Indispensable channel analysis

MicroScopemicroscope.co.uk

November 2012

This monTh’s Theme is WindoWs 8Will Microsoft’s Mobile gaMble pay off? page 6

sales opportunities around WindoWs 8 operating systeMs page 9hoW touch-based os could change direction of hardWare page 11

◆ the Month in it ◆ opinion ◆ letters ◆ five-Minute intervieW ◆

Ingram Micro confirms UK boss Matt Sanderson will return to OzIngram Micro has confirmed that UK managing director Matt Sanderson will step down from the role in January 2013 to take up the post of vice-president and managing director at the broadliner’s Australian outpost.

Sanderson previously spent five years with Ingram in Australia as director of vendor management and marketing, commercial director, and senior director of volume business and consumer sales.

He came to the UK in 2009 to replace Julian Klein in the captain’s chair, after US-based Ingram Export Group head Pablo Suarez – who was front-runner for the post – decided against a move to Milton Keynes and took on a role running Latin America operations for Bell Micro out of Miami.

In a brief statement, Ingram UK marketing director James Parker said Sanderson’s promotion was “based on the success he has achieved in the UK”.

Until a replacement is found, the UK will be run directly by the distributor’s senior vice-president of the UK and Benelux, Johan Vandenbussche, himself an old hand at the British operation, having occupied the UK managing director post from 2004 to 2007.

Google puts positive spin on weak resultsGoogle’s quarterly results disappoint-ed analysts, who marked the stock down, which led to a huge sell-off and temporary suspension of trading in its shares as the value plunged by almost 10%. CEO Larry Page put a positive spin on the figures, however, claiming Google had “enormous opportunities” for growth and the quarter had been strong. It reported revenues of $14.1bn for the quarter ended September 2012, a 45% increase on the same period the previous year.

Comet falls into administrationTroubled electricals and IT retailer Comet has been placed into adminis-tration, putting around 6,000 jobs at risk across the UK. Backer OpCapita – which hired former Dixons supre-mo John Clare to run Comet last year – was thought to have been making good progress in turning the ailing business around, but recently lost the backing of industry credit insurers, leaving it unable to trade effectively.

AVG rolls out CloudCare to support security SMEsAVG has taken the wraps off a man-aged service cloud offering that should provide its reseller partners selling into SMEs with a method of protecting customers on a pay-as-you-go basis. The vendor’s Cloud-Care platform has been tested and approved by resellers and managed service providers in the run-up to launch, and is now being made avail-able to other partners in the UK, Ire-land and the US.

Microsoft Surface tablet already ticking corporate boxesMicrosoft’s Surface tablet looks like it has a good chance of becoming adopted in the corporate world be-cause of the comfort users have with Windows. The tablet runs the new Windows 8 operating system and is Microsoft’s first major foray into the hardware market, but according to SecureData, the device is likely to receive a warm reception in the busi-ness world.

UK and services shine for ComputacenterA 9% rise in services revenue and a strong performance in the UK helped buoy Computacenter’s third-quarter results, with the expectation that those twin trends will continue into 2013. The channel player revealed the state of the last three months in an interim management statement that showed although the services side of the busi-ness is growing, the supply chain rev-enues are continuing to struggle, down by 2% in the third quarter.

BT iNet invests in staff to build on cloud computing opportunitiesBT iNet, the network services arm of BT, has embarked on a recruitment drive to bolster its sales of cloud technologies to customers. The move is tacit admission that many customers find cloud technologies complex and confusing. The organi-sation aims to recruit a further 50 people into its converged infra-structure practice in the coming 18 months and will boost its total headcount by approximately 17%. The new roles will be largely in sales and engineering.

BSA becomes Software AllianceThe Business Software Alliance (BSA) is changing its name to The Software Alliance to reflect the fact that its members are no longer simply selling into business customers. “We started 24 years ago as the Business Software Alliance because the industry’s big-gest focus in the early days was on providing tools for enterprises. Today, we are simply The Software Alliance, because the benefits of software in-novation extend into every aspect of modern life,” said BSA president and CEO Robert Holleyman.

SCC poised to invest, acquire as SDG sale goes throughIntegrator SCC has been sharing more details of its proposed investment plan in the wake of the sale of its distribution arm, SDG, to Tech Data. Chief executive James Rigby talked of a plan for an “extensive programme of investment and possible acquisi-tion supporting our bid to become the partner of choice for mid-sized companies and government organisa-tions across Europe”.

Xerox takes aim at rivals with remanufactured cartridge linesXerox has launched a new line of reusable cartridges designed to work with OEM desktop laser printers from its rivals. The vendor claims its Responsible line, which it is pitch-ing squarely at the managed print services market, can be used in print-ing hardware from Brother, Canon, Epson, HP, Konica Minolta, Kyocera and Lexmark, among others.

Insight reports drop in Q3 sales and profits across EMEAReseller giant Insight has taken a knock at its European operation after redundancy payments and restruc-turing costs ate into its operating profit during the third quarter. In the three months to the end of Septem-ber, Insight’s local operating profit was down 47% on the year-ago quar-ter to $1.4m (£867,000), representing 0.5% of net sales. n

Government adds more suppliers in next phase of G-Cloud project The second phase of the G-Cloud project has gone live, with hundreds of new suppliers, including a substantial number of resellers, named in the public sector cloud buying programme.

The updated list includes upwards of 450 firms – out of well over 600 expressions of interest – with the government boasting that 75% of suppliers named in the framework are SMEs.

Programme director Denise McDonagh (pictured) said this was a positive sign that Westminster was reducing its dependence on a small number of large IT suppliers.

“It also demonstrates growing support for the G-Cloud concept. We are creating a truly competitive and diverse marketplace that encourages service providers to improve the quality and value of the solutions they offer, reducing the cost to taxpayers and suppliers,” she explained.

the month in the channel

November 2012 | 2Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk

community

Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk November 2012 | 3

In a software streaming world the days of a big launch are set to be different

Cut the cost of printing with big name backing

BILLY MACINNES OPINION

There is a story on the MicroScope website that caught my eye because it definitely falls into the

“what a brilliant idea” category. In fact, I’m pretty sure it might also sit in the “why didn’t anyone think of that before?” category.

I refer to the story concerning Xerox’s launch of a range of reusable cartridges that work with laser printers from rivals such as HP, Canon, Brother, Epson, Konica Minolta, Kyocera and Lexmark.

