Comms Dealer

US-based provider of flash-driven storage arrays Tegile Systems has announced a European expansion in Europe driven by increased customer demand.

Currently it sells exclusively through its channel partners in the UK, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and across the Benelux region however, with a growing demand, it plans further expansion into the Nordics. Tegile will also continue to grow its channel reseller base in Europe.

The company has also reported a 600% revenue growth in Europe since last year, it says. Tegile first came to Europe in 2012 and since then it has managed to expand its team on top of its increasing customer base which achieved more than 1,400 installations across the education, healthcare and government sectors, it says. In terms of the product and solution portfolio, Tegile stayed focused on virtualisation and high performance.

"We have seen such fantastic results all fostered from our own organic growth. With customers around the world such as Saudi Petroleum, Aer Lingus, Rahr Corporation and Mizuno USA, we are demonstrating exactly how much the company has grown since its inception.

"Moving further into the European market was the next logical step, and we are excited to continue building relationships with key channel partners in the region to ensure we are providing the best customer experience possible," said Paul Silver, VP EMEA, Tegile.

In Europe, Tegile distributes its product portfolio through its partner network, including the Exclusive Group's company Big Technology.

Barrie Desmond, COO of Exclusive Group, said: "Tegile is one of the most disruptive start-ups championing data centre transformation."

The storage market is expected to grow rapidly, with all-flash market to expand at a 50% CAGR by 2018 and account for around 15% of Europe's total flash market, says ICT consultancy IDC. \\

In a response, Tegile has formed three main product categories. This includes the entry level flash system, the mid-tier workhouse for larger scale VDI, server virtualisation and database environments, and the high performance array for I/O workloads.

The apparent battle between IT departments and service providers has been highlighted in a study by LogicNow of over 1,300 IT departments and almost 700 IT Service Providers across eight geographies.

It claims to have found a misunderstanding of relationships and a substantial disconnect between IT Service Providers and IT departments in how their relationships should evolve.

Some 64% of IT Service Providers were keen for their customer relationships to move towards greater strategic consultancy - keen to offer wider, more diverse knowledge-based services.

But only 13% of IT departments felt the same, with the remainder split evenly between wanting no change at all, and actually wanting more focus on tactical, technical IT support instead.

It seems to be about the vision and access to point solutions: Asked where managed security offerings should improve, IT departments are most keen to see better email security; better web protection; and better anti-virus.

IT Service Providers on the other hand are planning on prioritising security consultancy and offering more proactive system updates and patching - both indicative of the misalignment in the relationship mentioned above. Indeed, IT departments ranked both of these 'improvements' to the managed security offering towards the bottom of their priorities.

Then there are unfriendly pricing structures: 76% of IT departments globally want to pay for Managed Security Services with a single invoice on either a monthly, quarterly or annual basis that encompass all the charges for all their IT security needs - technology licences and associated services combined.

Concerningly, 49% of IT Service Providers globally are invoicing in exactly the wrong way (invoicing for every technology individually, or on an ad hoc basis) - and even worse, many are deliberately not planning to change their invoicing processes in the next 12 months.

"At LogicNow, we champion the Managed Service Provider model. IT departments benefit most from proactive support rather than Service Providers simply reacting when things go wrong. And at the same time, it's a more profitable business model for Service Providers," said Dr Alistair Forbes (above), General Manager, LogicNow.

"However, our Global IT Service Providers Harmony Report clearly shows that IT Service Providers need to be patient in their pursuit of this model and choose their timing carefully.

"Pushing strategic consultancy too early in the relationship gives an impression of under-valuing the immediate concern weighing heaviest on the customer's mind. IT departments engage with Service Providers because they have a particular problem that needs solving. This must be addressed first to earn the opportunity of a strategic engagement later on."

Global data centre and Internet exchange provider Equinix has officially launched its Partner Programme in EMEA.

The scheme is designed to help the company engage with European managed service providers (MSPs), network service providers (NSPs), system integrators (SIs) and solution providers (SPs), capable of helping enterprise customers with their IT and cloud solutions.

The new programme mirrors that outlined in Equinix's global announcement earlier this year and allows partners to resell or refer Equinix services.

