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CHANNEL | BUSINESS | TECHNOLOGY | COMMUNITY
APRIL 2016 | Vol. 21 No. 3APRIL 2016 | V lV 21 N 3APRIL 2016 | Vol.VV 21 No.NN 3
CONTRIBUTORS
MARTIN ANDERSON
BARRY ASSAF
GREG BARNES
JAMES BYRNE
PHIL CAMERON
BRIAN CORRIGAN
MADHU DUBEY
MARK FIORETTO
DEAN HODGSON
MARK JONES
WILLIAM KESTIN
NITIN KUCHARA
NINA MCMAHON
PIP MARLOW
KEITH MASTERTON
MOHEB MOSES
MARK RANSOM
FRANK SKIFFINGTON
JOHN WALTERS
JAMIE WARNER
RHODY BURTON
JAMES HENDERSON
SCOTT ATKINSON
RUSSELL BASKERVILLE
RAPHAEL BLANCHET
RUSSELL FRANCIS
BEN TOWN
IBM’s channel solutionRHODY BURTON
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arnnet.com.au | APRIL 2016 |
CONTENTS 1
AprilREGULARS
6 News10 Appointments48 Networking49 Storage50 Telecommunications51 Acquisitions58 Products60 Apps61 Community
COLUMNS
2 Editorial Tipping the next big thing is rather like playing needle
in a haystack. Security, unified communications,
Internet of Things - they all have friends.
4 Guest Editor Brian Corrigan reflects on his lengthy stint
at ARN as editor, then editorial director, from
December 2003 to September 2008.
8 Partner round-up As Tasmanian ICT companies enter a period of
maturity, the development and implementation
of a coherent industry wide strategy is of critical
importance to inform strategic pathways for
growth and development.
12 The hot list Each month this column looks at partners on the
upward move. These are the companies to watch.
14 MSP/Compensation Noted analyst, Moheb Moses, explains why
you can’t change your business if you don’t
change compensation.
15 Thought leadership Mark Jones says forget how to be a great leader but
instead ask why are you a leader in the first place?
16 25 years
The tale of how distie giant and market leader,
Tech Pacific, was eventually sold in 2003, reads
like a chess game. Mike Gee follows the moves as
we look back on 25 years of ARN.
46 Words from the wise Hall of Fame inductees, Phil Cameron and Pip
Marlow, offer valuable pointers and insights for
all channel players in 2016.
56 The workplace
Having a pool party as your next work function?
Make sure you encourage good behaviour and
responsible drinking. Madhu Dubey explains why.
INTERVIEWS
20 IBM’s channel solution
IBM A/NZ director of global business partners,
Rhody Burton, sat down with ARN in a very candid
and personal discussion about her journey into
IT, lessons learned along the way, and some
personal insights and even unknown facts.
30 Scoring goals with ARN
James Henderson has crossed the Tasman to
take up the reins as Editor at ARN after a stint
running Reseller News in New Zealand.
FEATURES
24 Buy vs. Build? The changing dynamics of the datacentre
EMC and VCE opened up the Buy vs. Build debate
alongside key distributor partners and resellers
at an exclusive ARN Roundtable.
34 IoT and Big Data: the disruption starts here
ARN deputy editor, HAFIZAH OSMAN, takes a look
at the two biggest market disruptors for 2016 -
IoT and Big Data - and highlights the growing and
evolving partner opportunity.
40 Flash Forward: The storage evolution
This roundtable considered the latest trends
in the storage market, highlighted where flash
technology makes sense, and examined the market
opportunities for businesses and service providers.
52 The future of IT
It’s a software-driven, open source world, and
we’re just living in it, according to bernard
golden, who delivers four tenets for the future
of the IT industry.
3020
24
40
| APRIL 2016 | arnnet.com.au
2 EDITORIAL
Needle in a haystack
I t was a bit like playing needle
in a haystack for real. There
we were at the 2016 Judges’
Networking Lunch, the opener for
the 2016 ARN ICT Industry Awards
season, and the more I chatted,
the more I became aware of one
fundamental thing: Most people
were betting on different horses
when it came to the next big IT play.
And I mean the ‘anything but Cloud’
play. The truth is, if you aren’t making
a Cloud play by now, then maybe
you shouldn’t be. There are lots of
people on the Cloud offering every
imaginable play. There is little room
for little guys trying to get a toe-hold.
At least one industry analyst is
prepared to bet that sometime in the
next 12 months, the Cloud fallout
will begin as small companies,
unable to deal with small margins,
simply go under or bail out.
Smart start-ups are positioining
themselves around Cloud add-ons,
extras, new solutions, cleverware.
The big boys will slug this one
out. Let’s face it, even the disties are
giving it a go.
AN EYE FOR SECURITYSo where to look for that elusive
money-making sector that offers
opportunity? I had a fascinating chat
at the Lunch with FireEye Regional
Alliance Manager, Chris Barton, who
is seeing his company deliver stellar
growth (and I mean stellar) in a
sector that can’t possibly not grow.
Let’s face it: Data, data, and more
data equals never ending increased
need for security. Every business needs
security and as we agreed, not cheapo
security where the holes are so big the
hackers don’t even need to hack. They
evolution of the workplace, driven
by the rise of the digital office,
and unified communications
in particular. “Without emerging
unified communications technology,
workplace evolution and the shift
to remote working would not be
possible,” he noted. So pencil in UCC
as an area worth exploring.
AND THEN THERE’S IOT…The perennial Internet of Things
was muttered about as a strong
possibility and lots of big, big money
is currently going into IoT. Has it
arrived? No. Will it eventually arrive?
Well, yes, logically, it has to as both
business and home become more
and more technologically dependent.
So, as one person said, start testing
the water now, find a nice pool, and
start wading in. But be careful.
You know, it all reminds me of a
comment made to me years ago by
a very savvy industry guru who said
that when disruption and confusion
reign and infrastructure is being
remoulded, opportunity is at its
greatest. I’m going with that now.
NEW EDITORFinally, I’d like to welcome James
Henderson to the position of ARN
Editor. He will be the face of ARN and
a contact point for many of you. As
such, this will be my last editorial.
It’s been fun for five years. Now
James can start scratching his head
and pondering the mysteries of the
channel in search of some wise words
each month. I have no doubt that he
will succeed.
Mike GeeEditorial Director, ARN
just walk in and take what they want. So
a security play would be good, although
Barton did make an interesting
observation when he said that
perhaps the future in security looks so
lucrative that the big boys like Google
and Microsoft might well want to come
and play. That remains to be seen.
HOW ABOUT UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS?Somebody else was a big proponent
of unified communications and
collaboration (UCC). Now I admit I
am not the biggest know-all when it
comes to UCC but rather fortuitously,
and coincidentally, that morning I
had written a story about Ingram
Micro in the US acquiring NETXUSA,
a UCC value-added distributor
focused on VOIP solutions and IP
phones for telecommunications
service providers and resellers.
It was an interesting buy. Ingram
said, in a statement, that NETXUSA
complemented its established UCC
business, bringing a strong portfolio
of IP communications products from
companies such as Cisco, Digium,
Edgewater, Polycom and Yealink.
This got me thinking that Ingram
wasn’t making a UCC add-on move
unless it saw some real potential in
this market. And where the big boys
roam, the rest of you should be taking
notice because opportunity beckons.
Consider this: 2014 research
findings reported a 26 per cent
increase in open remote job postings
compared to the prior year, with hiring
managers expecting many more to
come over the next five years.
Wavelink MD, lan Rubin, told
Reseller News NZ recently that
this change reflects the continuing
”It all reminds me of a comment made to me years ago by a very savvy industry guru who told me that when disruption and confusion reign and
infrastructure is being remoulded, opportunity is at its greatest”
| APRIL 2016 | arnnet.com.au
4 25 YEARS/GUEST EDITOR
You know those moments when something takes
you back to a different time and place in your life? Well I had one recently as I sat in a North Sydney boardroom waiting for a client. I was checking the tech news when I saw that Ingram Micro was being sold to a Chinese investment company for $US6 billion.
Suddenly I was transported back to my old desk in St Leonards, it was 2004 and we were breaking news that Ingram Micro was acquiring its biggest rival in the region, Tech Pacific. Could that really be 12 years ago?
A lot has happened in the Australian IT industry since then but it seems the more things change, the more they stay the same. Phil Sim, another former ARN editor, noted in these pages recently that Dell’s direct model and online competitors were supposed to kill the channel back in the dotcom days.
We know now that the channel adjusted and this never happened. In my time as editor, Cloud computing sounded the alarm bells but, once again, smart channel operators have found a way to stay relevant as the world around them changes.
As you’d expect in an industry defined by change, there has been plenty of
Staying relevant as the world around you changesBrian Corrigan, Guest Editor
Brian
Corrigan,
Guest Editor
A lot has happened in the Australian IT industry … but it seems the more things change, the more they stay the same.
consolidation. Rumours of Express Data being up for sale were never too far away but few would have considered Dicker Data as a potential suitor. Chalk and cheese doesn’t even begin to describe that cultural match up but David Dicker knows a thing or two about this business. I would never bet against him.
Looking back, ARN also changed significantly during my spell in the editor’s chair. Our weekly page counts shrank dramatically as advertisers pushed more of their spending online, but we became a more active part of the community as our business reacted to changing market conditions.
We formed stronger relationships with industry leaders by starting a series of roundtable talkfests and, encouraged by this success, launched an annual awards
evening that has gone from strength to strength. I’m immensely proud of the team that launched the ARN IT Industry Awards.
When I left ARN for The Australian Financial Review I never completely lost sight of the channel. Listed service providers like Data#3, Oakton, SMS Management & Technology and UXC were on my beat.
Now, I’m running the content marketing division of Spectrum Group, a tech-focused communications agency. In a funny twist of fate, IDG Communications has relocated since I left the business and I’m now based in the same building as the current ARN team. It’s a small world.
Brian Corrigan was Editor and then
Editorial Director of ARN from December
2003 to September 2008.
3O B S E R VAT I O N S
1
SMART CHANNEL
OPERATORS
HAVE FOUND A
WAY TO STAY
RELEVANT AS THE
WORLD AROUND
THEM CHANGES
2
IN AN INDUSTRY
DEFINED BY
CHANGE, THERE
HAS BEEN
PLENTY OF
CONSOLIDATION
3
WE BECAME A
MORE ACTIVE
PART OF THE
COMMUNITY AS
OUR BUSINESS
REACTED TO
CHANGING MARKET
CONDITIONS
| APRIL 2016 | arnnet.com.au
6 NEWS/DISTRIBUTION
T he dust had barely settled on
the shock sale of Ingram Micro
to Chinese company, Tianjin
Tianhai, for $US6 billion, when rumours
gathered rapidly that oft-mooted but never
concluded sale of Distribution Central was
on the cards and about to drop.
A Friday of whispers turned into a
Monday morning of confirmation, as
March 14 opened with an early email
from Arrow vice-president, global
communications, John Hourigan,
announcing the company had finally
snared the offspring of Scott Frew and
Nick Verykios.
Finally! We’ve asked Scott and Nick five
or six times in the past two years, ‘Are you
selling to Arrow?’ It had been the most
consistent of rumours. And, to be fair, Frew
has always said, ‘If somebody walks in the
door tomorrow with the right amount of
money, I’ll sell.’ This time he did.
Arrow was suitably happy: "The addition
of Distribution Central to our presence in
the region expands and strengthens Arrow’s
business in the value-added distribution
marketplace,"
It’s president of Global Enterprise
Computing Solutions, Sean Kerins, said.
"This acquisition supports our strategy to
expand Arrow’s portfolio and build strategic
capabilities to help meet the evolving needs
of our customers."
The buyout follows Arrow's acquisition
of Observatory Crest in October 2014,
a distributor of IT security solutions
and services based in Sydney. "The
combination of Distribution Central
and our capabilities from the earlier
Observatory Crest acquisition makes
Arrow the leading value-added distributor
in the region," Kerins added.
JEWEL IN THE CROWNBut the real jewel in this crown, as far as
Arrow was concerned, was announced on
February 11 when Hewlett Packard Enterprise
– after an extensive review of its Australian
processes – chose Distribution Central as
one of its distribution partners for 2016 and
beyond. A month later, the DC deal was done.
The gossip mill had Ingram Micro (a few
days before it was sold to China), Avnet,
Arrow, and Westcon, in the queue to buy DC
depending on who was on the end of the
phone. But if this was horse race, Arrow
was Black Caviar – unlikely to be beaten to
the prize.
So an iconic Australian distie bites
the dust. But at the ARN Judges’ Lunch,
the real question being bantered around
was ‘What happens next?’ And ‘Where is
distribution heading?’
One long-time industry observer confided,
“Every Australian distributor, bar two, is
up for sale right now. But the price tags
are too high. Wait and see what happens
though when the prices come down a little.”
FURTHER CONSOLIDATIONNo matter who you talk to, it seems that
further consolidation is inevitable. The
massive Chinese companies have started
2016 with $23.8 billion of outbound deals so
far this year, according to data compiled by
Bloomberg. After just 48 days of 2016, that’s
already closing in on the record of $US25.6
billion announced during the whole of last
year. China watchers say it is just the start.
Frew questions the current distributor
landscape, asking for definition around the
term “value-add”. “What does it mean?”
he asks. “Distributors now say they are
value-add but what do they add? Most have
no engineering resources for example,
and resellers work out quickly whether the
story stands up or not. Yes, distributors
need a good vendor to sell, but it’s also
about wrapping all of those things around
a product that will save and make resellers
money. And that’s all it boils down to.”
HEADY ROADOver 12 years, Distribution Central burned
a heady road. “When Distribution Central
opened up, Ingram Micro was hitting a few
billions, Westcon was hitting around half a
billion and all of the big boys were already
in play,” he recalled. “There was no room
for a distributor to come in but we did and
we made it to number six.”
Frew believes the future for his now-
ended project is bright: “Distribution
Central will have no problem shooting
through the $450 million mark this year and
with Arrow’s backing, I see no reason why
that won’t continue to grow in the future."
But he won’t be here to see that. He was
set to leave Australia on April 12 for a new
home in Surrey, England, where he will run
his real pet project, iasset.com – a potential
billion-dollar baby. Verykios will stay for now.
And so the distribution landscape
settles once again, but for how long? The
smart money says not long at all.
Arrows buys DC - what does it mean?
Frew’s bottom line
“The reason I picked Arrow to be the acquirer is because they need everyone of our staff on the ground in Australia. If one of the local global distributors had been the acquirer, it would have destroyed operations and accounts and that was a key consideration.”
Is this true?
“Every Australian distributor, bar two, is up for sale right now. But the price tags are too high. Wait and see what happens though when the prices come down a little.”
Mike Gee and James Henderson
Scott Frew Nick Verykios
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| APRIL 2016 | arnnet.com.au
8 PARTNER ROUND-UP
Tasmania - challenges, growthTasmanian-based IT service providers and tech innovators experience similar challenges to other states in terms of attracting IT skills and retaining talent. But securing useful, experienced and current advice for their tech investments, is another issue they face. JULIA TALEVSKI speaks to partners about some of the opportunities and challenges they’re facing this year.
William KestinTASICT CEO
Tasmania is
experiencing an IT
renaissance of
creativity and
expansion at the
moment. The industry is
growing, helped by the cabling
underneath Bass Strait and the
state receiving the nbn roll-out
before all other states. This is
providing opportunities for
remote areas to sustain
start-ups, which encourages
companies to enjoy regional
lifestyles while staying connected
to the rest of the world.
Whether it is a Launceston
IT business surpassing the $100
million sales mark or a Hobart
company, whose software has
just been purchased by the
largest bank in the US, many
success stories show Tasmania
punching above its weight.
However, the challenges
for Tasmania include the lack
of properly educated and
trained staff coming out of our
university and TAFE to fulfil
the expansion needs of some
companies and the lack of VC
companies, and in part the
government, properly investing
in the growth of our industry.
David MooreI HATE MY PC FOUNDER
As a mobile
computer support
business servicing
homes and SMBs,
the main
challenges I see in the
Tasmanian market is the
ongoing struggle to obtain
decent Internet connectivity.
While parts of Tasmania
have been early to wonderful
speeds, most of the people I
deal with are struggling with
ADSL (and not even ADSL2+),
old satellite, or patchy
Next G services.
Those who have been
lucky enough to get onto nbn
services are often treated to
poor customer service. I often
get called out to a new nbn
installation only to find that
it isn’t actually working; then
it becomes a battle to get an
nbn technician back.
The attractiveness of
Tasmania’s low population
density is also its Achilles
heel. It can be difficult and
uneconomical to get decent
service and product delivery
to people in more remote
locations. It’s kind of sad to say,
but simply by being punctual,
honest, following up and
showing empathy, I’ve been
able to build a good customer
base in a rural area.
Nina McMahonELAN PROJECTS LEADING DIRECTOR
This year has
been all about
growing our
PopUp Wi-Fi
product. We work
right around Australia, bringing
Wi-Fi for events like Stereosonic,
Dark MOFO, Gympie Music
Muster and Ad:Tech. Companies
like Sony, Boost Mobile, Nissan
and Vodka O sponsor the Wi-Fi
that we customise for them. We
also bring fast Internet for
crowds anywhere.
While our company is
Tasmanian-based, 12 months
ago one of our co-founders,
Linden Kurth, moved to Sydney
to service the mainland.
Our clients are production
companies, festival, event and
conference organisers.
We face two key challenges
in running our business from
Tasmania. The first is securing
investment to scale PopUp Wi-
Fi. This is to meet an already-
surging demand for our
services nationally. The other,
is particular to our business
model and relates to a lack of
Tasmanian population density
– there are simply fewer
events with sufficient budget to
engage with us.
We are constantly staggered
by the enormous disparity
between the affluence on the
mainland and in Tasmania.
Basing an office in Sydney has
definitely been the difference
between sinking or swimming.
They are wealthier and always
hungry for the next innovation
that will give their event a
further point of difference
and profitability. People in
Tasmania still ask us “does it
work?”. 200 events under our
belts, yet we frequently get
emails from people we’ve never
met simply booking the service
in Sydney.
As Tasmanian ICT companies
enter a period of maturity, the
development and implementation
of a coherent industry wide
strategy is of critical importance
to inform strategic pathways
for growth and development
- TASICT AND IN-TELLINC
of Tasmanian ICT companies produced a product or service for sale in ICT marketsof ppro58% p
uct or service for s- TASICT INDUSTRY SURVEY RESULTS
PARTNER ROUND-UP 9
On a different note, we
have noticed an interesting
trend taking place. Our
mainland clients are generally
enthusiastic and supportive
that we are a Tasmanian
Startup. “Brand Tasmania”
seems to extend as far. It has
been particularly noticeable in
the really positive attitude that
mainland and even overseas
clients demonstrate towards
PopUp Wi-Fi being founded and
based in Hobart.
I think a key issue to
address, in order for the tech
and innovation landscape in
Tasmania to flourish, is for
Tasmanians to identify with
the attitude that others are
increasingly gravitating towards
us. The Hobart waterfront area
is growing some of Tasmania’s
most exciting ICT companies
and provides the opportunity
to grow the Tasmanian Tech
brand through trade missions
and through local awareness of
what it all means to us.
Doing business is great in
Tassie, and getting better if
you’re clever and lucky enough
to have a revenue-based
start-up. If I was hunting for
investment for an idea, I’d
head elsewhere.
Martin AndersonIONATA DIGITAL MANAGING DIRECTOR
As a Web and
app development
agency, the main
challenge we
face is
continuing to find suitably
experienced staff as we grow
our team.
Tasmania is a fantastic
place to live and work but
there is a reduced pool of
experienced candidates for
positions as they become
available. As an agency, we
are looking to address this by
engaging with local education
institutions to meet the next
crop of developers and also
recruiting team members
from interstate. We have
recently added team members
who were keen to move to
Tasmania from Melbourne
and Adelaide.
The great thing about
working on the Internet
is that it allows us to
service customers all
around Australia and as
far away as New Zealand
and Malaysia. We help
people sell skin care
products online in Newcastle
and manage public
transport ticketing systems
in Christchurch.
Although our customers
are spread far and wide we
have made the decision not to
off-shore development work
and to focus on building a
dynamic team of developers
and creative problem solvers
in our Hobart office. We
value the creative spark that
comes from collaborating
to solve problems which is
why we continue to seek out
best available talent to join
our team.
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| APRIL 2016 | arnnet.com.au
10 NEWS/APPOINTMENTS
EMC’s Chris Trevitt joins HPEFormer EMC A/NZ general manager of
channel sales, Chris Trevitt, has joined Hewlett
Packard Enterprise (HPE) as its director –
indirect, South Pacific Enterprise Group.
Trevitt commenced his role on March 29.
Trevitt takes over from Kaaren Lewis,
who held on to that role until January 29.
Lewis was the company’s channel, SMB,
and alliances indirect sales director. The
company’s SMB country manager, Nicholas
Lambrou, took on Lewis’ responsibilities, in
addition to his, up till Trevitt’s employment.
As for the EMC A/NZ channel business, it
has been managed by A/NZ general manager of service provider,
systems integrators and alliances, Mark Fioretto, and Brett
Harris was named A/NZ general manager, mid-market, inside
sales and distribution since Trevitt’s departure.
Trevitt was with EMC for about 10 years, starting out as a
commercial account manager (between 2005 and 2008) before
moving up the ranks and becoming A/NZ general manager of
channel sales.