Obviously, other firms have done this before – just take a look on eBay – but as far as I know this is the first time one of the “respectable” printer manufacturers has done it.

According to Xerox, managed print services providers can save nearly 50% compared with using cartridges from the printer vendors themselves. And it is keen to stress the “high-quality standards” used in the manu-facture of the cartridges are the same as for its own products.

While the Responsible cartridges are aimed at the managed print ser-vices market, I can’t help feeling (and hoping) that Xerox has opened a Pandora’s box that will force print-er vendors to drastically reduce the price of their own cartridges. If (or when) that happens, the price of printing should reduce significantly for many people.

Until now, printer vendors have been able to set pricing for their car-tridges, toners and consumables because there has been very little

competition, except from companies that provide remanufactured prod-ucts. It is fair to say that none of those companies has a brand name to com-pare to the likes of HP, Xerox, Canon, Epson, Brother and Kyocera.

Printer vendors have also done their best to raise doubts over the quality and reliability of remanufac-tured products, arguing that if you are not paying their premium prices, you are not getting a premium prod-uct. That argument is likely to prove a bit harder to sustain when a com-pany such as HP is trying to con-vince a customer that a cheaper

Xerox cartridge is as unreliable as one bought from an unknown busi-ness on eBay or online.

What we are witnessing now could well be the opening salvo in a battle that forces printer vendors to signifi-cantly reduce the price of print car-tridges. If they don’t, someone else will do it for them. ■

SIMoN quICkE edItOr’s cOmmeNt

Do you remember previous Windows launch-es, with high-profile stunts such as The Times being sponsored and acrobats danc-ing down the sides of buildings? back in

those days an operating system launch was big news.This time around, however, although there were

stunts – such as New York’s Times Square being taken over with Windows 8 ads – there was a much more muted feel to the launch.

It is probably a sign of the times, demonstrating that in a software streaming world the days of a big launch are set to be different. Plus, of course, micro-soft faces more competition now than in the past.

back when it was sponsoring newspapers for launch day, Linux was a very small affair, Apple was struggling to get past 5% market share, Google was not seen as much more than a search engine, and the world was fairly limited to desktops and laptops.

Now, of course, it’s all change, and although microsoft has acknowledged this with touch and the launch of its Surface tablet, resellers are selling these products in a very different world.

but one thing has not changed – the industry still needs Windows 8 to do well. Customers need to up-grade, and with XP support ending in 2014 even cor-porates will have to start making transition plans.

Software releases might not be the same as they used to be, but the channel still needs it to be a launch that opens consumer and corporate wallets.

This issue contains healthy doses of scepticism as we chart the reaction from the analyst community to the launch, but it also covers the numerous opportuni-ties for the channel. billy macInnes charts the ramifi-cations of microsoft choosing to make its next oS de-signed for mobile environments and Amro Gebreel discovers the industry has a pretty robust pitch to encourage users to upgrade to Windows 8. ■

Simon QuickeEditor

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

Can Windows 8 boost reseller bottom line?

This is the first time one of the respectable printer manufacturers has sold reusable cartridges

community

Can the industry learn from Football Manager 2013?

“Most operating systems and applications could do with a Classic Mode. They’re all far too complicated”

niCk booTh opinion

However enthusiastically the government extols the virtues of an economy driven by en-

trepreneurship and small businesses, the fact remains that it’s not easy being a small company.

I’m sure the large number of resell-ers that fall into that category would readily agree these are tough times.

A recent survey by the Forum of Private Business found a significant chunk of small firms were being forced to absorb increased energy, transport and raw material costs, be-cause they weren’t in a position to pass the costs onto their customers.

While this is bad news for those companies, I have to confess to a sneaking regard for the two-thirds that have been able to pass on in-creases in energy prices and imports (due to the weakness of Sterling) to their customers at such a difficult time economically. Whether this is the right thing to do is another matter.

You might expect customers to kick up a bit of a fuss at the prospect of paying more for something at a time when the economy is so slug-gish, but perhaps they will remain stoical, as part of a mass passive ac-ceptance being passed down to the next rung in the ladder, a collective shrug of the shoulders and a “Sorry, guv, but nothing we can do about it.”

On the flip side, those businesses that have absorbed the costs them-selves might find life harder initially but could it be turned to their advan-tage? If they are now operating in an environment where two-thirds of their competitors are starting to charge customers more for their ser-vices, doesn’t that make them more competitive against them?

There’s a balancing act between taking a hit to keep customers on board or spreading the pain and hop-ing they’ll stay with you. But if small companies can take the hit and stay in business, they could offset some of the pain by winning new customers.

They might also gain a psychologi-cal advantage with customers against their rivals if they are not seen to in-crease prices every time their costs go up, especially if those companies that do raise their prices don’t reduce them when or if fuel or energy costs or currency factors head in the oppo-site direction in the future. ■

billy MaCinnes opinion

It’s not easy being an SME

Panicbuy joins Leicester City in the new year for £2m, all the research will have been based on the informa-tion compiled by thousands of talent scouts paid by Sports Interactive – publisher of Football Manager 2013.

The publisher, by all accounts, has a comprehensive network of intelli-gence gatherers, with inside knowl-edge of every club, at every level, across the globe. So, in a sort of re-verse gamification process, a game was given a business interface. What would that be? Bizzification?

As a business information system, the game is far more professional and businesslike than what passes for re-search in most industries. If only the rest of IT was as thorough as Sports In-teractive boss Miles Jacobsen. Every day in IT hundreds of surveys are re-leased all of which just happen to echo the marketing message of the people who commissioned them. I say commissioned, what I really mean is made up. If they are not making up survey results, they’re conducting

surveys on groups that are too tiny to be statistically significant, on ques-tions that are so vague as to be open to all kinds of interpretation – according to research I just made up.

Football Manager 2013, then, could teach us all a valuable lesson about business. So stick that up your agenda, Lord Sugar. He always ar-gues that football needs to learn from business – when in fact it’s the other way around.

For example, Sports Interactive’s Jacobson noticed from comments that many older people never had time to play the game, so he intro-duced a new Classic Mode into the 2013 release, which strips the game down to its basic features.

If only the IT industry would fol-low suit. Most operating systems and applications could do with a Classic Mode. They’re all far too complicated and offer all kinds of hidden short code death traps that can see you set-ting up tables or starting macros you never wanted, or highlighting and deleting entire documents, all be-cause you randomly hit a fatal combi-nation of keys.

