MicroScopemicroscope.co.uk

July 2013

◆ Bring your own app: into the enterprise◆ resellers exploit the capaBilities of the Business app store

◆ the month in it ◆ opinion ◆ letters ◆ five-minute interview ◆

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Phoenix IT numbers down at end of tumultuous yearPhoenix IT Group has plunged to a full-year pre-tax loss of £58.8m – a precip-itous drop from last year’s adjusted loss of £4.9m – and seen sales fall by 4.1% to £250m at the end of a difficult year for the IT services outfit. Underlying pre-tax profit also fell from £20m in its fiscal 2012 to £14.9m.

This time last year an optimistic Phoenix was banging the drum after embarking on a major restructuring programme designed to, in the words of its then-CEO David Courtley, give it “a strong platform to grow this business by offering a more cohesive range of complementary services.”

However the resolute failure of the British economy to show any signs of sustained growth, and the discovery of a £14m black hole in the accounts at its midmarket managed services business Servo – which turned out to be down to profit overstatement and not cash misappropriation – have effec-tively blighted its fiscal 2013.

Phoenix revealed that it took a one-off charge of £68.1m for impairment of goodwill and other intangible assets has been made in respect of the accounting irregularities at Servo, and executive chairman Peter Bertram conceded that it had been a challenging year.

“There are issues affecting the Group,” he said, “which whilst being resolved, will continue to negatively impact in the short term. We are planning for revenue growth, particularly from the second half of the current financial year, and believe the Group can recover from the difficulties of last year.”

C2000 accounting probe holds up Tech Data quarterliesComputer 2000 parent Tech Data has revealed that it will not be filing its first quarter financial results for the three months to 30 April on sched-ule, due to serious vendor accounting improprieties at its UK business.

The problems on C2000’s books came to light in late March, a couple of weeks after Tech Data filed its Q4 and year-end numbers to 31 January.

Entatech nabs five from Northamber to run Surrey baseEntatech has snaffled five former Northamber employees to get a new southern sales office in Leatherhead, Surrey, up and running.

Former Northamber Microsoft business manager Dominic Hoskins heads up the operation as sales of-fice manager. He will be backed up by Stewart Honeywill, Oliver Moor-by, David Smith and Dritan Smith.

HP looks to former Acer, Lenovo boss to run PPSOne-time Acer UK managing director Dion Weisler has been tapped by his paymasters HP to take charge of the troublesome Printing and Personal Systems business unit as Todd Bradley moves to China in the newly-created role of EVP, strategic growth initiatives.

Weisler first pitched up at HP in December 2011 and has been run-ning its PC business in APAC and Japan for the past 18 months.

Prior to that he served as Lenovo’s COO of Product and Mobile Internet Digital Home Groups and held vari-ous senior roles at Acer.

Ingram makes changes at top of European organisationBroadliner Ingram Micro will hand the role of senior EVP and president of Europe to current SVP of Central and Eastern Europe and head of DACH (Germany, Austria, Switzer-land and Hungary) on 1 August, fol-lowing the redeployment of incum-bent Alain Maquet.

Schulz will report to CEO Alain Monié. He will take charge of grow-ing the distie’s European ops by fur-ther diversifying its business model and strengthening its solutions business, said Monié.

HP unveils enhancementsHP has unveiled enhancements to its PartnerOne programme, chief among them a simplified compensation model, new membership levels and massive cuts to the number of certifi-cations offered to the channel.

HP said it will offer resellers more predictable levels of partner compen-sation across its Enterprise, Software and PPS groups.

Windows 8.1 not a magic bullet for PC salesThe anticipated launch of Windows 8.1 may not be the longed-for shock therapy that will push PC sales and shipments back into growth mode, according to analysts at Context.

Context senior PC analyst Marie-Christine Pygott said that while Win-dows 8.1 could be a help its impact would most likely be outweighed by macroeconomic concerns, and in the near-term, growing interest in and ac-ceptance of low-cost Android tablets which, she said, are beginning to come into their own.

Annodata hires Azzurri, Intrinsic talent in sales pushBusiness communications reseller Annodata has announced the ap-pointment of former Azzurri and Intrinsic CEOs Martin St Quinton and Mike Mason as non-executive chairman and managing director of UC and collaboration respectively.

The 25-year old firm is currently on a drive to hit the £100m sales mark and hopes to use St Quinton and Mason’s combined 60 years plus experience to get it there.

Logicalis launches flexible skillsLogicalis aims to alleviate customer problems with skills gaps by launch-ing a flexible resource operation that provides the option to plug gaps around specific problems.

Skills shortages continue to dog UK businesses who cannot afford to employ staff full-time but could be tempted with a cloud type personnel package that would be a flexible way of completing projects.

Operating losses widen at Daisy in otherwise strong yearUnified business communications services specialist Daisy Group has booked a full-year operating loss of £16.8m for the 12 months to 31 March but insists its overall position is still strong. The firm said it saw significant growth in cash generation, ahead of market expectations, while full-year sales and adjusted EBITDA came in at £351.5m and £56.3m were both flat compared with the previous financial year.

Equanet, PIXmania costs push Dixons Retail to pre-tax lossDixons Retail has fallen to a full-year pre-tax loss of £115.3m, barely improving on the year-ago loss of £118.8m after booking non-underly-ing items of over £200m.

The multi-channel retailer re-vealed its fiscal 2013 numbers to the end of April on 20 June, showing massive restructuring and impair-ment charges of £168.8m.

Tech firm ditches Rackspace hosting service for ‘lack of support’ A cloud sales service company, Price & Quote, has ditched its IT hosting provider, Rackspace, because of “lack of support and unresponsiveness”.

It was hard to get the level of support that Price & Quote needed, according to Seamus Devine, co-founder and managing director of Price & Quote, which opted for Rackspace’s service in September 2012.

“The issue was that Rackspace was too big for us. We weren’t getting the one-to-one service that a startup such as ourselves needed,” said Devine.

Price & Quote provides cloud-based sales engine software to its custom-ers. The nature of the business means that a fast and reliable IT service is critical to its business, according to Devine.

