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Indispensable channel analysis

MicroScopemicroscope.co.uk

October 2012

This monTh’s Theme is ViRTUALisATionthe skills needed to sell virtualisation technology page 6

boost sales with networking, back-up and security offerings page 9research reveals money-making opportunities in virtualisation page 11

opportunities for resellers beyond implementation page 12 ◆ the month in it ◆ opinion ◆ letters ◆ five-minute interview ◆

Phoenix IT boss Courtley resignsPhoenix IT Group CEO David Courtley has resigned after just 15 months in charge, the company has revealed.

In a brief statement issued to the City, the IT services provider confirmed Courtley had left to pursue other business interests.

However, it insisted that his departure had nothing to do with the discovery of a £14m black hole in its accounts, which sent Phoenix’s stock into a spiral last month.

Following Courtley’s departure, Phoenix has named non-executive chairman Peter Bertram as executive chairman, while chief financial officer Jane Aikman adds the role of chief operating officer to her duties, and David Garman becomes senior independent director.

Gartner advises caution with Windows 8 implementationsGartner has warned that Windows 8 might not be suitable for many users. The analyst house said the latest ver-sion of the Windows operating sys-tem (OS) might be a good choice for users looking to adopt tablets widely across the business, but could be a risk for others. Gartner’s advice is that most businesses should stick with what they currently use before assessing if a move to Windows 8 is going to deliver benefits.

Lanway is star signing for Championship side Burnley FCManaged services and comms provider Lanway has renewed its support for its local team Burnley FC, with an outsourcing deal that is expected to reduce costs by 25%. Following a success-ful three-month trial, Lanway has revealed it is to manage the Clarets’ entire IT infrastructure, including 24x7 monitoring and hardware provision.

Getronics gains £8m investment for services improvementsAurelius, the German backer of ser-vices player Getronics, is to plough €10m (£8m) into the business to smooth its internal processes and help it better address customers’ needs. The money will be spent in three areas: the implementation of an internal private cloud infrastruc-ture across the entire group to ease workflow processes; the launch of an internal bring-your-own-device capa-bility for Getronics employees; and an extension to its outward-facing cloud portfolio.

EMC UK boss vows to boost channel salesIn addition to its promise to deal with no more than 150 accounts directly, EMC has also revealed plans to reinforce the degree to which its direct sales team will have to work with the channel by promis-ing not to pay them for deals they do off the list, as well as making it more difficult to quote prices. The vendor is on track to meet its aim of reduc-ing its direct accounts to 150 by the end of 2012.

Avnet sets up Red Hat support centreAvnet Technology Solutions has taken the wraps off a support centre for Red Hat to try to increase solu-tion sales. The centre will provide assistance to Red Hat partners as well as looking to help IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Symantec resellers looking to build an open source solution.

Fujitsu, Arrow ECS to offer virtualised backup bundlesFujitsu has teamed up with Arrow ECS to launch a line of solutions designed to help resellers address user virtualised back-up scenarios. The Virtual Machine Protection (VMP) appliance is a combination of Fujitsu’s Primergy servers, Eternus storage systems and Symantec’s NetBackup software.

Redstone absorbs Maxima remnants in £13.8m dealNetworking and IT solutions integra-tor Redstone has bought the remain-ing assets of sunken rival Maxima in a deal that values the firm at £13.8m, including net debt. Maxima was holed below the waterline in 2011 following a rough couple of years, and put some non-core units up for sale in October that year as part of a restructuring plan. It had already successfully sold its Integrated Busi-ness Systems unit to ERP specialist K3 and its Microsoft, Intellect and Document Managed Services units to m-hance, as well as jettisoning its Irish business.

Rayat takes over from Toal as regional director at AvnetLong-standing Avnet staffer Sukh Rayat has stepped into the shoes of departing John Toal to take up the post of regional leader for the UK and Ireland at the distributor. Rayat, who has been with the business for 13 years, takes up the role at Avnet Technology Solutions faces the task of growing the business in both UK and Ireland.

SCH celebrates best ever year, plans major SCC investmentSCC parent SCH has brushed aside concerns surrounding the British economy to post its most successful financial results in its near 40-year history, with 2012 sales up 11% and post-tax profits more than doubling. Following its disposal of the SDG distribution business to Tech Data in September 2012, it has also revealed ambitious plans to ramp up investment in its SCC brand.

PC sales continue to tumble across EuropePC sales across Europe continue to decline as the ongoing fragile eco-nomic conditions take their toll and users look for more flexible hard-ware options. The latest figures from Context, which gathers its figures directly from distribution, indicate that business desktop sales across Western Europe dropped by 10.3% during the first couple of months of the third quarter.

Westcoast mourns Strowman loss Westcoast is mourning the loss of Howard Strowman, who sadly died after sustaining serious injuries in a motorbike accident last month.

Strowman had been a channel character for years and joined Westcoast in May last year as chief executive of the distributor's Asset Management (WAM) arm.

Before taking up the role at Westcoast, he was synonymous with PST Holdings, a brokerage that specialised in handling all sorts of kit, and he enjoyed 30 years running the firm before it ran into trouble in 2004.

"Everyone at Westcoast will remember Howard. It will be hard not to, as his enthusiasm and larger-than-life presence was ever present," said Alex Tatham, sales and marketing director at Westcoast.

"His Westcoast and WAM colleagues are devastated by this loss, as are all those that knew him in the channel and beyond. But our deepest condo-lences must go to his family, who loved him dearly," he added.

the month in the channel

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

community

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

Look for customers at the beginning of their virtualisation journey while also encouraging those that have already taken the plunge to go a bit deeper

Has enterprise social networking grown up?

nick booth opinion

Don’t LOL, but analysts say that social networking makes companies more efficient. ROFL? That was

my first reaction too. But enterprise social networking has an important role in collaboration strategy, accord-ing to a new report by Ovum.

The global analyst claims the en-terprise social networking market is maturing. (PMSL! It so isn’t!)

No, hang on, yes it is. Apparently, attention span-destroying technolo-gies – ooh look a butterfly! – such as Twitter and Facebook can unlock massive productivity gains in busi-ness. With a little tweaking.

Jive and Yammer were the pio-neers of maturity in communication. Personally, I don’t think either of those names exudes an air of sobriety and professionalism. What’s wrong with a good old-fashioned, stuffy, pin striped name? That might have helped them be taken more seriously and corner the market.