Let’s have a Classic Mode for Microsoft Word. That would save time. At the end of the day, that’s what it’s all about isn’t it? If you entertain people, that’ll bring the clouds back. ■

Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk November 2012 | 4

Business system vendors could learn a lot from Football Manager 2013...” The words of Gianfranco

Zola there, speaking at the launch of the latest version of the industry database for the football industry. He thought I was asking him about foot-ball. In fact I was asking him about business, given that Football Manager 2013 is essentially the de facto infor-mation system for the football industry.

Although it’s sold as a game, Foot-ball Manager 2013 has in-depth de-tail on every footballing talent availa-ble in Europe. The original idea was that nerds would use this informa-tion to assemble imaginary teams for their computer games. Instead – in a classic example of life imitating apps – agents, football managers and any-one else trading in talent started using the database for business.

Come the January transfer win-dow, the game will be the founda-tion for many of the desperate trades that take place. When Danny

“

S teve Ballmer has made a few gambles in his time as CEO at Microsoft. Sadly, not all of them have turned

up trumps: Zune, aQuantive and Vista are all significant failures in the company’s history. There is a unify-ing thread running through some of those failures, and that is Microsoft’s desperation to get in on the act after being left behind by competitors in new markets. Bing is another instance where the vendor has spent – and lost – quite a lot of money play-ing catch-up.

Now, as Gartner suggested a cou-ple of months ago, Microsoft is “tak-ing a big gamble” with the life force of the organisation itself – Windows. Acknowledging that Microsoft had to take the risk with Windows “to stay relevant in a world where mobile devices with new modern experiences are becoming the norm”, the market research com-pany caused a stir by making an uncomfortable comparison when examining how corporates might adopt Windows 8. “Windows Vista, for example, never gained signifi-cant success in corporate environ-ments… The bottom line is that IT leaders are questioning whether Windows 8 will suffer a similar fate,” Gartner stated.

With many businesses currently embarking on a migration to Win-dows 7 or preparing to begin the pro-cess of doing so – prompted, in part, by the news that Windows XP sup-port will be discontinued from 8 April 2014 – it seems a potentially inopportune time to be releasing a new desktop operating system.

When Windows 7 arrived it was greeted with relief by business and home users because Vista had been such a unmitigated disaster. The cir-cumstances are different this time around. Windows 7 has been well-received by business and home users so there is far less urgency in making the potentially disruptive shift to another version of the operating sys-tem with a completely different user interface (UI).

But then the release of Windows 8 is not really to do with PCs and lap-tops – not at this moment in time and especially not at the corporate level. By far the most significant event in the PC firmament over the past two years or so has been the release of the iPad and the emergence of the tablet form factor via a range of Android-based devices.

Coinciding with and, to a large extent, leading the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) and mobile working trend, the iPad and other tablets have had a massive impact on the tradi-tional PC and laptop markets.

Windows 8 slate/tablet with the Surface, designing, developing and manufacturing the hardware as well as the software, in a distinctly Apple-ish move.

The unveiling of the Surface hints at a frustration within Microsoft that hardware manufacturers were failing to develop products that could emu-late the design of Apple’s very suc-cessful tablet. Certainly, Ballmer did nothing to dispel the notion when he effectively signalled to shareholders that Microsoft intended to emulate Apple’s strategy by building “specific devices for specific purposes” and highlighted the Surface as one of those devices.

Difficult transition aheadSo, for the short term at least, the focus for Windows 8 appears to be to help Microsoft enter the tablet arena and improve its share of the smart-phone market. What will it do, if any-thing, for PCs and laptops?

Will Microsoft’s mobile Windows gamble pay off?Developed for touch-enabled devices, the vendor's latest operating system release marks a big shift away from the traditional user interface. But it could be too big for the many users who are content with Windows 7. Billy MacInnes reports

Obviously, with all machines ship-ping with the operating system (OS) pre-installed, Windows 8 will be the de facto platform for PCs and laptops, but that does not mean the transition will be seamless. Hardly surprising when Microsoft is pushing an OS where one of its standout features (and the first thing you see) – the user interface (UI) – has been developed for touch-enabled products such as tablets and smartphones.

Raphael Moroney, owner of Oxford-based Computer Assistance, thinks it will be a major headache, making the dreaded comparison with Vista to explain his point. “For home users, it harks back to the days when we sold a Vista machine, then had the customer return the next day telling us we had sold them a defective product and threatening to contact Trading Stand-ards for selling product that was not suitable for use,” he says.

“It is going to be a big hassle, and we have to be very careful about

Windows 8

November 2012 | 6Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk

Following the tablet trendMicrosoft and the Wintel world has been well behind the curve when it comes to tablets. Back in July 2010, Ballmer told financial analysts he would “talk about slates and tablets and blah, blah, blah, blah” and then went on to admit Apple had “sold more [iPads] than I’d like it to sell”.

He also promised Microsoft was in the process of making things happen with Windows 7 on slates: “Some of you will say: ‘When?’ And I say: ‘As soon as they’re ready. They’ll be ship-ping as soon as they are ready.’ And it is job one urgency around here. Nobody is sleeping at the switch. And so we are working with those partners, not just to deliver some-thing, but to deliver products that people really want to buy.”

That never happened, of course, but there is a chance it could happen with Windows 8. To try to make sure it does, Microsoft has even gone to the trouble of making its own

The Windows 8 user interface has been developed for touch-enabled products such as tablets and smartphones

Windows 8

November 2012 | 7Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk

selling it and explaining to people about how to use the Windows key,” he continues. “Virtually nobody uses the Windows key, but now peo-ple are being told to use that and then to type in the program they want to run – it’s crazy!”

Worse still, the new UI is designed especially for touch-enabled prod-ucts, but the market is hardly burst-ing at the seams with them. “It may be cool for touch-enabled laptops, but where are they?” he asks. “There aren’t any on the market that people are lining up to buy. There is no mar-keting for the new products. It’s an operating system without a device to install it on.”

Business user experienceAs for businesses, Robert Rutherford, managing director at Quostar Solu-tions, says any move to Windows 8 from Windows 7 “will not gain any-thing”. He points to the “completely different” user experience as the big-gest issue. “Many will remember the pain of moving to Microsoft Office 2007 – the change was vast and caused a raft of training and produc-tivity issues,” he recalls.

The new UI may well be similar to the iPad, says Rutherford, but “it still needs to flick back to the old desktop system as most applications aren’t designed for it. That’s a good thing, but you can expect the old desktop to slowly evaporate in later releases when people get used to it. In gen-eral, people don’t like change”.