“As a new business, it was crucial to support our goal by working with an IT provider that could deliver high levels of support and offer the expertise and guidance on the services we needed to build a successful business,” he said. “Rackspace lacked that understanding. The slow response time we were experiencing was costing us time and money.”

the month in the channel

July 2013 | 2Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk

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Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk July 2013 | 3

Opportunities around apps will exist for the channel and ignoring them now will prove an unwise move

Business best placed to train its workforce

Billy Macinnes opinion

Here we go again. Business lobbying group, the Con-federation for British In-dustry (CBI), has released

a survey that reveals “a stubborn shortage in the skills the UK needs to remain competitive and fuel long-term growth”.

According to the survey of 294 companies that employ 1.24 million workers, 39% are struggling to recruit workers with the advanced, technical Stem skills they need and 41% don’t see any prospect of the situation im-proving in the next three years.

As many as 55% think school leav-ers do not have the right work experi-ence and attributes to set them up for success, such as self management, problem solving and attitude to work and believe there is “a need for school reform to produce people who are rounded and grounded, as well as stretched academically”.

Almost a third are dissatisfied with the basic literacy and numeracy of some school and college leavers and 31% think young people lack the re-quired technical skills.

CBI director-general John Cridland says the country needs “to boost our skills base urgently before the UK loses more ground”.

The CBI is calling on government to implement the independent Rich-ard Review into apprenticeships and to give employers control over quali-fication content and structure, while routing funding more directly to businesses, rather than spending the money through intermediaries.

“Firms are already investing in training but they cannot do it on their own,” Cridland argues. “We want to see the skills budget protected as far as possible, while focusing on busi-ness needs. That means routing fund-ing more directly to firms. We can’t afford for funding to be badly target-ed or sucked up by bureaucracy.”

To most businesses, what Cridland advocates sounds like common sense, so why did I start this article with the phrase “here we go again”? First, I can’t help thinking there’s something strange about people who have come up through the existing education system – and carved out successful careers in business – com-plaining about its shortcomings.

How many of the people urging the government to let them have a say in how young people are educated and

trained – with public funds, for the benefit of their businesses – would have reacted, had companies sought to dictate their education process?

The more serious point is that busi-nesses nowadays expect to have eve-rything given to them on a plate with the lowest possible outlay on their behalf. We live in an era where busi-ness enjoys far more political, cultur-al and economic clout than ever be-fore. The irony is that business seeks to have a wider say in how workers are educated at a time when it be-lieves the best way to boost profits and competitiveness is to pay as little back as possible to the society that produces those employees.

Personally, I don’t think it’s the role of the government or the educa-tion system to force children to con-centrate their studies in areas that are friendly to business. We’re constantly told today’s world of work is so fast moving and people need to keep add-ing to their skills so frequently, it seems inevitable that a curriculum so tailored to suit businesses today would be out of date by the time the child left school.

Business has always had to train school leavers and graduates to meet its needs. For years it did so without complaint because it accepted its re-sponsibility to train its own work-force. It’s only recently that business has sought to push as much of that work back to the state as possible or get it subsidised.

We hear a lot about the dependen-cy culture of individuals, but it ap-plies equally to businesses. Why should a company expect the state to pay for the privilege of training its workers? I don’t doubt that 39% of businesses are struggling to recruit workers with the advanced, technical Stem skills they need, but maybe in-stead of waiting for the state to sort it out for them, they could think about recruiting people and training them in those skills themselves. ■

siMOn quicke editor’s comment

The word “apps” is increasingly connected to the idea of the future for those many organi-sations attempting to cope with the bring your own device (ByOD) explosion.

If you want to make sure staff are using safe and secure applications then the best way to ensure that is happening is to make them available through a corporate app store.

It is perhaps more an idea than a reality at the mo-ment and recent research from Insight indicates that, right now, customers are much more worried about nailing the security problems first before looking to widen the breadth and availability of applications through a corporate-backed store.

Even if the mainstream deployment of enterprise app stores might be some way off, there is a lot of noise about the need for vendors to recognise their customers’ desire to consume their software on an increasing number of flexible platforms.

Resellers themselves are advised to start thinking about developing their own apps to make sure they can extend their support for customers through help and advice that can be consumed on smartphones and tablets.

One former Nokia employee – who had been part of its initial team reacting to the launch of the iPhone – said he kept telling the company it was “all about the apps” but, at the time, the focus was on improv-ing hardware functionality with bigger and brighter screens, rather than recognising the thousands of apps that extended the capability of the phone and afforded personalisation to appeal to users.

Since then of course the Apple store has been joined by Android’s equivalent and numerous other flavours according to OS platform and vendor. At a consumer level the app debate is well understood. But at a business level this themed issue might be quite early in the app story but will hopefully act as a signpost to future market developments.

Opportunities around apps will exist for the chan-nel and, although it might not be totally clear right now what they will be, it is fair to say that ignoring apps now will prove an unwise move. ■

If you would like details of forthcoming themes running in the MicroScope ezine, wish to share your reaction to this one, or make any other contribution, email squicke@techtarget.com.

Resellers ignore apps trend at their peril

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community

Norway’s Green Mountain locks down its green data

nick BOOth opinion

I f you are a systems integrator, reseller or hosting company, at some stage you will have to go and look around a datacentre on

behalf of your clients.This is not fun. First of all there’s

the corporate film to sit through, with time lapse photography of a busy city street at night. Believe me, once you’ve seen one film of blurred head-lights, you’ve seen them all.

The commentary will invariably contain the time-honoured phrase, “in these increasingly competitive times”. Then all kinds of spurious claims are made about the green-ness and power efficiency of the system – but you know it con-sumes more power than a small town before they get to be efficient with it.

At most of the datacentres I have visited they create a big drama about not letting you in unless you have your passport – even though they know who you are. This is to impress on you how secure their establish-ment is. And yet I read somewhere this month that, once you are behind the scenes, most datacentres are shockingly insecure. People wander in and out and unplug each other’s cables as they scramble through wir-ing closets as a short cut.