Now these upstarts have got seri-ous competition, according to Rich-ard Edwards, Ovum analyst and au-thor of the report. IBM (ah, there’s a reassuringly boring organisation) has muscled in and stolen much of the market in what is, let’s not forget, a hugely conservative and stuffed shirt corporate environment.

IBM Connections (pictured below) earned $105.4m in 2011, out of a market that is currently worth over $500m. Edwards predicts that this sector will enjoy massive growth.

“Enterprise social networking is well and truly in the adopter phase,” says Edwards. Only around 10% of organisations in established IT mar-

kets have made their buying deci-sions. So once the early adopters have proved the concept, there is a massive wave to be surfed.

It is never easy to catch a wave. In my experience, no matter how hard you try to position yourself, the light-er competitors always seem to seize the moment more effectively. Per-haps the surfing metaphor does not really apply to corporate social media, as I expect the heavyweights are more likely to provide the serious competition as this market takes off.

Notice how my thought processes seem to be jumping all over the place? That’s deliberate. I’m trying to be all social media.

The enterprise collaborations tech-nology landscape is awash with so-cial software from a variety of differ-ent sources, says Ovum. Pure-play enterprise social networking solu-tions compete with established enter-prise collaboration providers. Busi-ness automation social platforms are up against companies better known for their enterprise applications.

“With a market potential of at least $10bn, the enterprise social network-ing market is the new battleground for all enterprise collaboration ven-dors,” says Edwards.

Are you ready to Yammer, Tibbr and Chatter? Or are you more Telli-gent than that?

Much of the time, technology makes us less productive, because it becomes a toy. Look at the devasta-tion caused by email. How will enter-prise social media stop us from wast-ing time? Ovum doesn’t say. Oh GR8. It’s probably best to pretend to like it. CYA, as they say in the chat rooms. ■

simon quicke editor’s comment

The virtualisation market has been around for several years, attracting its fair share of coverage as it moved through the hype cycle and was the buzzword for a while.

It has now reached the stage where it is better de-scribed as mainstream, and is so well established that most users are familiar with both server virtuali-sation and the desktop variety. education around the fundamentals may no longer be required, but there are still areas where the channel can spark new thoughts about the technology.

there is still an opportunity to sell both desktop and server virtualisation technologies, because even those customers that have embraced the technology will need to invest further before they can genuinely describe their environment as virtualised.

As well as traditional virtualised products, there are increasing opportunities for resellers on the manage-ment and security fronts. Just because an environ-

ment is virtualised does not mean it can be covered by physical infrastructure tools that are not fit for purpose. the number of specialist vendors offering back-up, security and management tools for virtuali-sation customers has grown over the past couple of years, and that is set to continue.

this virtualisation-themed issue covers the various opportunities that exist for channel partners in the virtualisation market, as well as examining the latest research to discover just how much further those businesses have bought into virtualisation can go.

Over the next 12 months, resellers should take a two-pronged approach to virtualisation – looking for customers at the beginning of their virtualisation journey while also encouraging those that have al-ready taken the plunge to go a bit deeper.

the evidence shows that one of the components of a return on investment pitch is to deepen the in-vestment to get even more out of the technology. ■

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

Opportunities abound on the virtual journey

editor’s blog: Quicke off the mark

community

Is the desktop version of Windows 8 a wrong move?

billy macinnes opinion

The radical changes made to Windows in the latest release of the Os might not be welcomed by some businesses

Gartner has generated sig-nificant coverage recently by raising some fairly obvious issues with Win-

dows 8 that you might have expected Microsoft to have addressed by now.

A press release announcing that Gartner analysts would debate the fu-ture for Windows 8 at Gartner Sym-posium/ITxpo 2012 began with the following statement: “Microsoft is taking a big gamble over the next few months with Windows and Office… It is a risk that Microsoft must take to stay relevant in a world where mo-bile devices with new modern expe-riences are becoming the norm.”

In the release, Gartner vice-presi-dent Michael Silver said the advent of smartphones and tablets had rele-gated the PC’s role to “simply a peer with other devices” and Windows 8 was designed to help Microsoft enter the tablet market and improve its share of the smartphone market.

His colleague, research vice-presi-dent Steve Kleynhans, said Windows 8 was more than just a “low or even high-impact major release” of Win-dows, describing it as “the start of a new era for Microsoft”. Comparing it with NT, he suggested Microsoft’s “RT era” which is being launched with Windows 8 could, like NT, run for about 20 years. The technology “underlying Windows 8 will last a long, long time”, he suggested.

The challenge for Microsoft is that the radical changes made to Windows in the latest release of the operating system (OS) might not be welcomed by businesses that prefer to “reduce technology risk by deploying mature, stable, well-supported products”.

As Silver pointed out, although Windows 8 will be formally launched in October, the reality is that most organisations are still work-ing on eliminating Windows XP and deploying Windows 7.

I can’t imagine that, for many, the decision will take long to make. Mov-

Tensions exist between depart-ments in companies, and resellers should be doing more

to exploit these tensions. Take an IT department, for example. Networking people are a different breed from IT, who in turn are a species away from those in charge of storage.

If you’re ever in a pub where there’s a storage crowd and you see a minibus full of networking types enter, put down your drink and get out because it is bound to kick off – they really can’t hack each other.

One vendor has created a cunning plan to exploit these tensions for commercial purposes. Silver Peak’s brand of WAN optimisation has tra-ditionally involved a box.

So if a storage manager wanted to speed up the replication of one data-centre to another, he would have to go cap in hand to the networking manager to make the case. The net-working manager would make his storage rival jump through all kinds of bureaucratic hoops to justify the purchase. “Space is at a premium in my datacentre,” he’d say. “Are we going to get value for money?”

So the poor storage manager would have to stay late after work, writing a lengthy report extolling the virtues of Silver Peak’s Velocity Solution, when in fact the argument can be summa-rised in a sentence – the Velocity box can make a 10GB transfer take seven minutes when it used to take 90.

Now Silver Peak has invented a way to bypass the networking man-ager. In all the years Silver Peak has been going, it has been secretly de-veloping a fiendishly cunning in-vention under the innocent sound-ing guise of its Virtual Acceleration Open Architecture (VXOA). It has created software that allows the stor-age bods to optimise bandwidth without using a networking box. So it has found a way to bypass (indeed undermine) the jobsworth in the comms room and take all the credit for the improvement in the net-work’s performance.

So these storage-based WAN opti-misation systems can now be bought through storage resellers. If you are a networking manager, and you see a NetApp reseller come through the door, you might want to steel yourself for a fight! ■

nick bOOTh opinion

Silver Peak stuffs more than data

ing to Windows 8 in such circum-stances could be hugely disruptive.