It is aimed at encouraging adoption of the Equinix Cloud Exchange in delivering IT consultancy and services to satisfy the increasing enterprise demand for hybrid cloud solutions.

Refreshingly, none of the strong line-up of executives at the launch, which included Chris Rajiah (Vice President of Worldwide Channel Partners and Alliances), Michael Winterson (EMEA Managing Director), Pete Hayes (Chief Sales Officer), and Eric Saillard (EMEA Channel Sales Director), claimed they had all the answers in adapting the global programme to the challenges of the European market.

Rather, they stressed their willingness to engage with and listen to enterprise channel organisations in the development of appropriate solutions.

This approach was endorsed by a number of service providers that have recently joined the EMEA Channel Partner Programme including VMWare and Datapipe who were present at the launch.

According to Mark Underwood, VP EMEA Sales, Datapipe, the new partnership had already opened up significant opportunities for the company within its enterprise customer base.

Security emerged as Dell's current major focus area as the vendor opened its annual channel event, dubbed Peak Performance, in Berlin.

The company said it expects to more than double security solution sales in 2015, as well as highlighting continued channel growth as one of its strategic goals for the year.

Stressing the importance of strong partnerships, Dell EMEA President Aongus Hegarty told the 300-delegate audience: "Over the last few years, our focus has been working with key partners to expand our portfolio and we're setting even higher target for our partner network this year."

Dell's quest for stronger footing in the channel came more apparent earlier this month as the firm struck a new distribution agreement with Tech Data in the UK&I. At the event the vendor said it expects distribution revenue to grow by more than 50% during the current year.

Overall channel growth was outlined as one of Dell's 'crucial goals for 2015' with a target 30% year-on-year increase in this area, the same as the firm achieved last year. According to Ronnie Wilson, VP Dell Software EMEA, over 60% of the vendor's software is already shifted through the channel.

The vendor claims its software division has grown from about $100m to $2bn in the last three years, and Wilson was keen to emphasise its importance for the overall business.

"Software is key to Dell, it's a game-changer," he said. "Building end-to-end capability is the future. Software is critical to building capabilities in the cloud, in mobility, big data and in security. It's the glue that makes everything work and holds it all together."

Dell sees security as a central focus point for its own strategy but also in the wider space. "From talking to partners and customers all across the EMEA region, I know security is on top of everyone's agenda," Hegarty said.

Curtis Hutcheson, VP Dell Security, echoed the thought, saying companies across the board have started to realise security breaches are not going to go away. This, according to Dell, is leading to more and more encrypted data traffic.

"People are realising that security breaches will happen, and they are now aggressively encrypting more data to prevent a breach from happening," Hutcheson said.

But as encryption makes it difficult to inspect network traffic, this is creating another security concern. This, as Dell's Executive Director of Network Security Patrick Sweeney put it, affects everyone's business and could be detrimental to solution providers' service capabilities unless tackled with the right technical abilities.

It is clear that security is central to Dell's strategy. It could play a key role in the vendor's pursuit of the SMB segment, which it has traditionally served on the hardware side but remains fairly untapped in terms of software.

European cyber-security growth is being driven by the wider use of mobile devices in enterprises, says a researcher, and it expects this to rise at 13% per year for the next four years.

Technavio, a tech-focused research firm, has published a new report on the cyber security market in Europe, and draws attention to the adoption of BYOD policies in workplaces which allow employees to use their personal mobile devices for work.

This has increased the demand for uninterrupted connectivity between a corporate network and employees' mobile devices.

Faisal Ghaus, Vice President of Technavio, said: "The rise in employee mobility is leading to the increased use of mobile devices, but these can be insecure, making it easy for hackers to gain unauthorised access. This is expected to drive the growth of the cyber security market in the coming years."

The latest Technavio report also emphasises the growing demand for cloud-based security systems. Organisations that find it difficult to manage stand-alone or integrated network components because of budget constraints and lack of resources are opting for these solutions.

"Cloud-based security solutions are cost-effective, compatible with PCI DSS regulations and offer round-the-clock system monitoring, which is expected to contribute to the market growth during the forecast period," added Ghaus.