So it was refreshing to visit a genu-inely low-carbon datacentre in Nor-way. The Green Mountain Datacentre

Ihad an interesting conversation with someone in the managed print services (MPS) business

who had attended the ITEX Expo & Conference in Las Vegas in April. For those of you unfamiliar with ITEX, it’s an event which, according to its website, “showcases all aspects of the evolving office market and the grow-ing influence of IT services”.

He told me about one session where the speaker asked them to look at a typical managed print services contract they provided to customers and asked: “Would you sign it?”

It’s a very good question. It’s some-thing many people involved in pro-viding MPS really should ask them-selves more frequently, but I have a very strong suspicion that many of them have never once done so.

One of the characteristics sup-posed to define the role a channel partner plays for its customer is the ability to stand in the user’s shoes and understand his or her require-ment. As such, you would expect the channel partner to make a virtue of only selling products or services it would be happy to use itself. That should include the contract the cus-tomer is expected to sign.

The problem with many MPS con-tracts is that the “use it or lose it” stipulation isn’t really fair. Essential-ly, it gives a customer a fixed number of pages per quarter, say 15,000 for example, but states that if it only uses 10,000, it loses the other 5,000. But if the customer prints 20,000 in the next quarter, it gets charged for print-ing an extra 5,000 copies. What this means is that over the year, given the fluctuations in quarterly printing pat-terns, a customer might well be with-in the agreed 60,000 copies annually but end up paying for 70,000.

Most people selling these contracts must surely be aware that the rigidity of fixed quarterly targets puts them in a win-win situation with the custom-er. I would be surprised if many of the people at the ITEX session would have put their hands up when the speaker asked if any of them would sign their own contracts.

But I am surprised they expect cus-tomers to. And I’m even more sur-prised those customers do. ■

Billy Macinnes opinion

is on an island near Stavanger and uses seawater to cool its data halls. The water comes in from the sea, under the force of gravity. This saline solution is used to chill fresh water, (seawater is too corrosive to be used in the internal piping), via a titanium heat exchange system. The cold fresh water is then piped into the datacen-tre halls to keep them chilled. In this way, the volatile costs for the most expensive part of a datacentre are wrestled to the ground and subdued.

Similarly, the electricity for power-ing the computers has no carbon foot-print. It’s created by hydro power at three different mountain reservoirs, which gives the datacentre a zero car-bon footprint and high fault toler-ance. There’s no need for an emer-gency generator when you have three power supplies.

But the most exciting part of the exercise is verifying the security. The datacentre buildings were built in-side a mountain on a remote island that was once a secret Nato base in the cold war. It looks like a hideaway in a James Bond film. It even has a giant stone door that rolls to one side once your host has convinced a bio-metric machine of his veracity.

Once inside you are separated from the outside world by 60 metres of rock. There are long corridors carved into the rock and four vast data halls with 7,000m2 of rackable

space. You expect to see a giant boul-der rolling down the hallways and maybe patrolling henchmen in a golf buggy. Outside, approaching boats are monitored by camera.

All that’s missing is a swimming pool full of crocodiles for disposing of rivals. Forget all those dreadful corporate films and endless Power-points. This is how to sell IT services!

A compliance or security officer will like the inaccessibility of a data-centre buried inside a rock with only two doors offering access. Marketing and corporate social responsibility officers, in turn, will be impressed by the low carbon footprint of a datacen-tre powered by sustainable energy.

The chief finance officer will rave about the cheap electricity available and the stability of the price. Britain’s power charges are set to double in 10 years’ time while Green Mountain is offering a price freeze.

According to Green Mountain CEO Knut Molaug, all three will be asked to visit the datacentre in a long sales cycle that takes several months and involves several visits.

“It’s the CFOs who make all the technology decisions now as they get to sign everything off,” said Molaug.

Well, I’m not actually going to host my services with Green Mountain. But like me, you’ll be glad you made the trip. It’s worth going just to see the fjords and mountains. ■

Would you sign the contract?

Apple revealed a number of quite staggering statistics concerning its App Store at the company’s recent

worldwide developer conference. Apple stated that there had been more than 50 billion app downloads to date, it hosts more than 900,000 apps and there are 575 million App Store accounts.

There is no doubt that the success of Apple’s App Store and the con-sumerisation of IT on the back of the phenomenal growth in smartphone and tablet sales is driving mobility and the requirement for mobile apps at the enterprise level. A recent report from Gartner predicted that up to 25% of enterprises will have their own enterprise app stores by 2017.

The market analysts argued that enterprise app stores would provide “greater control over the apps used by employees, greater control over software expenditure and greater

the application portfolio and reduce the associated risks, licence fees and administration expenses,” he added.

Enterprise app store trendsGartner identified three key en-terprise app store trends. First on the list was the growing number of enterprise mobile devices and the adoption of mobile device manage-ment (MDM) by enterprises that would drive demand and adoption of enterprise app stores. Second was the ability of enterprise app stores to sup-port “a more diverse and competitive automated software process requir-ing less procurement intervention”. Finally, Gartner said the long-term success of an enterprise app store would be dependent on “a dramatic increase in the supply of software solutions”.

Helen Wood, UK channel director and global channel programmes di-rector at RES Software, is in no doubt

Bringing the iTunes attitude to the officeBilly Macinnes looks at how resellers can help organisations change their current application delivery method for a more flexible app store approach

apps in the enterprise

July 2013 | 5Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk

negotiating leverage with app ven-dors”, but warned that the prospect of greater control would only be pos-sible if the enterprise app store was widely adopted.

“Apps downloaded from public app stores for mobile devices disrupt IT security, application and procure-ment strategies,” said Ian Finley, re-search vice-president at Gartner. “Bring your own application (BYOA) has become as important as bring your own device (BYOD) in the de-velopment of a comprehensive mo-bile strategy, and the trend toward BYOA has begun to affect desktop and web applications as well.”