Of course, Windows 8 should, in the near term, play a much bigger role at the ultrabook, tablet and smartphone level, where its tiled user interface is better suited for touchscreen devices. As Gartner notes, it is an OS “that looks appro-priate on new form factors of PC hardware including tablets, hybrids and convertibles”, but this has also led people to question “its appropri-ateness for traditional desktop and notebook machines”.

On paper, Microsoft’s approach dif-fers from Apple’s in that Windows 8 is the latest version of the desktop OS adapted to accommodate tablets and smartphones, whereas Apple’s OSX and iOS are distinct operating systems (even if more and more features from iOS are being imported into OSX). The irony, however, is that if Win-dows 8’s initial success is at the tablet and smartphone level, the path it takes will be similar to iOS (although it could be potentially more disrup-tive at the PC level than Apple’s strate-gy is to its desktops with OSX).

Perhaps the most chilling passage in the entire Gartner release is when it refers to the OS that everyone at Microsoft would rather forget: “Win-dows Vista, for example, never gained significant success in corpo-rate environments… IT leaders are questioning whether Windows 8 will suffer a similar fate.”

Ouch. If that happens, Windows 9 could be the new Windows 7. It could also end up being primarily a tablet, smartphone and ultrabook OS as the available desktop screen estate shrinks even further in the coming years. In which case, might Microsoft have been better off taking the Apple route and producing two versions of Windows 8? It could have launched a simple traditional desktop OS for the PC and a more radical tile-based ver-sion that included features more suit-able for tablets, smartphones et al?

Maybe it would have been even better if Microsoft had just launched Windows 8 for all those non-PC form factors, including ultrabooks, tablets and smartphones, and left Windows 7 alone on the desktop for another year or so.

There is no reason why taking a risk with Windows 8 will not help Microsoft “stay relevant in a world where mobile devices with new modern experiences are becoming the norm”, but I can’t see why it has to take the risk with Windows 8 for traditional desktops and notebooks as well. ■

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

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There is no doubt that server virtualisation has been a successful technology trend, even if there is still debate

over just how much of the server estate has been virtualised to date. Some maintain it is still much small-er than the physical estate, while others suggest this is the year when the number of virtual servers in the world will outnumber the number of physical ones.

Estimates of the percentage of virtu-alised server workloads hover around the 50% to 60% mark. But a measure of the ambition of virtualisation ven-dors is that VMware CEO Pat Gelsing-er told attendees of the US VMworld 2012 conference in August that it wants to increase that figure to 90%.

Virtualisation ambitionsSuch ambition suggests the server virtualisation market will be a healthy area for vendors and the channel for some time to come.

Dave Chalmers, chief technologist and EMEA vice-president at HP’s en-terprise group, says businesses still have a long way to go to increase lev-els of virtualisation and to continue to reap the benefits. “We are rapidly seeing virtualisation of the server as the beginning, not the end,” he says.

Virtualisation technologies are being deployed in the storage envi-ronment and are also starting to make it to the network environment, adds Chalmers. “Virtualisation technology is deepening, more virtualised serv-ers are being deployed, and the areas of technology it applies to are ex-panding,” he says.

This point is echoed by Bryan Semple, chief marketing officer at VKernel, who notes that virtualisa-tion management challenges are being compounded by the expansion of use cases and the addition of mul-tiple hypervisor types, vmotion, stor-age vmotion, advanced clustering, private clouds and public clouds.

VMware’s vision of datacentre in-frastructure built with software only serves to expand the management problem out to network, storage and more physical devices, he says: “The benefits to users are great, but man-agement applications need to keep up with VMware’s torrid pace of development.”

circumstances,” he says. Ian Wells, regional director for

Northern Europe at Veeam, says the virtualisation market has evolved to the point where virtual servers are expected to feature in any infrastruc-ture project.

Mark Thomas, solutions architect at Databarracks, is more circum-spect. He points out that virtualisa-tion is more mature in some indus-tries than others, citing the finance sector as an early adopter, and the technology from some vendors is not as advanced as that of others.

Nevertheless, he says any barrier to virtualisation has less to do with the

technology than businesses being re-sistant to change: “Organisations often fail to embrace what virtualisa-tion can enable them to do and so never realise the full benefits.”

Robert Rutherford, CEO of QuoStar Solutions, describes the market as being more fluid than it has been for a long time. He believes there will be increased activity with the imminent release of Microsoft’s latest version of its Hyper-V platform, which he says will only do more to increase inter-est, growth and development in other areas. “It will also encourage churn and upgrades, which in turn should help everyone,” adds Rutherford.

the virtualisation pitch

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

There are very few applications or workloads that cannot be virtualised now, agrees HP pre-sales consultant Jerry Walsh. “Many clients now think ‘virtual’ first, and only use physical resources in exceptional

“Organisations often fail to embrace what virtualisation can enable them to do and so never realise the full benefits” Mark Thomas, Databarracks

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Guide the way in a complex world of virtual technologyWith the trend towards server and desktop virtualisation growing rather than slowing, channel partners with the right skills will increasingly be called on to guide customers through a maze of choices during implementation and beyond. Billy MacInnes reports

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

Shaun Donaldson, director of stra-tegic alliances at Bitdefender, says there has been a push over the past year towards expanding server virtu-alisation to include mission-critical, tier-one applications. “The presence of virtualisation in enterprises is very nearly ubiquitous; almost all use vir-tualisation somewhere, but few use it everywhere,” he says.

Perhaps that is because they don’t need to be virtualised. Kevin Bland, Citrix channel director for UK, Ireland and South Africa, says there may be a reason for the high percentage of the server market that is non-virtualised – the high per-centage of servers that will never see the benefit of being virtualised, such as single servers, branch offic-es and retail stores.

Virtualisation in the cloudBland also suggests that some busi-nesses will not experience the cost benefits server virtualisation can potentially provide until enterprise functionality is delivered at a new, low cost point, and this leads to the issue of the cloud.

“Beyond the organic growth of ex-isting farms, the server virtualisation opportunity is now being played out in the cloud service provider and new enterprise workload markets,” says Bland.

The question is whether vendors can offer a cost base that scales with the cloud. “Only once vendors make this a reality will the cloud market be opened up to the possibility of server virtualisation,” he says.

Databarracks’ Thomas believes vir-tualisation is a big advantage for com-panies looking to move to the cloud. “It is far easier to put systems into the cloud from a virtualised environ-ment,” he says.

