Contents 1. SLA – Senior Level Advisory – XMA

2. Key Announcement implications – 2017 Global Threat Intelligence Rept

3. In Depth Focus – Securing the Digital Enterprise

4. Financial Round up – Brocade, Ciena, Cisco, DLink,

Extreme and Netgear

THE CHANNEL has been designed specifically for senior-level channel executives. It provides guidance and highly-strategic advice on the channels and what senior channel executives should be aware of. It will guide management teams on the impact of competitor announcements, insights into the market,

brief focus on services sub-segments, value stack, vertical focus and key director messages.

THE CHANNEL

| Channel Issues and Advice |

June 2017

1 SLA – Senior Level Advisory

Key Executive

Lee Hermani CEO

Andy Wright, Commercial Dierctor

XMA

Established in 1982, XMA are a leading IT supplier, employing over 500

staff from purpose built locations across the country. In December 2007 XMA was acquired by the Westcoast Group of companies (Westcoast, Clarity Computer Distribution (trading as Westcoast Ireland) and XMA).

XMA operates from purpose-built headquarters and distribution centre in Nottingham, comprising around 30,000 square feet with 1,200+ pallet location and 6,500 pick locations. It also has a warehouse facility in Milton

Keynes which covers 105,000 square feet with 5000 product lines.

Financials

XMA in Business

Other XMA markets are Education, Public Sector and Scotland from offices in:

London Nottingham Halifax

Glasgow Reading Cwmbran

£164.4 M

£222.4 M

£305.8 M

£385.5 M

£3.4 M£4.2 M

£6.2 M

£6.2 M

£0.00 M

£10.00 M

£20.00 M

2013 2014 2015 2016

£0.0 M

£100.0 M

£200.0 M

£300.0 M

£400.0 M

£500.0 M

Revenue and Operating Profit

Other Partners

Key Partners

Accreditations

XMA describe themselves as a compliant route to purchase, with presence

on local and national frameworks for hardware, software, supplies and services. Our accreditations with BSI - ISO 9001, 14001, 20000-1 and 27001 - are a hallmark of excellence and demonstrate its focus on meeting quality, environmental, service and information security

management standards.

Data centre Business

XMA represents many data

centre vendors such as HPE, Atlantic, Cisco, DELL EMC, HPE, SuperMicro and Nutanix.

Acquisitions

Viglen was formed in 1975 by

Vigen Boyadjian and was acquired by Alan Sugar (later Lord Sugar)'s company Amstrad in 1994 although Sugar stood

down four years before XMA acquired them in January 2014.The acquisition allowed

XMA to consolidate its position in Education with desktop, server and storage assembly.

XMA acquired Halifax-based print consumables firm QC Supplies later in 2014.

Analysis

XMA have embraced virtualisation and hyper-convergence but it is lacking any cloud offer. As UK Cloud has shown, cloud solutions in Public Sector are key. XMA needs to adopt cloud and transition from “product selling” to

an annuity model. NEXT > 2) Key Announcement Implications

2 Key Announcement Implications

Executive Summary

For leadership, it has

defined three overarching principles to adopt:

1. Security is a business problem. Security strategy and practice are needed

so your organization can conduct business while safeguarding its

sensitive information and ensuring its services are available whenever needed.

Security is not performed just for the sake of ”doing security things,” but

rather to support the needs of the business. Security should be

considered a basic business requirement. 2. Security is much more than

technology. Security is technology, processes, and people

working together. Throwing more technology at a security problem

without taking processes and people into consideration

2017 Global Threat Intelligence Report

This report contains recommendations for management, technical staff, and users. It also presents interesting findings from NTT Security analysis

of real-world security event data from the past year. These findings will assist you to in understanding just how pervasive certain types of attacks are so you see how they affect all organizations, including yours. Our hope is this report will enable you to improve your

own daily security practices, and perhaps the practices of others as well.

Global Findings

Phishing attacks were responsible for as much as 73 per cent of malware

being delivered to organizations. Nearly 30 per cent of attacks detected worldwide targeted end-user technology like Adobe products, Java and Microsoft Internet Explorer.

The three technologies found on end-user computers which were targeted most throughout the year were Adobe Flash Player, Microsoft Internet

Explorer, and Microsoft Silverlight.

Only 13 percent of exploit kit activity detected throughout the year occurred during the third quarter of 2016, showing a steady decline in exploit kit activity throughout the year.

77 per cent of all detected ransomware was in four industries – business and professional services (28 per cent), government (19 per cent), health

care (15 per cent), and retail (15 per cent).

The finance industry was the only industry to appear in the “top three most attacked industries” in all six geographic regions analyzed. The next most commonly attacked industry was manufacturing, appearing in the “top three” in five of the six regions. No other industry appeared in the

top three more than twice.

25 passwords accounted for nearly 33 per cent of all authentication attempts against NTT Security Honeypots. Over 76 per cent of authentication attempts included a password known to be implemented in the Mirai IoT botnet.

Globally, distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks accounted for less

than 6 percent of all attacks, but DDoS attacks accounted for over 16 percent of all attacks from Asia, and 23 perc ent of all attacks from Australia.

EMEA Findings

may do more harm than good. Also, with threats changing and evolving

so quickly,

most organizations can’t possibly add

new security technologies at a pace which can keep up with evolving threats.