Prior to being EMC A/NZ general manager of channel sales, a
role he was in for almost three years, he was its National Australia
Bank enterprise account director for a little over three years.
He also previously spent about seven years at IBM as its
account manager.
- HAFIZAH OSMAN
FRED VIET JOINS MICROSOFT
Microsoft has hired Fred Viet to head up its Surface commercial channel in A/NZ. Viet previously spent more than 11 years at Lenovo, most recently as its A/NZ channel director. He first started at Lenovo as a global account manager before taking on the role as a sales director for large accounts.
WAYNE ANDREWS STEPS DOWN FROM CSCComputer Sciences Corporation (CSC) chief financial officer and chief operating officer, Wayne Andrews, is stepping down from his position after more than three years with the company. Andrews is being replaced by CSC’s finance director in Asia, Stuart Adams, who will be relocating from Singapore to Australia to take on the role.
CAPGEMINI A/NZ APPOINTS NICOLAS AIDOUD AS CEOCapgemini has named Nicolas Aidoud as its A/NZ CEO. Aidoud succeeds Deepak Nangia, who will move to take on the role of chief customer officer for Asia-Pacific and the Middle East and assist the executive chairman in expanding Capgemini’s footprint in this region.
EMMA ROGERS LEAVES AWS FOR SERVICENOWServiceNow has named Emma Rogers as its Asia-Pacific and Japan
corporate communications director. Rogers joins ServiceNow from Amazon Web Services (AWS), where she held a number of roles – she was public relations manager for almost three years and Asia-Pacific analyst relations senior manager for more than two years.
PETER BRADY JOINS KASPERSKY LABKaspersky Lab has appointed Peter Brady as its new general manager. Brady replaces Andrew Mamonitis, who has since taken on a director role at distributor, Hemisphere Technologies. In this role, Brady will be responsible for developing Kaspersky Lab’s strategic business plan for the A/NZ region, and building partnerships.
COMMVAULT APPOINTS NEW VP FOR APJCommvault has appointed Owen Taraniuk as its new vice-president of APJ. In the new role, Taraniuk will be responsible for driving growth. Taraniuk has already launched a transformation program, which will see a realignment of the company’s sales functions and partner engagement model.
DROPBOX HIRES FIRST LOCAL AND ASIA CHANNEL CHIEFSDropbox has made two new executive appointments in A/NZ and Asia. Former channel and alliances manager at Infor, Greg Kieser, has been named head of partner sales A/
NZ at Dropbox and the company has chosen Marcus Low to be its head of channels in APJ. The two appointments will drive channel strategy and execution for each area of the company’s focus.
BULLETPROOF APPOINTS AAKASH GANDHI Bulletproof has hired Aakash Gandhi as its new general manager of business development and partners. In his newly created role, he will report to director of sales and marketing, Mark Randall, and will be responsible for leading Bulletproof’s sales team as well as dealing with the increasing demand for Cloud services.
GORDON GAKOVIC LEADS SOFTWARE AGSoftware AG has appointed Gordon Gakovic as managing director for its A/NZ operations. Based in Melbourne, Gakovic is responsible for managing and executing Software AG’s commercial initiatives and marketing strategies for the local market. Gakovic will also focus on strengthening and expanding the company’s footprint across the region.
MILNE TAKES ON UXC RED ROCK CEO POSTPhilip Milne has been named as the new CEO of UXC Red Rock. He takes on the post from Jonathan Rubinsztein, who left the company in January to join Infomedia (ASX:IFM) as its new global chief executive. Milne will be responsible for leading the team to grow the business.
IN BRIEF
VMware replaces John Donovan with Kerrie-Anne Turner
VMware has appointed Kerrie-Anne Turner
as its A/NZ head of channels and general
business. Turner’s first day in the office was
February 15.
She replaces John Donovan, who departed
the VMware A/NZ business in November last
year and joined ForgeRock as its new A/NZ
and ASEAN regional vice-president.
With a 25-year career in the information
technology sector, including 15 years
with software company Symantec, and
holding both global and regional senior
executive roles, Turner brings to VMware
a comprehensive management and
leadership skillset and the strong industry
experience required to help continue the
company’s current trajectory into 2016.
Before joining VMware, she held dual
roles of vice-president Asia-Pacific and managing director Australia
at StayinFront and was responsible for the company’s strategic
direction, its operational productivity and sales growth targets in the
Asia-Pacific region. She held these positions for more than six years.
Prior to that, Turner was the A/NZ managing director at
MessageLabs for more than a year. She was also an Asia-Pacific
advisory board member at the company.
- HAFIZAH OSMAN
EMC: 2005 –
JANUARY 2016
IBM: 1997 – 2004
CAREER
STAYINFRONT:
OCTOBER 2009 –
FEBRUARY 2016
MESSAGELABS:
AUGUST 2008 –
SEPTEMBER 2009
STAYINFRONT: JUNE
2007 – AUGUST 2008
SYMANTEC: 1995 –
MAY 2007
CAREER
| APRIL 2016 | arnnet.com.au
12 NEWS/BORN IN THE CLOUD
The hot list
EmpiredRussell BaskervilleMANAGING DIRECTOR
NUMBER OF STAFF: more than 900
AGE OF COMPANY: 17 years
(was established in 1999 in Western
Australia, and listed on the ASX since 2007)
> PRODUCTS/SOLUTIONS IT BRINGS TO MARKET: Empired’s core solution offerings
are in Cloud, enterprise mobility, big data,
and business analytics. These offerings
are delivered via three interactive business
streams: infrastructure and Cloud services;
consulting and application development; and
business and productivity solutions. Together
they provide extensive breadth of service
and expertise, and a range of services to
provide ‘end-to-end’ advice and solutions.
> BUSINESS DIFFERENTIATOR: We believe
we can leverage technology to deliver
tomorrow’s advantage today for our clients.
Dedication to this purpose, supported by
initiative, innovation, and growth, underpins
our value proposition and ability to deliver
high-quality business solutions. We
proudly boast a set of values and brand
commitments that define who we are
and what our stakeholders expect. These
have shaped an organisational personality
that we believe underpins exceptional
client experiences.
> FUTURE PLANS: We will invest in growth
and innovative services, with a clear focus
across the east coast of Australia. Our
investments will expand our capability in
data and IoT-related services and modern
applications, and leverage Cloud platforms.
> KEY MESSAGE TO THE CHANNEL IN 2016: Put your people first, invest in innovation,
and evolve your services. Do this and our
industry, our clients, and all associated
stakeholders will enjoy great success.
BigAir GroupScott AtkinsonGROUP CLOUD AND
MANAGED SERVICES CTO
AGE OF COMPANY: 14 years
(is publicly listed on the ASX)
> PRODUCTS/SOLUTIONS IT BRINGS TO MARKET: The BigAir Group is a national
business-focused ICT provider delivering
the latest Cloud-based solutions, managed
services, and network infrastructure.
We have our own national wireless
telecommunications network and
Cloud infrastructure.
> BUSINESS DIFFERENTIATOR: Our three
key pillars – network services, Cloud and
managed services, and campus solutions.
BigAir provides a wide range of network
services from its own national Fixed
Wireless network to more traditional cable
based solutions using fibre, dark fibre,
ethernet over copper and ADSL2. The BigAir
Cloud and Managed Services division is a
consultancy-based business that prides
itself on gathering customers’ business
environments and then delivering a fully
integrated solution. Our Cloud services
comprise both public and private as well
as hybrid options, and our technology
partnerships include only top-tier providers.
BigAir Campus Solutions provide
managed end-to-end high speed broadband,
networking, printing, billing systems and 24/7
operational support systems to the tertiary
student accommodation market. We’ve been
able to extend this experience seamlessly
into other campus style environments.
> FUTURE PLANS: We’ve been striving to
ensure that organisations deploy the right
type of network and technology, so they can
connect better than ever before. We began
by building and managing our fixed wireless
networks for business. We want to grow that
blanket coverage across the country.
We also have an end-to-end capability
and tools for mid-sized organisations to
free up their people and take the journey
towards more effective, efficient and
powerful ICT solutions.
> KEY MESSAGE TO THE CHANNEL IN 2016: Adopt an agnostic approach to infrastructure
when designing the perfect configuration
for your clients’ networking requirements.
Hosted NetworkBen TownMANAGING DIRECTOR
NUMBER OF STAFF: 10
AGE OF COMPANY: Little over three years
> PRODUCTS/SOLUTIONS IT BRINGS TO MARKET: We provide white label solutions
such as Desktop as a Service, Infrastructure
as a Service, Wholesale Internet, Backup
Put your people first, invest in innovation, and evolve your services. Russell Baskerville, Empired
This regular column looks at partners on the upward move. These are companies to watch. Each month, ARN looks at some of the companies that have risen to prominence already or are progressing beyond their start-up origins. HAFIZAH OSMAN asked five company leaders to file reports on their companies.
arnnet.com.au | APRIL 2016 |
BORN IN THE CLOUD/NEWS 13
and disaster recovery, and VoIP to Managed
Service Providers across Australia.
> BUSINESS DIFFERENTIATOR: Hosted
Network is a 100 per cent channel focused
Cloud provider working directly with IT
integrators, software vendors and managed
service providers that are looking to make
a move into Cloud services. As part of our
relationship with them, we assist them with
their go-to-market strategy all the way
through to the sales and technical aspects
of their business.
> FUTURE PLANS: Our primary focus at the
moment is expanding our partner base
and building our training tools for our
partners to succeed with building their own
successful Cloud offerings.
> KEY MESSAGE TO THE CHANNEL IN 2016: Look at diversifying your offerings. One of the
quickest and easiest ways to build revenue
is to sell additional services to your current
customers. Look what’s available in the
market and do your research on products and
services that will align with your business
model, and solve your customer’s pain points.
At Hosted Network, we encourage
partners to diversify and build their
product portfolio, allowing them to be in
a position to be the one-stop provider to
accommodate all of their customers’ IT
needs. By not limiting their service offering,
they are remaining competitive, opening
doors to increased revenue potential, and
strengthening their client “stickiness” and
retention opportunities.
VelpicRussell FrancisVELPIC CEO
NUMBER OF STAFF: 40, and growing
AGE OF COMPANY: Three years old in July
2016 (but the Velpic platform was formally
launched on July 1, 2014)
> PRODUCTS/SOLUTIONS IT BRINGS TO MARKET: The Velpic platform is a SaaS
Cloud-based Learning Management
System (LMS) that allows anybody to create,
schedule, view and report on video lessons.
> BUSINESS DIFFERENTIATOR: Velpic is
unique in the global LMS market place in
that it provides the user the ability to create
video based multimedia presentations
inside the Learning Management
System without having to use a separate,
complicated tool. It also allows the people
being trained to stream the video lessons
from the same platform. So our unique
selling point is that we have all the tools
anyone needs to create, schedule and
perform lessons and then report on the
results — all within the one extremely
simple to use browser-based application.
> FUTURE PLANS: Global expansion,
integration with other SaaS platforms,
maintaining first mover advantage.
> KEY MESSAGE TO THE CHANNEL IN 2016: Launching Version 3.0 which has
been specifically designed to attract SME
customers by providing enhanced training
capabilities for SMEs — a rapidly growing
market segment of the broader Learning
Management Systems market. Version
3.0 will activate the third and final major
sales channel in Velpic’s three pillar sales
strategy, with pillar one being enterprise
sales and pillar two being the reseller
partnership channel, both already in place.
OlikkaRaphael BlanchetOLIKKA CLOUD LEAD
NUMBER OF STAFF: 25
AGE OF COMPANY: Five years
> PRODUCTS/SOLUTIONS IT BRINGS TO MARKET: What we do — Enterprise End
User Computing and Infrastructure; both
in the Cloud and on-premises. Why we do
it — Our focus is always on our customers
and what’s best for them, and we use our
specialised skills to ensure users have
a great experience on the platforms we
implement. We provide professional services
for design and implementation, and ongoing
as-a-service run, maintain, upgrade.
BUSINESS DIFFERENTIATOR: Olikka is
different. In fact, our name comes from the
Swedish word ‘olika’, which translates as
different, so being different is at our core
and has been since day one. We definitely
have a unique culture, and great people
who thrive in a high paced and flexible
environment, and we think that’s essential
in the Cloud era. Great people challenge
each other to think differently about what
enterprise organisations need, and this
translates to specific, crafted, modern,
non-cookie-cut solutions.
> FUTURE PLANS: From foundations in
systems management, automation and
virtualisation, Olikka has sharpened its focus
in the last two years to end user, Cloud, and
infrastructure. Being a dynamic, responsive
company, it is in our DNA to evolve, automate
and simplify whilst always retaining focus on
the end outcome for both the customer and
the end user. In such a connected, mobile
first world, Olikka sees a great future in the
Internet of Things, and our early projects in
the space are proving to be stimulating and
disruptive within our customer’s businesses.
> KEY MESSAGE TO THE CHANNEL IN 2016: We select our partners based on what we
believe is truly good for our customers
and we are continually assessing vendor’s
products and capabilities, and matching
these against our customer’s problems and
strategies. We enjoy talking to new vendors,
and when we do add a new vendor or
technology to our partnership list, we take
it seriously. Our message to all vendors
in the era of Cloud and consumption IT:
customers judge you on current execution,
not future plans.
“Our unique selling point is that we have all the tools anyone needs to create, schedule and perform lessons and then report on the results” Russell Francis, Velpic
“Customers judge you on current execution, not future plans” Raphael Blanchet, Olikka
| APRIL 2016 | arnnet.com.au
14 THE EXPERTS/MSP
T here’s a
belief that
sales people
are coin-operated
(ie. they work
purely on extrinsic
rewards like their
pay packet). While
this may be true for
some, my experience is that the best sales
people are driven by intrinsic goals and
rewards (achieving results, recognition,
helping customers) with an understanding
that the money will follow.
Good compensation plans reward
success while enabling companies
to weed out non-performers. But,
equally, they should reward sales
people for doing the right thing.
There are countless stories of
compensation plans that had unintended
consequences from innovative sales
teams finding shortcuts.
Now, when the sales process is
established, the likelihood of that is
lessened. But when the business model
is untried or untested, the chances of
this are much higher.
Which is what I see in companies
transitioning to the Cloud but holding
onto old compensation plans. In fact, I am
aware of organisations where perpetual
license teams poached subscription
license clients (and convinced them to pay
a lump sum to own the software) in order
to achieve their targets.
So, in this instance, a compensation
plan should really be about rewarding
the behaviour that achieves results, not
the results themselves. Consider the five
different models shown in this article.
In the end, alignment is the key word.
Your reward system must align with the
behaviours you want, which must align with
your company goals. And if compensation
doesn’t change, nothing does.
Selling Cloud - change the sales compensationBy Moheb Moses
It can be difficult these days to come up with sensible reasons as to why businesses shouldn't embrace Cloud-based productivity tools such as Google for Work or Microsoft Office 365. The benefits of the Cloud are many and expanding. However, a number of common pitfalls for IT professionals exist and can have lasting negative implications on any organisation.
1 Cloud means lots of support for staff
Greg Meyers, corporate vice-president and CIO of Motorola Solutions, says the surest way for IT leaders to avoid the most common Cloud pitfalls is to learn from others' mistakes.
"The biggest mistake I've seen others make, and we've tried to avoid, was underestimating the change to employees and being unprepared to support them through the trauma that is changing the tools they have used daily for decades," Meyers said. "Be prepared to explain over and over why you're changing, stay committed to your principles, have empathy for those who won't be happy and provide overwhelming training, support and change management."
2 Limitations of Cloud's one-size-fits-all approach
Finding the right tools and applications that meet key business objectives and requirements is paramount to the success of a shift to the Cloud, according to Liz Herbert, a vice-president with Forrester Research.
"One of the biggest challenges I see is the one-size-fits nature of the Cloud," Herbert said. Simplicity and ubiquity drive many of the Cloud's obvious benefits, but the change can be a "huge challenge for CIOs" moving to environments that don't play favorites or tailor contracts to special interests.
3 Proactive planning for growth objectives
Companies can grow in new ways and improve business practices thanks to the Cloud, but these things don't happen on their own. IT leaders need to rethink how their businesses run and determine how assets - software, hardware and data - can be optimsed to drive business value, according to Matt Katzer, founder and president of the IT consulting firm, Kamind.
- MATT KAPKO
5 different models, 5 different objectives
100% commission
up front (eg. the
first month’s
income as
commission
with no residual
payments).
This is ideal for
new customer
acquisition, but can
create a culture
that is not oriented
to customer service
or retention.
100% commission
on consumption (ie.
paying commission
totally on a
recurring revenue
basis). This is
ideal for customer
retention and
growth, but over
time will mean that
sales people are
less likely to chase
new customers.
Mix with more up
front (ie. higher
percentage paid
as commission up
front, with smaller
percentage based
on the customers
recurring revenue).
Main emphasis
is on acquisition,
but also drives
retention.
Mix with less up
front (ie. lower
percentage up
front, with higher
percentage based
recurring revenue).
Some acquisition,
but focus in
predominantly
retention and
growth.
No commission
(ie. reps on a fixed
salary). This is
better for customer
retention,
although it can
also be applied to
acquisition. This
model reduces
“bad” behaviour,
but can be very
challenging to
manage.
3 common Cloud pitfalls IT leaders should avoid
MOHEB MOSES: is an ARN Hall of Fame inductee; CompTIA director, A/NZ channel community; and co-founder of
channel sales consulting and training firm, Channel Dynamics.
21 3 4 5
arnnet.com.au | APRIL 2016 |
THOUGHT LEADERSHIP 15
M y favourite concept in management theory
is called the ‘Peter principle’. Named after
its author, a bloke called Laurence J. Peter,
it articulates a common feeling in the workplace:
“managers rise to the level of their incompetence.”
Ha! Rising to the level of their incompetence.
How wonderfully amusing, dark, insightful, cathartic,
and terrifying.
You know this story, right? The annual reviews tick
around and a hard-working employee is rewarded for
a job well done. Along comes the pay rise and more
responsibilities – they’re inseparable.
Well, Mr Peter discovered that’s not always the best
decision a leader can make. Your erstwhile colleague’s
past performance shouldn’t be the only reason why
they’re given a new role with greater responsibility.
Without the right training, or abilities, power goes to
their head, poor decisions are made, or people struggle
to follow the freshly empowered leader.
It’s a tough scenario because we’ve all been
there. That’s the “terrifying” aspect I referenced
earlier. Obviously the normal way to “get ahead” on
the corporate ladder is by demonstrating you’ve got
leadership and management potential.
MANAGING UPThe game we play is called ‘Managing Up’. We convince
our boss we’ve got the ability to think and act like them
and, if all goes well, the promotion is ours.
This linear thinking is insidious. We want to know
how to be a leader, a manager, a better person. Faced
with a new opportunity or stretch goal, we work hard
to overcome our secret perceived incompetence before
it’s no longer secret.
Think I’m exaggerating? Here’s the list of Inc.
Magazine’s Top 10 business books of 2015: Stand
Out, Team Genius, Team of Teams, Serial Winner,
You Win in the Locker Room First, People Over Profit,
Corporate Awesome Sauce, Do Over, Work Rules!,
and Steal The Show.
The trouble is nine out of 10 books are focused on
the incompetence dynamic – different variations of
“how to be a better leader” and “how to do a better job
at work”.
The only book that’s different. People Over Profit,
by Dale Partridge, is described by Inc. as: “A manifesto
and action plan for companies to remain socially
Forget how to be a great leader. Why are you a leader in the first place?By Mark Jones
MARK JONES is Chief
Storyteller + CEO at Filtered
Media, a brand storytelling
agency in Sydney.
responsible not because it's the right thing to do but
because it's the only way to survive.”
The subject matter sounds inspiring. But the
keyword in this description is manifesto – the author’s
attempt at articulating a higher calling.
Partridge appears to have looked past the obvious
obsession with “how” and gone for something far
more inspiring. Why are you a leader in the first place?
What’s your purpose? If you don’t have one he’s about
to give you one: a mission to transform profit-obsessed
corporations. It’s the principle that matters here.
This point was driven home by Michael Jr., one of
my favourite comedians. He told the story of a segment
in his act called “break time” where he chats with the
audience. Upon meeting a school music teacher, Michael
Jr. invites the man to sing Amazing Grace. What followed
was an understated, deep-register vocal rendition.
Sensing an opportunity to unlock something
amazing, Michael Jr. then asks the man, of African-
American descent, to sing the “’hood version”. Out
of nowhere came an entirely different performance.
The man picks it up a notch or three, jumps to a high
register, and his vocals soared all over the place like a
black gospel singer. Powerful stuff.
THE PUNCHLINEThe punchline here are words that apply equally to life
as they do leadership and team building.
“The first time I asked him to sing, he knew what
he was doing. The second time I asked him to sing, he
knew why he was doing it,” Michael Jr. said. “When you
know your why, your what has more impact, because
you’re walking in, or towards your purpose.”
It follows that the antidote for the Peter principle
is not more books about how to be a great leader, but
why you’re a leader at all. Get that right and the rest
will follow.
The antidote for the Peter principle is not more books
about how to be a great leader, but why you’re a leader at all
| APRIL 2016 | arnnet.com.au
16 25 YEARS
How Tech Pacific was sold to IngramBy Mike Gee
The tale of how distie giant and market leader, Tech Pacific, was eventually sold in 2003, reads
like a chess game and ARN journalists (at the time) had fun following out.