But Thomas also warns this is an issue that could meet resistance in-house as IT managers deal with the prospect of taking on a technology that will greatly change the role of their department. “It’s up to the chan-nel to promote the value of the solu-tions and question companies if they can really deliver in-house what they need over the long term,” he says.

Richard Davies, managing director

“The presence of virtualisation in enterprises is very nearly ubiquitous; almost all use virtualisation somewhere, but few use it everywhere” Shaun Donaldson, Bitdefender

of ElasticHosts, claims virtualisation solutions are already morphing into cloud opportunities, with some cus-tomers looking to move to cloud serv-ers instead of virtualising in-house infrastructure.

“By doing so they get the benefits of virtualisation through their cloud provider, while also getting the inher-ent elasticity and cost benefits of cloud,” he says. This suggests that, in Davies’ mind at least, the challenge of scalability versus cost has been met.

“Resellers that recognise this are starting to build their own cloud products, or partner with established cloud providers to white label their services, so they can retain existing customers and appeal to new ones specifically looking for cloud-based services,” he says.

Desktop virtualisationWhatever the situation with regard to server virtualisation, there seems to be a consensus that desktop virtualisation and virtual desktop

infrastructure (VDI) is starting to gain some traction as the next big thing in virtualisation.

Citrix’s Bland brings the two to-gether in the context of enterprise workloads, suggesting that the biggest opportunity for server virtualisation lies in desktop virtualisation as a new workload.

The ability to offer scalable, flexi-ble desktop virtualisation solutions in a way that fits individual users’ needs and requirements while simul-taneously offering a secure, scalable server platform is key, he says: “Ven-dors which can bridge both capabili-ties and recognise that VDI is not the answer in 90% of desktop virtualisa-tion cases will be a solid bet for part-ners and customers.”

Rutherford at QuoStar Solutions is not completely convinced that VDI is where it needs to be yet. “I’m cau-tious over VDI – no-one’s got it quite right yet. I’d expect to see some hard battling going on in the coming 24 months, particularly between Micro-soft and VMware – both are position-ing themselves for a drawn-out bat-tle,” he says.

HP’s Walsh takes a similar view to Bland. “Desktop virtualisation is an exciting opportunity to extend the use of virtualisation and the associ-ated advantages to the desktop envi-ronment,” he says.

“It should be thought of as a new opportunity to innovate, and not as an alternative solution to server vir-tualisation. Client virtualisation reg-

ularly builds on the successes achieved from server virtualisation,” he adds.

Things to considerBut VDI is not as easy as it may first appear. There are issues, such as the fact that a virtual desktop system can be more expensive to implement than a traditional desktop. Another concern might be input/output (I/O).

John Fruche, vice-president for outbound marketing at NextIO, says many customers are not getting the full potential of their virtualised serv-er hardware, and this will cause more problems when it comes to desktop virtualisation.

“Today we have virtualised the CPU, memory and storage, but I/O virtualisation remains an untapped potential for channel partners to bring more value to their customers,” he says.

Having a strong I/O backbone will help customers implementing desk-top virtualisation. “As desktop ap-plications and files continue to grow in size, having the right amount of I/O throughput is essential,” adds Fruche. “Today, many are still rely-ing on ‘classic’ virtualisation, believ-ing that simply creating more virtual machines is the answer. However, when I/O becomes the bottleneck, adding client virtual machines into the mix only puts more stress on the critical subsystems.”

There is an opportunity for channel partners to help customers implement

VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger told attendees of the San Francisco VMworld 2012 conference that it wants to increase the percentage of virtualised servers from 50% to 90%

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the virtualisation pitch

OctOber 2012 | 8Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk

I/O virtualisation at the rack level to give them more headroom for their existing virtualised servers, and open them up to begin experimenta-tion with client virtualisation, he says. “This brings new revenue – and, most importantly, profitable

services revenue – to the reseller.”Databarracks’ Thomas believes that

when it comes to VDI, the cost argu-ment may not fly when implementa-tion costs can be higher than for a tra-ditional desktop. “The channel has to promote strategic, rather than tacti-

cal, solutions. Vendors have to put forward desktop virtualisation, not as an out-and-out cost saving, but as an enabler for remote working, disaster recovery and greater control over the security of desktop infrastructure,” he says.

Jon Leary, consultant at CSA Wa-verley, agrees that arguments in sup-port of VDI can include an improve-ment in data integrity and internal security, with management software able to block USB ports on thin cli-ents and no disk drives in service.

He says the real measure of a suc-cessful VDI implementation is the ability to deliver a rich user experi-ence typically not achievable with traditional, server-based computing methods.

But Leary admits that even if VDI is attractive, it “may prove a bit early for some businesses that are only just turning to datacentre consolidation and virtualising their servers – and they may not have the budget to ex-pand this to desktops”. And while it may bring operational cost savings once in place, the fact remains that in the current economic climate, VDI is a major upheaval for organisations and is a costly exercise, he says.

Security concernsSecurity may also be a concern, in a different way, because of the reli-ance on connectivity to a corporate or public network. “The network will need to be properly managed to avoid possible increased downtime in the event of network failure,” says Leary. “However, this can be prevented by the use of a clustered file system.”

Bitdefender’s Donaldson warns that VDI exacerbates performance is-sues of traditional endpoint security in virtualised environments and there is a primary opportunity for channel partners to help customers achieve greater return on their virtu-alisation investment by introducing new tools.

“Traditional anti-malware prod-ucts in particular create performance bottlenecks that reduce achievable consolidation ratios,” he says. “Too often, organisations and their virtuali-sation partners don’t realise that using traditional anti-malware makes no more sense than using traditional back-up solutions.”

On that note, Wells at Veeam says old back-up tools often do not func-tion well in the virtual world and are unable to harness the new capabili-ties virtualisation offers, such as the ability to truly test your back-ups for recoverability or instantly restore a server. There are significant returns for the channel in offering virtualisa-tion-based data protection systems

that address customers’ back-up and replication requirements, he adds.

“Products that truly provide en-hanced data protection capability for virtual environments will continue to be an increasing source of channel revenue in the virtualisation space,” says Wells.

Channel opportunitiesEmmet Florish, EMEA regional sales manager at SolarWinds, says chan-nel partners are ideally positioned to help customers as they step up their virtualisation, cloud and virtual desktop efforts.

“They will be able to help custom-ers navigate the complex choices be-tween public, private or hybrid clouds, the trade-offs between heter-ogeneous and homogenous virtuali-sation environments, and the choic-es associated with moving to a virtual desktop environment to deal with issues such as security and bring-your-own-device [BYOD] schemes,” he says.