He believes that businesses with Windows XP may be open to jump-ing straight to Windows 8. “In terms of timing, Microsoft has got the prod-uct launch down to a T. Windows 7 is a very good operating system from a business perspective, but Windows 8 has landed at a time that creates a dilemma for many, mainly due to the fact that there are still a huge amount of Windows XP estates out there.”

Yes, but is it really a good idea to create a dilemma for your customers?

Rutherford says most people with Windows 7 should stick with it, but those looking to use tablets might want to try Windows 8 while leaving their PC estate on Windows 7. “I’d still keep buying PCs and laptops with Windows 7 for at least the next 18 months to two years. Don’t forget

Windows 8 has landed at a time that creates a dilemma for many

that new operating systems take time to iron out the bugs, at least until the first service pack is released, and then a good few months after that,” he says.

Boosting consumer interestJames Reed, general manager for Computer 2000’s PC systems and software business units, believes the arrival of Windows 8 will spark an increase in demand in the consumer market through sales of tablets and convertibles, although he cautions “how pronounced it will be remains to be seen”.

There is also likely to be a moder-ate increase in demand in the busi-ness market in the last quarter of 2012. “We’d expect to see uptake of the Windows 8 Professional edition gather a bit more momentum next year, as more businesses adopt tablets and look to run ‘standard’ and fully compatible applications on them,” he adds.

One by-product of Windows 8 could be “an acceleration of upgrades to Windows 7 in the commercial and public sectors” as businesses move away from XP and opt not to make the jump to Windows 8 yet, says Reed. “It’s perhaps worth noting that some vendors are planning to ship ‘downgrade’ options with their new Windows 8 models, presumably to cater for a percentage of buyers who they think will prefer to use Win-dows 7 for a time,” he says. Many believe that percentage is likely to remain high for some time to come.

Delayed buying decisionsGrant Tiller, senior product manager at RES Software, quotes a survey the company undertook, which found that only 30% of respondents had completed their Windows 7 imple-mentations and a further 44% had not done so because “they were post-poning their Windows 7 implemen-tation to better assess the benefits of Windows 8”.

From Tiller’s perspective, those fig-ures represent an opportunity, but might they also suggest a missed opportunity? How long have those businesses delayed their Windows 7 implementations to wait and see what Windows 8 has to offer? And now it’s here, how many of them are going to decide to go ahead with Windows 7 anyway?

There are analysts who argue Win-dows 8 will herald a new dawn in x-86 tablets aimed at business users. “Duncan McAuley, purchasing direc-tor at VIP Computers says the reason-ing is that x86 tablets can be “full PC environments in a different form fac-tor. Once you dock that tablet into some sort of docking station, you can,

in theory, convert that tablet experi-ence into a traditional PC experience”.

Ultrabooks is another area where Windows 8 could represent an opportunity for the channel. As McAuley admits, these are essen-tially the PC market’s response to Apple’s MacBook Air, but he believes there are “massive synergies between Windows 8 and ultrabooks, as users seek to create and manage content on touch-powered ultrabooks and other form factors”.

But the thrust of this argument – that Windows 8 will help to drive business tablets and ultrabooks – tends to go against the grain of experi-ence with both form factors. The iPad, Samsung’s Galaxy and the MacBook Air are not specifically business machines, but they have successfully infiltrated the corporate environment.

Why? Well, this is another area where the concept of “business” tab-lets and ultrabooks could prove counter-intuitive by bucking the whole BYOD trend. BYOD does not stand for bring your business device. There is a subtle distinction. Most people want to have their own device and use it for work, not to be given a work device that they can also use for their own purposes.

This suggests it will be tablet and ultrabook adoption at a consumer level that could be the most impor-tant driver for Windows 8 in the short term, rather than any imposition of business products on employees. Certainly, the suspicion is that Micro-soft believes so too, and the story of the adoption of Samsung’s Galaxy and Apple’s iPad would suggest this is the right approach to take. And it is telling that there is nothing about the

Surface so far to suggest it is targeted at business users.

Mobile environmentNo matter how Windows 8 is adopt-ed in the consumer and corporate space, McAuley believes it will prove a boon to companies under pressure to deliver mobile solutions that cur-rently “face application nightmares with iPads and Android-based tablets, because they need two sets of applications and two sets of man-agement technologies. This is a real entry point for Windows 8”.

Computer 2000’s Reed perhaps best sums up Microsoft’s short-term strategy for Windows 8 when he describes it as fulfilling the need for “a different kind of environment” for touch-enabled tablets and the grow-ing number of mobile devices exploding onto the market.

He adds that the difference from Apple and Android devices is that users of those devices will want them to be compatible with the applications they run on their desktop or laptop; Microsoft is simply providing for that need. “It’s also taking a major leap for-ward that will allow organisations and individual users to use the same applications and services across a range of different devices in a consist-ent way, and migrate to new platforms at their own pace,” says Reed.

But it does not answer the question of why Microsoft did not just limit the launch of Windows 8 to products that could exploit its UI, such as ultr-abooks, tablets and smartphones? Why bother with a PC version at all at this stage? That’s a question to which people could be searching for an answer for some time to come. ■

Microsoft has made its own Windows 8 tablet – the Surface

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What’s critical to you is critical to us.

The rumours of Windows 8 started last year with a couple of slips from OEM partners and a bit too much

said by Steve Ballmer at a develop-ers conference. So when the launch in October was finally confirmed it didn’t come as a shock to most resell-ers or customers.

But in the last few weeks of the run-up of the launch the one thing you could be forgiven for is wonder-ing where the excitement was. The acrobats scaling the side of buildings and the national newspapers spon-sored for a day might have worked in the past for Microsoft but with the clock ticking on the launch there just didn’t seem to be much noise being made in the market.

Some of that was no doubt a conse-quence of the concerns analysts artic-ulated around the risks that migrating would cause customers. There has also been much deliberation on how

ners to get behind the OS launch and cool, sleek and well-designed prod-ucts have started rolling off produc-tion lines with logos from the likes of Lenovo, HP and Dell on them. Most of these devices take advantage of touch and have been built to appeal to the user’s need for something that looks good in both the board room and the living room.

A lot of news print will be inked over the Surface tablet but resellers might also want to use Windows 8 to make a hardware pitch for other tech-nology options.

Duncan McAuley, Purchasing Di-rector of VIP Computers, thinks this might be the ideal time to make the case for the ultrabook.