Let’s start in on November 24, 2000, with a news flash from ARN’s Mark Jones: Tech Pacific embarks on Initial Public Offering (IPO) voyage.
Jones wrote, “[Netherlands-based parent company] Hagemeyer has revealed late it plans to either float or sell off Australia’s largest distributor. The Dutch company has engaged Salomon Smith Barney to explore the IPO or sale of Australia’s largest distributor.
“The move ends weeks of speculation about the Tech Pacific Group’s future after some sources in contact with ARN
suggested it was in due diligence to be acquired by another distributor, such as US-based Ingram Micro.
“Tech Pacific Group CEO, David Arnott, said the primary driver was to explore an IPO listing on a stock exchange, most likely in the Asia-Pacific region, and possibly the ASX.
“He said Hagemeyer is not attempting to sell the Tech Pacific Group, but concedes anything is possible.”
FOUR MONTHS LATERThere was more huffing and puffing on March 28, 2001, with a story by Anthony Doesburg, about Tech Pacific NZ’s sale to Ingram mooted.
Doesburg reported: “The Asia-Pacific head of $US30 billion
distributor Ingram Micro, Hans Koppen, doesn’t rule out buying Tech Pacific NZ, although it’s not clear whether Tech Pacific is for sale.”
“Tech Pacific is ‘in a little limbo’, according to Koppen, since Hagemeyer said in November that it is considering selling or taking the IT distribution business public.”
SIX MONTHS LATEROn August 29, 2001, ARN’s Brett Winterford reported that the Tech Pacific sale was on hold and that and the proposed sale of the distribution giant had been cancelled.
He wrote, “Hagemeyer stated market conditions were not conducive to earning what it considers to be a suitable price.
“The group decided it was in the best interest of shareholders to keep Tech Pacific as part of its portfolio.
“With the current uncertainty affecting the ICT industry worldwide, it has become clear that extending the divestment process further would not maximise shareholder value.”
“Recently we came to the conclusion that given the present state of the IT market and the Australian economy, we can’t get a sales price that reflects the value of Tech Pacific. We can’t get what it’s worth, so we won’t sell,” said Hagemeyer CEO, Rob ter Haar.
“Hagemeyer will look at selling Tech Pacific again when the economic tide has turned, said chief financial officer, James Riddell. “As the cycle recovers,
APRIL 2001 Much to the bewilderment of smaller resellers, Tech Pacific announced it would charge resellers $33 for orders under $1000. Those placed on the TP website would incur a $22 fee.
MAY 2001 Toshiba’s former distributor, CHA, is forced into receiveship by ANZ bankers. Ingram Micro is appointed national distie alonside Tech Pacific and Dicker Data.
JULY 2001 After his short-term contract expired, Siltek Asia-Pacific CEO, Bruce Harvey, high-tailed it out of the country. This left the distributor’s Australian operations without a figurehead.
AUGUST 2001 After a short stint in the Australian market and an even shorter stint running a channel program, Gateway closed up shop - 200 people lost their jobs as a result.
SEPTEMBER 2001 HP and Compaq shocked the IT world with a planned merger. HP would acquite its arch-rival for $US25bn in the largest deal since Compaq acquired Digital in 1998.
OCTOBER 2001 Microsoft launched its new operating system, Windows XP, with fashion models, hot air balloons and helicopters.
JANUARY 2002 After flip-flopping several times, Tech Pacific finally abolished its $33 ($22 online) for orders under the set minimum of $250.
MARCH 2002 XBox mania hit retailers as consoles and games flew off the shelves to the delight of retailers. Larger retail chains got the gig: Myer, Grace Bros, Kmart, Target, Big W, Toys ‘R’ Us and Electronics Boutique.
Cisco produced plans to bypass distributors and sell to its Gold partners.
JULY 2002 IT services company, Commander, acquired leading HP reseller, Centari Systems, for an initial payment of $16 million.
AUGUST 2002 Powerlan exited the reseller business following Theo Baker’s shock decision to wind up the old Powerlan Queensland business and place it in voluntary administration.
Timeline 2001-2003
On March 31, 2005, the Tech Pacific name disappeared with the completion of the merger
of Tech Pacific’s business into Ingram Micro throughout Asia.
| APRIL 2016 | arnnet.com.au
18 25 YEARS
OCTOBER 2002Volante landed a record $12 million managed services deal with oil and gas company company, Santos.
DECEMBER
2002
Data#3 took a hit of about $2 million to soothe creditors and customers of the disastrous Queensland Software Services (QSS) joint venture.
FEBRUARY
2003
Ingram Micro global CEO, Hans Kopper, declared the company would knock Tech Pacifc of its Australian distribution throne within three years.
MARCH 2003 Intel officially launched Centrino.
APRIL 2003 Cisco bought Linksys.
MAY 2003
Harvey Norman launched its first concept retail store in Chatswood, Sydney, featuring digital cameras, notebooks, PDAs, mobile phones, entertainment consoldes, games and accessories.
JULY 2003Cellnet acquired Queensland-based components wholesaler, Cassa Australia, for $1.47m and assumed $2.31m in debt.
AUGUST 2003
Local components and peripherals distributors BBF and Bluechip Infotech announced a share-swap merger, effective January 1, 2004.
OCTOBER 2003
Following a six-week distribution review, Cisco dropped Tech Pacific in favour of retaining value-added relationships with Express Data and LAN Systems.
HP realigned its distribution landscape, adding Avnet Partner Solutions while ditching Digiland and eXeed.
DECEMBER
2003
Management at Sydney-based distributor, Alstom IT, made an offer to its US parent to buy out the local distribution arm.
then sure in the long-term we’ll look at divesting Tech Pacific,” said Riddell.
NEARLY 14 MONTHS LATERCome October 17, 2002, and ARN’s Gerard Norsa reported in a story that Tech Pacific is no longer for sale. “Just over 12 months ago, Tech Pacific was for sale to the highest bidder. When a buyer could not be found, the sale went on hold. Now there are no plans at all for Australia’s largest distributor to change hands.
“Kerry Baillie, Tech Pacific’s local managing director, claims that the sale of Tech Pacific is not just on hold, it is off the agenda altogether.
“‘None whatsoever,’ was Baillie’s response to the question of whether there were still any plans for Hagemeyer to sell Tech Pacific. ‘It would not be on my agenda even if it was still for sale, but I have actually asked that question [of Hagemeyer] and was told a definite ‘no’.’
“Nor is there any consideration from the company’s Dutch owners to attempt to grow its own local market share and revenues through acquisition.”
EIGHT MONTHS LATERHowever, that state of affairs didn’t last long. On June 15, 2003, Anthony Doesburg reported, “Tech Pacific changes hands”.
“Hagemeyer, has sold a 58.5 per cent stake to investment company
CVC. Hagemeyer is holding on to 31.5 per cent while the remaining 10 per cent has been sold to Tech Pacific management,” he wrote.
“New Zealand managing director, Tony Butler, says CVC expressed interest when Tech Pacific was put up for sale in late 2000. But an agreement couldn’t be reached, and Tech Pacific was eventually withdrawn from the market.
ANOTHER FIFTEEN MONTHS LATERFinally, on September 27, 2004, ARN’s Brian Corrigan reported: Ingram Micro buys Tech Pacific for $700 million.
“Ingram Micro Inc. has bought Tech Pacific Holdings in a deal estimated at $700 million. The announcement will see Ingram significantly strengthen its IT distribution arm in Asia-Pacific, a move which had been highlighted as a company priority. The deal is expected to be finalised by the end of the year”, he wrote.
“The news follows ongoing speculation that Tech Pacific would issue an IPO on the ASX if it was unable to negotiate a trade sale. CVC had owned a 58.5 per cent share in Tech Pacific and Hagemeyer a further 31.5 per cent. The remaining 10 per cent was split between senior management.”
On March 31, 2005, the Tech Pacific name disappeared with the completion of the merger of Tech Pacific’s business into Ingram Micro throughout Asia.
And so a signficant chapter in Australian ICT industry finally came to an end.
Tech Pacific managing director, Kerry Baillie,
carries the 2004 Olympic Games torch through
the streets of Sydney.
Blow-by-blow
24.10.2000
Tech Pacific
embarks on
IPO voyage
28.03.2001
Tech Pacific NZ
sale to Ingram
mooted
29.08.2001
Tech Pacific sale
on hold
17.10.2002
Tech Pacific is no
longer for sale
15.06.2003
Tech Pacific
changes hands
27.09.2004
Ingram Micro buys
Tech Pacific for
$700 million
Timeline (continued)
| APRIL 2016 | arnnet.com.au
20 INTERVIEW/IBM
She is a successful professional: a determined and driven unmistakable talent. But even she will admit to sometimes suffering from “impostor syndrome” and thinking she had to dress more masculine in order to impress with the “power pantsuit.” IBM A/NZ director of global business partners, Rhody Burton, sat
down with ARN in a very candid and personal discussion about her journey into IT, lessons learned along the way, and some personal insights and even unknown facts.
Associate Editor, JENNIFER O’BRIEN, reports.
Change agent leads IBM’s channel transformation
arnnet.com.au | APRIL 2016 |
IBM/INTERVIEW 21
Rhody Burton doesn’t mix her words when she starts talking about women working in
IT and how to battle confidence and self-esteem issues. “With impostor syndrome, you are waiting for someone to tap you on the shoulder and say, ‘what are you doing here? How did you get this job? Someone more capable is going to come in and take over.’ I definitely, throughout my career, deal with impostor syndrome,” she said, also explaining how wearing the “power suit” was one way to conform.
“I thought that was the uniform in order to be successful. The people who I saw as successful wore business suits so I started emulating that,” she said, but things changed once she got involved with running the diversity council at VMware.
“It was at that point that I recognised here I am, getting dressed every day to look like the man and to have my power suits and the cufflinks and all of the rest of it and, in fact, what is valuable about me is that I am not like them. And it was this ‘ah ha’ moment telling me to be authentic. The realisation gave me permission to be me.”
Manly-born and raised Burton - who has close to 20 years experience in the channel, having worked at Seagate Software, Business Objects, Crystal Decisions, VMware A/NZ and SAP Australia and is also a WIICTA 2012 Rising Star winner - credits her single mum’s hard-working nature and dedication to family for her strong work ethic.
“At one stage, mum had three jobs to provide for my sister and me. But we never knew it. I never looked back at that time and thought we are poor, we don’t have the money. I honestly believe that my work ethic and the fact that we have to work the hours we have to work, and we have to juggle
motherhood within those hours, everything that goes along with that, that was normal to me.
“I got home from school and my mum wasn’t there. She was at her second job, trying to earn enough money so that I didn’t know she was struggling to pay for school shoes. I am so incredibly close with my mum. She would definitely be my inspiration for that work ethic side of things.”
Burton never saw her gender as a hindrance in terms of career
development. If anything, she said she has been incredibly lucky with the managers and leaders that she’s been exposed to, and the sponsors and mentors she’s met along the way.
“I have never found that being a female has hindered my career at all. I’ve been a little bit oblivious to it and it wasn’t until I started running the diversity council that I realised a number of things. One of which is just how many women don’t get that opportunity, so I want to give back and help them,” she said.
“I’m so passionate about supporting things like women in IT and I’m also incredibly passionate about trying to encourage youth, male or female, to choose our industry to work in. I just naturally had people looking out for me throughout my career and so I have to give back.”
So how did Burton get into IT? Was it something she always envisioned?
“Absolutely not,” she said, explaining she wanted to be a lawyer or a writer, but “never in IT”.
“This is probably something people may not realise: I actually left school in Year 10. I left school early primarily because I wanted to earn money. I was very driven to earn money. A lot of my friends were older than me. They had left school, they started getting jobs. A few of them were temping and I remember thinking they were earning a lot of money and I wanted that. So I made
Mum put me through secretarial school and I went out and I started temping.”
At 18, she left for the UK with a friend and immersed herself in the world of temping, during which she landed a role at an IT company, dubbed The Point Group.
“It was in the channel funnily enough. We were the middle man for the hardware vendors and software vendors. I was hired to be the office administrator for Angus Panton. He was this amazing guy, an entrepreneurial person who needed help. He started to realise that I pick things up easily. He was so slammed with managing this business that he started giving me more and more things to do. I left school early, didn’t have any experience in IT whatsoever and within the first six months I had two clients.”
When Burton, after three years in the UK, returned to Australia, she
MAY 1997 - DECEMBER
1998:
Partner relations, Seagate Software
DECEMBER 1998 -
DECEMBER 1999:
VAR partner manager - Seagate Software
DECEMBER 1999 -
FEBRUARY 2001:
Distribution manager A/
NZ - Seagate Software
FEBRUARY 2001 - JULY
2004:
Channel and inside sales
manager - Crystal Decisions
JULY 2004 - APRIL 2006:
A/NZ channel manager - Business Objects
JANUARY 2007 - DECEMBER
2010:
Senior partner business
manager - VMware
MAY 2010 - DECEMBER
2010:
Acting director, channels A/NZ -
VMware
DECEMBER 2010 - JULY
2013:
Manager, Cloud and Channels A/
NZ - VMware
JULY 2013 - SEPTEMBER
2015:
Sales director, channels - SAP
SEPTEMBER 2015 -
PRESENT:
Director of global business
partners, A/NZ - IBM
CAREER TIMELINE
”We are a new IBM. We are not a software, hardware and services company anymore. We are a cognitive solution company where the platform is Cloud and we go to market by industry”
On IBM
| APRIL 2016 | arnnet.com.au
22 INTERVIEW/IBM
began temping again, and given her positive experience in the channel was adamant she wanted to work in IT. “There were lots of great jobs in advertising that other women wanted. But I said I would hold out for one in IT, so just give me short term assignments. If you spoke to mum or my family or friends, they will tell you I’m quite determined. I had decided IT was the industry for me and I couldn’t be swayed.” She got her foot in the door at Seagate Software as partner relations and the rest is history.
LIFE LESSONS But perhaps one of Burton’s biggest life lessons was an incident that happened in childhood, which she credits for helping her foster her relationship building skills and developing a sense of courage.
“When I was 11, quite a life changing thing happened to me. I fell off a cliff at Freshwater Beach. It was the first time I had really been hit with a big challenge. It was about three-and-a-half metres down and I landed on rock so I was in hospital for ages. I had a lot of time off school. I know I had gone from being at this little public school where everybody knew everybody to suddenly having the first three to six months out in Year 6. It was really a big deal,” she said.
“I broke both of my wrists, my jaw in two places. I shattered my kneecap. I was on the news and in the papers. When you were 11 that was kind of cool. I do remember coming back to school that year and there were new kids who had come in. I was almost like the new kid for the first time. I remember having to build relationships.”
Certainly, this ability to build
relationships has landed her in good stead. It has also given her momentum to take on new positions at a number of different technology companies.
CAREER JOLTS ALONG THE WAY From channel and inside sales manager, channel manager, channel sales director, acting channel director, Cloud and channels manager, senior partner business manager, and now director of global business partners, Burton has amassed a breadth of experience.
She said one of her biggest hurdles was moving from VMware to SAP. “It was a big, big culture shock. Being a channel person, I don’t think I quite appreciated just what a mature channel organisation VMware is. And I had always worked for fast growing companies that are in a good space. The culture is very much, ‘Yes, let’s do this. Wow, that’s a great idea. Let’s try that.’ And so I had come out of these environments of enjoying what I do and passionate about what I do. I happened to be very lucky to work for companies on this growth trajectory,” she said.
“Suddenly, I was working for this successful, established 40-year-old organisation that is very process driven and the answer isn’t always ‘yes’ because it is running a much bigger business and everyone has a great idea. I loved my time at SAP. It is full of really really talented people.”
It also prepared Burton for her current position at IBM. “It was the best preparation for coming into IBM. And now I’m at an 104-year-old company. I have gone from those young ones to older ones. I learned so much in those
two years at SAP. It prepared me for being a better leader and better at stakeholder management.”
CHARTING HER NEXT COURSEFast forward to today, and her journey at IBM is an exciting time for Burton, even though she says Big Blue wasn’t initially on her job wish list.
“IBM wasn’t on a list of companies that I aspired to want to go and work for. Probably my perception of IBM was that it was a big, old, blue suits company and if you look at the press and read what some of the analysts are saying overall about the company, it just wasn’t on my radar of companies that I wanted to go to. And I did not feel that my time at SAP was done.”
But she is thankful her path has led her to IBM, a journey that has already activated the change agent in her.
“IBM has transformed itself many times over the years; in fact, we are one of the longest standing companies in this industry,” she said. “This is an opportunity for me to be part of something really special. This is an opportunity for me to be part of a change and a transformation and a point in time for this company that is really taking us into that new era.”
She said IBM is well placed to take the transformative journey given the company’s breadth of solutions and capabilities. “What a great opportunity to come in and help be part of that core team that educates everyone on what it is that IBM is today. We are a new IBM. We are not a software, hardware and services company anymore. We are a cognitive solution company where the platform is Cloud and we go to market by industry. That is what IBM is today and I want to be part of the team of people that is helping not only our customers see that and even get them to do things in a new way, but the channel,” she said.
Burton is passionate about helping current partners become more sticky, build managed services, add differentiators into what they do, as well as attract new partners. “I would love the message in the marketplace to be: ‘wow, I didn’t know IBM did that. I need to go and talk to them.’ My vision is we are going to have more and more partners wanting to come and talk to us about including IBM in what they do.”
Her visionMy vision for the role and the team is I want
to be recognised as the vendor of choice, not
only for the traditional IT channel. There are
a lot of traditional IT organisations trying to
transform themselves and I want to be able
to let them know just the breadth of not only
solutions, but people within my organisation
who can help them on that journey and that
trajectory. I am also really interested in,
‘What are the new channels of tomorrow?
What does the new partner look like?’
| APRIL 2016 | arnnet.com.au
24 ROUNDTABLE/DATACENTRE
EMC and VCE opened up the Buy vs. Build debate alongside key distributor partners and resellers at an exclusive ARN Roundtable at Rockpool Bar & Grill in Sydney. Attendees discussed the changing dynamics of the datacentre, the market opportunities for the channel and from a local perspective, the emerging business use cases. ARN Editor, JAMES HENDERSON, reports.
Buy vs. Build?The changing dynamics of the datacentre
This roundtable was sponsored by EMC
arnnet.com.au | APRIL 2016 |
DATACENTRE/ROUNDTABLE 25
“Let’s move away from this absolute nature of the Cloud, and explore a fit for purpose approach in the market,” VCE/EMC chief technology officer of Converged Platforms, Matthew Oostveen, said.
As the changing dynamics of the datacentre play out through the local market - and disruptive factors change the course of IT transformation - Oostveen’s message to the Australian channel is straightforward in delivery, and resounding in its reach.
“Not every workload or application is best suited to the Cloud, and the Australian enterprise landscape is changing to reflect this,” Oostveen said, in addressing a host of key partners and distributors during the exclusive ARN Roundtable Lunch, Buy vs. Build? The changing dynamics of the datacentre.
In citing a move away from an all-out Cloud approach to business, he said the datacentre of today is under bombardment from a host of disruptive technologies, such as the Internet of Things, Big Data and software-defined infrastructure.
Combining to foster a hybrid Cloud environment, businesses across the country are seeking alternative ways to support growing demands for new applications and services, while juggling limited budgets and resources.
In Australia, and overseas, it’s playing out in the numbers with more than 80 percent of enterprise IT organisations expected to commit to hybrid Cloud architectures by the end of 2017, according to IDC research.
Naturally, Cloud computing continues to gain momentum locally, but as the industry evolves, IT organisations continue to standardise on converged infrastructure as the foundation for next generation datacentres, with complexity and cost reduction coming to the fore.
“From a partner perspective,” Tecala Group managing director, Pieter DeGunst, says, “we’re having many fit for purpose conversations.”
Speaking as an EMC partner of over 10 years in Australia, DeGunst acknowledges that as new technologies continue to impact the datacentre, fit for purpose becomes a “wide ranging conversation”, offering no one size fits all approach for the channel.
“This is where we’re engaging with our customers, through a consultative process,” he adds.
Echoing DeGunst’s analysis of the current datacentre state of play, Nexus IT managing director, Sean Murphy, said there is “no cookie cutter” approach to developing a hybrid Cloud model, as hyper converged takes a top seat at the table of Australian boardrooms.
“Two years ago, a CIO would read a technology magazine and say they want to be in the Cloud, and we’d build a business case around that,” he recalls.
“We can put anyone 100 per cent in the Cloud or on-premise, or provide a combination of both, but it takes time for that customer to figure this out and work through the complicating factors.”
Through blending on-premise and Cloud environments, Oriel Technologies chief technology officer, Richard Mitton, said the coexistence of both has derived from a reversal in conversation, with the adage of “doing more with less” prompting partners to find real-time solutions to changing business demands.
For Mitton, businesses now explore running workloads on-premise, retracting on a previous all out approach to Cloud.
“But we’re just the IT plumbers,” he said. “Businesses essentially want to keep running in the same way so the changing market is disruptive for the plumbers in the respect of Cloud migration.”