Partners in the traditional virtuali-sation channel will need to add other areas of competence as new re-quirements appear, such as mobile device management (MDM), main-taining user personalisation, and en-suring secure data in remote and BYOD environments.

Florish predicts the possibility of a clash between traditional desktop partners with expertise in areas such as device management, patch man-agement and anti-virus, and those in the datacentre virtualisation space.

“Virtual desktop will require capa-bilities in both areas and some of the requirements will change,” he says. “In general, virtual desktop repre-sents an expansion of the virtualisa-tion market, partially at the expense of the traditional desktop market.”

The good news for partners is that the increased complexity in managing IT environments, allied to the drive to adopt different strat-egies, will provide them with the opportunity to reinforce their role as trusted independent experts that can help guide customers through a maze of choices. ■

more online› Online guide to virtualisation

› Virtualisation security on the rise

› The virtualisation channel pitch

› Virtualisation spending rising on back of VDI demand

Ian Wells, Veeam: “Products that truly provide enhanced data protection capability for virtual environments will continue to be an increasing source of channel revenue”

Kevin Bland, Citrix: “Only once vendors make this a reality will the cloud market be opened up to the possibility of server virtualisation”

the virtualisation pitch

One of the big problems with virtualisation used to be unlocking the serv-ers and desktops that

continued to stick with old physi-cal infrastructure. That might still be a challenge for some resellers but now most of the focus is on finding an angle that gets around the increasing commoditisation of virtualisation.

With the likes of Microsoft getting involved with the technology, more customers know about virtualisa-tion, but that has also raised the number of partners selling it and adding to the competition.

Those two ‘c’ words – commoditi-sation and competition – are some of the first you hear when you ask peo-ple about the general state of the vir-tualisation market, before delving down into how the channel can make money out of it.

for how resellers can make virtualisa-tion work for them.

The first is to expand their offering to include the virtualisation of other elements of the datacentre, such as the networks.

“This will further improve the op-erational capability of their custom-ers and improve margin retention,” says Wordsworth.

The second is to focus on the man-agement piece of the jigsaw, provid-ing software and hardware that can monitor, manage, optimise and se-cure virtual environments.

“As IT moves towards services de-livered from a virtualised set of re-sources, the ability to troubleshoot and tune performance becomes in-creasingly harder,” says Wordsworth.

“The need for the channel to pro-vide end-to-end visibility and control has never been greater and the tools that do so not only need to provide

Look beyond the first sale to make the most from virtualisationResellers should target sales in networks, back-up and security off the back of virtualisation, says Amro Gebreel

insight, but also actionable data. “Application performance man-

agement is key for resellers to add value to a virtualisation sale and en-sure that, as business-critical applica-tions are moved onto a hypervisor, IT is able to not only manage their SLA, but also improve it in the process.”

Virtualisation management is a large area. As the technology spreads, so does the need for helping hands and the channel has a key role in this.

“The biggest opportunity for resell-ers lies with the support for custom-ers. We’re seeing virtualisation adop-tion rates increase rapidly, but we’re also seeing an increasing need from SMEs for advice and consultancy pre-sales, as well as training and ex-tensive help-desk support services post-sale. If resellers ensure their in-frastructure offers this expertise and support, then the opportunity is there,” says John Roberts, head of

virtualisation

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

“Over recent years, the first phase of virtualisation has become an in-creasingly commoditised play for the channel. As a result, competition has risen exponentially and margins have been steadily falling,” says Dominic Wordsworth, product manager at ComputerLinks.

“That’s not to say that virtualisa-tion doesn’t open doors to wider op-portunities around consultancy and professional services in the server and desktop virtualisation market, but given the developing skillset in the end user community, engagement in these sales today often involves just licence fulfilment – hence the de-cline in margins.”

It is not that resellers can’t make money out of virtualisation, they just need to develop a pitch that delivers more than the basic package if they want to make decent margins.

Wordsworth has two suggestions

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managed services at Redstone.Resellers are in a good position be-

cause the management challenge is not confined to users starting out on the virtualisation journey but also early adopters now moving into a second stage with the technology.

“For next-generation virtualisa-tion customers, management and monitoring tools to help contain the VM sprawl and regain visibility of their resources are a good step up. Moving further along, virtualising desktops can offer real business ad-vantages, but should not be promot-ed as purely a cost saving exercise,” says Mark Thomas, solutions archi-tect at Databarracks.

Not only is management going to be important to get the most out of the virtualisation investment itself but it is going to be key to making a wider solution work. The savvy channel partner should always keep their eye on the bigger prize beyond the first sale.

Virtualisation is the norm for most new IT deployments but the real value lies in converged systems and integrated virtualisation. These tools, that bring the management of servers, storage, networking, security and op-erating systems together, decrease complexity and ultimately reduce operational expenditure for custom-er,” says Wayne Gratton, EMEA Solu-tionsPath business development di-rector at Avnet Technology Services.

Recovery and securityBeyond management, other impor-tant areas include back-up, recovery and security. The message that physi-cal infrastructure tools are no longer fit for purpose when it comes to a virtualised world seems to be getting through to customers and there are opportunities for resellers armed with the right products.

Shaun Donaldson, director of stra-tegic alliances at Bitdefender, puts forward the case for the security pitch: “An often overlooked aspect of going from a traditional to a virtual-ised datacentre is endpoint security.”

“Administrators become frustrated if traditional anti-malware is creating performance bottlenecks that become more apparent as consolidation ratios increase. Resellers can increase their own share of datacentre spending by including security in the sale,” Don-aldson says.

The same has been said many times by those selling back-up recov-ery services. Veeam found customers became frustrated using products that were never designed to cope with the virtual environment.

From a reseller perspective it makes a great deal of sense to try and build the solution out from the virtu-

For a long time the word virtualisation sparked off images of large enterprises with large server farms. But that has changed and the technology has moved downstream and as a result become an even more important channel play.David Blackman, general manager northern Europe and MEA at Acronis, points to its own research to highlight a trend in the market.

“Virtualisation has been talked about between the channel and the customer for years, but it has nearly always been associated with large enterprises, as they are widely believed to have the most to gain from the technology,” he says.

“However, virtualisation can work for any business, because most of them are facing the same IT challenges as larger enterprises. According to a recent global study by Acronis and research house Ponemon, 2012 is the year mainstream businesses adoption of virtualisation will outpace that of the large enterprise for the first time.”