Finley said enterprise app stores promised a partial solution, but only if IT security, application, procure-ment and sourcing professionals worked together to successfully apply the app store concept to their enterprises. “When successful, they can increase the value delivered by

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the success of apple’s app store and the consumerisation of it is driving mobility and the requirement for mobile apps at the enterprise level

July 2013 | 6Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk

that the success of Apple’s App Store has demonstrated the ability to deliv-er mobile applications to mobile de-vices and has totally changed the way we look at IT in the enterprise today as users increasingly come into offices with demands and expecta-tions that they never had before.

“The expectation is that they will get what they need immediately, and gone are the days of calling an IT guy, waiting a week for him to show up with a wallet full of CDs to install the application they asked for,” she adds.

But are enterprises in any place to fulfil that demand? And what actions are they taking, if any, to make sure that they can do so?

Mobile app developmentAccording to a recent survey con-ducted by Vanson Bourne for Bor-land (a Micro Focus company), 79% of CIOs and IT directors polled are delivering mobile apps, but a third of them complained their mobile development team was sluggish or outpaced. This suggests there could be problems ahead, given that many of them expect the number of busi-ness apps being made accessible on mobile devices will increase from 31% in 2013 to 46% in 2016.

The good news for third-party companies is that a significant pro-portion of CIOs and IT directors (37%) outsource between 25% and 50% of their mobile application de-velopment work.

Respondents also revealed that mobile app development was even more of a problem for organisations that were using mainframes. Nearly nine out of ten reported that mobile applications vendors and developers were more reticent about working with mainframe organisations.

In terms of priorities, CIOs identi-fied improving operational efficiency as a major factor in supporting mobile applications, along with improving cost-effectiveness, capturing new cus-tomers and retaining existing ones.

Commenting on the survey re-sults, Archie Roboostoff, Borland so-lutions portfolio director at Micro Focus, says: “Mobile apps play a critical role in every organisation’s business strategy today. However, the consumer in all of us is demand-ing more, and companies are under increasing pressure to release higher quality mobile apps faster and more often than ever before.”

Business on the moveOne of the big drivers for apps is mo-bile devices. As Gary Calcott, techni-cal marketing manager at Progress Software, points out: “Today’s busi-ness interactions are no longer static. There is no such thing as a ‘desk job’. We all do business on the move, in multiple locations, and rely on more than one device to equip us.”

IT capabilities need to keep pace with the more demanding needs of organisations seeking a competitive advantage via technological efficien-cy, he adds.

“There is a clear business need for applications that are connected and fuelled by business data that can be deployed across any cloud or on-premise system, and on any device. The IT department should be in the business of powering productivity, not limiting it. With this in mind, a concerted effort must be made to im-prove the speed, connectivity and ease of use of application develop-ment software,” says Calcott.

Adrian Simpson, chief innovation officer at SAP UK & Ireland, says mo-bility and BYOD are definitely play-ing a part, but it is important to en-sure mobile devices enhance productivity.

“Making sure these devices have apps on them that meet the needs of the business and the individual job role is key. This is where partners can add value. SAP resellers are encour-aged to offer business applications to customers which ensure personal devices are exploited to their fullest sense, particularly in terms of business-critical functions,” he says.

Channel expertise requiredRES Software’s Wood speaks of a step change in the requirement for ap-plication delivery – indeed for any IT service that is currently delivered via long-winded, process-heavy tasks. “It will enable channel partners to have more strategic conversations and relationships with their existing customers and, perhaps more impor-tantly, with customers whose incum-bent partners are not able to articulate or deliver an ‘IT store’ experience,” she says.

Wood believes the enforced migra-tion from Windows XP and the con-

sumerisation of IT have created “a perfect time for the channel to speak to its market about IT delivery ability today versus what the future could look and feel like”. And that is not just confined to a standard app store opportunity, but could be a complete infrastructure refresh to accommo-date immediate, as well as long-term, business needs, she says.

“Most IT directors we have spoken to over the past few months are ex-tremely stressed about the choices they have to make soon, so a safe pair of knowledgeable hands will find their expertise is especially relevant in today’s unsettled environment,” says Wood.

Ed Brill, IBM director, mobile en-terprise marketing, says the company provides an App Centre in its Mobile First platform that can used for com-panies seeking to adopt a solution. Channel partners are starting to adopt some of IBM’s tools to build mobile apps. Brill cites research from For-rester Consulting that suggests IBM’s Worklight mobile application plat-form can deliver a return on invest-ment (ROI) of 363%.

The mobile app trend is shortening

the whole app lifecycle from build, deploy, manage, analyse to feedback and building the next version from months to weeks, and there’s always a new operating system (OS) or plat-form, a new screen size or tablet to account for, he says.

Brill reveals that IBM has “been ag-gressive about recruiting channel partners” and giving them the oppor-tunity to go and demonstrate “the ability of what can be done with a mobile platform to organisations very rapidly”. For some partners working within an industry or horizontal framework, they can develop a re-peatable app than can help custom-ers quickly jumpstart their evolution to mobile.

He views the mobile app market as one that it is “developing” and be-lieves it is “a place with lots of oppor-tunity”. To date, a lot of work in this space has come from bespoke agen-cies that have set out to build apps one at a time. Brill says partners pro-viding long-term customer care can put themselves in a position to pro-vide a full lifecycle perspective rather be a delivery vehicle for one-time ap-plication development.

“apps downloaded from public app stores disrupt it security, application and procurement strategies” ian Finley, Gartner

apps in the enterprise

Simpson: “Making sure mobile devices have apps on them that meet the needs of the business and the individual job role is key. This is where partners can add value”

July 2013 | 7Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk

App development partnersMark Miller, vice-president for prod-uct management at IPC, is convinced there is a “substantial role” for chan-nel partners in the development of apps in the B2B space. “Technology leaders are recognising the value they can add to their customers and the potential to tie their customers fur-ther into using their systems, by hav-ing an extended ecosystem of devel-opers creating relevant applications that are interoperable, compliant and available off the shelf,” he says.