“The Windows 8 launch will cer-tainly stimulate spending in the channel but also create huge oppor-tunities for multiple devices allowing total and seamless connectivity,” McAuley says.

The sales opportunities behind Windows 8Amro Gebreel looks at the related security, management and hardware pitches resellers can make with the launch of the Microsoft's latest operating system

“Touch screen displays will be a big winner for vendors. Therefore, no pitch for Windows 8 would be com-plete without mention of ultrabooks.

“Ultrabooks are super-slim, super mobile notebooks — essentially the PC market’s response to Apple’s Mac-Book Air. Ultrabooks have had a slow start, but it’s still early in the game. Resellers must mention the synergies between Windows 8 and ultrabooks, as users seek to create and manage content on touch-powered ultrabooks and other form factors.

“Analysts IHS are predicting sales of ultrabooks to hit 44 million in 2013 and those numbers are arguably nothing to sneeze at. With Windows 8 just around the corner, getting a consumer to pick up an ultrabook certainly will become an easier sell, compared to a PC.

“Corporate customers will be inter-ested in the new features that lend themselves to businesses, such as en-

pitching Windows 8

November 2012 | 9Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk

touch – one of the key features of the operating system (OS) – will go down in the corporate market.

But of course for the reseller the marketing buzz and analyst theories will not be the issues at the forefront of customers’ minds. They will want to hear a reasoned pitch around the Windows 8 launch.

For plenty of resellers the irony of the Windows 8 pitch is that it will continue promoting the Windows 7 story. A lot of customers are still mi-grating away from XP and, with one eye to the future, a lot of the position-ing of Windows 7 will be as a step-ping stone at some point in the future to Windows 8.

Hardware opportunitiesThat might well deal with the soft-ware side of the pitch, but where there should be immediate action is on the hardware front.

Microsoft has rallied its OEM part-

pitching Windows 8

November 2012 | 10Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk

hanced end-to-end security and vir-tualisation and management.”

The hardware pitch will be helped by the likes of Intel throwing some weight behind the ultrabook push and it might just be a fresh message – that avoids yet again talking about tablets – that appeals to users.

With hardware there are of course other opportunities that arise, which will give resellers with management expertise some opportunities.

“For channel organisations, cus-tomers that are investing in Windows 8 will fall into two camps: those that want new hardware with Windows 8 pre-installed or those that want to mi-grate their existing machines to the latest Microsoft OS,” says Seann Gar-diner at Dell KACE.

That leads Gardiner into the first area where resellers might well want to pitch solutions around Windows 8 with systems management a good op-tion to push.

“Adding comprehensive systems management solutions can help the end user manage both these scenari-os. In addition, the partner is offering a more comprehensive service to the end user and one that is more profita-ble as well,” he says.

“Software distribution and config-uration management are two areas that customers will have to consider. Selecting a single solution that deliv-ers both functions reduces the amount of new knowledge to learn and will ensure that every machine is managed centrally, and reduce future systems management overheads.

“Another consideration for the customer is the ability to remotely perform PC and device inventories. Being able to effectively carry out up-grades and migrations relies on accu-

“Managing the TPM, the enterprise can check the health of pre-boot BIOS, ensuring a device has not been altered”

Touch as a feature is clearly going to get a lot of the attention, but there are other points about Windows 8 that resellers should be talking about to promote the benefits of an upgrade to users.

Daley Robinson, marketing director at Stone Group, provides a hit list of the areas where customers attention should be drawn to:

Enhanced securitySecure Boot is a feature enabled by UEFI, which replaces the traditional PC BIOS found in previous version of Windows. Security features are exception-ally important and the risk of losing data because of malicious viruses can prove catastrophic. The enhanced security features of Windows 8 brought about by Secure Boot are designed to prevent such viruses and unsolicited programs initiating on your PCs before Windows 8 and all of its built-in safeguards are launched.

Improved start-up timesOne major change to Windows 8 is the improved start-up times and faster performance. This will allow you to get on-task far quicker than previously, reducing the amount of wasted time waiting for the system to load up. There are various user reports online testing the performance of Windows 8, showing boot times of 12 seconds with a HDD, or 8 seconds from an SSD – a notable improvement on Windows 7.

User Roaming ProfileUser Roaming Profile has been devised to address the challenges in today’s multi-user and multi-device environment. User Roaming Profile allows you to synchronise your profiles, settings and apps so that, regardless of where you are, you’ll still get the same end user experience. When the user logs in to another device with the same ID, the settings are downloaded from the cloud and synchronised with the local machine.

Windows BitlockerWindows 8 Bitlocker now comes as standard on all Windows 8 Pro devices. For PCs that have Trusted Platform Module (TPM) – most of PCs come with TPM as standard – there is now an “out of the box” software encryption solution to make data security a priority in all educational institutions.

Windows 7 compatibilityEverything that runs on Windows 7 will also be capable of running on Windows 8 too, meaning you won’t need to upgrade your ICT suite just to accommodate Windows 8. While many may still be cautious about the upgrade to Windows 8, it is set to bring a no-compromise experience across all PC devices.

More than just touch

rate hardware and software inventory information. These functions can also be used to monitor license com-pliance on an ongoing basis, after the OS upgrade has taken place.

“When offering Windows 8, there is a real chance to up-sell the package by including extra management func-tions and make system administra-tors very happy.”

Opportunities for securityOne other obvious area is security. Most users will look at Windows 8 not just with questions about im-proved productivity, flexibility and ease of use, but will also want to know how secure it is.

Microsoft has done plenty of work on making its software applications more robust to hacking attacks but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a chance for resellers to add some additional value by putting together a security solution for the customer.

A spokesman from Wave Systems argues this is a good time for resellers to start talking about hardware-based security. Going for the embedded op-tion is something that could work well with Windows 8.

“The Windows 8 launch means that hardware-based security will be-come a practical option for enterpris-es, but that doesn’t mean enterprises need to make a massive pay-out to benefit from embedded security. All Windows 8 devices will be shipped with a Trusted Platform Module and over 600 million devices already con-tain a TPM,” says a Wave spokesman.

“The TPM provides a secure bolt-ing mechanism which implements a three-factor application – providing a single point of access to enterprise VPNs, single sign-on and single sign-

off. The TPM stores the signatures of critical start-up components of the machine, and the ones that are most important are used early in the boot process, before antivirus initiates.

