Microsoft Datacentre Security & Management Update – September

Whilst doing a demo of Systems Centre Service Manager this week a question came up that about showing the primary user of a computer that has certain software installed. I was pretty sure you could create a view to do this but had to look it up, and here is the result. Staying with Service Manager I also came across this useful PowerShell script to auto close resolved incidents have a look at this article for the details.

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Making a difference – working in Credit

Working in credit services might not sound glamorous or exciting – but it can be fascinating and very rewarding.

The first thing you need to work in the Credit Services department, says Mark Ancell, is a resilient attitude, ‘You tend to be either adored or reviled. People can get
frustrated sometimes if they can’t get the extra credit they need fast enough, which is entirely understandable, they just want to get on and do the business after all. But most of the time, it’s very rewarding because what we’re doing is helping people and 99 times out of 100, that’s what we are able to do.’

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ipad to HP Printer through thin Air – watch the Airprint in action

INTRODUCING HP AND AIRPRINT

Print from iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch to HP web – connected printers via WiFi.

Finally, the wait is over. You can now enjoy the freedom and ease of being able to print stuff you love – photos, recipes, maps and tickets – via your WiFi network. And the best part is, there’s no setup required.

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Hot technologies and markets for the channel in 2012 Part 4

Value Added Cloud

Where would any self-respecting prediction list be without reference to the cloud! Every vendor seems to have jumped in feet first with cloud happily tacked onto just about every possible permutation of product. You would assume that the market is saturated and a done deal. Well the reality is that customers – remember, the ones who pay for things – have, by and large, not yet boarded the good ship cloud for various reasons. There is an opportunity for a new breed of channel partner that understands not just the cloud but legacy systems to help then make that switch. One of the biggest areas is office productivity, of which, Microsoft is still the dominant player. Another area is unified communications, and the last area ripe for moving to  the cloud is backup and recovery.

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Hot technologies and markets for the channel in 2012 Part 3

Purchase Automation Solutions

The recession is over – Hurrah! But the cost of the stimulus packages and banking bailouts has left the UK with a big budget deficit, so cuts are coming. The public sector will be hit hard, and the knock on effect will be felt by every vendor and service provider which supplies to any organisation receiving funding from central or local government. Even as we speak, departmental heads and accountants will be pouring over spreadsheets and diving into ERP systems to work out how to save a few quid. One logical response is to stop your employees from buying things that are outside
of their assigned budgets. Another is to tighten up controls on when they buy and from which suppliers as well as cracking down on fraudulent activity.

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Hot technologies and markets for the channel in 2012 Part 2

Disaster recovery for virtualised environments

Virtualisation is hot. VMware is making money hand over fist and everybody wants to save cash through the new magic bullet. But if you’re a large enterprise, you still need to put in place a  bulletproof disaster recovery position to protect this shiny new virtual infrastructure. The traditional method is to create alternative sites and replicate the data from the primary to the backup. This
is expensive and further complicated in a fast evolving virtualised environment.

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Hot technologies and markets for the channel in 2012 Part 1

For a channel partner looking to carve out a niche, going with an established vendor in a saturated market is actually rather tricky. You need to be either technically better than your rivals or significantly cheaper. Both are not easy to achieve. The other option is to pick an emerging technology area that is likely to bear fruit in the next 12 months and commit early. But there are lots of areas and tech companies to choose from and investing in a vendor that goes under or a market that never truly hits the big time is a big risk.

In the day-to-day trawl of the IT industry that is our remit on Channel Pro, we come across emerging technologies and vendors that standout as a “bloody good idea!” but for a number of reasons, haven’t yet carved out a sizeable channel. These are our top four for the next year.

Mobile Device Management

Look around you; everybody seems to have a smartphone these days. Online app stores are flourishing and all the social media sites are going mobile. More and more people are actually using them
for work. For the average IT department, setting up, patching, securing and ultimately recovering these smart devices is a time consuming and expensive business. Wouldn’t it be nice if the desktop provisioning, patch management, application deployment and security tools from the likes of Shavlik, HP and Microsoft could apply to mobile devices? Well mobile device management as
exactly that and it is hot!

The vendors and the technology

There are a number of players in the space that are recruiting and according to Gartner’s influential Magic Quadrant, the ones to watch are AirWatch, MobileIron and Sybase. The technology each vendor uses is comparable, but taking MobileIron as an example, it uses a platform charged at roughly a £4 per user per month that extends all the traditional desktop management stuff to almost every “smart” mobile device under the sun. It also adds a few bells and whistles around managing roaming charges and data loss prevention.

The potential versus the pitfalls
According to the few partners that have dabbled with Mobile Device Management, the technology is pretty good and it supports lots of devices. The “perseat” cost model also sits well with customers and, so far, the startups like MobileIron have added more features without jacking up the price. There are also only a handful of partners in the UK and the market is definitely growing. The problem is that there are a lot of entrants in the space. Gartner counts around 20, and the competition in this space could get fierce. McAfee bought a key rival in the space just before they were gobbled up by Intel so expect to see some serious competition from a big player soon. Also, the technology is ripe for deployment at a mobile operator level which could cut the channel out of the loop.

Summary

Mobile device management will be a major industry, Gartner agrees, so it must be true. Whether early pioneers like MobileIron or McAfee (Intel) will be there when it hits is debatable, especially with the buying frenzy that is happening at the moment. As new hybrid devices that start to blur the distinction between phone, laptop and pad enter the market, the opportunity will grow further. Either way, the sector is pretty exciting.

Cisco channel strongly embraces video

Interest in TelePresence solutions has been growing strongly since the acquisition of Tandberg by Cisco with many partners signing up to the new Cisco TelePresence Advanced Technology Programme (ATP).

Joel Chimoindes, Azlan Director of Unified Communications, commented: ‘We have been really encouraged not only by the keenness of Cisco partners to adopt TelePresence as a new offering to their customers, but also by their willingness to invest in training and accreditation in order to have the requisite skills to successfully implement a video solution as part of a wider collaboration deployment. Cisco has a philosophy of recruit, enable and grow, and that’s exactly what we are doing at Azlan by enabling partners with the skills and supporting services they need in order to create an environment in which they can grow.’

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Tablets take PC sales up 17 percent

Channel research specialist Canalys measured global PC market growth at 17 percent in the second quarter of the year, driven by widespread upgrades to Windows 7 and strong tablet sales. Gartner’s preliminary figures for Q2 – which do not include tablet PC sales – tell a different story with global sales up by only 2.3 percent on last year. It says that the market is now shifting to a pattern of modest, but steady growth.

McAfee highlights need for tight security

McAfee has found that a hacking group penetrated 72 organisations in 14 countries since 2006 stealing national secrets, business plans and other sensitive information. The company has also released an educational guide to banking online for consumers. A recent survey by Javelin Strategy and Research found that 47 percent of households that used online banking last year did not have antivirus software installed.