For its part, IPC has launched an app development partner programme for its Unigy platform to harness “the creativity, innovation and knowledge of existing and new channel partners to provide new applications to its customers and, in so doing, to in-crease the points of connection it has with them”.

Channel partners benefit by having their apps certified by IPC and “re-ceiving support with marketing and sales of their solutions – which can be particularly valuable for those try-ing to break into a new sector, or those which are very small and do not have the resources to undertake targeted marketing campaigns”.

Miller says partners are already developing apps that extend the functionality of its platform. He highlights a call accounting app and another aimed at integrating call data with customer relationship management (CRM) data as good examples of this trend.

One interesting consequence of the proliferation in app stores is the ef-fect it could have on software spend-ing. RES Software’s Wood predicts that the profusion of app stores will cause software spending to sky rocket for many companies as users deploy software that they think they need but actually don’t. “I also think we will see more and more software ven-dors insisting on auditing within some of the large enterprises to en-sure that everyone is above board and legal with their licensing,” she says.

Mobile app development and de-ployment is increasingly being seen as an integral part of any BYOD strat-egy. But Simpson at SAP warns there is no point in introducing BYOD un-

less considerations – over and above security and legal consequences – are included in any policy. He believes that tailoring the implementation to improve efficiency and accessibility is crucial to its success.

“By introducing the opportunity for partners to develop their own business applications and contribute these to enterprise app stores, they ultimately become synonymous with BYOD policies, delivering a competi-tive edge and adding value to the business,” he argues.

Supply and demandAs with the Apple App Store and other consumer platforms, choice is seen as an important driver in the success or failure of enterprise app stores, which suggests many IT de-partments (and suppliers) are going to face something of a culture shock trying to provide a platform that is ac-ceptable to today’s users.

“Without a dynamic selection of apps to choose from, users will even-tually have little reason to continue to visit an enterprise app store. An app store can be a natural way to share new applications within the enterprise, recognise great applica-

tions, provide feedback to develop-ment teams and even create a bit of competition between them — all to drive the development of better solu-tions,” warns Gartner.

Brian Prentice, research vice-presi-dent at Gartner, argues that organisa-tions need to change their thinking to view the implementation of an enter-prise app store as a component of their application strategy, rather than infrastructure strategy.

“The primary determinant of suc-cess is app supply. As a result, appli-cation leaders should be given over-all responsibility for any app store initiative, but they should work in a collaborative fashion with other teams. The types of apps download-ed and used provide important infor-mation as to what types of solutions are of value to each type of user.”

It is a point taken up by Wood, who points out that enterprises need to make sure they meet the user de-mand, otherwise the user will find an alternative way to get what they need. “This may include sourcing and installing their own software, or leveraging some of the cloud services that are becoming readily available and accessible,” she says.

Enterprise app stores are popping up all over the place, but they need to provide the user with the ability to self-serve applications from a store and bring the iTunes mentality into the workplace because that satisfies the immediacy of it all, adds Wood.

Few enterprises would argue if their app stores succeeded in bring-ing the “iTunes mentality into the workplace”. For many CIOs and IT directors, that would sound like music to their ears. ■

“the types of apps downloaded and used provide important information as to what types of solutions are of value to each type of user” Brian Prentice, Gartner

apps in the enterprise

more online› Gartner predicts growth in enterprise app stores

› Bring your own device: a Trojan horse for enterprise mobility?

› Guide to consumer and enterprise mobile apps

“companies are under pressure to release higher quality mobile apps faster and more often than ever before” archie Roboostoff,

Micro Focus

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Gartner predicts that up to 25% of enterprises will have their own app store by 2017

Anyone with a smartphone or tablet will understand the importance of apps and the way in which they can

extend the value of the hardware and enhance the experience for the user.

Games, entertainment and fitness apps are just a few categories, but in-creasingly businesses are being told apps could be their future too. The corporate app store – where applica-tions that can be used in the business are verified and made available in a secure environment – is emerging.

For resellers, the value they can add to customers is in advising them which apps should be included in the workplace and keeping an eye on developments in the market place.

For example, last month Microsoft made its Office 365 available to iPhone users and customers need to be aware of those sorts of changes in the market.

But in addition to making sure Microsoft, SAP and Salesforce users get a chance to get their data via a portable device, other apps that are emerging that the channel may well want to highlight to customers.

Ray McGroarty, EMEA Director for Enterprise UC Solutions for Polycom, offers some advice about just where to start when it comes to talking apps with customers.

– a former director of strategic allianc-es at Blackberry and founder of TAT – announced that he had raised $1.2m in funding for his firm Dexplora and its enterprise business services. This includes the company’s first product

Apps for the futureDeveloping apps will increasingly be a lucrative area for the reseller. amro Gebreel reports

– an app called GetSalesDone, which brings the essentials of Salesforce.com to the smartphone.

The company is backed by a couple of venture capitalists and 12 angels – including one of the original

apps in the enterprise

July 2013 | 8Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk

“The best apps for businesses are those which are designed specifically for business use,” he says. “They allow employees to continue to utilise infrastructure investments wherever they are. Examples include Salesforce Mobile (CRM) and Microsoft Outlook (email) as well as our own Polycom RealPresence Mobile.

“The RealPresence app is a soft-ware application that lets customers securely extend the use of HD video collaboration beyond the conference room to easily connect tablets and smartphones (iOS and Android) with other standards-based video systems.

“Channel partners can use these kinds of mobile apps as an example of how the customer’s deployment will be available all the time, wherever their staff may be. Getting the most from any technology investment is key for customers and if partners can offer business apps then it helps them to build the case for quick ROI,” he adds.

Uncertain timesBut this is a market in flux and there are apps emerging on a frequent basis not just from the established house-hold names in the industry but from startups keen to establish themselves in this emerging software world.

Just last month, Hampus Jakobsson

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The Bill Gates of the future is unlikely to be tinkering with operating systems but developing apps and already efforts are being made to encourage students to start developing their skills in programming and designing useful mobile applications.

Apps for Good, which is an open source technology education movement, recently revealed the winners of its 2013 competition for students that had designed apps.