Guests:Ben Le Huray INGRAM MICRO
Matt Oostveen VCE/EMC
Adrian Chu AVNET
Cam Wayland CHANNEL DYNAMICS
Richard Centellas VCE
Darren Ashley BEARENA
Alex Kennedy DATACOM
Sean Murphy NEXUS IT
Richard Mitton ORIEL TECHNOLOGIES
PieterDeGunst TECALA
Moderators:James Henderson Jennifer O’Brien
Photos: Maria Stefina
CORE 1:Value and solutions
“Through our EMC architects we actively engage
with partners to educate the channel on the vendor
portfolio and new products coming to market.
Resellers old and new must understand the value
they bring to the table and how to deliver solutions
to the end user market.”
– Ingram Micro’s Ben LeHuray
| APRIL 2016 | arnnet.com.au
26 ROUNDTABLE/DATACENTRE
Milton observed, “Customer businesses don’t change as fast as we want to change the IT plumbing”, indicative of the varying degree of maturity levels across the Australian enterprise.
“Cloud means different things to different organisations,” adds Datacom national Cloud manager, Alex Kennedy. “As a partner our role is to assess where each customer sits in terms of Cloud adoption, and the level of maturity they have.”
In adopting a hyper converged approach to the market for the past three years, BEarena managing director, Darren Ashley, said CIOs of today require differing Cloud strategies, yet crucially for partners, “always repeat what they’ve done before.”
“There is a pattern to follow,” he said. “But it remains an education play given the rapid pace of technology today.
“Our goal is to make the infrastructure invisible and the next stage is to assess the Cloud goals of the CIO, which shifts the focus onto which
workloads should stay on-premise, and which should move to the Cloud.”
WORKLOADSWhether it’s considered a blessing or a curse, CIOs today have a multitude of options when it comes to running workloads, creating complexity for partners around which applications should reside where within an IT architecture.
“And that’s the key question,” VCE/EMC’s Matt Oostveen observed. “Pragmatic CIOs understand that some workloads will be kept in house and that others are suited to the Cloud.”
But as Oostveen explained, the question of how partners can provide business leaders with a homogenised view of workloads and management capabilities remains.
“We’re trying to bridge the chasm between the two and this is where the conversation lies for CIOs,” he said.
VCE senior director of vArchitects, Ricardo Centellas, reinforced the fact that CIOs of today want to understand how partners can close the gap between workloads, as the conversation shifts to business use cases and experiences.
“Of the CIOs I meet, they want to know about managing and orchestrating workloads, as well as the provision and integration aspects of hyper converged technology,” he said.
PERCEPTION VS. REALITYAkin to the ongoing industry dilemma of ‘to Cloud or not to Cloud?’ the continuous enhancement of IT has been both a boon and a burden for channel partners.
In drawing on previous market experience, Murphy observes that as the dynamics of the datacentre change, the role of the partner transforms in parallel, as “cloudify” application trends trigger new industry challenges.
“Most workloads aren’t public Cloud ready and are built on a system that’s 25 years old,” he said. “But the solution to this problem comes in at a budget of $500,000, placing the onus on the partner to intelligently and creatively provide an alternative outcome.”
Centellas, in referring to the value-add of seasoned channel partners in Australia, believes such market behaviour represents an opportunity for resellers to former deeper engagements with customers, through establishing a business starting point.
“Partners are critical to EMC and we understand that on occasions customers want $5 million worth of technology and expertise for $500,000,” he acknowledged.
“But here lies an opportunity. Customers think they understand the business criteria and needs of applications but they don’t know the smarts or possess the IP and background that partners have.
“As such, there’s a chance for partners to open the dialogue with customers and make trade-offs to ensure a mutually beneficial outcome.”
BUY VS. BUILDOnce committing to a hybrid Cloud model, reflecting the current approach for Australian businesses, organisations must now decide whether to buy or build.
Prompted by EMC’s newly released hyper-converged appliance VxRail, the question returns to the boardroom amidst a changing datacentre outlook.
While the build path may appear to be limitless in its customisation options,
CORE 2:Workloads
“Pragmatic CIOs understand that some
workloads will be kept in house and that others
are suited to the Cloud.”
– VCE/EMC’s Matt Oostveen
arnnet.com.au | APRIL 2016 |
DATACENTRE/ROUNDTABLE 27
Buy vs. Build - top 5 channel opportunities
1 Bearena managing director, Darren
Ashley: During the past six months, we’re seeing numerous instances of customers being secured by Cloud reps. But with through hyper converged, the direction of travel is clear across Australia - businesses are fully embracing hybrid Cloud. Conversations of the past used to be all Cloud, now they are more focused around hybrid solutions.
2 Oriel Technologies chief technology
officer, Richard Mitton: We’re now becoming the customer with regards to hyper converged and this begs the question; do I buy or do I build? This is the conversation I’m having everyday with vendors, focused around how we partner together so we’re joining forces going forward. The channel used to come through us, but now it stops with us. It’s a new
conversation and some vendors get it but a lot don’t. Change will need to happen because this is how our customers want to buy. They stopped talking speeds and feeds three years ago, and the focus has shifted to business outcomes and solving problems.
3 Nexus IT managing director, Sean
Murphy: For the organisations that don’t want to pay for the resources of partners, they sweet spot for the market is the hyper converged play. It allows partners to provide a solution that has the backing of a globally trusted vendor with a guarantee to work and meet its SLA requirements.
4 Datacom national Cloud manager, Alex
Kennedy: I’m the new buyer for vendors. The industry is being disrupted by public Cloud and the key for partners is to become
more effective to their customers. Hyper converged is a way to disrupt public Cloud providers and offer new services that may not be in the market today.
5 Tecala managing director, Pieter
DeGunst: If I look at each individual conversation, approaching it from an educational standpoint, what are we trying to achieve? It’s about having the diligence and the patience to bring the conversation back to the outcome you’re trying to achieve. Let’s not skip the technology aspect but we’ll get to that later. Do you want to buy or build? Again, let’s have that talk further down the line. The main focus centres around having a fit for purpose conversation with customers, and ensuring our staff are having multi-level service engagements because this is where we are generating the most success.
through building their own hybrid Cloud solution.
“Providing CIOs with the correct infrastructure frees up resources and staff to focus on other aspects of the business.
“It allows organisations to look upwards and recognise growth opportunities, but they can’t undertake this radical shift without both the vendor and partner providing the correct tools to achieve this.”
With the DIY approach to IT a dying game, opening the door for partners to both add and extract value from strategic hyper-converged infrastructure plays continues to gain greater relevance across the channel.
“But for resellers, it’s hard to qualify a clear differentiator between buy vs. build,” cautions Ingram Micro solutions architect team leader, Ben Le Huray. “As such, partners are reverting back to a per user and per business case approach.”
Taking the distributor conversation further, Avnet Technology Solutions business unit director, Adrian Chu, said top tiering partners throughout Australia possess a “strong grasp on reality”, with complexity and hardship trickling down to the mid to lower tier of partners.
“Through the lower end of our partner base, we’re guiding them through the process at a deeper level, articulating and presenting the value
it’s a journey that presents significant challenges for already overextended IT staff resources.
For the process of continually evaluating, integrating, managing and sustaining hardware and software solutions is both costly and ties up valuable resource.
Traditionally, the alternative, buying an IT converged solution, has been the privilege of companies with sizeable budgets
Irrespective of sector or size however, Oostveen believes momentum
in the IT market has shifted.Recent technological developments
now ensure partners can put businesses, of all sizes, on the path to eliminating complexity and extracting value from hyper converged infrastructure solutions.
“I don’t think this needs to be a complicated message for the channel to articulate,” Oostveen said.
“Businesses don’t know what they don’t know and at present, they don’t know that they are tying up expensive resources and skill sets
| APRIL 2016 | arnnet.com.au
28 ROUNDTABLE/DATACENTRE
of the changing datacentre market,” Chu said.
“Lots of partners from the old days are servicing one or two key clients - which has been their core business - but now the opportunity has arrived to evolve and adapt. The converged play is upon them whether they are ready or not, and they need to get on board.”
As more businesses embrace hybrid Cloud services, partners that continue offering traditional IT services run the risk of competitors with more efficient, nimble business models capturing customers and market share.
“At Datacom, we’re constantly evaluating how we can provide additional value in respect of the changing converged infrastructure market,” Kennedy added.
“We’re seeing a shift in customers hiring architects, moving to the public Cloud with some workloads still on-premise. But they don’t realise that the architect will stay to build the solution, hang around for a while and eventually move onto the next thing.”
Kennedy advised that six months after the architect’s departure, customers are left contemplating how to run a changing and convoluted environment.
“They thought it was a piece of gold but it turned out to be a lemon,” he
said. “Our role as partners is to educate enterprise on how the management of processes during change and the fit for purpose approach required to go to market.”
RESELLER ENABLEMENTWith the hyper converged play focused on the end game, defining an outcome that best fits the needs of the customers remains mission critical.
To extract value in this context, Channel Dynamics director, Cam Wayland, said partners should utilise support from all aspects of the channel, focusing on enabling staff to better address business concerns during the sales process, to avoid a race to the bottom on pricing.
“Hyper converged is a great story within the industry, but it’s what hyper converged can deliver and the business outcomes it provides that is the key conversation to have for partners. And that’s the play, educating sales staff to
drive business conversations rather than product pitches.”
In capturing the partner skill set within the Australian channel, Wayland believes business and financial focused training provides the deepest value for resellers continually tasked with taking new technologies to market.
“The technology is good but the business skills training and value-add messaging around how a partner builds their own IP is what’s important,” he said.
“If this issue isn’t addressed, partners end up in a discounted scenario because they haven’t properly articulated their value proposition
from the outset, and because of this, they become drawn into a conversation about price.”
At Ingram Micro, Le Huray said the role of the distributor in this equation evolves around enabling partners to put in the “hard yards” of backend work required to offer differentiation in an increasingly competitive world.
A refreshed approach to selling key to hyper converged success
With partner ecosystems in a state of flux, and partners required to adapt to shrinking margins, new competition and ongoing skills shortages, the resellers winning the hyper converged war are those investing in long-term sales training.
As outlined by BEarena’s Darren Ashley, successful partners are finding ways to better equip staff to delve deeper into the datacentre conversation, banishing a previous reliance on traditional speeds and feeds methods.
“What we’ve focused heavily on is positioning our solutions and steering the conversations with customers,” he explains. “Three years ago the
conversations were always the same, focused around the speed of disks and the specs of the product.
“I can’t remember the last time I had this conversation with customers because today, the discussion has developed to focus on the business outcomes.
“One of my sales personnel went through the entire sales process with a customer, but returned to ask for more discount because the hyper converged offering was more expensive than the competition.
“We sat down and talked it over and I asked, “Where do you think you failed?”
For Ashley, if a sales person arrives at the end of a process and the customer
is still making a judgment based on price, then the partner has failed.
“It means we haven’t done a good job of explaining hyper converged and the key business benefits of the customer,” he explains. “We’ve put our name to hyper converged and undertaken lots of sales training internally as a result.
“The easy way is hard and the hard way is easy. If partners put in the hard work up front, and follow these steps then when the sales process arrives, they’ll cut through it without hesitation or difficulty.
“But for those partners keen to take the easy route there’s a misplaced assumption that at the end of the sales process, the customer will
automatically choose your solution.” Going forward, Ashley believes
partners operating within the hyper converged systems space must evaluate different sales approaches, technology options, potential use cases, in keeping with providing related services to customers.
“We have a lot of journeymen still within the industry, those who have been working in the channel of 30 years and find it impossible to change their mindset around how they sell.
“I’m seeing a huge difference in approach from our younger staff coming through, they are our top performing sales reps because of this refreshed mindset.”
CORE 3:Selling changes
“We recognise that the old relationships
required to sell are dying and that the
challenger sale is the new breed”
- Adrian Chu, Avnet
arnnet.com.au | APRIL 2016 |
DATACENTRE/ROUNDTABLE 29
“Through our EMC architects we actively engage with partners to educate the channel on the vendor portfolio and new products coming to market,” he said. “Resellers old and new must understand the value they bring to the table and how to deliver solutions to the end user market.”
It’s a testament mirrored by Chu, with Avnet providing both technical and sales paths to foster a challenger methodology to sales, empowering partners to take control of the sales conversation.
“We recognise that the old relationships required to sell are dying and that the challenger sale is the new breed,” he said. “We’re ensuring our partners clearly define opportunities within the market and educating the channel on new methods rather than traditional approaches to sales.”
As Kennedy explained, the art of understanding what the customer is trying to achieve within a hyper converged environment can be fraught with complexity, citing strong sales staff at those widening the conversation across different areas of the business.
“Sales people can traditionally be very product focused and while a few may succeed, this isn’t the required approach,” he said. “We talk to customers at different levels to ensure our finger is on the pulse in terms of identifying ongoing pain points and challenges.
Rise of hyper converged triggers changing channel dynamic
As hyper converged architecture injects new life into a stagnant IT infrastructure, sales opportunities are emerging for channel partners.
But with opportunity comes challenge, with resellers traditionally tasked with overcoming costing barriers as revenue streams come under duress.
“There’s disruption in the market and as a company, we’ve become both the provider and the customer,” adds Oriel’s Richard Mitton.
“On the topic of buy vs. build, is there a cost to my organisation as a partner? When the disruption eases, where will the dust settle within the channel?”
For partners, Mitton believes the question moves away from technology, touching on the commercial aspects of hyper converged and how the channel extracts value from the vendor.
“I’m now the customer so I need to benefit and make this a mutually beneficial venture,” he adds.
In recognising the changing position of the partner within the market, VCE’s Ricardo Centellas said vendors must now take credible steps to ensure support is extended across the channel.
“We often have that talk with partners and when the service provider is the customer, EMC comes in to review cost models and help rework strategies going forward. We want partners to talk to us about how they can inject value into our offerings,” he said.
“If the conversation is dominated by dollars and cents, then maybe that isn’t the conversation to be having.
“Partners must understand that customers want to know how to move the business from point A to point B.”
While the goal has always been for vendors to better engage with partners, and assist from a sales perspective, Wayland believes the harsh reality and fluctuating market conditions hinder the ability to tighten the lines of communications through the channel.
“The concept of alignment is crucial,” he advised. “That’s the order check for a high performing channel, are vendors, distributors and partners aligned in terms of training, sales meshing, skills and supply chains - if they line up, it bodes for a healthy channel.”
To facilitate this change of approach throughout the channel, Oostveen recognises that generally speaking, “vendors must be easier to do business with” for partners.
Substantially altering the vendor and partner relationship in the process, Oostveen said from an EMC perspective, there is changing realisation that vendors must find better ways to communicate through its complex ecosystem of partners.
“We need to provide our partner community with the right type of
access to the right type of people at the right time, and this is crucial to our ongoing growth within the market,” he said.
In closing, Oostveen said the “immediate opportunity” for partners lies around “fit for purpose”, through bridging and binding together the workload and infrastructure conversation.
As the changing dynamics of the datacentre play out at a local level, and the buy vs. build conversation deepens, partners now sit at the intersection of innovation.
But with further disruption ahead, the Australian channel must lead the conversation.
| APRIL 2016 | arnnet.com.au
30 INTERVIEW
James Henderson took up the ARN editor’s role on April 4. Over the last few years, James has been heading up Computerworld and Reseller News in New Zealand.
But don’t expect a Kiwi accent because James hails from Newcastle in the UK where the distinctive Geordie accent is worn like a badge of honour. Think Monty Python’s Eric Idle or Sting or the movie Billy Elliot.
His enthusiasm about ARN and the Australian channel community is infectious. James talked to ARN president and publisher, SUSAN SEARLE, about his love of football (his team is Sunderland), his sporting journalism background and how he ended up writing technology in Auckland.
SCORING GOALS WITH ARN
What was your background before you
came into technology journalism?
I started my career in journalism 13 years ago as a features writer for A Love Supreme magazine, which is an English Premier League football fanzine (a magazine for fans) covering Sunderland AFC – my local football team.
From the age of 15 I remember writing stories, cycling to pick the magazines up from the printers and then standing outside of football grounds across England selling copies for £1.50, rain or sunshine. So it was a very hands on role.
After studying journalism at university I became a sports reporter for The Times of London, covering the North East football beat and reporting on Premier League matches.
Across Australia and New Zealand, I’ve also worked for The West Australian and The New Zealand Herald, focusing on football, cricket, rugby and golf.
How did you end up in New Zealand?
After finishing my studies I was commissioned to report on the 2011 Rugby World Cup for a range of newspapers in the UK, following the England national team on the ground in New Zealand. Unfortunately, England didn’t perform well so after losing to France in the quarter-finals, I decided to make use of my free time and travel around New Zealand.
A few months turned into a six and then after a year of making my way around the North and South Islands, I returned to Auckland to resume my journalism career.
Why the IT industry?
Sport was naturally my first choice but I struggled to dislodge the established journalists in the industry, so I made the conscious decision to refocus my efforts in another industry.
And that’s when IT cropped up. Initially, I was drawn to the industry because of the people within it, and the noise it was creating within the mainstream press.
Given New Zealand’s reputation as early adopters of technology, the new and exciting technologies coming to market ensured no day was ever the same, and it helped bring me up to speed pretty quickly. But crucially,
arnnet.com.au | APRIL 2016 |
INTERVIEW 31
it’s rewarding to work in a market which evolves at such a rapid pace, and continues to open my eyes to the genius of this industry and the people within it.
You’ve been at IDG in New Zealand
for two years and have edited both
Computerworld and Reseller News,
so you’ve seen IT from the user and
channel perspective. Has that been
valuable? Why?
As Editor of ARN, I believe my role is twofold – to inform the channel but also to listen to it. While my job is to better enable partners, I also believe an editor should capture the mood of the market and translate it back through the media, ensuring a two-way conversation.
During my time editing Computerworld and Reseller News in New Zealand, I covered the industry from end-user to reseller to distributor to vendor, which offered an extra dimension of the market when engaging with partners.
Too often distributors and vendors communicate their own perspective to partners, often bypassing the needs and understanding of the resellers. But resellers’ views stem directly from the needs of their customers and are essential market intelligence.
Through working in the end-user space across enterprise, I’ve seen firsthand the changing demands that are placed on partners, and I believe this provides me with a deeper understanding of what the resellers are encountering and the outcomes they need to achieve.
What have been the highlights of
developing the Reseller News brand
and community?
During my early days at Reseller News, it quickly became clear that bringing distributors, vendors and resellers under one roof was a tough ask. In fact, it rarely happened. Because ARN has helped develop the Australian community, it’s more common to catch-up as an entire industry. But that model didn’t exist in New Zealand
With the relaunch of Reseller
News, there’s a different dynamic in the New Zealand channel today and collectively, we have helped reunite the industry, bringing old faces back together and reigniting past relationships. We’re pleased to see the market responding to our approach.
This was best summed up during the inaugural Reseller News ICT Industry Awards last October, when 300 industry figures joined together for a night celebrating the Kiwi channel, something nobody believed could happen 12 months prior.
Following on from the awards, the launch and rise of After Hours has perhaps been our greatest achievement as a team.
This no strings attached
networking event regularly brings together key industry figures and we’re humbled to see this has become a key date on the monthly social calendar.
As one reseller put it; “Reseller News is the Switzerland of the channel” – and it’s this neutral platform that has helped regain the channel’s trust and facilitated a sense of community.
Now we are planning the first Women in ICT Awards (WIICTA)for June, with a strong agenda to celebrate gender diversity in the NZ ICT industry.
Why are you moving to ARN?
Through my work with Reseller News, I’ve established significant relationships in Australia and believe the move represents an exciting career progression.
I hope to draw on my trans-Tasman perspective to develop the editorial footprint of ARN, ensuring our content enhances the industry we are serving.
I believe there is an opportunity to both deepen and widen the channel conversation in Australia. While traditions and reputations must be respected, there is a need to uncover new aspects of the local market and seek opinions from the new breed of partners as well as the mainstream.
ARN has the opportunity to ensure the conversation is reflective of the changing channel, whether this be breakthrough vendors, startups or born in the cloud providers - irrespective of size or stature.
With respect to the 25 years of ARN, I hope to lay the groundwork for ongoing change, magnifying the key issues relevant to resellers. I look forward to gaining a deeper understanding of
what makes the channel tick.
Over those 25 years, ARN
has developed a strong
community and reputation.
How do you view your
appointment as editor and
the editorial responsibilities?
I appreciate the size of the task at hand, but with the help of my editorial colleagues, we will put channel partners at the heart of our content strategy, better serving the market through a blend of
originality and deeper analysis.It’s a great honour to take over
editorship of ARN. Having observed the Australian market evolve from across the Tasman, I look forward to building upon ARN's long-standing reputation within the industry. In this role, my core journalistic values will always remain; built around integrity, accuracy and objectivity.
You developed a wonderful network
in New Zealand. How will you develop
your contacts in Australia?
My first real encounter with the Australian channel was during EDGE 2015, where I escorted the Kiwi contingent. In meeting with the majority of the 180 Aussies in attendance, I began to build my local network and look forward to expanding this further in the coming weeks and months. Please email me on [email protected]
”I believe there is an opportunity to both deepen and widen the
channel conversation in Australia. While traditions and reputations
must be respected, there is a need to uncover new aspects of the
local market and seek opinions from the new breed of partners as
well as the mainstream.”
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SUCCEEDING TOGETHER:
THE TRIUMPH OF SUCCESSFUL PARTNERSHIPSBuilding successful partnerships is paramount to the HP pedigree. Partners are vital to the success of any vendor and HP has worked across many verticals and markets with its partners to drive growth and revenue.