“By managing the TPM the enter-prise can check the health of pre-boot BIOS, ensuring the device has not been altered since its last connection to the network. One of the most im-portant features on Windows 8 is re-mote attestation – that means trusted third parties will be able to manage the TPMs for enterprises,” points out the spokesman.

Corporate take-upHaving hardware-based security could also save customers a few pounds, adding to the reasons to add that into the Windows 8 pitch.

The expectations might not be for a surge of businesses to start buying the

OS but hope are higher for consum-ers. In the age of consumerisation that means Windows 8 will find its way into the workplace quickly.

Resellers have several options be-yond just selling the software and a license and as the suggestions here show, there are going to be opportu-nities to push security, management and hardware platforms in the next few months.

Things could get more exciting still if the corporate world comes back en-joying touch. That could lead to more hardware sales and even greater op-portunities for resellers managing a wide estate of devices for customers.

It is still early days but resellers need to be talking about Windows 8 and thinking about how it will give them an angle to sell products and services to customers for the rest of this year and well into 2013. ■

Duncan McAuley, Purchasing Director of VIP Computers, has a tick list of points resellers can reel off to counter the inevitable “why should I upgrade?” question from customers.l Faster boot timesl Increased securityl Longer battery lifel Better performancel Faster Wi-Fi connectionl Multi-monitor improvementsl More powerful file explorerl Improved task manager

Why upgrade to Windows 8?

technology

Slow business uptake for Windows 8 but OS could still transform marketConsumer sales most evident at launch, but touch OS could change direction of hardware, writes Simon Quicke

The multi-platform touch OS could accelerate the change in direction for hardware towards tablet-laptop hybrids

Operating systems

Even before the product hit the shelves, analysts and OEM partners were starting to make their predictions of

the impact Windows 8 would have on the market.

The traditional way things operat-ed was that Microsoft came out with a major product and it gave everyone an upswing in revenues, not just from selling the software but from as-sociated hardware and peripherals.

This was fairly predictable until Vista, which received the same mar-keting hype but failed to register with users. That led to questions about whether or not the era of the big oper-ating system launch was over, an issue Microsoft has been forced to deal with ever since.

From the channel and vendor’s point of view, harmony was restored with the launch of Windows 7 as the product proved popular and came at the right time for users that had de-layed upgrading from XP to Vista.

But before Windows 8 had even launched, doubts were raised about just what it could mean for resellers and customers.

Gartner had already warned that, for many customers, the time might not be right for an upgrade. This not only implied a wait-and-see policy might be best, but went further and talked of the risks some users could expose the business to if they were to jump to Windows 8.

Enthusiasm for Windows 8Against that background it was perhaps of little surprise that, at last month’s Canalys Channel Forum event in Barcelona, the session on the prospects of Windows 8 being posi-tive was packed out.

Along with Canalys principal ana-lyst Alastair Edwards there were rep-resentatives from two Microsoft OEM partners, HP and Lenovo.

Both vendors have in the past few weeks launched products aimed at exploiting Windows 8, particularly the touch functionality.

Edwards said that, in the past, the expectation was that a new Microsoft operating system (OS) would get peo-ple spending again.

But Edwards said: “It is a changing

Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk November 2012 | 11

PC environment, with Apple, Sam-sung, Google and Amazon, and there are new players and form factors.”

He highlighted tablets as well as the increased competition as two of the big changes since the launch of Windows 7.

In addition to the changed land-scape and tough competition there is the additional problem of the timing of the Windows 8 launch, into a de-pressed global economy still strug-gling to shake off the worst recession in 60 years.

In some respects it is a pivotal mo-ment for Microsoft, but one that could put the vendor back in the ring if it manages to get the right products to embrace the current trends in the market, including consumerisation.

At the heart of the strategy is touch, which the vendor is introducing as a differentiator that will get the thumbs up from consumers but could take longer to convince corporations.

“There are big questions over whether business users want touch, particularly on clam shell devices. There are usability issues with touch and it’s not proven that business users want touch or if is it enough of a differentiator,” said Edwards.

The advice from Edwards is for the

channel to continue to focus on the current migration paths of many users as they move to Windows 7. That might well prove a springboard in the future of for Windows 8, but for now going straight to it would be a leap too far for some.

From an OEM perspective, touch is a significant move. Neil Berville, head of channel programmes and strategy EMEA at Lenovo, described it as a game-changer and one people will use on different devices.

“We have seen a lot of tablets and smartphones go into corporates. It’s a good catch-up and puts Windows on a par,” he said.

Dan Tindall, head of HP’s world-wide channel and personal systems business, said touch was an impor-tant feature that would become even more widely used over time.

Apps market gamechangerBut what will be critical is the num-ber of apps that work on Windows 8 and exploit touch functionality. OEMs are not planning to write apps, so it will have to come from the market in the same way as the Apple and Android systems. Until that gets going, a question mark will hover over the extent to which third party

functionality can extend the OS.Where the excitement seems to re-

side around the launch of Windows 8 is in the potential it provides OEM hardware vendors to deliver a range of products beyond traditional desk-top, laptop or tablet models.

HP is to rejoin the tablet market with hybrids as both tablet and lap-top, the user separating screen and keyboard to revert to touch control.

Lenovo has also lined up products it believes will appeal as the look and feel becomes increasingly important.

“It is a great opportunity and it is pushing the boundaries. You will see a huge amount of innovation,” said Berville.

Change in directionBut neither HP nor Lenovo are ex-pecting a surge in sales this year or even the first few months of next, seeing Windows 8 as a slow burner as it moves into the corporate market.

Tindall explained there were still a large number of users still working with the previous version of the OS.

Berville agreed a surge in sales on the back of the Windows 8 launch was unlikely. But he pointed out there well could be a perceptible im-pact outside the business market.

“In the consumer space there will be a spike, there are lots of good products and we will bring some things to the market that will really excite people,” he said.

He said the focus for now was going to be on the consumer with “a little bit of the S in the SME space”.

“The Windows 8 opportunity in the short term will be smaller rather than explosive. But you can’t ignore this is going to be part of a multi-plat-form environment,” said Edwards.

No-one is promising the channel it can get rich selling Windows 8. But to ignore the advances it offers and its long-term implications for customers would be a grave mistake.