Winners included apps that could help young people calculate their savings and help people with Alzheimer’s and learning difficulties plan their daily routines.

Apps for Good CEO Iris Lapinski said that the goal of the organisation is to change the way technology education is taught in schools.

“We are building the confidence of the students taking part and developing their creative, business and digital skills for the future. This will ensure that young people are not only users and recipients of technology, but creators and makers,” said Lapinski.

“We were stunned at the originality and creativity of the submissions this year and delighted to see the entries coming from schools right across the UK – from Caithness down to the south coast. The ingenious ideas emerging from these talented young people is truly inspiring. We look forward to seeing their brilliant app concepts develop into commercial reality and for all the final-ists to continue their journey of solving problems they care about.”

The next generation

July 2013 | 9Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk

investors in Yahoo, indicating there is a strong belief that apps will reap rewards for backers.

At the time of the announcement, Jakobsson talked about a changing world where flexibility was becom-ing more important to users in the light of other trends in the market, including cloud and BYOD.

“Traditional CRM systems don’t seem to be designed with the end-user in mind. This means that no matter how powerful a tool it may be, companies aren’t getting the best out of it,” Jakobsson said.

“After years of working in sales ourselves, we felt that there was a real need for a tool that is intuitive and intelligent.”

Resellers must get involvedAnd it is not just startups and exist-ing vendors that are being urged to get involved with apps. One of the main pieces of advice from Steve Brazier, CEO of channel analysts Canalys, at its channel conference last autumn, was for resellers to start developing their own apps. From his position viewing the market, Brazier was able to see which way things were going and recommended that resellers themselves get involved in the application world.

“Recruit some developers and start making apps,” he said. “You don’t need a lot of developers to do apps. There will be $18bn (£11.2bn) spent on apps [in 2012] and $7bn of that is on non-gaming apps.”

He said that apps were increas-ingly being used to make it easier for customers to interact with helpdesks

Enterprises are going to be developing their own internal app stores as part of strategies to make mobile device management (MDM) easier to handle, giving staff access to approved software.

By 2017, Gartner expects 25% of enterprises to have developed their own app stores and to be negotiating with software vendors for products that can be added to the ecosystem.

But the analyst house warns that the benefits of improved MDM and the attraction of staff using approved applications will only be possible if the app store is widely adopted by staff.

“Apps downloaded from public app stores for mobile devices disrupt IT security, application and procurement strategies,” said Ian Finley, research vice-president at Gartner.

“Bring your own application (BYOA) has become as important as bring your own device (BYOD) in the development of a comprehensive mobile strategy and the trend toward BYOA has begun to affect desktop and web applications as well,” he added.

“Enterprise app stores promise at least a partial solution but only if IT security, application, procurement and sourcing professionals can work together to successfully apply the app store concept to their enterprises. When successful, they can increase the value delivered by the application portfolio and reduce the associated risks, license fees and administration expenses,” said Finley.

Jason D’Cruz, marketing manager at VIP Computers, outlines where resellers would start with suggesting business apps to customers:

n LinkedIn – Our sales team mainly use the LinkedIn app to not only keep up to date with their contacts but also for sales development, giving them the ability to learn everything, on a professional level, about a target prospect. We’re also involved with the groups on LinkedIn helping VIPs to stay abreast of industry news and communicate our weekly deals.n CamCard – Some of our sales team also use CamCard which essentially lets you scan and save business cards, allowing you to sync contact information directly to your smartphone.n HootSuite – Our marketing team use this app as a social media manage-ment dashboard. You can update social profiles, add new contacts, schedule tweets and messages, and analyse social media traffic patterns all via this app.n Dropbox – Dropbox is a great app for having access to presentations and vendor data while on the move. You can literally bring up presentations, documents and other files in just a few clicks.n GoogleApps – Google Apps pretty much eliminates the need for many computer programs. You can create and save text documents, spread-sheets, slide shows and more on Google Docs, and several people can work on one file simultaneously. Google Calendar makes creating and sharing calendars easy, and event reminders can be emailed to invitees.

Enterprise app store growth

Starter business apps

and get standard responses to ques-tions. As a result, staff costs had been reduced and there were already examples ranging from airlines to utility companies that were pushing a lot of their customer support via self-developed applications.

“Now apps are replacing people, so investing in services might mean investing in developers,” Brazier said pointing out that the pressure to maintain a resource of highly-trained staff to solve problems was being challenged by the shift in technology.

Still on the peripheryThat might be for the future, with the market yet to be anywhere near what could be described as ‘mainstream’, and many customers yet to embrace the app concept.

Although things might be going slowly, with less than 10% of global users using cloud-based office apps, that situation should change over the next few years.

According to Gartner, the current uptake will hit 33% of the customer base by 2017. The analyst house expects a “major shift” to take place in the market in the first half of 2015, giving resellers a decent bit of time to help ready customers for the changes.

“Despite the hype surrounding migration to the cloud, big differ-ences in movement rates continue, depending on organisations’ size, industry, geography and specific re-quirements,” said Tom Austin, vice-president and Gartner fellow.

“While 8% of business people were using cloud office systems at the start of 2013, we estimate this

number will grow to 695 million users by 2022 – representing 60%,” he added.

Email will be a big moverEmail is the key application that de-cides whether or not a customer will move to cloud office systems and Gartner expects 10% of email to be hosted by the end of 2014 and at least a third by 2017.

“Although it is still early in the overall evolution of this cloud-based segment, there are many cases where businesses — particularly smaller ones and those in the retail, hospital-ity and manufacturing industries — should move at least some users to cloud office systems during the next two years,” said Austin. “However, readiness varies by service provider, and caution is warranted.”

Email apps are likely to grow in popularity with a recent Spice-works survey of the SME market in-dicating that by the end of the year, 51% of the market will be using cloud-based email.

That provides resellers with a chance to encourage app usage that will ensure that users get the most out of their cloud-based apps.

Email, file-sharing as well as office type apps from Google and Microsoft are all places where Spiceworks expects the SME market to increase adoption of hosted services and should lead to the emergence of more apps to support those moves.