At its Partner Awards in February, HP awarded resellers for their successes. These three winners are examples of the triumphs partners across the country have when working with HP, the undisputed leader in the print space.
Enigma Business ProductsEnigma Business Products was named cMPS Partner of the Year and the company’s managing director, Shaun Hemberg, explained that HP has been there since the beginning working tirelessly to achieve joint success.
“When Enigma first opened in 2000, HP were the standout OEM/Vendor who provided us support, training and access to their programs,” he explained.
“When Enigma first opened we concentrated our sales focus on being a box shifting organisation. However, we saw after the first few years that there was a shift in the market from customers that they were looking for more than that from their suppliers. We decided that if we did not embrace this change and reorientate the way we did business we would be left behind. This decision and the support we have received from HP to help us change has enabled us to be where we are today.
In addition to managed print services, Enigma has built a successful practice providing customers with a wide gamut of other solutions including Pull Printing, Print environment Security analysis and resolution, Document Capture and Route and document management programs as well as a range of other solutions for varied IT requirements.
“Essentially they go hand in hand,” Hemberg continued. “It provides a future path for our customers once they have the HP hardware on site.”
The print landscape has changed considerably since Enigma opened its doors in 2000 and Hemberg explained the company has adjusted to suit the market with the help of HP.
Partnering with the right vendor is essential in managing the elevated customer expectation we service today comparatively to the past.
“The solutions [we offer] have certainly become more technical and I am grateful for the support we receive from the pre-sales and post sales guys at HP.” Shaun Hemberg
Rob Mesaros (HP Inc.), Shaun Hemberg (Enigma Business Products), Chris Hewlett (HP Inc.)
Simon Williams (Cartridges Direct), Rob Mesaros (HP Inc.)
Rob Mesaros (HP Inc.) Yogan Murugesu (Landmark Computers), Chris Hewlett (HP Inc.)
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“When it comes down to it – we have been able to work in partnership with HP, hand in hand to develop solutions using HP programs and channel support to exceed our clients’ requirements.
Cartridges DirectOne of the other great HP Print partner success stories is The HP Print Supplies Partner of the Year, CartridgesDirect. Simon Williams is the company’s managing director and said the decision to move toward offering HP genuine products was vital to the success of the business.
“We first became a partner with HP back in 2008. Before this we had been selling a wide range of remanufactured toner cartridges and compatibles from China,” Williams said.
“We saw that the quality of these products had been getting worse over time, primarily caused by aggressive price pressure. This in turn pushed the quality of the product down. Sales of genuine ink and toner had been increasing significantly as well, due to the poor quality of the generic products. At that time, Williams saw the opportunity to take the business online and partnered with HP.
“HP print solutions have been a key element of that direct model. From the very formation of Cartridges Direct HP has been a mainstay of our operation. They are the pioneers in many aspects of printer cartridge technology and, as pioneers in our segment it was natural that we would offer their products from the very outset.
Williams bet big on the online business and the company is reaping the rewards thanks to hard work from Cartridges Direct and support from HP, their trusted solutions partner.
“Since the beginning HP has been more than just a vendor, they truly have been a partner to CartridgesDirect,” he said.
“They have always taken a strong interest in the growth of the company and our approach to the marketplace. Having a business manager to work with has also been a key to our success. They have taken the time to understand our business.
“Winning the Supplies Partner of the year is something very special to us,” Williams said.
“It is testament to the work that has gone in over the years by all of our staff and I personally thank each and every one of them. It takes true dedication to get the business from a one man operation in a two car garage to where we are today.”
Landmark ComputersAnother success story from the HP Print partner ecosystem is Landmark Computers.
Servicing predominantly the
1-99 seat market while also working with customers up to 250 seats, the reseller sees every vertical as an opportunity. The team at Landmark has been selling print solutions since 1994 and the company’s managing director, Yogan Murugesu, explained that Landmark is a one stop place for all IT requirements for small business customers.
“We have other solutions around servers, networking, and PC hardware but our focus in the print space has intensified in the last six to seven years,” he said.
“We have been a long standing partner with HP, and it’s because they have the best product range and solutions in the space that we sell into.”
Murugesu went on to say that the market has changed significantly in the past decade and HP had been instrumental in helping Landmark address the changing needs of clients.
“More and more business are trying to reduce the amount of printing from a carbon footprint point and are trying to go paperless where possible. We have also found some customers prefer to spend a little bit more, go to a better device and share it among more users. That means selling less units in certain cases.
He added that in the face of these changes, offering products renowned for quality like those in the HP print portfolio has been vital to the continued success of Landmark and that the HP team were constantly working with his team to explore new opportunities. Murugesu also said the markets for multi-function printers (MFP) had picked up and customers were also looking more at HP’s business inkjet range.
The team at Landmark navigated the changing landscape expertly and have become one of the most successful resellers in the country. This success has culminated in the company being named HP Print Partner of the Year.
“It’s very pleasing, because a lot of hard work is put in,” Murugesu added. “In addition, it also opens a lot of doors for us, because we can be seen as a trustworthy partner for HP.”
He went on to say that customers recognised the value in having a reseller that was also a trusted HP partner as it demonstrated the faith HP has in the company and that both the partner and end
user have the backing of a global giant committed to quality and continued success.
All three winners agreed that partnering with HP was one of the best decisions they ever made in their business as it formed a large part of the foundation of their success.
“HP also has programs in place that make it worthwhile for the customer and the reseller. Most importantly, the HP team that we deal with is fantastic and has always helped us and our customers where possible.” Yogan Murugesu
“They have always taken a strong interest in the growth of the company and our approach to the marketplace. Having a business manager to work with has also been a key to our success.” Simon Williams
| APRIL 2016 | arnnet.com.au
34 TECH WATCH/MARKET DISRUPTORS
They are the big two - IoT and Big Data - and these game-changing technologies are set to continue to gain traction in 2016 and beyond.
IoT is all about interconnecting and creating intelligence from the myriad of connected devices. It is a leading edgetechnology that can offer sizeable cost savings and ongoing
productivity enhancements.
Big Data is a term for data sets so large or complex that traditional data processing applications are inadequate. While challenges include analysis, capture, storage and privacy, companies are seeing huge benefits due to the improved analysis of data and data correlation. Companies can make better decisions because of greater operational efficiency, cost reduction and loweredrisk.
ARN deputy editor, HAFIZAH OSMAN, examines the two biggest market disruptors for 2016 - IoT and Big Data - highlighting the growing and evolving partner opportunity.
IOT AND BIG DATA:THE DISRUPTION STARTS HERE
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MARKET DISRUPTORS/TECH WATCH 35
The volume of data that is pouring out of the great etchnological
shift is growing exponentially. It is obvious. So it it just as obvious that the game-changing technologies for 2016 will revolve around unlocking the potential value of this data. Right at the top of the list are platforms that facilitate productivity and collaboration in data science.
Two of these game-changing and interconnected technologies are the Internet of Things (IoT) and Big Data. Channel players claim these technologies will continue to gain traction in 2016 and beyond and will pave the way for channel opportunities.
Teradata A/NZ chief data scientist, Ross Farrelly, said these technologies are enabling a ‘listening framework’ – letting organisations actively analyse large data streams in real-time, and an increased utilisation of decision-making platforms that can augment human decision making processes.
Farrelly said IoT is all about interconnecting and creating intelligence from the myriad of connected devices.
“IoT is a game-changing phenomenon that can offer enormous cost savings and massive productivity enhancements,” he said.
As for Big Data, Farrelly said it creates huge amounts of data sets which are so large or complex that traditional data processing applications cannot adequately analyse them. However, if companies can meet these challenges they can make better decisions, realise operational efficiencies and cost reduction and also reduced risk.
“The value of these technologies heavily depends on the use cases driving their
adoption. But for organisations implementing data analytics technology for marketing purposes, or to gain ongoing insight into business processes to maximise productivity, the platforms that support real-time analysis and action are important.
“Technology that enables real-time analysis and action can be integrated with business systems to provide organisations with the insight needed to make decisions quickly. This ability makes organisations more responsive, which is important in today’s competitive landscape,” he said.
Oracle A/NZ Big Data specialist, Vicky Falconer, said 2016 is going to be an exciting year as Big Data will be a game changer, driven by the rapid emergence of visualisation tools that are bringing new insight into the hands of the business user.
Falconer claimed advanced analytics and machine learning, in addition to IoT, will be the driving force of Big Data.
“They are often talked about separately, but really IoT is the means for generating the data, which Big Data then takes and adds to and enriches what
MuleSoft A/NZ regional vice-president, Jonathan Stern, said the tools and technologies are already in place to take advantage of Big Data and IoT. It’s now a case of putting the non-technical aspects in place: the processes and people.
Then, he said, it will be about execution.
“IoT is creating a lot more data, contributing to the Big Data pool. However, often this resides in disconnected products, devices and services. When this happens, valuable data becomes siloed,” he said.
Stern addressed three challenges that enterprises need to address to leverage IoT:
1. Real-time collection of data from connected devices
2. Processing of that information to make it actionable
3. Connecting that data to operational systems to enable the creation of new products and service offerings
Stern said the key to solving the connectivity issues to deliver successful IoT initiatives is through open APIs.
“APIs allow disparate systems and data to talk to each other, creating a seamless flow of information from one source to another. We’ll start to see more organisations turn to an API strategy as IoT initiatives proliferate
“To thrive in the new business landscape, organisations need to be agile. As always, differentiation is the key to positioning. As Big Data and IoT adoption accelerates, businesses that offer specialist skills around integration of disparate data sets will benefit most,” he added.
you have already got, so that decisions can be made on it.”
In addition, Falconer said new tools, especially in the areas of Cloud and mobile, are empowering and speeding up innovation in businesses by enabling them to move rapidly and adopt new technologies like Big Data and IoT, and test and develop new applications that utilise them.
“As a result, innovation is moving into the heart of the business rather than being at the edge. A key impact of this is on the business culture itself. Innovation and insight become the role of everyone in the business, not just specialised departments,” Falconer said.
CHALLENGESEMC A/NZ mid-market inside sales and distribution general manager, Brett Harris, said the market has been talking about IoT and Big Data for years now, but many organisations still don’t have the infrastructure in place to manage them correctly.
“Businesses won’t fully benefit from these trends until they have the tools to manage the sheer amount of data that will be created, utilise that data and then give their staff the
IS BIG DATA/IoT SOMETHING THAT THE MARKET IS READY FOR NOW?
“The advantages
of IoT and Big Data
is that it enables
businesses to get
closer to their
own customers,
providing new
insights about them,
and enables them to
then deliver a better
service” - EMC’S BRETT HARRIS
WHY IoT AND BIG DATA ARE GOOD
| APRIL 2016 | arnnet.com.au
36 TECH WATCH/MARKET DISRUPTORS
Partner organisations that can offer situational awareness across connected devices and help keep IoT from becoming a cyber security nightmare will quickly differentiate themselves from the pack, according to FireEye A/NZ’s Rich Costanzo
“This is particularly true as most IoT device manufacturers are driven by cost and pay little attention to security. Resellers need to be able to help their clients not only identify all the risks in their environment, but also invest in the ability to develop a security strategy.”
Allied Telesis Australia country manager, Scott Penno, said IoT represents an opportunity for new devices and technologies to be deployed and existing devices to be retrofitted and/or connected, while Big Data poses an opportunity and a challenge as the volume of data is growing exponentially and the challenge is to find the knowledge and insight within the information to make smarter decisions.
“IoT and Big Data present many different opportunities for the channel from trusted advisor or consultant on new technologies and services through to creating platforms that can leverage this data and provide insight and intelligence to their customers.
“One particular challenge for the channel in the market today is adding value and differentiating themselves – and IoT and Big Data provide plenty of opportunity for this to happen,” he said.
However, Penno mentioned that traditional resellers need to understand that the world is moving towards consumption based models and that organisations are less interested in owning things and more interested in paying for the benefit those technologies deliver.
“Subscription based business models, Cloud-based services and innovative new applications and services are all ways in which traditional resellers can make changes to improve their chances of success in the future.”
Schneider Electric Pacific channel and alliances general manager, Muralee Kanagaratnam, is optimistic about the opportunities in this space. He said there has been a lot of hype around IoT, edge computing and Big Data, but yet this has not been rolled out on a mass scale to date.
“Where there is complexity there is margin - this presents a golden opportunity for channel partners. As the market starts to look at innovative ways to stay ahead of the game, they will rely on the channel to be the trusted advisor.”
Whilst the technologies may be becoming more “plug and play”, the supporting infrastructure and environments needs to be managed – this is where the channel will play a key role in supporting their customers and continuing to service them, said Kanagaratnam.
“This means helping customers generate business advantages from their investments in technology, particularly as they pursue digital transformation, or take over responsibility for more technology functions through managed services.
“Many customers are looking for guidance and innovative game changers, not necessarily a solution to a problem. Channel partners have a responsibility and an opportunity to usher in successful IoT and Big Data implementations by exploring the adoption of technologies that help customer achieve business objectives,” he added.
on and on. Companies will need the will and the way to detect, analyse, and respond to these kind of attacks,” he added.
Bitdefender security specialist, Alexandra Gheorghe said each market will embrace IoT and Big Data advancements at its own pace.
He claimed that, at this moment, companies find it very challenging to manage the explosion of data generated by mobile and connected devices. Another issue affecting all markets is the need to standardise IoT applications, as the lack of interoperability among devices and objects remains a major hurdle for widespread IoT adoption.
FireEye A/NZ SE director, Rich Costanzo, also spoke about security as an issue.
With an increasing number of devices connecting to both the enterprise and critical infrastructure, he said security teams need complete visibility into their networks and the capability to quickly detect and shut down a compromised device.
“While many vendors differentiate between the risks of the various types of devices – whether BYOD, remote and onsite, or even connected and disconnected – in reality, these are all part of the soon-to-be worldwide collection of 50 billion IoT devices.
“Every one of those endpoints is a cyber security risk; a first point of attack and network vulnerability. This means there is a greater attack surface to be exploited and businesses are at disadvantage because an attacker only needs to breach one device to be successful, whereas an organisation has to protect all of them,” Costanzo said.
CHANNEL OPPORTUNITIES businesses to get closer to their own customers, providing new insights about them, and enables them to then deliver a better service.
“But the primary disadvantage of IoT and Big Data is that they will put significant pressure on a customer’s IT infrastructure, whether that be private infrastructure or Cloud-based. In order to maximise these technologies they must ensure that infrastructure is ready before implementation,” he said.
Blue Coat A/NZ chief information security officer, Damien Manuel, said with Cloud migration, apps and services require data protection across multiple premises.
Manuel said as workers become ever-increasingly IT-savvy and the number of Cloud-based, often-free solutions to their specific Big Data and IoT requirements become available, more and more of them are bypassing the IT department for a quick fix.
“They are easier to procure and use without going through the usual IT channels. Moving to a Cloud-based solution means that sensitive data now moves freely between the enterprise and the Cloud. The use of unsanctioned Cloud applications has created an intensified risk of internal/external data exposure, malware attacks from suspicious Cloud providers and the problematic visibility and security issues.”
He also said with the increased use of Big Data and IoT, the sheer number of advanced security threats will grow every day.
“So will the sophistication of cyberattacks, custom malware, drive-by downloads, watering-hole attacks, and the list goes
“Where there is complexity there is margin - this presents
a golden opportunity for channel partners.”
Muralee Kanagaratnam, Schneider Electric
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MARKET DISRUPTORS/TECH WATCH 37
“They will put significant pressure on customer’s IT infrastructure, whether that be private infrastructure or Cloud-based. In order to maximise these technologies they must ensure that infrastructure is ready before implementation” - EMC’S BRETT HARRIS
WHY IoT AND BIG DATA CAN BE PROBLEMATIC
PREDICTIONS OF THE FUTURERiverbed Technology Asia-Pacific and Japan vice-president of solutions, Ian Raper, said it’s undeniable that IoT is poised to overhaul not only business, but every aspect of modern life.
“From fridges to fitness products in the domestic world, and everything from dialysis machines to dams in the enterprise realm, we can expect things that were never connected to soon come online. In fact, Gartner is predicting that a typical family home, in mature markets like Australia, could
contain several hundred smart objects by 2022.”
The expected boom in IoT and Big Data technologies opens the playing field for a range of business opportunities.
Raper mentioned every area of life – from work, to transport, healthcare and government service delivery – stands to benefit from the innovations and efficiencies made possible by a fully connected world resulting from IoT and Big Data.
“Focusing on the enterprise space, IoT presents opportunities to monitor and manage assets, automate processes and generate
significant savings on resources and manpower. Utility providers are already using connected smart meters to track usage and pre-empt surges in demand.
“Similarly, connected patient care systems are already allowing healthcare providers to track the health status of outpatients and adjust treatment where necessary,” he said.
Commvault principal architect, Chris Gondek, claimed today IoT and Big Data are staples of the business world but tomorrow and into the future, they will make their way into the everyday life of consumers – in the form of insurance premiums and healthcare.
“There are so many devices out there that can collect and send data, and the algorithms
to make sense of the data for business purposes are getting more intelligent and as the sources increase, the data repositories improve.
“One example is the ultimate end of benefits fraud, as analysis can eventually pick up on discrepancies when there is access to all the relevant data collection points of any individual collecting benefits,” he said.
But at the end of the day, according to Gondek, whether it’s a new feature or improvement in performance, it all boils down to greater productivity and a reduction in cost.
“With businesses taking more of a lead with regards to their technology spend, as opposed to the old days where this was dictated by the IT department, it is becoming more critical for us to seek out these new technologies as our IT costs are driven down,” he said.
BITDEFENDER SECURITY SPECIALIST, ALEXANDRA GHEORGHE, STRESSED BUSINESSES SHOULD
NOT IGNORE SECURITY.
1. “The first step to take is to
create organisational rules
and update network security
infrastructure so that it can
detect, and in some cases
control, data transmitted
to and from the new smart
devices that form the IoT.”
2. “Organisations should
embrace a risk-management
approach and reinforce the IT
infrastructure and systems to
restrict data access through
firewalls, endpoint security
solutions and proper policies, as
well as monitor networks 24/7.”
3. “An administrator should
be alerted if an unidentified
device is connecting to
the network. Lastly, it’s
essential to understand how
a device works, analysing its
ability to store and transfer
confidential corporate data.”
THREE KEY SECURITY STEPS TO TAKE
“With businesses taking more of a lead with regards to their technology spend, as opposed to the old days where this was dictated
by the IT department, it is becoming more critical for us to seek out these new technologies as our IT costs are driven down”
- CommVault’s Chris Gondek
| APRIL 2016 | arnnet.com.au
40 ROUNDTABLE/FLASH FORWARD
Flash storage continues to make a big impact in the industry, particularly in enterprise infrastructure. It is considered one of two big disruptions (alongside virtualisation) that have upended the enterprise datacentre and infrastructure stack for large companies.
With the advent of flash, many players are looking to disrupt the longstanding incumbents. Certainly, flash storage is gaining popularity and changing the way companies are using technology internally.
With that in mind, a group of experts gathered at an exclusive roundtable to discuss the latest trends in the storage market, highlighted where flash technology makes sense, and examined the market opportunities for businesses and service providers. Jennifer O’Brien and Hafizah Osman report.
This roundtable was sponsored by
Westcon-Comstor, Avnet, Tintri, and Nimble Storage
Flash Forward:
The storage evolution
arnnet.com.au | APRIL 2016 |
FLASH FORWARD/ROUNDTABLE 41
Guests:Bede Hackney NIMBLE STORAGE
Graham Schultz
TINTRI
Matthew Hurford
NETAPP
John Martin
NETAPP
Ean Mackney
WESTCON-COMSTOR
Jason Stegeman
TINTRI
Paul Oxley
AVNET
Rodney Gedda
TELSYTE
Andrew McGee
HDS
Roshan Ratnayake
LOGICALIS
George Kazangi BLUE CENTRAL
Moderators:Hafizah Osman
Jennifer O’Brien
Photos: Maria Stefina
Rodney Gedda, Telsyte senior analyst There are a number of flash storage opportunities for partners as the technology has evolved from the device level to the Cloud arena.
“Flash enables customers to transition to multiple delivery models (hybrid Cloud); it goes hand-in-hand with software defined; it adds value to equipment and as-a-service; and it enables customers to focus on the business outcome and total cost of ownership,” Gedda said, adding as costs fall, flash can capture more disk-based workloads.
He said today’s applications including Big Data processing and real-time analytics; virtual servers and desktops; mobile device integration; on-premise and Cloud Disaster Recovery; as well as industry automation are all driving the adoption of flash technology.
Graham Schultz, Tintri A/NZ managing directorPartners are the voice to market, as they are able to spend more time offering deeper consultative services now that the task-intensive storage management of the past is alleviated with the advancements of flash. Customers are also able to reallocate budget thanks to the associated cost savings from flash.
“From a partner perspective, that budget is available to offer higher level services around the business transformation. And we're seeing that partners are evolving to offer those types of services rather than somebody sitting doing grunt work installing and configuring storage arrays. So that shift in the partner ecosystem is happening for the right reasons and it has got benefits for the customer and partner.”
John Martin, NetApp Asia-Pacific director of strategy and technology There are a myriad of opportunities associated with flash, but the channel community needs to be very clear and think of flash in terms of people and not workloads.