OS launches might have changed, because of changes in the consumer and the different demands on tech-nology. Microsoft has an opportunity to get itself back near the front of the tech race if backing touch wins out, but for now the jury is out on many aspects of the Windows 8 launch. ■

opinion

What vendors get wrongWith experience of working for a reseller, distributor and vendor, Aidan Simister lists the top 10 mistakes made by vendors in channel relationships and how to address them

training must deliver actual skills to sell your products. The sales, techni-cal and marketing teams must know the questions to ask to find the right opportunities and be able to handle objections and understand how your business works to ensure total and consistent engagement.

5Lead by exampleThe culture of a vendor arriving

at 10am and leaving at 3pm having spent much of the time checking emails has to change. You need to engage and lead by example by showing best practices in selling your products and solutions and provide real-world examples of selling into other organisations. You want to kick-start a habit-forming process that can be maintained over a period of time.

6Proof of understandingAs a vendor, you need to under-

stand the business of your partners and how your products can add value. You need to appreciate the differentiators and get to know their customers to construct a tangible and actionable account plan to work

together to add real value and build the relationship. Your offering needs to be in the context as to what it will deliver to a partner’s business, its customers and, of course, its pockets.

7Do as you promise, and do it quickly

Avoid too much talk with minimal action. If you say you are going to do something, actually do it. Nothing kills a relationship faster than empty promises. If you say you are going to call a customer – do it. If you say you are going to book a demo for a prospect – do it. If they need help bringing in a deal, react quickly and this will go a long way.

8Cleanliness is next to godliness

Perhaps the most important thing to bear in mind is to make the number one goal to keep your channel clean and friendly. Do not tolerate box-shifters – only allow real partners that are able to add value and know what you do, otherwise you damage your true partners, which will stunt the growth of your business. Build trust and loyalty with your partners and exclude those that are not will-ing, ethical, loyal or able. Do not offer margin to partners that don’t under-stand your business.

9Direct touch teamsThe very nature of direct touch

is to have maverick hard-hitting sales staff; however, make sure they are

closely managed. While it is great that they are able to find and drive opportunities, they need to engage with partners. This will go a long way in building trust and will ulti-mately encourage partners to work closely with them. Far too often, there is a divide and lack of engage-ment between direct touch and the channel, which can be damaging.

10Sell direct or via the channel, but not both

Running a direct and channel sales model in the same region simply will not work. Selling your products through a web store while trying to maintain a serious channel is an im-possible task. Make the commitment. Either work through your partners or sell direct, but don’t do both. The final KISAbove all, ‘keep it simple’ and make it personal. You want to make it easy for partners to do business with you. Moving all engagement to an online portal or making partners fill out end-less forms or jump through pointless hoops does not drive engagement or create a nice warm feeling.

While there seems to be a culture to move everything to self-service portals, there is a lot to be said for good old-fashioned conversations. ■ Aidan Simister is country manager (UK & Ireland) for NetWrix, a specialist provider of innovative technology for IT infrastructure change auditing.

Nothing kills a relationship faster than empty promises. If you say you are going to call a customer – do it

managing relationships

1Protection racketAll vendors claim that they pro-

tect their partners, but in reality they rarely do. Despite fancy deal regis-tration programmes, the smallprint still gives very little deal protection. It may be that one partner only gets a small discount advantage over another, meaning that even if it does all the work on a deal, it can still end up making 15% or less. To my mind, this is not proper deal protection.

2Perceptions of arrogance Ask partners/resellers how they

perceive the vendors they work with and all too often the view is one of arrogance. Vendors can often give the impression that they are somehow further up the hierarchy than their partners, whereas a successful chan-nel model is quite the opposite. Good partners should be treated as the life-blood of the organisation and a bit of humility goes a long way.

3Rewarding the wrong partners

Vendors often go after the same part-ners in the belief that big is beautiful and should be rewarded with equally big margins. In reality, unless these larger, well-known partners really buy your proposition at management level, they will serve as nothing but fulfilment and are unlikely to grow your market share. The important thing is to establish partners that are willing and able to proactively grow your market and then reward them accordingly. Rather than offering high margins or, in some instances, paying to become a vendor in a reseller’s portfolio, a partnership should be a two-way process with mutual gain.

4Failure to enable, motivate or arm

The first thing many vendors do dur-ing the honeymoon period is to visit their partners for a day of training and corporate presentations in an effort to motivate the sales team. But this can be short-lived and, as with any relationship, a lack of effort and com-munication means that interest soon dwindles and the relationship breaks down. It is critical that a clear and defined long-term plan is put in place, agreed at the right levels and executed accordingly. And importantly, the

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NOVEMBER 2012 | 13Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk

readers’ letters

send your letters and comments tosquicke@techtarget.com

Video streaming applications can pack a business efficiency punchGary Calcott, technical marketing manager, Progress SoftwareThe greatest benefit I can see for mo-bile business applications as a result of Apple's latest iPhone launch will come from on-demand video stream-ing applications. As a result, we could see greater demand for the de-velopment of more data-intensive ap-plications, which could pave the way for video-conferencing on mobile de-vices becoming commonplace as the iPhone 5 and subsequent 4G-enabled handsets are rolled out within busi-nesses on a more widespread basis.

Clearly, there are a number of spe-cific industries which could also see a significant, tangible benefit from uti-lising the iPhone 5’s rapid exchange of potentially large datasets. For instance, patient x-rays or MRT scans could become far more accessible for health professionals on the go, while the same could be true of anyone look-ing to access large files, such as com-plex construction plans.

There may also be additional bene-fit for 4G-enabled business applica-tions, where the state of an interac-tion between the mobile app and the back end can be quickly synchro-nised, providing easier access to important data in a timely fashion. For example, being able to access a subset of a database, or check on the status of long-running business trans-actions in an instant on an iPhone 5 could allow for faster, more efficient decision-making.

Automated storage tiering a hotspot for the channelWarren Reid, EMEA marketing director, Dot HillThe cloud and virtualisation present all kinds of opportunities and chal-lenges for the IT industry, and the channel’s role is to help deliver the tools needed so that IT administra-tors can successfully manage IT in these new environments.

Dot Hill has received feedback from its resellers that a widespread challenge is how to manage the effect in virtualised environments of I/O

hotspots, or data traffic spikes, on the supporting IT infrastructure, particu-larly storage. Virtualised environ-ments present a complex and dynam-ically changing workload which calls for the ‘hot’ data to be present on the fastest storage medium at the instant it is needed.

Until now, the only answer to this problem was to add more disc spin-dles to the storage infrastructure to increase I/O performance. But this is an expensive and inefficient method, resulting in a large amount of unnec-essary capacity. The advent of SSD and flash-based technology provides an answer to high performance, but how do we ensure that the right hot data is in place on our expensive SSD drives at the instant it is needed?