“We are living in a hybrid world. The combination of the three main storage environments (physical, virtual and cloud) that most of us operate in may not necessarily offer the definitive solution to an organisation’s disaster recovery pain points – and who knows what changes will be introduced in the next 10 years – but it is certainly moving SMBs in the right direction.”

A growing market

alisation technology to include some of the storage, security and manage-ment features. With this forming the first step on a journey customers will make towards the cloud it makes much more sense selling the concept of the need for the right tools for the job at the outset rather than facing the difficult task of bolting them on to a hosted environment afterwards.

So it is perhaps of little surprise that smart resellers are already look-ing to that bigger picture and are in a good position to use virtualisation to open doors into other businesses.

“Virtualisation offers huge oppor-tunities for resellers to talk to their customers about technology refresh-es. It also opens up the conversation for the reseller to talk about where virtualised solutions should be host-ed and this offers new revenue and margin opportunities,” says Steve Davis, sales director of Next Genera-tion Data.

There are also opportunities to talk about software licensing. Always a hot topic for those concerned about compliance and audits, the virtuali-sation sale also can be a platform for a discussion on licensing.

“We see software licensing as one such opportunity. Virtualisation has redefined how software is installed and used in companies and many are grappling with how they pay for it,” says Roberts at Redstone.

Virtualisation is a staging post on a journey to the cloud but also presents a chance for resellers to get customers to reassess their IT infrastructure. That means a solution sale can be made, sidestepping the problems with commoditisation and decreas-ing the chances of going up against low-price competition.

With the chance to use virtualisa-tion as an opportunity to talk about a range of other issues, the pitch for a reseller could be a wide one. It should also help establish or ce-ment relationships between cus-tomer and supplier, because this is no single simple sell. With the likes of Gartner talking about workspace aggregation, which combines virtu-alisation, cloud computing and BYOD, this is an area that has the potential to deliver revenues for some time to come.

“Workspace aggregation solutions are a new technology offering that gives resellers the ability to blend lega-cy, Windows, web and SaaS applica-tions and content for customers to cre-ate highly portable digital work spaces,” says Richard Pegden, director of marketing at Centrix Software.

The world he describes couldn’t be further away from the cheap com-moditised sale and that can only be good news for resellers. ■

One of the problems with virtualisation deployments is that customers are often unable to articulate the right questions to ask resellers.

As a result they are unsure of the aims and the resulting benefits of making the move to a virtualised environment. One approach taken in other parts of the market is to use audits to assess the size of the problem and a similar approach is starting to be recommended on this side of the market.

“One approach to differentiate yourself from the rest of the market is the ability to provide fast user insight. Most desktop virtualisation projects stall or are derailed because this is lacking. Customers don’t know the right questions to ask of their existing IT strategy,” says Richard Pegden, director of product marketing at Centrix Software.

“Collecting and analysing data on end-user computing environments has been traditionally a manual process requiring floor-walking and intensive user research. While this represents a potential source of revenue, it is time-con-suming and ultimately offers little perceived value to the customer.

“There are now analytics solutions available that make it easier and quicker to gather facts on how an organisation’s users consume and use applications and devices on a day-to-day basis.

“Using workspace analytics solutions can reduce the time of the traditional desktop review/analysis phase by up to 50%.”

Ask the right questions

An often overlooked aspect of going to a virtualised datacentre is endpoint security

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Research reveals money-making opportunities in virtualisationFigures show that even existing virtualised IT estates have the potential to deliver revenue for resellers. Simon Quicke reports

ising cost savings, and the pay-off for mid-sized customers.

According to Colt’s research, the mid-market is in a position to reap the benefits of virtualisation quicker than the other ends of the business spectrum. Its whitepaper sets out the view that those with around 30 serv-ers are best placed to gain the biggest cost savings.

The areas identified as delivering the largest savings are hardware, where costs can be reduced by up to 75%, and maintenance, where monthly costs can be 25-50% lower.

Reseller potentialColt spells out the benefits on the costs front, but research from other sources has underlined the market potential for resellers.

VMware has also been busy put-ting numbers to opportunities. It has carried out a couple of notable stud-ies this year to gauge what is hap-pening in the virtualisation and cloud markets.

The first study found that a third of senior IT decision-makers across EMEA plan to spend a third of their annual enterprise IT budget on cloud computing over the next 18 months. With virtualisation seen as the main stepping stone to the hosted environ-ment, this clearly has some major consequences for resellers.

The second VMware study, con-ducted among 350 channel partners serving SMEs across EMEA, found that the number of heavily virtual-ised SMEs will double by 2014.

According to the research, resellers predict that 38% of companies which have already embraced virtualisation will have 80% of their businesses vir-tualised by 2014. That deeper level of investment appears to be a growing trend across the customer base, re-

vealing that it is not just greenfield sites that have the potential to deliver revenue for resellers.

Alastair Edwards, principal analyst at Canalys, which carried out the sec-ond study for VMware, points out that even in a tough economic market, the cost savings of virtualisation make it a compelling argument for customers.

“It’s a tough economic environ-ment at the moment, however, and organisations are getting pulled in many different directions, with costs being scrutinised at every step,” he says. “Virtualisation is being seen as a solution that delivers cost savings as well as broader business benefits. As a result, channel partners predict that SMEs are planning a rapid rate of virtualisation adoption within two years, with the majority of SMEs realising the benefits heavily virtual-ised environments can deliver. Savvy organisations are those mak-ing the connection between IT in-vestment and more holistic business priorities, and are virtualising today

to gain competitive advantage.”Whether selling to SMEs or

mid-market customers, the evidence points to more opportunities being available to resellers. The research keeps piling up, showing that for customers to reap the benefits of vir-tualisation they have to make further investments. That means both exist-ing and new customers offer resell-ers the chance to make some money out of virtualisation. ■

The cost savings of virtualisation make it a compelling argument for customers

Resellers predict that 38% of companies which have already embraced virtualisation will have 80% of their businesses virtualised by 2014

virtualisation

The percentage of businesses that have yet to make the move to virtual servers has hovered between 40% and

60% for the past few years, but re-gardless of the exact number, there is a perception that more sales can be made – and it is one based on truth.

Putting the numbers to one side, the message is clear that for resellers there is still a lot of opportunity in the virtualisation market.

Adoption rising“In terms of technology, the core hypervisor is reaching maturity. The percentage of servers virtualised is still much smaller than the number of physical servers in the estate. Or-ganisations have a long way to go to increase levels of virtualisation and to continue to reap the benefits,” says Dave Chalmers, chief technologist and vice-president of HP Enterprise Group, EMEA.