For resellers there is not just the conversation with the customer around the choice of business app, but the performance issues that will need to be considered if the user is

going to be able to work effectively.An indication of the importance

of user experience could be seen in a recent joint initiative from IBM and AT&T, where the two firms would work together to help customers ana-lyse the performance of apps.

“Businesses are challenged with the need to provide rich mobile ap-plications, while avoiding device power and network usage pitfalls that frustrate and turn away customers,” said Kristof Kloeckner, general man-ager IBM Rational Software.

Talking about performance and network usage opens up a much-wider potential sale for the reseller and ties the app pitch into the ongo-ing discussion about how customers want to work with the cloud and al-lowing staff to use their own devices. Talking about apps could just be the tip of the iceberg and another way of challenging the customer to think about their future strategy.

Wherever customers start, the way the market is heading is fairly clear with more cloud-based application use encouraging the development of asso-ciated smartphone and tablet apps.

Resellers might not want to get into developing apps themselves but will need to be aware of the changes in the landscape and the increasing desire that corporates will have to es-tablish and control app use through their own store-like environments.

Anyone with a handheld device will know the power of apps and with more business options emerg-ing, it’s clear that this is a market that the channel cannot afford to ignore for too much longer. ■

apps in the enterprise

I t has never been more important than it is today for businesses to get it right every time when providing a good customer expe-

rience (CX). As a partner, when pro-viding CX solutions to end-users you should put yourself in the customer’s shoes and think about how a bad ex-perience would make you feel. How would you maintain your existing customer base, let alone attract new customers? Most of the market you’re selling to is facing the same busi-ness pressures and as part of your own customer service offering, it is essential you are providing the best products and advice, so that you and your customers can reap the greatest rewards available.

CX is currently rising to the top of most companies’ business priorities, especially as we move to an era where mobile and social is increas-ingly involved in customer interac-tions. It’s becoming hard for busi-nesses to stand out from the crowd as products can no longer be separated on specification alone, something the patent disputes plaguing the con-sumer tech space bear witness to. At the same time, organisations are working to get to grips with their so-

ence from beginning to end, you will be well-placed to develop the best project for your customer’s needs.

The full packageIn today’s big data age where organi-sations are capturing more and more information, it’s important to recog-nise the value of offering customers solutions that take into account the whole IT stack, including hardware and analytics offerings, rather than just a software package. Bringing together an entire CX solution from top to bottom does not only enhance your customer’s capabilities, it gives you the chance to grow your own revenues and increase your market knowledge and standing.

As a partner, your skills and exper-tise in identifying best-of-breed prod-ucts and building the most effective platform around these will prove in-valuable to your customers during their CX deployments. In the current market, where every penny counts, the channel has a real opportunity to step up and become a respected IT strategy consultant, instead of a sim-ple reseller. The real value from tech-nology deployments come from the way the various technologies are

The customer experience: Are you doing enough?David tweddle explores the importance of maintaining your brand's reputation and offering the correct solutions

brought together and the business processes that are written for them. Combining your knowledge from both areas will play a critical role in helping you deliver the best CX plat-form as you guide your customers on their journey to get the most out of their deployments.

Today, organisations are changing their CX strategies to gain a competi-tive advantage, which is why as re-sellers you must transform your busi-ness processes and expand your expertise to provide the best solu-tions available. The fact that we are starting to see more solutions being sold, instead of transactional prod-ucts, suggests the channel is already taking the necessary steps to alter the way it sells to its customers in light of the above business challenges. ■

opinion

July 2013 | 11Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk

cial media strategies as they look to enhance customer service by engag-ing with customers via platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.

The importance of the brandA recent study found that 81% of consumers are willing to pay more for a superior customer experience and that over 90% have gone to a competing brand following a bad experience. When you consider these startling facts, organisations need to be doing all they can to provide a superior customer experience to not only grow their revenue streams, but maintain them in the first place. So, what advice do you need to offer cus-tomers who trust you with improving their customer experience?

Most importantly, before going in and offering customers advice you need to fully understand their busi-ness objectives. For example, a retail-er might want a solution that simulta-neously tracks online and in-store touch points, while a telecoms opera-tor would like a system focused on identifying various upsell opportuni-ties during interactions. By develop-ing this understanding up front and analysing the whole customer experi-

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David tweddle, head of uk Alliances and channel at Oracle

customer service

Our own research has shown that 92% of organisations believe adopt-ing mobile apps will give them a competitive edge. However, only 29% have a mobility project in place. There seems to be a lack of apprecia-tion of just where these applications will be coming from.

Given the proven necessity of bridging the IT skills gap, the chan-cellor needs to translate his words into actions, preferably with meas-ures prior to the Autumn Statement. It’s the only way to ensure that in a decade’s time, the UK will lead the world in IT skills and not be left lag-ging behind.

Good to see government embrace secure and flexible cloud servicesMark Butcher, commercial director, Proact ukThe government’s second G-Cloud framework has officially launched – and is double the size of its prede-cessor. This provides an excellent opportunity for the public sector, which has been crying out for this kind of service and the cost savings it will provide, to adopt cloud services without affecting service delivery.

It is good to see the government widely adopting the kind of secure and flexible cloud services that have become prevalent in the private sec-tor and we look forward to seeing this adoption continue to scale.

UK needs to invest in IT skills if it is to become Europe’s tech centreGary calcott, technical marketing manager, Progress SoftwareIt is widely accepted the UK has an IT skills crisis. It is believed we could face a shortfall in the region of 33,000 technology workers by 2050.

The effects are already being felt by British businesses. Many organisa-tions – enterprises as well as SMEs – struggle to find IT-savvy talent. The missing IT workforce can partly be put down to a steady decline in com-puter science teaching and interest in schools. It is claimed the skills gap could take 20 years to close.

For those fortunate enough to track down the requisite skills, most are finding they must pay through the nose to acquire them. Candidates should not have to be burdened financially for showing ambition to work in the IT sector. Especially given that the technology sector accounts for the majority of profes-sional job vacancies in the UK, with extremely competitive wages.