“It is about people. Different kinds of people will want different kinds of flash solutions. You can sit there and try and map workloads. But the question isn’t ‘does this workload run well on this product or that product’. The question is, ‘what is it that that particular person emotionally resonates with?’ What do they see as their future of their IT environment? What do they see as their specific problems that lie outside that technical thing of, ‘does it run well’?”
Jason Stegeman, Tintri senior systems engineerThe channel is crucial in communicating the promise of flash.
“Having the right channel and having the channel that can ultimately articulate the business value is crucial. In this area, it is about understanding multiple stacks in the infrastructure. There's networking, compute, there's applications, and there's business processes. And that's the difference — having the partners that can articulate what that flash provides in a certain context or a certain business application.”
Matthew Hurford, NetApp A/NZ technical sales directorBut partners need to expand the skill sets and reach out to a new audience.
“We're increasingly having conversations away from IT. We're having fewer conversations with storage guys and infrastructure guys and CTOs and far more conversations with line of business and other C level folks. We're having more of an audience with risk and compliance people who are suddenly worried about this Cloud first strategy and what does it mean with data? That for me is a shift for vendor and that's something we're going to have to encourage our partners to further stretch their few resources to go and do. That's a different set of skills.”
Andrew McGee, Hitachi Data Systems A/NZ chief technology officer“In a way, we're kind of making the badge on the IT kit irrelevant to them where they just want the outcome. And there are a lot of customers now that just want to buy consumption-based pricing. All the different ways we need to sell IT has changed.”
He said the company doesn’t want to sell platforms, but solutions. “We want to try to get partners to a point where we have a solution conversation with the customer, rather than a point product discussion. It is a journey. We are not there, but we want to get to the point where channels can articulate that. They can wrap their own value around it. We have some channel partners that specialise in things like databases. So they will bring different pieces of jigsaw to the table that we won’t be able to provide. Finding the right mix of channel partners that can bring those pieces of jigsaw together is crucial and means we have a much more compelling proposition for the customer.”
Bede Hackney, Nimble Storage A/NZ managing directorThe biggest task today is delivering innovation at the business process level.
| APRIL 2016 | arnnet.com.au
42 ROUNDTABLE/FLASH FORWARD
“I would argue that probably one of the biggest challenges that everyone faces is helping customers understand what they can do to innovate in their business process based on leveraging the innovative technology that we're delivering. We've all passionately agreed that there's innovation in business process, there's innovation in technology. But the innovation in technology is only useful if it drives innovation in a business process. Our customers are stumbling on the potential for the innovation in a business process.”
Additionally, Hackney said the process is only half of the challenge. “You have to fix the process and help the customer see what's possible in their process, but we also want to deliver storage that's capable of much greater performance, but storage isn't the only thing in the datacentre.”
Ean Mackney, Westcon-Comstor FlexPod business manager A/NZNow more than ever, the onus is on the channel to articulate value propositions and deliver business outcomes.
“It's incumbent upon us as vendors and distributors to really go out and enable the channel and make sure that they're having the right conversations so they're fully taught to actually go out and iterate why flash is a good idea.”
Certainly, there is no slowing down the flash momentum, Mackney added.
“My major go to market this year is actually converged infrastructure in conjunction with NetApp and Cisco and all we're doing all year is
coaching partner SEs and salespeople on how to go to market and have that conversation on top of with an all flash and then be ready and enabled to have a complete Cloud discussion. My primary go to market is to make sure that we're all ready to rock.”
WHAT IS THE PROMISE FLASH?
Jason Stegeman, Tintri A/NZ senior systems engineerIt’s about how businesses modify their business process to take advantage of flash? “What applications can they start creating? And more importantly, what can we start creating in conjunction with my internal and external business customers? What services can we start creating based on the fact that we’ve taken care of what
is always a problematic tier? We've all heard of VDI, it’s happening, but only since flash has come into the equation on a wide scale has VDI really started to actually take off. So it’s writing the applications based on that storage tier.”
Matthew Hurford, NetApp A/NZ technical sales director“In 1910 Henry Ford painted his car black. He painted his car black because it's the fastest drying paint. He was managing the constraint in his process. To be honest, we're doing more than that, but we're almost back managing the constraint and we're removing the
“Innovation in technology is only useful if it drives innovation in a
business process.”BEDE HACKNEY, NIMBLE STORAGE
What do you think are the most workable areas of your infrastructure to develop a hybrid Cloud?
61%STORAGE
40%SERVERS
37%APPLICATIONS
31%DISASTER RECOVERY
SOURCE: TELSYTE
How is flash leading to innovation?
Matthew HurfordNETAPP A/NZ TECHNICAL SALES DIRECTORInnovation is doing things you didn’t do before to get a different outcome. A lot of flash at the moment is being deployed in an optimisation phase and IT has been going through that for a long time. At the moment, it’s providing cost savings whether in operational management or in speed that provides optimisation. But there are only a few use cases where customers are truly driving innovation. And that’s the next challenge for business. If they truly want that digital transformation to take place, they need to figure out how they change their business processes, which is ten times harder to get innovated outcomes. Businesses are doing fundamentally different things to what they used to do. The opportunity is there. They can free up the money from the optimisation phase, they can free up the people from the optimisational phase, and now they can go and invest in dev-ops and they can do some funky things.
Rodney GeddaTELSYTE SENIOR ANALYST If you look at some of the innovation projects — optical, holographic storage (taking solid state electronics out of the equation and looking at ways to store data in different ways) — that could very much become reality in the future and we could see that flash as we know it today is just another step along the path of innovation.
Bede HackneyNIMBLE STORAGE A/NZ MANAGING DIRECTOR Don’t confuse innovation in storage with innovation in business. Those are two different things. I passionately agree that what’s important is the innovation that we drive in business. I think it's interesting the innovation we drive in our infrastructure to support the innovation in business. Three or four years ago we were in tick phase where our sales, and everyone around this table, were adding flash into their arrays with ground up or bolt on, and that was to address speed and all the rest of it, but I believe that we are into the top phase. Conversations that I’ve had with customers where they were unclear what went wrong, and then realised that their application had completely changed its performance dynamics because of the speed of the storage. Then they realised they could run that query every half hour instead of overnight — that scenario is driving business process innovation.
In terms of evolution, there have been a number of revolutions of storage. There was direct-attached and then it was modular-networked attached and now it is irrefutable that flash is disrupting the storage market. Look at the legacy vendors and the revenue trends and look at the upstarts and the revenue trends. I agree what’s going on in the optical space is the next phase of innovation in two to five or seven years.
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| APRIL 2016 | arnnet.com.au
44 ROUNDTABLE/FLASH FORWARD
constraint, which was the performance in the storage layer. So now we can go and do interesting things around agile development and that kind of stuff because now we've enabled and we've freed up the resources to do it.”
Paul Oxley, Avnet Technology Solutions business unit directorThat speed difference is a big deal for the customer in terms of time to market. “When you've got something you want to get there, you want to compete with everybody else, being able to go quick and go hard, is so important. If you can't do that with a SAN, you can do that with flash. That might be the difference between you being first or second to market – and that's a huge business advantage.”
HOW ARE CONVERSATIONS EVOLVING?
Ean Mackney, Westcon-Comstor FlexPod business manager A/NZHe said what you want to really look at when you're having that conversation with your client is not all data is created equal. “That still holds true to this very day. Go out and actually have that conversation, figure out what is going to fit on what device based on the applications that they're providing and using in their environment and then have that conversation. I know it's a bit passé to say but that's where the Cloud consultancy piece comes into it because it drives that into some newer conversations. Flash is cool in storage and the story about flash is cool. Customers will ask what you are doing around this. Drive it out and then we get to have a longer, larger conversation around the broadness of our portfolios, around what we're doing with our software, with our integration, and that's where we really drive home an actual business value. And that's where innovation can come from.”
Roshan Ratnayake, Logicalis solutions architect, datacenter and Cloud servicesAll conversations involve delivering
MATTHEW HURFORDNETAPP A/NZ TECHNICAL SALES DIRECTORFlash plays its role in a bigger picture. If you look at what most companies are trying to achieve at the moment around business agility, I think flash helps companies be more agile. It's more than just a storage media itself, it requires deep application integration, it requires that you have data agility and data mobility. And we're seeing customers adopt it wholesale. We're absolutely putting forward our complete portfolio of flash products now, first and foremost, for every primary workload.
EAN MACKNEYWESTCON-COMSTOR BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT SALES MANAGERMy position on flash innovation and going to market is that it is an additive to a lot of the things that we're already achieving out there when we're talking to our customers. From a distribution perspective, when we're looking at how we're helping business partners get enabled and out to market, we need to be making sure that we're enabling them to be aware of what the flash conversation is and what it brings to the market.
If you're not out there having the conversation, then somebody else will be with your end-users. Flash is a key driver to giving you that efficiency, that high latency, giving you the best type of result for whatever application you're driving and then helping them drive that out to Cloud. At many levels, we need to have a Cloud conversation with this as well and that's why it also helps
to build an initial energy for that conversation and then we can go out and talk about the big picture.
JOHN MARTINNETAPP ASIA-PACIFIC DIRECTOR OF STRATEGY AND TECHNOLOGYOddly enough, despite its initial success in the marketplace, people are not buying flash for its performance, they're buying it for what performance actually delivers to them in terms of massive operations of simplification. There is that aspect in the marketplace. What we really see as the major benefit is the fact that people can basically reduce their overall cost to their entire IT environment by more than 40 per cent over a multi-year period because of that operational simplification that flash enables. And I think that's the real game changer.
JASON STEGEMANTINTRI SENIOR SYSTEMS ENGINEERFlash is not really a differentiator anymore; everyone has it. It's really about what you do with that flash storage and how you utilise it. What we're seeing is, more focus is moving towards the application. The application owner doesn't care if it's on flash or if it's in the Cloud. They care about how to manage the application, how to manage their data, and if it scales up and scales out. And the focus is, how does flash enable that? Issues such as latency and speed will pop out for flash, as well as operational savings from an environmental point of view because datacentre rack space is expensive, as is power and cooling.
I think it's going to be very interesting now that you start getting different types of flash and seeing what flash is going to evolve into. There are some new technologies coming out, so we need to figure out how that enables business outcomes. Flash is not unique, it's not something that really changes, it's one part of a very complex infrastructure stack.
ANDREW MCGEEHITACHI DATA SYSTEMS A/NZ CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICERCustomers aren't buying technology for the technology anymore, they're buying technology for an outcome. And they're not too concerned on what the technology is as long as they can get to the outcome and they can measure it and they can get those results. Also, flash isn't just about performance, it is around the simplicity.
People who are going all flash on the datacentre today want to use their precious resources and people resources to focus on other things rather than tuning IT equipment for the right tier of applications. So the simplicity, the reduction in management overhead, the reduction in environmental costs, etc. is not just about performance as a whole. There are a whole range of factors that people are buying flash for today.
BEDE HACKNEYNIMBLE STORAGE A/NZ MANAGING DIRECTORWhat's interesting about flash is that I would argue it's the single most significant in innovation
Q: How is flash storage a game changer and what are some main benefits for customers?
What they said
arnnet.com.au | APRIL 2016 |
FLASH FORWARD/ROUNDTABLE 45
in storage since 1956 when the hard drive was invented. If you look at pretty much everything else that's happened in between it's all additive and evolutionary rather than revolutionary. So, if you look at the lifecycle of storage, since the '50s, it's the most interesting thing that has happened.
The other thing I would say is that I completely agree that operational simplicities are a real thing. We do see customers buying flash, whether it's all flash or all hybrid flash for performance, but it's not really for the technology, it's really for the application outcome that that performance is delivering. Absolutely, operational efficiency is probably the most important thing that's going on in storage right now. And I think flash is really only the tip of the iceberg in terms of technologies that are driving operational efficiencies. Some things such as Big Data analytics and taking a predictive approach to how we monitor and manage storage arrays are really driving that operational efficiency to the next level.
PAUL OXLEYAVNET BUSINESS UNIT DIRECTORFlash is about innovation right through the channel. It is about how it has allowed end users to come up with innovative solutions that they couldn't have afforded to. Some of that is due to the operational components and the price of flash.
Where the challenge is picking up, is that it is allowing that integration, it's allowing the solution, which again, comes back to the fact that it's about an outcome, it's not about providing a bunch of different technologies. It's about why is this an appropriate technology that can deliver the price performance that allows us to get to really good business outcomes and that hopefully allows people to be innovative with their allocation of resources.
GEORGE KAZANGIBLUE CENTRAL MANAGING DIRECTORFrom a service provider point of view, flash causes a problem for us as much as an opportunity. I'll start with the easy one, the opportunity. Most service providers or truly multitenant environments are generally IO bound, not disk bound or space bound so we find ourselves buying a lot more space than we actually require in getting the performance to handle the peaks and troughs. So flash addresses that.
Where it causes us some problems is with the developers that have all this performance now and don't quite code as efficiently as possible. So, I think flash will have its own challenges in a few years when that catches up to us, but for the moment, we're taking advantage of all the extra IOs we've got at the moment.
RODNEY GEDDATELSYTE ENTERPRISE IT SENIOR ANALYSTAll of a sudden, storage has become sexy. I'm interested in this whole concept of the best outcome using the best type of technology, and that isn't automatically a Cloud service or on-prem service, it's a combination of both. And flash is increasingly playing a big part of that.
A lot of data is now born in flash, so in terms of personal devices and industrial technologies, a lot of it is natively flash and a lot of data is being sent from the endpoint through to on-prem systems to managed service providers to the Cloud. On the topic of operational efficiencies, software has a lot to answer for in storage over the past decade. We haven't seen a lot of innovation in software, in storage management
software, but we've seen a lot of innovation infrastructure in components. But there's still a lot of innovation in how we manage our data, particularly with the influx of Big Data processes and so forth into that mix.
GRAHAM SCHULTZTINTRI A/NZ MANAGING DIRECTORSo many IT organisations are facing the changes, and many are really struggling to be able to deliver on these business outcomes and effectives. Most of us are talking to enterprises struggling with that evolution and I feel the combination of the technology, and the smarts that we've all touched on are really helping organisations address their internal business requirements to compete effectively with a public Cloud. So, I do see it as an important element in the business and IT organisation's to deliver on good outcomes internally.
ROSHAN RATNAYAKELOGICALIS SOLUTIONS ARCHITECTIn terms of what we see as a solutions integrator, customers are coming to us but they're not asking for flash. They're not saying, “Give me a bunch of flashing disks”. Flash is, at the end of the day, just a building block of converged infrastructure or hyper converged storage.
When we talk about operational efficiencies, businesses don't want to deal with the day to day managing of high ops, latency, and performance and that's where flash can solve those problems. They want to see the same efficiencies inside the organisation. So, again, flash can basically help the IT organisation basically meet those demands on time as well.
- HAFIZAH OSMAN
a business outcome. “Flash does have a business outcome, but it's about finding those workloads to show those outcomes. Here’s an example of an interesting use case in a hospital environment, where they implemented flash storage which meant that the doctors could get access to patient information a few seconds faster. The doctor could see more patients throughout the day, which means more people that he could actually cure.”
Graham Schultz, Tintri A/NZ managing director“If Henry Ford had asked his prospective customers what they wanted they would have asked for a faster horse. In the storage world just making storage faster based on the same old legacy architecture (LUNS/Volumes) is not the ideal. In a highly virtualised datacentre customers need to think about new and more efficient options available that are better aligned to the application – delivering true quality of service and eliminating on-going management.”
George Kazangi, Blue Central managing directorHe said we can either do the lazy approach and simply say, ‘you can buy more storage’ or we could make a shift like some of the other vendors and service providers are doing and actually charge per IOP. “And that will start to lead developers into understanding there's a cost in developing applications because at the moment storage is easy.
From either an internal chargeback point of view or service provider point of view, if we change based on performance we're going to start to hopefully have a thought process with developers around how can we better code this. I think that's one of the evolutions we need to get to. I think we're getting there. Content addressable storage is getting there. But I think to drive behaviour with consumers, we need to change the way that we sell it or teach the real cost of storage.”
| APRIL 2016 | arnnet.com.au
46 THE EXPERTS/OPINION
The 3 things I’ve learned that have helped me during my careerPhil CameronWestconVP VENDOR
ALLIANCES APAC
AND DIRECTOR
OF VENDOR
ALLIANCES A/NZ
Whether you’re new to
our industry, starting
your career or like me
spent many a year building
your channel career in our
industry, what is it that
keeps you in the game?
Our industry is
going through massive
transformation. Every day there is a new
headline so how do we prepare ourselves for
this turbulence that no doubt will continue?
Change is inevitable so how do you prepare
yourself for it?
I’ve been very fortunate that I’ve built
my career from the ground up, beginning
at the most junior level by surrounding
myself with some fantastic leaders, channel
entrepreneurs, mentors and colleagues. On
the flip side, I’ve also seen and experienced
my fair share of bad managers, poor leaders
and questionable channel operators.
So what are the three things that got me
through and made a difference to my career?
1 Build and leverage your personal network
What would happen today if you are tapped
on the shoulder and suddenly your role no
longer exists or you are proactively seeking
a change? Just this week I’ve been assisting
four people from three different vendors and
a distributor where this has happened. Who
do you turn to for support, introductions, ideas
and a sounding board? For me, it was building
a trusted network from in and out of the
industry that I could
turn to when I needed
them. Throughout my
career, all — except
one — of my jobs
have come about
through my trusted
network.
2 Determine what you want
to be known forIt took me a while to
work this out, however
for me it is to be a senior
channel executive that can
be trusted and relied on
wherever I work. This clarity allowed me to set
some personal goals and helped me determine
what my own IP is and where I can add value
to the company I work for. Importantly, it is
also about how I can give back to the channel
industry and hopefully help some others along
way. My tip is think about what you want to be
known for and, as importantly, what you don’t
want to be known for.
3 The personal values you have today are the foundations that carry you
through the good and the badOur industry comes with many high demands,
expectations and constant pressure especially
at the end of a quarter. Some people want to
cut corners and do things that question the
integrity or compliance of that organisation.
My experience is these people get caught
out somewhere along the way. My tip is don’t
be tempted with anything that doesn’t sit right
with you or different to your personal values.
There are no short cuts.
Our industry is ever changing, fast paced
and rewarding. It’s an exciting time to be
amongst it as the channel will always play a
vital role.
Stickiness key to optimised Cloud strategy
Pip Marlow, Microsoft Australia MANAGING DIRECTOR
We are all working to transform
our businesses in this mobile-first,
Cloud-first world. But now you’ve
done the hard work to transition
to the Cloud – how do you build a
sustainably profitable business once
you’re there?
I believe a key pillar of building
an optimised Cloud strategy is
creating stickiness. “What,” I hear
you ask, “exactly does ‘creating
stickiness’ mean and why would I
want to do that?”
Creating stickiness is all about
looking for unique opportunities
to make your solutions invaluable.
Developing and deploying
intellectual property (IP) that
becomes part of the daily life of a
customer is one of the best ways to
increase stickiness. It is important
to remember that once your solution
is sold, you should also take steps to
drive adoption.
To learn more about
building an effective go-to-
market strategy for your IP, visit
the Driving Profitability with
Packaged IP modules in the
Profitability Challenge (www.
profitabilitychallenge.com).
”Don’t be tempted with anything that doesn’t sit right with you or different to your personal values”
1. Build and leverage your personal network2. Determine what you want to be known for3. Your personal values you have today are
the foundations that carry you through the good and the bad.
Cameron’s trio of tips
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| APRIL 2016 | arnnet.com.au
By 2018, there will be six billion devices or things connected and 20 per centof business content will be authored by machines, resulting in a need for improved networking technologies.- GARTNER
48 MARKETS/NETWORKING
NEW AND FUTURE TECHNOLOGIES ARE PUSHING NETWORKS TO THE BREAKING POINT. BUT THE PROBLEM IS, MANY
ENTERPRISES CAN’T COPE WITH THE LATEST CROP OF DISRUPTIVE TECHNOLOGIES. ARN’S CHRIS PLAYER SPOKE TO EXPERTS
IN THE NETWORKING SPACE TO GET THEIR VIEWS ON SOME OF THE BIGGEST NETWORKING TRENDS.
The future of the network
Mark RansomEXCLUSIVE NETWORKS DATACENTRE
SALES OPERATIONS MANAGER
Ransom said there has been
a lot of talk in the market
about the software defined
networking (SDN) piece.
“Speeds and feeds are not
such an issue as they once
were as most of the boxes now
come with enough power. Now
the issue is 10gbps to where?
Will we go to 25 or 40?”
“It is very much chicken
and egg, a vendor will come out
with a 25, 40 or 50Gb solution
and then it is a matter of the
rest of the market catching
up and supplying products to
satisfy those requirements.
There is a lot of talk and
a lot less doing, because
people are waiting to see what
everyone else is doing.
“Information is much
more readily available around
products, which means
customers are coming into
the conversation with a pretty
good basic understanding of
the technologies.
“It is then up to the
partner to come in and
provide a solution based on
the technology the customer
identifies,” he added.
Jamie WarnerENERDS CHIEF EXECUTIVE
Warner said the biggest
networking trend he has seen
is the migration of businesses
to the Cloud with Microsoft
Office365 and the threat
of ransomware.
“The greatest impact
we are seeing with SMB on
networking appears to be
the transition away from a
local area network, Microsoft
Domain Controller & Active
Directory (AD) to AD in the
Cloud with Microsoft Azure
for authentication, control
and Single Sign On (SSO),”
he added.