Planet Hippo has launched a new Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) solution providing corporate users with a scalable, secure and cost effective way to deploy cloud hosting offering 99.99% availability and zero packet loss to meet SLA requirements, said the firm.

Planet Hippo's IaaS solution is powered by OnApp, the rapidly growing cloud resource technology which is now used by one in three public cloud platforms.

It enables users to set up private or public clouds in minutes using libraries of pre-configured, customisable virtual machine templates that allow easy deployment of virtual machines running different operating systems and applications simultaneously.

Planet Hippo also enables users to select the resources they require, including virtual private servers and shared hosting platforms, scaling them as required to match demand, save energy and minimise cost.

According to Darren Lavender, Managing Director of Planet Hippo: "This new IaaS solution offers greater flexibility and scalability than traditional web hosting.

"It enables corporate users to accelerate their delivery of cloud services and achieve significant cost reductions by reducing their reliance on premise-based IT infrastructure and eliminate the need for costly and obsolete centralised storage."

Plans announced by Angie Communications to build three next generation comms infrastructures in the UK are well advanced with the company  now taking registrations for its upcoming nationwide 10-gigabit fibre connectivity which will be available to three million premises. Also in the pipeline is nationwide 4.5G mobile covering 95% of the UK population, and 5G wireless networks covering 90% of the UK population.

The registration process concerns Angie's nationwide fibre roll-out only.

The timing and possibility of actual connecting people depends on certain aspects, said the firm.

ISPA has welcomed Astro Communications as a new member, giving the ISP access to the trade association's innovation, knowledge and experience.

Astro Communications MD Steve Hodges said: "Our decision to become a B2B ISP in 2014 means we are now in a stronger position to play a more proactive, contributory role within the industry. We applied for membership to ISPA and are delighted to have been accepted into the association.

"Astro plans to take full advantage of the benefits of ISPA membership, helping to influence the industry through shaping public policy, being part of ISP specific discussion groups and getting involved in events and awards. It's an exciting time for Astro Communications."

European telecoms operators could realise 39 billion euro by re-imagining the network, claims a study by Arthur D. Little and Bell Labs which states that NFV and SDN are a strategic opportunity and a necessity for the telecoms industry.

The study, titled 'Reshaping the future with NFV and SDN', predicts that the shift to becoming a cloud carrier has the potential to significantly redefine how the industry competes in the cloud era.

The report says that for the last 20 years, IP modernisation in carrier networks has been restrained by the need to accommodate legacy network functions and disparate management systems.

By first consolidating network functionality and eliminating outdated hardware, telecoms operators will realise the systemic gains from full IP transformation and modernised operations.

The report findings show that the efficiency impact of onboarding NFV and SDN for these operators could be worth 14 billion euros per year in the network domain alone, which will be augmented by a further 25 billion euros per year in non-network operating costs through greater automation and simplification of business processes.

Jesús Portal, Partner at Arthur D. Little, said: "The time is now for Europe's telecoms industry to bring networking into the cloud era. It will not be trivial to execute programmability and automation at the scale required for success, but the prize is significant."

Bringing the supply chain together under one umbrella including the end user was the rationale behind Panasonic's new B2B Partner Portal, according to Valerie Poret, Panasonic European Channel Manager.

"The Partner Portal is about closing the gap between Panasonic, our channel partners and the end user," she said.

"Clients have access to resources that enable them to maximise potential sales and achieve higher levels of service.

"The portal covers more products and make it easier for distributors and resellers to access customer facing information and register new business."

The web-based service is open to users across the company's Visual Systems and Communications divisions Europe-wide, and will be expanded to other business divisions later this year.

Those who sign up for the scheme gain access to product information, sales news and business incentives, with rewards scaled according to the level of partnership - Registered, Expert or Solutions - depending on the user's level of training and sales volume.

High level partners will also benefit from end user business lead allocation.

The Partner Portal also offers an online training programme and provides instant answers to product related questions.

"Depending on products, partners can find easy tools to support their daily business, such as eConfig which helps comms specialists to build their customer offer and select, at a glance, the system matching end user requirements," added Poret.

"For visual technologies, AV rental companies have access to a community platform allowing them to share information about their fleet of products available for cross-rental."