Unless significant programming skills are developed in schools, I fear the UK will struggle to replicate the success of other countries, such as the US, in producing major technol-ogy companies.

The simple fact is that we have heard before about how the chancel-lor wants the UK to become Europe’s technology centre but the plan ap-pears to be, at best, short-sighted.

The long-term solution is putting programming skills in the hands of every school child in the country.

community

July 2013 | 12Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk

“the long-term solution is putting programming skills in the hands of every school child in the country”

readers’ letters

Find out what makes online competitors more attractivechris Norfolk, director uk, Mindjet ltdI read the news about IDC cutting global IT spending expectations and would urge VARs to start carefully analysing what their online competi-tors are doing.

The fragility of the global economy continues to drive businesses to look for the most cost-effective solutions. Research released earlier this year by analyst Quocirca suggests most SMEs are turning to online retailers to do so, effectively locking the channel out of millions of pounds worth of sales. Given that face-to-face sales are being cannibalised by online retail in all industries at the moment, I am not surprised. The average consumer on the street is voting with his feet by staying off the high street and choos-ing to purchase with clicks instead of bricks. Busy people and businesses are attracted to the ease and simplic-ity of purchasing online – and this is not likely to change.

Mark colonnese, Director, Aquarium SoftwareThe BBC has suspended its chief technology officer and admitted wasting nearly £100m of taxpayers’ money on a five-year project intended to make the corporation “tapeless”, saying that to continue with the project would be “throwing good money after bad”. The Digital Media Initiative (DMI) was supposed to create a production system linked to the BBC’s huge broadcast-ing archive, but flaws in the system peaked in April 2013 when, instead of streamlining access to old video footage, it brought news departments trying to locate archived Margaret Thatcher footage to an effective standstill.

It is not only that our money could have been spent better on nurses, doctors and therapists, fire and ambulance staff, teachers and the like. It is that those procuring public sector technology never seem to learn. You can have your cake and eat it, if you shop around a little better and have a well defined technology brief. There is even now a transactional revenue model for such contracts, meaning you don’t have to pay the bulk of the contractor’s fee until the technology is correctly deployed and people are successfully using it. It really is as easy as ABC; so would someone please tell the BBC?

BBC wastes licence fee resources

Rather than fight the rise of the internet, I recommend VARs embrace it. Get to know your online com-petitor. Spend time researching what they offer that makes them more at-tractive than what you traditionally offer. Then you can see what changes you could make to better compete. Perhaps it is the fact they offer a bet-ter price or can ensure rapid delivery. Make sure your prospects and exist-ing customers are aware of the finan-cial benefits the VAR model offers. SMEs tend to be more money-con-scious than others, and would benefit from being able to pay for ICT in in-stalments, rather than in the up-front lump sum usually required online. It is also worth reminding them of the added value and consultation they receive from VARs, something no on-line retailer can replicate. There’s no substitute for human conversation! ■

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MicroScope is produced monthly by techtarget, First Floor, 3-4a little Portland Street, london, W1W 7JB, uk. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any form of retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written consent of the copyright holder. All rights reserved, including translation into other languages.

› send your letters and comments to squicke@techtarget.com

backchat

would be doing your job!

What advice would you give to someone starting out today in it?Start with the basics, a good grasp of mathematics is essential and learn to program, it is the only way you will gain respect from developers and it will help you to understand what is possible.

What’s running on your smartphone? Nothing but email, I am not a big app fan and dislike games.

What does the next five years hold for the channel? Significant change, the consumerisation of It means that a lot of people think they are experts, good channel players will win these people over and convince their audience they really understand customer problems and how to solve them.

tell us something most people do not know about youWhilst I have successfully taught computer science to Masters level I actually qualified as an environmental scientist, my computing knowledge is mainly self-taught.

What goal do you have to achieve

before you die, and why? Early on in my career I designed software based products that went on to be very successful, I would like more of these.

What is the best book you’ve read? Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

and the worst film you’ve ever seen? Starsky & Hutch (2004)

What would be your desert island mp3s? the housemartins, Paul Simon and St Germain.

What temptation can you not resist? Malt loaf

Who would you least like to be stuck in a lift with? Why, what did they do? keith lemon, he isn’t funny.

if you could be any animal for a day, what would you be and why? A golden eagle, the ability to fly gracefully and be at the top of the food chain.

What was your first car? How does it compare with what you drive now?

A Ford Fiesta purchased soon after finishing university. I have spent the past two years living in Doha, Qatar where public transport or walking is not an option and a 4x4 is compulsory. I am currently enjoying taking public transport and walking wherever I can.

if you could have represented Great britain at one event in the 2012 olympics, which would you have chosen and why? the long jump, from childhood I have been able to jump better than most, but not to Olympic standards.

if you were facing awesome peril and impossible odds, which real or fictional person would you most want on your side and why?Flash Gordon, if you can take on Ming the Merciless you can take on anything.

and finally, a grizzly bear and a silverback gorilla are getting ready for a no-holds-barred rumble. Who is your money on and why? the grizzly is stronger and faster. ■

five-minute intervieW

tell us what you do for a living.I am the ctO at cloud Direct, a cloud Services Brokerage. It is my role to understand the technologies, where the market will move and solutions that will work best for our customers.

Why are you the right person for this job?I have been living technology for the past 20 years and am very good at identifying the technologies to back and those to resist.

What gets you up in the morning? Breakfast, my favourite meal of the day, so good I sometimes do it twice.

Who helped you get to where you are today? hitesh Patel, a university friend who taught me everything there was to know about DOS. From that point I was hooked on Pcs.

What is the best or worst business advice you have received and from whom?the best advice was to treat your employees well. Most other advice has been poor, too many people think that they know how to do your job better than you, they usually don’t or they

Simon PonsfordCloud DirectMicroScope puts its questions to Simon Ponsford, CTO of Cloud Direct

Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk July 2013 | 13

› click here to read more five-minute interviews online

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