He added that a ‘sticky’
SaaS monthly fee for licensing,
support and maintenance
would allow partners to
capitalise on this shift in SMB.
“The challenge will be
ensuring the feature set of
Cloud AD delivers the same as
on-premises. Also, a strong
solution for Files and Folders
in the Cloud is required to
replace local File Servers given
the local file server is usually
the domain controller. MSPs
and IT Providers will also need
to up-skill to take advantage of
the new technology,” he added.
Greg Barnes A10 NETWORKS A/NZ
MANAGING DIRECTOR
Barnes said there was a definite
trend in consolidation of
footprint within the datacentre.
“Datacentre consolidation
will be around as long as we
have datacentres. Customers
are looking for vendors and
partners that can give a
consolidated approach.
“There is a trend toward
alliances in a collaborative
type environment. A10 has a
number of these relationships
around security, for example.
“Customers are looking
for an all-purpose solution
and the consolidation
of vendors is not quite
there; we are still seeing
consolidation of all the vendors
forming alliances.
He said customers want
more focused partners, so the
company is all about enabling
the channel to deliver that focus.
“We are trying to find
the key partners who can
consolidate those environments
and add in security. The changing
environment and transitioning
to Cloud, virtualising the
environment, consolidated
management and security.”
“Customers are always
looking for the new vendors
and if partners are not offering
it as at least an option, then the
customer will not take them as
seriously as they might. Partners
need to be brave,” he added.
Nitin KucharaNK2IT MANAGING DIRECTOR
Kuchara mainly sells well-
established brands like Cisco
and Juniper as they offer
familiarity, but said customers
are looking for quality products
above all.
“Many of the IT managers
I talk to have been burned
badly and are hesitant to
take a risk in the journey to
hybrid Cloud.
“We discuss the solution
with the client and what
they are the most comfortable
with. That may involve an
established player or it
may involve a challenger
brand. It really depends
on the customer,”
he added.
THROUGH 2017, 25 per cent OF BIG DATA IMPLEMENTATIONS WILL FAIL TO DELIVER BUSINESS VALUE RESULTING FROM PERFORMANCE
PROBLEMS DUE TO INADEQUATE NETWORK INFRASTRUCTURE.- GARTNER
arnnet.com.au | APRIL 2016 |
Mark FiorettoEMC GENERAL MANAGER SERVICE
PROVIDERS, SYSTEMS INTEGRATORS
AND ALLIANCES
Fioretto said EMC was
witnessing a move toward
converged and hyper-
converged infrastructures.
“Not only will these
infrastructure solutions change
the modern datacentre, but
they will change the nature of
businesses,” he added.
“Flash is becoming much
more mainstream. More than
80 per cent of Australian
businesses believe an all
flash datacentre that hosts all
active workloads will become
a reality within the next two to
five years.”
He mentioned Australia
is leading the way in Asia-
Pacific and Japan, with
26 per cent of businesses
surveyed most likely to have
deployed flash, as compared
to an average of 15.7 per cent
across the region.
“The opportunity for
the channel is to be more
consultative and educate
their customers on the
benefits of the modern IT
infrastructure and how it can
help them manage workloads
more efficiently. By advising
customers on how to plan
and implement a modern
datacentre, the customer will
continue to see its partner as a
critical piece of the IT puzzle.
“The storage market is
less generalised now. Partners
need to have a deep knowledge
of their customers’ business
to make a fully informed
recommendation about the
type of workloads that will be
managed. This will ensure the
right technology and service is
deployed, maximising results.
As the market changes, so
must the services partners are
offering,” he said.
John WaltersNEXTGEN MANAGING DIRECTOR
The distributor continues
to see a strong uptake and
growth of flash storage
technologies and Walters said
this remains a substantial
opportunity for the channel.
He added the majority of
NEXTGEN’s successful
deployments had been
around enhancing enterprise
application performance.
“This is the
transformational use of flash
and will continue to have
a dramatic impact on our
landscape,” he said.
“Traditional approaches
to storing and retrieving
enterprise data are broken.
This is due to the sheer
volume of data organisations
are faced with, and their
desire to make better use
of it. In today’s data-driven
world, businesses are
struggling with the conflicting
demands of managing
complex silos and providing
instant access to information.
“A more strategic overall
data management approach
is required, rather than just
selling more infrastructure
as budgets are under
pressure; datacentre space
is expensive; and migration
to the Cloud requires
different solutions.
“Channel partners
that help organisations
navigate this change and
elevate the discussion
around more strategic
business challenges like
application performance and
enabling Big Data will gain
credibility and win business,”
he said.
James ByrneINFINIDAT A/NZ COUNTRY MANAGER
Byrne said there is little doubt
that flash is what everyone
is talking about, but the
mass growth area was still in
unstructured data.
“Block and file is still the
growth engine for this but I am
also seeing a lot of growth in
Cloud,” he said.
“The successful service
providers are the ones
with expertise in the Cloud
migration.” He said partners
looking to build or integrate a
vendor-neutral storage stack
to sell as-a-service and land
clients in a neutral place will
be the most successful.
“Co-location datacentres
are the key, they are the
landlords of where the
data will sit. They can give
the client an independent
third party to hold data and
facilitate movement in and
out of the Cloud.
“Going forward, the
number one opportunity, will
still be traditional on-premise
infrastructure because most
businesses will not go all in
on Cloud.
“Customers are more
interested in the outcome
than what it looks like. What
they are really looking for is a
platform that will fulfill their
requirements for delivery and
that will encourage a shift back
to multi-protocol platforms,”
Byrne claimed.
WITH ALL THE TALK ABOUT FLASH AND THE EXPLOSION
OF CLOUD, CUSTOMERS AND PARTNERS ALIKE SHOULD BE
FORGIVEN IF THEY’RE CONFUSED ON THE WAY FORWARD.
ARN’S CHRIS PLAYER SPOKE TO INDUSTRY LEADERS ON
WHAT ARE SOME MARKET OPPORTUNITIES WITHIN THE
STORAGE SPACE.
Sweeping ahead with storage
STORAGE/MARKETS 49
$US8.51 billionthe expected revenue for storage hardware used for Big Data deployments by 2019- IDC
THE SIZE OF THE DIGITAL UNIVERSE IS FORECASTED TO GROW TO 40,000 EXABYTES BY 2020, AND THIS SORT OF
DATA GROWTH REQUIRES HUGE AMOUNTS OF STORAGE
- IDC AND EMC
| APRIL 2016 | arnnet.com.au
50 MARKETS/TELECOMMUNICATIONS
THE TELECOMMUNICATIONS MARKET HAS GROWN TO REACH $41.3 BILLION DOLLARS, ACCORDING TO RESEARCH BY
IBISWORLD. THIS HUGE MARKET IS DOMINATED BY TELSTRA, OPTUS AND VODAFONE, BUT HOW CAN THE CHANNEL BENEFIT
FROM THE VAST TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE THE INDUSTRY HAS EXPERIENCED? CHRIS PLAYER SPOKE TO A NUMBER OF
PLAYERS IN THE TELECOMMUNICATIONS SPACE TO GET THEIR VIEWS.
Telecommunications takes big steps forward in 2016
Keith MastertonTELSTRA DIRECTOR OF BUSINESS AND
ENTERPRISE PARTNERS
Masterton said the key to
success, for the channel, would
be developing business
solutions that leverage
technological improvements.
“We see the move toward
professional and managed
services as a key capability.
We want partners that
have business consultancy
skills and application
and services skills,”
he added.
Masterton described
Telstra’s mobile network
capability as an enabler for
its channel and that the telco
would continue development in
the area to service this need.
“We will continue to
invest in leadership in
that area. We see it as a
positive differentiator for our
channel partners to take to
their customers.
He added that the telco was
seeing many of its partners
morph their businesses to
become solutions integrators.
“We are looking to
transition and migrate our
existing channel but also
looking for new partners with
those skills to compliment our
existing capability.”
Frank SkiffingtonMITEL A/NZ VICE-PRESIDENT
Skiffington said 2016 was about
working more collaboratively in
the mobile space.
“There is a big push from the
partners and telco carriers to
fold in mobile to whatever other
solutions they are offering as
part of their managed services
proposition,” he said.
“I don’t think it is going to
change the market dramatically,
what it will do is allow the
market to address an area that
has really been the preserves
of the mobile carriers.
“There are plenty of
vendors out there talking about
hosted PBX solutions. What
we are talking about is hosted
unified comms in the mobile
world. We are talking to tier
one carriers about it right now
and it is resonating really well.
“There is a big play for
a traditional telco reseller
channel partner to understand
that they can sell not just the
UC but integrate network,
mobile, other managed service
products into the proposition.
“We are seeing a drive from
some of our bigger channel
partners to become more of a
mini system integrator. Which
is a big change in the market
for them,” he added.
Barry AssafNEXON DIRECTOR
Assaf believes the coming year
would be all about Cloud
enabled UC, contact centre and
relationship management
through the capabilities of
video conferencing.
“Every conversation we
have is about high speed
communications networks and
mobility, particularly around
4G and wireless technology,
autonomous devices, public
and private Cloud services,”
he explained.
“I think the carriers
are going to become more
innovative with the ways they
offer their services such as
Telstra integrating Wi-Fi
networks into its network. It will
become about getting greater
connectivity wherever you go.
“Getting those customers
closer to those networks in our
environment and giving them
access to security, applications,
platforms, and network
services is our focus. You need
to take advantage of some of
these evolving technologies
and be able to leverage those
investments,” he said.
Dean Hodgson ENGHOUSE INTERACTIVE A/NZ
GENERAL MANAGER
Hodgson said IoT and the
connection of devices would be
a big opportunity as the
dynamics of managing those
connections is where the
channel could capitalise on.
“The big role for the
channel is managing all of the
different Clouds an organisation
will use. Each interaction
typically has its own Cloud
environment and all of those
need to be managed,” he added.
“One of the big challenges
for the reseller is dealing with
the many different types of
agreements that come with all
the different Clouds.
“A reseller doesn’t just
sell Cloud or on-premises or
just software; they sell a mix,
especially to enterprise. These
enterprises have a number of
different commercial models of
how it wants to transact.
“Customers are saying they
want to pay per endpoint per
month, or per agent per year.
The challenge for the resellers
is how they are able to manage
those deal variants,” he said.
$ 41.3 BILLIONTHE OVERALL SUBDIVISION REVENUE EXPECTED OVER THE FIVE YEARS
THROUGH 2015-16. - IBISWorld
49.6% mobile services; 24.9% wired services; 22.4% resold telecommunications; 3.1% satellite, TV, and other services
PRODUCTS AND SERVICES SEGMENTATION (2015-16), IBISWorld
arnnet.com.au | APRIL 2016 |
ACQUISITIONS 51
endpoint security and user profile
management vendor, AppSense. Financial
terms of the deal haven't been disclosed.
This is the seventh acquisition for
LANDesk in five years and will expand
its capabilities in unified endpoint
management to include both physical and
virtual devices. AppSense will also add
advanced endpoint protection capabilities
to the product portfolio. – JULIA TALEVSKI
Kogan.com buys Dick Smith online retail businessOnline retailer, Kogan.com has purchased
the Dick Smith online retail business, and
will take over from June 1. Kogan plans to
keep the legacy of the Dick Smith brand
and run it as an online-only consumer
electronics retailer. – JULIA TALEVSKI
SugarCRM acquires Contastic NLP technologySugarCRM has acquired the intellectual
property rights of Contastic, a natural
language processing (NLP) platform
designed to automatically recommend
valuable content for users to send to
their contacts. Following the acquisition,
Contastic chief executive, Cy Khormaee
joined SugarCRM as director of product
management for predictive analytics.
– HOLLY MORGAN
BroadSoft picks up TranseraUnified communications and collaboration
services company, BroadSoft, has
acquired Transera, a provider of Cloud-
based contact center software for SMB
and large enterprises. BroadSoft said
the acquisition positions the company to
lead the fast-growing Contact Center-
as-a-Service (CCaaS) market, while
enabling service providers to offer a
comprehensive Cloud contact center
portfolio with minimal new investments,
Shoply to acquire 100 per cent of Anyware Technologies in mergerOnline retailer, Shoply, will acquire 100 per
cent of distie, Anyware Technologies, in
merger plans announced in a filing on the ASX.
Under terms of the agreement,
Anyware Technologies managing director,
Garrison Huang, will inject $1 million to
Shoply through an entity he controls giving
Anyware a 19.99 per cent share of the total
issued capital of Shoply, initially.
Anyware Technologies also includes
e-commerce business, Harris Technology,
which it acquired from Wesfarmers.
Projected revenue of the two merged
companies for FY2016 is $50 million.
Shoply includes the two companies,
eStore and Warcom, both electronics
retailers. Combined with Harris Technology
they will deliver larger scale and greater
synergy, according Huang in a statement
to ARN.
It was subsequently announced that
ShoplyEO, Vaughan Clark, will retire from the
business and Huang has been appointed as
the managing director of the group, starting
after the merger is completed in May.
– MIKE GEE
CSC acquires Canberra's Dalmatian GroupIT services provider CSC has added
another acquisition to its arsenal,
purchasing Canberra-based information
and cyber security consultants, Dalmatian
Group. Financial details of the acquisition
haven't been disclosed. CSC A/NZ
managing director, Seelan Nayagam, said
the demand for cyber security services is
growing across its enterprise accounts,
and the acquisition substantially expands
its presence in this sector across A/NZ.
– JULIA TALEVSKI
LANdesk picks up AppSenseUS-based LANDesk has added to its
portfolio through its acquisition of
Bought: the acquisitions round-up
ACQUIRED 01/02/16 - 21/03/16• Anyware Technologies• Dalmation Group• AppSense• Dick Smith (online
retail)
• Contastic NLP• Transera• Capital Markets• TwoCents Group• Connector Systems
Fast facts
rapid time-to-market, and seamless
integration with BroadSoft’s BroadWorks
and BroadCloud solutions. – HAFIZAH OSMAN
Computershare adds Capital MarketsSoftware solutions and professional
services company, Computershare
(ASX:CPU), has acquired US-based
funding, cooperative and risk and
analytics services company, Capital
Markets Cooperative (CMC). The company
said the acquisition is subject to US
regulatory approvals, which are expected
to be obtained within three months. The
total acquisition is worth $US71.2 million.
– HAFIZAH OSMAN
Rype Group buys TwoCents GroupAustralian Cloud integration company,
Rype Group, has acquired marketing
agency, TwoCents Group, as part of its
focused expansion strategy. TwoCents
Group will continue in its current form
as a full-service marketing agency, with
director Samantha Brooks staying on as
CEO and founder Simon Dell taking on a
consulting role with TwoCents as well as a
seat on the Rype board. – HAFIZAH OSMAN
Ingram Micro nabs Connector SystemsIngram Micro has entered into an
agreement to acquire Connector Systems
Limited, a value-added IT solutions
provider, representing emerging and
developing vendors in both Australia and
New Zealand. The acquisition is subject
to certain customary closing conditions
and is expected to close in the 2016 first
quarter. As a result, Connector Systems
will operate as a business unit within
Ingram Micro’s Value Division – with the
price tag remaining private.
– JAMES HENDERSON
Bulletproof acquires Cloud HouseASX-listed Cloud hosting provider,
Bulletproof, has purchased New Zealand
Cloud services company, Cloud House.
The deal is worth $NZ1 million up front,
with the possibility a further $NZ4.2
million to be paid in a 50/50 split of cash
and shares based on performance until
mid-2017. - CHRIS PLAYER
Garrison Huang
| APRIL 2016 | arnnet.com.au
52 FEATURE/TECHNOLOGY
| APRIL 2016 | arnnet.com.au
52 FEATURE/TECHNOLOGY
Over the past year, I’ve had the opportunity to attend a number of conferences, ranging from the most establishment events you can think of
all the way to highly technical yet informal meetups. The dress at the events ranged from suits and ties to t-shirts and shorts.
During the year, I’ve talked with an enormous range of IT people. Some work at vendors. Some at service providers. I’ve spoken to many analysts, associated from the very largest firms down to one-person shops. And I’ve talked to
well over a hundred IT users, working in large enterprise organizations as well as Web-native startups.
And the universal feeling is that IT is changing in a huge way. And that change is not just in terms of the technology used in IT – though there is incredible change going on there. But also in in the very role of IT.
In short, person after person, no matter their role or their employer, echoed the same message: IT is undergoing a profound transformation. I agree. And here’s my four tenets for the future of the IT industry.
It’s a software-driven, open source world, and we’re just living in it. By Bernard Golden
Four principles that
will shape the future of IT
The four tenets start off with no controversy:
Marc Andreessen’s 2011 Wall Street Journal editorial pointed out that software is transforming entire industry segments, including video entertainment, music, but also old-line industries like transportation, retail, and even defense. His message was that software is now a central component of every industry’s offerings, and every company needed to focus on software as a core competency. And everyone jumped on it.
The phrase “software is eating the world” has become a standard opening slide in many vendor’s decks. More recently, the line “Don’t get Ubered” has joined it, warning audience members that their business could be disrupted by a Silicon Valley (or other IT hot spot) startup that is reconfiguring an industry value chain and being fueled by endless venture capital.
In fact, software is eating the world has become such a trope that it’s trotted out as an easy shorthand
to represent that change is going on – but the endless repetition attenuates the underlying truth: The shift to digitisation is affecting every industry, to the disadvantage of incumbents.
Part of this is the fact that products or processes that used to require significant investment or manual
effort are being replaced by digitised alternatives. More tellingly, small companies, unencumbered by practices required by analog approaches fossilized into inefficient industry traditions, can rethink the customer value chain and redesign it as a more efficient offering.
The key challenge for incumbents is their existing infrastructure and practices, typically developed as a
key part of their differentiation and competitive advantage, are now shackles constricting their ability to respond to the software revolution.
What we will see over the next decade is akin to the revolution wrought by the emergence of assembly line mass production. Any company
that wanted to serve a mass market had to figure out how to automate production; those that couldn’t, or couldn’t raise enough capital to fund the effort dwindled away.
What is different today is that this software-centric reality will affect every industry and every company. Most are unprepared, and many will fail to make the leap to being a software company.
Software is eating the world
1
Any company that wanted to serve a mass market had to figure out how to automate production; those
that couldn’t, or couldn’t raise enough capital to fund the effort dwindled away.
arnnet.com.au | APRIL 2016 |
TECHNOLOGY/FEATURE 53
arnnet.com.au | APRIL 2016 |
TECHNOLOGY/FEATURE 53
Within the overall wrenching
restructuring of the economy, it’s easy to overlook the massive change going in the technology industry itself. The shift to a software-centric world should redound to the immense benefit of the big technology firms, but they’re in trouble, too. Instead of reaping the gain of everyone else being forced to focus on technology, big vendors are themselves suffering from the ongoing shift to software.
The evidence is everywhere: IBM has suffered 15 straight quarters of reduced revenues. Dell and EMC are set for a merger (consolidation is a classic response to an industry in financial trouble). BMC and Informatica have gone through private equity restructurings (another classic response to poor prospects).
So why is what should be a field of dreams for technology companies turning into a nightmare? The answer is two little words: open source. Simply put, open source is commoditising
the vendor offerings, and vendors are suffering from cost structures misaligned with the new realities of the industry.
Not only does this directly affect software products, but it also affects hardware (remember, software is eating the world, and that extends to hardware as well). The new mantra is software-defined anything, and by placing open source into commodity hardware, previously-unassailable market positions are now showing reduced growth and even profit drops.
Open source is proving to be more than a low-cost replacement, however. Technology innovation has shifted decisively to open source. It’s hard to think of an emerging technology area that isn’t based on open source. Obviously, the software-defined hardware trends reflects this.
The open source trend means more than incumbent vendor financial pain. It means that the ongoing industrial restructuring I described in the previous section of this piece will be achieved via the use of open source, which brings us to my third tenet.
Netflix is an awesome company.
Given how early and effectively it dismantled the video rental company Blockbuster, we should perhaps speak of the “Netflixization of an industry” rather than give that epithet to Uber. And it hasn’t rested on its laurels, either. It no sooner became top dog in the rental industry than it shifted to video streaming, where it appears about ready to upend the existing studio/carrier ecosystem.
At its heart, Netflix is a technology company. And it’s awesome there as well. Early in its streaming journey, Netflix concluded that operating
datacentres is not its forte; moreover, given its uncertain growth and erratic viewer patterns, trying to manage infrastructure would be an intractable headache. So it turned to Amazon Web Services, and used it as the basis for its widely-used streaming service..
Instead of managing infrastructure, Netflix focused on building out its streaming application capability. And it built far more than just application functionality. Netflix created supporting functionality appropriate to deploying and monitoring vast numbers of AWS resources in an environment that often experiences failure. It built orchestration tooling
to allow application components to continuously join and leave the resource pool. It built complementary tools to perform destructive testing to better ensure resiliency.
In other words, Netflix designed an incredibly sophisticated software environment tuned for its needs, and invested heavily to implement it. And it did all this with open source, much of which it created and then released to the larger world to allow others to use Netflix tools.
Here’s the thing, though. Netflix is sui generis, and has capabilities far beyond the average or even top-notch enterprise IT organization. Netflix focuses on its IT capabilities as a core
No enterprise is Netflix … or ever will be
Open source is eating the technology industry
3
21. “This software-centric reality will affect every
industry and every company. Most are unprepared,
and many will fail to make the leap to being a
software company.”