This means organizations must often rely on people and processes to

compensate for the use of older security technologies

3. Security practices need to be more helpful to users. Attackers are

targeting users more than ever, but it’s unrealistic to think

exposing users to a few hours of security awareness training, conducted at best

once a year, will be effective at stopping attacks. Users need help from

technologies which prevent attacks from reaching them. Users

also need security support which helps users differentiate the

malicious from the benign. Users must be empowered to do

their jobs while protecting sensitive data. Leaving it all in users’ hands is unfair

and unrealistic.

Phishing and Ransomware

Figures:- Above: Phishing and Ransomware by Industry. Below; Phishing Volumes

.

NEXT > 3) In Depth Focus

3 In Depth Focus

BT and KPMG developed this paper

based on their experience with organisations they work with. It is a practical guide to those organisations

that are on their journey to use security as a business enabler as well as a useful checklist for those who are already on their journey

Brian T Geffert, Global Chief Information

Security Officer, KPMG

Mark Hughes, President,

BT Security

Securing the digital enterprise - BT and KPMG

Executive Summary

Cyber crime is big business, and it’s becoming more of a threat every day,

as more and more people and devices connect to the internet. The chances of a business or an individual becoming a victim have never been greater. Cyber security dominates the media. State-sponsored attacks. Multi-billion dollar organised crime. And the occasional over-enthusiastic

teenager.

In the first

whitepaper last year, BT and KPMG

focused on how cyber crime is changing,

who these ruthless criminal gangs and

individuals are, and how to fight back. This year, they’re taking a different approach. They look at the practical steps businesses go through on their journey

towards managing the risks. In July 2016, the UK’s National Crime Unit found cyber crime had

overtaken

‘traditional’ crime for the first

time, with over two million incidents of

computer misuse that year. There are

those who criticise cyber

security companies for scaremongering and exaggerating the threat to drum up business. But boards struggle to set the issue in a business context, and demystify a world of complexity. So, it’s time to look differently at cyber security. Move beyond the jargon and understand the

real risks of the digital world.

Don’t start with Technology

Questions to ask:

• Have you got the balance right between people, process and technology?

• Are you clear what the business really needs to protect, and who has

decided that?

• Have you planned, prepared and exercised for potential attacks?

Large UK firms are

prepared to pay out more than £136,000 on average to cyber criminals who launch ransomware attacks, a WEF survey has revealed

The top three most important factors in cutting your security risks

Risk Quantification

Summary

The hard reality is that all firms face cyber attacks. Any business is a potential target. As you move from worrying to false confidence, you’ll get the people, processes and technology to protect yourself; but it’s often not

until you’re attacked that you truly understand what the risks of working in digital are like, let alone how to start thinking differently about security. From the board down, we must change how we see cyber security. The mindset and models will just keep us saying the same things. It’s not

sustainable. These myths will become traps, unless we make security another thing we always think about. Technology is changing. The threats are changing. We have to cut through the jargon, and think about our roles differently. If we want to understand the risks we need to communicate

better. The role of the CISO is shifting: from guard dog to guide dog. They’re moving into roles which mean they need to start thinking about how security affects bigger business decisions.

By starting to ask ourselves some hard questions, we can change our approach and help our businesses succeed.

NEXT > 4) Financial Roundup

4 Financial Roundup

Recently Released Financials

Brocade Q217 – Revenue of $552.8M was up 6 per cent Y on Y and down 5 per cent sequentially. Gross margin was 62 per cent

o OEM 55 (63) per cent

o Channel 45 (37) per cent o International 50 (47) per cent o Services 18 (18) per cent o Data Storage 51 57) per cent

o Ethernet 31 (27) per cent

Cisco Q317 – Revenue of $11.9B was down 1 per cent Y on Y but up 3 per cent sequentially. Gross margin was 64 per cent

o US & Canada 59 (60) per cent

o EMEAR 25 (26) per cent o AsiaPac 16 (15) per cent

Ciena Q217 – Revenue of $707.0M was up 10 per cent Y on Y and up 34 per cent sequentially. Gross margin was up a point at 45 per cent

o North America 60 (62) per cent o EMEA 15 (15) per cent o Car and LATAM 5 (9) per cent o APAC 20 (14) per cent

o Packet Optical Transfer 71 (68) per cent o Packet Optical Switching 9 (11) per cent o CESD 1 (1) per cent

o SW and Service 19 (20) per cent

DLink Q117 – Revenue of $147M was down 20 per cent Y on Y and down 19 per cent sequentially. Gross margin was 26 per cent

o EMEA 22 (21) per cent o North America 12 (15) per cent

o AsiaPac 66 (64) per cent

Extreme Q317 – Revenue of $148.7M was up 19 per cent Y on Y but flat sequentially. Gross margin was up 5 points at 55 per cent

o EMEA 35 (35) per cent

o Americas 55 (56) per cent o AsiaPac 10 (9) per cent

Netgear Q217 – Revenue of $330.7M was up 6 per cent Y on Y and 2 per cent sequentially. GM was 28 per cent. Segment breakdown:

o EMEA 17 (21) per cent o Service Provider 17 (27) per cent

For further information, please contact:

Keith Humphreys – Managing Consultant at euroLAN – keith@eurolanresearch.com