We are about to see an acceleration towards automation through dynamic-tiering – something that has been on IT developers’ agenda for some time, but in reality has been dif-ficult to fully achieve. Tiering ensures that the right kind and amount of stor-age is available when and where

Peter Godden, senior director EMEA, Coraid Organisations are looking to upgrade their storage infrastructures to realise the benefits of a virtualised or cloud environment, only to find that the cost and complexity of legacy storage create significant obstacles.

The channel can help these organisations by offering alternative technologies such as Ethernet SAN storage. Users of Ethernet SAN can gain from savings in both capital and operating expense without compro-mising on performance and quality.

Securing long-term successful relationships with customers means offering the best solutions at an affordable price. Thanks to x86 processors and rapid advancements in technology, Ethernet SANs deliver better performance than Fibre Channel, at up to 1,800Mbps of throughput using low-cost, industry-standard hardware.

In addition, Ethernet SAN is easy to install, operate and scale, so client satisfaction is high. Likewise, for the reseller, it does not require big investments in sales or technical training because it harnesses tried and tested technologies.

Resellers that already offer Ethernet-based storage have reported booming demand at the same time as strong customer loyalty; it is time to tune off the Fibre Channel.

Bring storage bang up to date

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needed with little or no input from the IT manager. Automated tiering solu-tions have been available for some time, but they are usually based on a batch process which moves the hot data overnight or during quiet peri-ods, which results in yesterday’s hot data being moved to the fastest tier.

The next evolution in smart auto-tiering will bring data migration that occurs in real time so that bottlenecks at the storage level are avoided as tier-ing happens in a matter of seconds, making the storage infrastructure as versatile as the virtualised environ-ments for which it is intended.

Resellers have much to gain from promoting platforms offering these advancements in technology as they can add real value for their custom-ers, with demand from IT managers for greater automation set to increase over the next few years as virtualisa-tion is truly realised. ■

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backchat

for all involved. The worst advice I ever received was probably from a recruitment agent who encouraged me to take a step too far in my career when I was younger. I came very close to floundering out of my depth, a lesson well-learnt.

Who helped you get to where you are today?My father had a big influence on me. He was a very successful businessman, both in private practice and as a senior manager in a UK public company. He instilled the virtues of integrity, hard work and vision in all of his three children from an early age.

What advice would you give to someone starting out today in IT?Prepare for the unexpected. One great thing about IT is that it constantly changes, often in directions many of us don’t foresee. It’s a great career choice for those who thrive on change and are excited by the great possibilities innovation provides us.

What does the next five years hold for the channel?Excellent question and if I had the answer to that I’d set up a channel development consultancy and plan my retirement. I think the biggest simultaneous challenge and opportunity will be the move to cloud-based offerings. Questions such as, “How can a partner differentiate

themselves?” and, “How can resellers make money from cloud?” are top of my mind. If cloud vendors such as SAP can deliver programmes that enable the channel to positively answer both of these questions, then this will be a winning combination to take advantage of one of the biggest changes to our industry.

What’s running on your smartphone?Like most of us at SAP, I run many of our applications on my iPhone; the ease of use and immediate access wherever I am is just great. And for the kids (and possibly myself), F18 Carrier Landing.

Tell us something most people do not know about you?I took up skydiving after breaking my back and neck in a road accident and promptly broke it again, doh! I’ve given it up now.

What is the best book you have ever read?A great question and one that’s hard to answer but if “best book” is defined as a book you simply can’t put down, then I’d have to say that it is Red Storm Rising by Tom Clancy. To give it context, I read this book during the cold war when the storyline might easily have happened.

And the worst film you have ever seen?That has to be Hudson Hawk with Bruce

Willis. For some reason I decided to take a date to watch it but the badness of the film had the added benefit of driving us out early to the nearest bar. I can’t complain!

What would be your Desert Island MP3s?A pretty eclectic choice. Definitely U2, a band I’ve seen many times and could listen to constantly without getting bored. Some classical – maybe Gorecki or Elgar – and perhaps some eighties disco, which will NEVER go out of fashion.

What temptation can you not resist?A cold beer on a warm day. Perfect.

What was your first car and how does it compare with what you drive now?A brown mini 850 christened “Marigold” by my mother. Somewhat at the other end of the scale in size compared to the Audi Q7 I currently drive that weighs as much as an elephant and has the aerodynamic characteristics of a house!

Who would you least like to be stuck in a lift with? Why, what did they do?Any politician, need I say more?

If you could be any animal for a day, what would you be and why?A bird of prey, they’re cool.

If you could represent Great Britain (or your home country) at one event in the 2012 Olympics, which would you choose and why?Volleyball. It’s a great team sport where all players have to contribute to the overall success of the team. If one or all don’t perform well the team will lose, but if the team is in harmony and executing as a unit it will be unbeatable.

If you were facing awesome peril and impossible odds, which real or fictional person would you most want on your side and why?

Winston Churchill because he would convince me that the impossible odds can be overcome and inspire me to tackle whatever situation I’m in.

And finally, a grizzly bear and a silverback gorilla are getting ready for a no-holds-barred rumble. Who is your money on and why?The bear because if it all goes horribly wrong the bear can run faster than a gorilla and of course you don’t have to be the fastest, just faster. ■

fIve-MInuTe InTervIeW

Tell us what you do for a livingI am the channel sales director at SAP UK.

Why are you the right person for this job?I have been lucky enough in my 20+ year career to have many diverse experiences, ranging from being a software engineer through to living in the US for a couple of years. In addition to gaining great experiences to learn life’s lessons from, I have had the privilege to work alongside – and for – some excellent people. I hope this translates into a thoughtful execution of my role alongside a challenging vision for all those who choose to join me on my journey.

What gets you up in the morning?Chas & Dave howling to be fed. No, I don’t have two chaps with beards staying in my house, they’re my cats.

What is the best or worst business advice you have received and from whom?The best advice I’ve ever received, which applies both in and out of business situations, is to always seek to understand the motivation of people saying or doing things that you disagree with. Don’t assume they are wrong and you’re right; in many cases they have very good reasons for their actions and if you take the time to understand it your response will be more effective

read more five-minute interviews atwww.microscope.co.uk

Rich PhillipsSAP

MicroScope puts its questions to Rich Phillips, channel sales

director at SAP UK

Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk NOVEMBER 2012 | 14