2. “The open source trend means more than
incumbent vendor financial pain. It means that the
ongoing industrial restructuring will be achieved via
the use of open source.”
3. “Whatever solution arrives to help enterprise IT
organizations meet their future, it’s not going to occur
by aping Netflix.”
4. “Everyone will be walking on constantly shifting
sands as the siroccos of innovation and disruption
blow through the industry.”
THE REVOLUTION STARTS HERE
| APRIL 2016 | arnnet.com.au
54 FEATURE/TECHNOLOGY
| APRIL 2016 | arnnet.com.au
54 FEATURE/TECHNOLOGY
There’s an almost perfect storm engulfing enterprise IT organisations. Their charter is
rapidly moving from internal process automation to creating new business offerings to help their companies remain competitive. The stalwarts of technology vendors are unlikely to be capable of helping them achieve this, because their own prospects are being buffeted by the innovation and economics of open source. Meanwhile, emulating the best open source-using organizations like Netflix seems beyond their grasp. So where will their solutions come from?
Almost certainly, new open source offerings will arrive that combine important components into preconfigured stacks that can be implemented as-is, thereby reducing the competence required to use them. I know that not all open source communities have covered themselves in glory on this issue, but the pressure – and opportunity – to make open source more consumable will provide powerful incentives for creation of these offerings.
Second, one can expect a new breed of vendor to spring up to offer help to enterprises with innovative open source projects. This new breed is likely to combine consultancy and training and many will also offer managed services to offload operational burden from users.
Third, we are likely to see interesting consortia spring up to provide best practices and reference architectures, with participation from both vendors and end users. Both have an interest in making open source more consumable, and working together can ensure both provider and user can contribute and benefit from collaboration.
One can envisage tremendous disarray in the vendor space as incumbents try to retool themselves to meet the emerging needs of enterprise customers. There will be a flood of new entrants who will all be honing their “product/market fit” in the throes of a rapidly changing industry landscape. Old and new will be jousting to serve as the primary interface to customers because the entity that “owns the customer” always obtains the lion’s share of the revenue. One can anticipate a lengthy period of vicious natural selection as the new ecosystem participants go up against existing inhabitants in a battle for critical resources: customer budgets.
Likewise, enterprise IT organisations will go through extended disruption as they attempt to develop skills more suitable to their new role as the technology factory of their companies. The organizational strife implicit in Gartner’s bi-modal IT will play out in full force as IT groups try to build new capabilities and circumscribe investment in legacy systems. The rapid technology innovation we will witness over the next decade will make this process even more difficult, as it will be challenging, to say the least, to determine exactly how to make a plan in such a dynamic environment.
Making such an enormous change across the entire technology landscape will be a protracted effort. Everyone will be walking on constantly shifting sands as the siroccos of innovation and disruption blow through the industry. But on the other side of the chaos lies a new kind of industrial organization, one powered by open source software and delivering its value via digital technology.
Helping enterprises becoming software
companies via open source is the next
decade’s IT challenge … and opportunity
competence and invests as much as is needed, facilitated by its software-like margins. It also attracts some of the best talent in the industry, drawn by the challenge of working on the Netflix technology, and a set of HR principles unique unto Netflix. Oh, and it pays really well, and offers options in its high-flying stock.
None of this sounds like a typical enterprise IT organisation to me, and I doubt it does to you, either. Despite the best intentions, the average enterprise IT organisation doesn’t have the money to attract high-quality talent. It’s
unlikely to be capable of designing its own application environment. Even trying to leverage the Netflix tools is likely to be beyond its capabilities, because the tools require top talent to adapt and operate them for a company’s own environment.
Consequently, exhorting enterprise IT organisations to “be like Netflix” is like encouraging me to run like Usain Bolt. It’s not going to happen. Whatever solution arrives to help enterprise IT organizations meet their future, it’s not going to occur by aping Netflix. Convenient, this leads directly to my fourth tenet on the future of IT.
4
Person after person, no matter their role or
their employer, echoed the same message:
IT is undergoing a profound transformation.
Exhorting enterprise IT organisations to
“be like Netflix” is like encouraging me to run like Usain Bolt. It’s not
going to happen.
CORE MESSAGE
FASTER. SAFER. MORE PROFITABLE.Find out about becoming an ESET partner at eset.com/au
INTERNET SECURITY WITHOUT COMPROMISETM FOR YOU AND YOUR CUSTOMERS
| APRIL 2016 | arnnet.com.au
56 THE WORKPLACE
Employee misconduct: Handling the situation
C an you dismiss an employee
because of the way he or
she behaved at a company
function? It is not that simple
particularly if you (as an employer)
have hosted a function that enables
and facilitates the employee to
behave badly.
In January 2016, the Fair
Work Commission handed a
decision regarding an employee’s
misconduct at a staff Christmas
party, which is a good reminder
for us all about what is acceptable
behaviour at work functions.
The case was McDaid v Future
Engineering and Communication
[2016] FWC 343. The employer,
Future Engineering and
Communication (FEC) dismissed
McDaid after his misconduct at
the 2014 FEC Christmas party.
The FEC Christmas party had
unlimited alcohol and there were
no controls over the amount
employees consumed.
McDaid, a project manager, got
drunk and became physically and
verbally aggressive. He poked and
pushed a senior engineer several
times before finally pushing him
into a swimming pool, fully clothed.
McDaid was asked to leave the
party by the general manager,
who he later got into a fight with
and injured.
In January 2015, McDaid was
called into work for a meeting. At
the meeting, he was told to find a
new job by the end of the month
but no mention was made of his
conduct at the Christmas party.
McDaid then went on sick
leave. When he returned, two
months later, from continuous sick
leave, he was asked to explain his
actions at the FEC Christmas party
(namely his misconduct). A support
person was present at this meeting
and they confirmed that McDaid
was given every opportunity to
explain his misconduct.
McDaid’s responses were
found to be unsatisfactory by
FEC and his employment was
terminated at the end of that
meeting, effective immediately.
McDaid appealed his dismissal
with the Commission. He alleged
that FEC was responsible for his
misconduct. He claimed that FEC
was responsible for supplying him
with unlimited alcohol and not
imposing any controls over how
much he could drink.
The Fair Work Commissioner
upheld the employer’s decision to
terminate McDaid’s employment
and found the dismissal was not
harsh, unjust or unreasonable.
However, the Commissioner went
on to say that:
1 in some cases employers
providing alcohol may be
liable for events attributable to its
consumption;
2 employees who drink will also
be held responsible for their
own actions, particularly where
there is physical violence.
Key takeaway
So, while an employee who gets drunk can’t pardon himself or herself from all responsibility for the consequences of his or her own actions, especially in circumstances where they engage in physical violence, an employer who provides free
flowing alcohol at a work function, and takes no steps to ensure responsible consumption, may not always escape responsibility for an inebriated employee’s actions.Your next work function might seem like it is months
away, but it is the perfect time for you to ensure that you have appropriate policies in place setting out the limits of acceptable behaviour for staff at work functions and other social events.
Having a pool party as your next work function? Make sure you encourage good behaviour and responsible drinking. By Madhu Dubey
Madhu Dubey is a partner
at Integrated Legal which
specialises in providing
cost effective legal
services to the technology
industry. She is also Guest
Academic at Australian
National University.
An employer who provides free flowing alcohol at a work function, and takes no steps to ensure responsible consumption, may not always escape responsibility for an inebriated employee's actions.
| APRIL 2016 | arnnet.com.au
58 PRODUCTS
W eighing in at 157 grams
and measuring 150.9 x
72.6 x 7.7mm, the unit is
slightly larger and heavier than its
major competitor, Apple’s iPhone
6s. It does pack more features than
the Apple though, with Samsung’s
fast Exynos 8890 CPU, an amazing
camera, water resistance capability
and an impressive battery life.
Samsung claims it has been
listening to consumers over last 12
months, and those pain points have
been taken into consideration in
the make of the S7 Edge. We found
that the S7 Edge is definitely an
improvement on its predecessor,
the S6 Edge. The return of water
resistance and MicroSD cards are
the main evidence of this. Overall,
the look of the device is more of an
evolution than a revolution and the
new phone feels better in the hand
than the model it supersedes.
Samsung has even improved the
camera. With a bright f/1.7 aperture
(one of the lowest on the market),
we were certainly not disappointed
by the results which are best
demonstrated by the incredible
contrast from the pictures.
It comes with 4GB of RAM and
this allows the S7 Edge to move
seamlessly between apps, the home
page and the Edge screen.
BATTERY LIFE One of the standout features of the S7
Edge is its battery life. The S6 range
was criticised for this and Samsung
Samsung has made a big push for its Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge to be the new go to device for the chic, stylish and tech savvy individual. The unit is a stunning thing - beautifully designed with great lines and bevelled edges. It looks the part, but can it sing like a diva or just look like one? CHRIS PLAYER reports.
Living on the Edge?
has upped the ante significantly to the
point that we got close to three full
days of regular use out of the device.
This was both a blessing and a curse
as we repeatedly forgot to charge
the device and were caught out on a
couple of occasions.
The S7 Edge also stays reasonably
cool during heavy usage such as
mobile gaming due to its liquid
cooling function. This means you
can use it for long periods and
never feel discomfort.
DISPLAYSamsung has a good reputation for
producing some of the best screens
on the market in its flagship devices,
and the S7 Edge is no exception. The
display is vibrant and bright at even
acute viewing angles, which we liked
but it did raise concerns about how
clearly people in close proximity
could view our content.
Samsung has also taken a leaf
from the smartwatch book with an
Always On display so you can view the
time date and even see if you have
new messages or emails at a glance.
The feature uses the power
properties of the display, allowing the
phone to light up only those pixels it
needs to display something on the
screen. This means that instead of
lighting up a backlight and powering
all 3.6 million pixels to show you
the time, the S7 Edge can light up a
selection of those pixels to display
simple things on the display without
really affecting your battery life.
THE IRRITATIONSNow we come to the annoying bit,
and it’s a big one. The display is
beautiful yes, and sensitive to a fault.
The features of the S7 Edge screen
mean that when using the keyboard,
you continually and accidentally hit
keys with the edge of your palm. This
makes for some interesting, and at
times disastrous messages.
After discussing this issue with
other S7 Edge users, many of them
admitted that they had altered their
method of using the keyboard after
switching to the device.
Quick ripSleek, stylish and at times infuriating. Overall, the look of the device is more of an evolution than a revolution. The display is beautiful yes, and sensitive to a fault. The features of the S7 Edge screen mean that when using the keyboard, you continually hit keys with the edge of your palm. However, the S7 Edge is definitely an improvement on its predecessor, the S6 Edge.
The verdictThe S7 Edge is a brilliant device but until Samsung come up with a fix for the screen, it will not attract the market share the manufacturer is after. There is no point in all the technology gone into creating this phone when it disrupts everyday tasks.
Fast factsThe product: Samsung Galaxy S7 EdgeThe price: $1249The wow factor: 3.5 stars
arnnet.com.au | APRIL 2016 |
PRODUCTS 59
Fast factsThe product: BackBeat PRO+The price: $419The wow factor: 4.5 stars
W eighing in at around 340
grams, the PRO+ can
be used as a wired or
wireless headset which you can
connect to your mobile device via
Bluetooth or to your PC via the
wireless USB adaptor.
The headphones are very
comfortable even during extended
periods of listening. The over ear
design does a fairly good job of
cancelling out outside noise but for
the full effect you need to switch on
the noise-canceling feature.
The unit also has an OpenMic
feature lets you hear your
surroundings and the PRO+ come
equipped with the best feature
of Plantronics, the automatic
music play/pause feature that will
pause content when you take the
headphones off and play when you
put them back on. The range on
the headphones is pretty good too.
Plantronics says they will work up
to 100 meters from the device you
are playing back from, but this is
clearly meant to be without physical
obstruction. We found that 25 meters
was about the limit when moving
between rooms.
We loved using these headphones
in the office and especially on
the plane as they cut out almost
all background noise and let you
immerse yourself in your audio.
They sound great as well which is
something we have come to expect
from Plantronics. They did well
in our vinyl test, Beast of Burden
by The Rolling Stones sounded
beautifully crisp and balanced with
great representation of low, mid and
high range.
The verdictThe PRO+ is the perfect companion for the mobile audiophile. Though not as sleek in appearance as some competitors, it packs plenty of features for the $419 asking price.
The design is simple yet elegant and follows a
pattern we have come to expect from Lenovo. There
was some debate in the office as to whether it looked too plain but
most were impressed by the look and feel of the unit and we like that
Lenovo has not gone the way of many competitors and simply made it
look like an Apple notebook.
It’s powered by an Intel core i7-5600U processor running at
2.60GHz (Turbo Boost to 3.2GHz) with 8GB of ram and a 256GB solid
state hard drive. Like many of the lightweight premium laptops on
the market it is running integrated graphics. While we would have
liked to see dedicated graphics in a machine in this price range, the
X1 was up to the task for most applications.
The Ultrabook comes with a 14-inch 2560x1440 display that is
touch enabled. It looks great with excellent colour representation
and a wide array of viewing angles. It weighs in at around 1.44 Kg,
which makes it extremely portable and the sim card slot makes it
ideal for working on the go. Also included is the fingerprint reader
for security.
The battery life is impressive as well, we were able to get almost
nine hours out of it in our battery test. Also included are all the
features you would expect from Laptop of this caliber, 802.11AC
Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, microSD slot and a variety of ports to connect
to a monitor or external storage. -Chris Player
The verdictIf you are looking for a laptop that is big on power and features yet light on weight, it is hard to go past the X1 Carbon. The combination of looks, internal grunt and functionality made it a joy to use. While the asking price is a bit too close to $3000 for our liking, Lenovo does the occasional deal through its website so be sure to check it out to see if you can get a better deal.
High fidelity on the moveIf you are in the market for a pair of high-end bluetooth headphones that you can easily connect to your PC, then the BackBeat PRO+ from Plantronics may be just what you need. CHRIS PLAYER reports.
The perfect business companionThe X1 carbon is a simple yet powerful laptop packed with features which make it perfect for the mobile workforce.
simple yet elegant and follows a
workforce.
Fast factsThe product: Lenovo X1 Carbon The price: $2899The wow factor: 4.5 stars
| APRIL 2016 | arnnet.com.au
60 APPS
Predictor:Is a new app from marketing
software company, Bronto,
which lets commerce marketers
send targeted product
recommendations to specific
segments of subscribers using
product data stored in Bronto’s
marketing platform. It integrates
with Google Merchant product
feed and lets you recommend sale
items to low order customers and
premium products to big spenders.
eFax:The eFax iPad app makes it
easy to send and receive faxes
from a tablet. The app has
sacrificed little in the transition
from desktop to mobile app. A
free account lets you receive
(not send) a handful of faxes,
but upgrading to a Plus or Pro
account give full functionality
to send and receive faxes.
Browse Recovery:Bronto has also made a Browse
Recovery app which captures
shoppers activity on an
ecommerce site. The app can
also send automated, relevant
messages based on rules, such
as recently viewed products,
frequently viewed categories or
frequently viewed products. The
app captures and stores product
page browse activity for all
customers and ties that behaviour
to a known contact or saves the
browse activity so it can be later
matched to a known contact.
Cubby:The newest app from the
team at LogMeIn allows
individuals, teams and entire
workplaces to easily and
securely work together from
any location. Files are stored
in the cloud for anywhere
access, shared with others
publicly or privately, or even
directly synced between
devices without using the
cloud. And to keep company
data secure, Cubby helps
IT easily manage users,
policies and devices from one
central location.
Network Toolbox:Ever wanted to turn your iOS
device into a network toolbox?
Well now you can with the
appropriately named Network
Toolbox app. It comes packed with
many cool networking utilities but
also looks great which will please
the Apple folks enormously.
Apple goes on an open source health kick
A pple’s open source
ResearchKit
framework uses data
from iPhones to help doctors
gain better health data directly
from patients.
Apple said medical
researchers are adopting
these new features to
design targeted studies for
diseases and conditions
that affect billions of
people around the world
and to gather more
specific types of data
from participants.
ResearchKit turns
iPhone into a tool for
medical research by helping
doctors, scientists and other
researchers gather data
more frequently and more
accurately from participants
using iPhone apps.
Participants enrolled in
these app-based studies can
review an interactive informed
consent process, complete
active tasks or submit survey
responses, and choose how
their health data is shared
with researchers.
The key to the technology
is the open source platform
on which it runs. Apple has a
well documented history of
a ‘closed loop’ system, not
allowing any third parties
access to its code, but the
iPhone and specifically the
App store has changed this.
With the open source
model, Apple has let
developers design studies
for iPhone and build on the
available software code and
contribute their tasks back to
the community to help other
researchers do more with
the framework.
The newest module,
designed by 23andMe and
recently released to the
open source community, lets
researchers incorporate
genetic data into studies.
The platform is currently
being used to assist
researchers in the fields
of postnatal depression,
cardiovascular disease and
asthma. Key contributions
include the ability to study tone
audiometry; measure reaction
time through delivery of a
known stimulus to a known
response; assess the speed
of information processing
and working memory; use the
mathematical puzzle Tower
of Hanoi for cognition studies;
and conduct a timed walk test.
ResearchKit studies
are underway in Australia,
Austria, China, Germany,
Hong Kong, Ireland, Japan,
Netherlands, Switzerland,
the UK and the US.
- Chris Player
The apps
Cubby helps IT easily manage users, policies and devices from one central location.
arnnet.com.au | APRIL 2016 |
WIICTA ALUMNI/COMMUNITY 61
| APRIL 2016 | arnnet.com.au
ARN’s Inaugural WIICTA AlumniThe inaugural WIICTA Alumni 2016 breakfast, held at the Establishment in Sydney, brought together finalists to meet with previous winners and female Hall of Fame members. The aim of the program was to facilitate a mentoring-style program to support women working in the technology sector. Conversations revolved around climbing the corporate ladder,the importance of a personal development plan, and confidence.Photos by Maria Stefina.
1. Panel discussion 2. Sara Adams (Telstra) 3. Katy Garcia (IBM), Fiona Brown (Dicker Data) 4. Sue Armstrong (Fujitsu) 5. Kate Burleigh (Intel) 6. Rhody Burton (IBM), Gabrielle Kingston (AppSense), Aggie Szemplinska (PernixData), Simran Kaur (Webroot) 7. Mona Lolas (IR), Dawn Edmonds (rhipe), Sara Adams (Telstra) 8. Ashlee McCusker (AWS), Gabrielle Kingston (AppSense), Amy Christopher (Symantec), Kate Burleigh (Intel), Wendy O’Keeffe (Westcon Comstor), Susan Searle (ARN) 9. Aggie Szemplinska (PernixData), Susan Searle (ARN), Genevieve White (Fortinet), Michelle Dawson (Kaseya) 10. Carol McLoughlin (Fujitsu), Sophie Vigors (DC), Sue Armstrong (Fujitsu) 11. Therese Fletcher (SAP), Gemma Lloyd (DCC)
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EMERGING LEADERSARN | 2016
E V E N T
Are YOU an emerging
leader in the ICT industry?
w w w . a r n n e t . c o m . a u / e m e r g i n g l e a d e r s
WHO IS AN EMERGING LEADER?
NOMINATIONS NOW OPEN
NOMINATE NOW
| APRIL 2016 | arnnet.com.au
64 COMMUNITY/JUDGES’ LUNCH
Awards open with Judges’ LunchThe traditional kick-off to the ARN ICT Industry Awards, the ARN Judges’ Networking Lunch, was held in the Ballroom at the Ivy in Sydney. More than 100 IT industry leaders gathered to hear an outstanding address by ARN Hall of Fame inductee and senior vice-president and managing director of Insight Enterprises Asia-Pacific, Andrea Della Mattea, who spoke about doing business in China. The gathering was also addressed by ARN president and publisher, Susan Searle, ARN associate editor, Jennifer O’Brien, and ARN editor, James Hutchinson. Photos by Mike Gee.
DATES TO REMEMBER
24/05/2016Nominations for the 2016 ARN ICT Industry Awards open
24/06/2016Nominations close
15/09/2016Celebration Dinner at Four Points by Sheraton Sydney
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arnnet.com.au | APRIL 2016 |
JUDGES’ LUNCH/COMMUNITY 65
1. Robbie Upcroft (Webroot), Martin Christmas (Arrow), Chris Barton (FireEye). 2. Karl Sice (Staples), Aaron McLeod (Staples), Nick Stranks (Ethan Group) 3. Steve Martin (NEXTDC), Ronnie Altit (Insentra), David Gage (ARN Hall of Fame), George Kazangi (Blue Central) 4. Photo bombed: Janice Tong (ARN) and Ben Johnson (Dicker Data) by David Abouhaidar (AC3) 5. Scott Frew (iAsset.com) and Andrew Thomas (Thomas Duryea) 6. Jacques Tesson (DPSA). 7. Duncan Bennet, Rhody Burton (IBM) 8. Kerrie-Anne Turner (VMware), Susan Searle (ARN), Sia Kelly (Telstra) 9. Laurie Sellers (ARN Hall of Fame), Andrea Della Mattea (ARN Hall of Fame and Insight) 10. Networking 11. ARN Hall of Fame inductees Andrew Thomas (Thomas Duryea) and Allan King (Buttonwood) 12. Phil Cameron (ARN Hall of Fame and Westcon Comstor), Laurie Sellers (ARN Hall of Fame)
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