“We are rapidly seeing that virtu-alisation of the server is the begin-ning, not the end. Virtualisation technologies are being developed and deployed across the rest of the IT infrastructure, including much virtualisation in the storage environ-ment, and now starting in the net-work environment,” he adds.

Chalmers says virtualisation tech-nology is deepening across the mar-ket, and more virtualised servers are being deployed. His view of the un-tapped potential is echoed by various reports that have been released in re-cent months.

Cost benefits are clearA study by Colt, which produced a whitepaper stating the case for virtu-alisation in mid-sized organisations, made the benefits clear, including getting more out of IT resources, real-

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

more online› The virtualisation channel pitch

› IDC sees virtualisation uptake hurting EMEA server sales

› Online guide to virtualisation

› Fujitsu, Arrow ECS to offer virtualised back-up bundles

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Virtualisation market presents new opportunities but risk of stagnationResellers must look beyond implementation and provide additional services for long-term success, writes Ian Wells

Supporting the infrastructureWe are already seeing the beginnings of this change. For example, data pro-tection has received a huge boost in its evolution due to the introduction of virtualisation. The channel can now offer back-up and recovery capa-bilities that go far beyond what was possible, or affordable, with physical infrastructure. For example, organisa-tions can perform high-speed recov-ery of backed-up data; test back-up machines to ensure they will recover accurately; and construct replicated IT infrastructures for failover in the event of an incident.

By exploiting the nature of virtual machines in this way the channel can offer tools to customers that vastly expand on what they could do with

physical architecture. The potential for additional revenue streams is al-ready being borne out: despite 2011-2012 being a poor year for storage in general, data protection experienced 2.6% year-on-year growth, in part due to the growth of improved data protection for virtual environments.

Only the beginningHowever, these improved data protection capabilities are only the beginning of what virtualisation can offer. Virtualisation’s scalability works both ways – organisations can expand their infrastructure to enor-mous size, or alternatively drill down to the smallest, granular details.

Even now organisations are only beginning to scratch the surface of what virtualisation can offer, both in terms of improving existing process-es and bringing hitherto high-level tools such as replication or e-discov-ery within reach of a wider audience, and in terms of supplying entirely new abilities that simply were not possible in a physical environment. Indeed, the best comparison for virtu-alisation at this stage may well be the internet, which has grown from being

a new way to look at communica-tions infrastructure to a revolution in the way that a lot of the world’s pop-ulation shops, communicates and consumes information.

Similarly, organisations are yet to exploit the full potential of virtualisa-tion in enhancing the way they view and use IT. It is these additional tools and capabilities that will provide con-sistent revenue streams to the chan-nel, even if, and when, the growth of virtual infrastructure stagnates.

Channel strategiesThe channel, for its part, must be prepared. There is still steady in-come to be made from offering virtu-al infrastructure to organisations, whether for internal infrastructure or to support public cloud projects. However, the channel will truly make the most of virtualisation by of-fering capabilities such as data pro-tection on top of standard features and being ready for the introduction of more and more tools that push the influence and use of the technology further into the business. ■

Ian Wells is director northern EMEA at Veeam

Organisations are yet to exploit the full potential of virtualisation in enhancing the way they view and use IT

There is a risk of stagnation. Offering more scalable infrastructure will continue to attract customers, but eventually adoption will peak

virtualisation

The virtualisation market has come a long way in a relatively short time. While IBM may have begun devel-

opment of virtual machines in the 1960s, it is only just over a decade since VMware introduced the x86 server virtualisation that has become near-standard.

Now virtualisation is swiftly be-coming the de facto choice for IT in-frastructure, as the scalability and cost benefits it delivers are too large to ignore. What this means is that the channel will see sizeable reve-nue streams simply from providing virtual infrastructure to customers, along with the expertise needed to ensure that this infrastructure runs smoothly.

Growth and stagnationAt the same time, virtual infrastruc-ture is receiving a further boost from the growth of cloud computing and the need for large, scalable environ-ments to provide services effectively. With IDC predicting public cloud ser-vices to be a $100bn market by 2016, there is a huge amount of virtual in-frastructure needed to support these services that the channel can supply.

However, while this may seem like the market is currently rosy, the channel cannot simply rest on its lau-rels. Put simply, there is a risk of stag-nation. Offering more scalable infra-structure will continue to attract customers, but eventually adoption will peak.

At the same time, differentiation will become more difficult if vendors and the channel are essentially offer-ing the same item with different packaging. As a result, the channel also needs to look at the potential of virtualisation beyond simply allow-ing larger environments in less space.

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readers’ letters

send your letters and comments tosquicke@techtarget.com

BYOD programmes are only going to increase in complexityOwen cole, VP eMeA, extraHop NetworksThere has been a lot of attention recently to bring your own device (BYOD) amongst both vendors and resellers alike. However, while BYOD can provide both cost and productiv-ity gains, it brings with it the chal-lenge of monitoring and managing a multitude of different devices.

Organisations will need to adjust how they manage devices and ap-plications in order to accommodate BYOD and cannot rely on manage-ment or monitoring software in-stalled on client devices due to a lack of access to the device and the grow-ing number of device types.

Now’s the time for resellers to ad-dress this challenge, by looking for new approaches to monitoring per-formance that do not rely on software agents installed on client devices. These traditional tools may have worked well when employees’ devic-es were owned and managed by the

tions to service providers to alleviate this pressure. This presents the chan-nel with two opportunities: to help companies going for the in-house option to improve the availability of their systems and networks; and to add the provision of cloud-based ser-vices to their portfolio.

The key rests with ensuring that any issue in the datacentre is identi-fied before it affects the business. While in data networking this has been possible for many years, in the storage network this has, until re-cently, been a black hole. Traditional tools gave visibility of elements but today’s resellers and MSPs can take

robert Marcus, ceO of QuantumWave capitalEvents subsequent to Francois Hollande’s presidential victory proved true to expectations in the international business community in influencing the brightest minds in the finance and technology sector to make a return to London. In the financial sector, it is a case of back to the future. Many of the brightest economic minds returned to Paris during the heat of the crisis, bringing with them a great deal of capital and know-how generated over years in the city. This migration signalled a great possibility for France, including the opening of the closed circles of French finance to an Anglo-Saxon model that was reductionist, hyper-aggressive and capable of evolving Paris into a vibrant financial services hub, a hub that was different from the City, and hopefully better.

Similarly, in the technology sector, the democratisation of innovation, the decentralisation of power away from closed systems and organisations, including Silicon Valley itself, has distributed innovation to new hubs around the globe, including Paris. This has been largely disenfranchised from the corporate workforce by the global economic crisis, and inspired by the legend of the Valley and its iconic characters. This includes a new generation of bright, resourceful and determined French entrepreneurs that have been growing up, and fast. Highly educated, determined, these risk-takers are proving that they can innovate as aggressively, create as ingeniously and work just as hard as their contemporaries in California. Under Hollande, the entire ecosystem essential to the creation or financing of innovation has been put at risk and has caused the flight of entrepreneurs to London, specifically the much-discussed Tech City.

As a result, under pressure, individuals and nation states retreat into their past, into the illusion of a better and more perfect time. However, we can never find our future in our past. Even France, with its great history and traditions, must evolve into an economic future that consumes the potential of its people in a new era.

Hollande’s win proved a decisive victory – for London

advantage of new developments that offer a true end-to-end view.

Big data is a concern for many be-cause it is costly to store, manage and protect. Moving it is an issue because migrations are delicate operations and if you can’t see what your system is doing in detail and in real time you might be faced with big latency to the applications running the business.

For resellers looking to support their customers’ response to big data with datacentre upgrades, or plan-ning to lift the burden by hosting the relevant applications themselves, the ability to have a clear and all-encom-passing view of their SAN will make a dramatic difference to the SLAs they can comfortably commit them-selves to. Successful resellers will ensure that networks, storage systems and applications are as reliable and available as possible even when big data has become bigger data. ■

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company, but with BYOD there are too many different devices for these tools to be practical. New approaches such as network-based APM require no agents or complex configuration, removing the need for any overheads and simplifying the monitoring pro-cess across a variety of devices.

It’s this kind of innovative tech-nology that will prove valuable for resellers looking to make money in the networking market. BYOD is only going to increase in complexity for IT teams and providing solutions to such business pain points, is where resellers can increase revenue in the current economic climate.

Turning big data into big moneychris James, eMeA marketing director at Virtual Instruments Big data will get bigger and with that the pressure on infrastructure manag-ers to provide reliable, cost effective, IT services will get stronger. While some will choose to invest in making their datacentres more stable, others will outsource some of their applica-

Big data is a concern because it is costly to store and manage

backchat

judgement, even when the stakes were high, and David Ellis of ComputerLinks, who has been both a mentor and friend for over a decade.

What is the best business advice you have received?When I accepted my first management position at the very young age of 19, many areas of business were still new to me and in many ways daunting. My mentor at the time commented that if there is something that intimidates you, go out of your way to do that task at every opportunity until it is no longer a problem. It is something I have done ever since and has been crucial in getting me to the position I am in today from management and staffing to public speaking and networking.

What is running on your smartphone?Like many, I have apps for Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media channels. And, of course, I have access to Comparetheware.com.

What does the next five years hold for the channel?The IT market is already extremely competitive, with more and more channel organisations launching technologies and services that cross over. This will continue over the next five years, making it more important than ever for companies to be able to clearly differentiate themselves from the

competition. The ability to connect to buyers and profile the services channel players offer in more innovative ways will also be essential.

Share something most people do not know about you Despite only being in my thirties, I seem to have had a rather early mid-life crisis, and in a very stereotypical way, went out and bought myself a Harley-Davidson just over a year ago.

What goal do you have to achieve before you die?My primary business goal is to continue to establish Comparetheware.com as the default method of researching new IT purchases for both products and services. My personal goal is the same as any other father – to give my children the best start in life and see them grow into happy, successful adults.

What is the best book you have ever read?Three books that merge in to one - J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of The Rings trilogy. I first read these books way back at school, and they have stuck with me since. Even all these years later, they are still an absolutely immersive read.

And the worst film you have ever seen?I am a bit of a sci-fi nut, but one film that really failed to deliver (putting it mildly)

was Solaris. George Clooney has made some excellent films, but this was not one of them.

What would be your desert island MP3s?My favourite bands range from the Foo Fighters and Linkin Park to Keane and Adele, so quite a varied mix. One track that would definitely have to be on there would be the Eagles with Hotel California, but with that choice I am starting to show my age.

What temptation can you not resist?My downfall is food, as my increasing waistline demonstrates. Despite many attempts to shape up, I should still spend less time out socialising and more time in the gym.

What was your first car and how does it compare with what you drive now?Cars are really not my thing. I prefer the freedom and exhilaration of riding motorbikes. Give me a Harley-Davidson and some great weather any day – that’s when I am in my element.

Who would you least like to be stuck in a lift with? Anyone involved in politics. I like to think of myself as an honest and open person – what you see is what you get without any smoke and mirrors. We would be complete opposites, and it would make for a very difficult conversation.

If you could be any animal for a day, what would you be and why?I would have to be a dog. I have been compared to a bulldog on more than one occasion – I like to think this is due to my solid, straightforward, loyal and reliable nature, but I could just be kidding myself.

If you were facing awesome peril and impossible odds, which real or fictional person would you most want on your side and why?If we are talking fictional personalities, it would have to be Superman. Highly intelligent, fast, bullet-proof and he can fly. He is kind of like the Swiss army knife of superheroes.

A grizzly bear and a silverback gorilla are getting ready for a no-holds-barred rumble. Who is your money on and why?Definitely the silverback gorilla, simply based on numbers. Gorillas live in groups called troops and work as a team. I fancy their chances any day against a lone animal such as a grizzly bear. ■

fIve-MInute IntervIeW

tell us what you do for a livingI’m a co-founder of Comparetheware.com, an IT search portal that was launched at the Infosecurity Europe show this year. Comparetheware.com helps IT buyers to quickly select the right technologies for their business and the best suppliers to assist with the implementation based on their specific project needs. The service also enables our channel partners to promote their businesses and generate valuable incremental opportunities.

Why are you the right person for this job?Having worked in the IT channel for more than 15 years I have seen the selection and procurement process from all angles – user, reseller, vendor and distributor. The company’s goal is to revolutionise this process with a complementary information service that can help accelerate the sales and buying cycle. My experience gives me a unique perspective on both aspects.

What gets you up in the morning?It may sound random, but it is the need to be challenged. When launching a new business, product or service, the risks are higher – but so are the rewards.

Who helped you get to where you are today?My family, who have always been behind my decisions and trusting in my

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

Mike WorbyComparetheware.comMicroScope puts its questions to Mike Worby, co-founder of IT search portal comparetheware.com

Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk OCTObER 2012 | 15