Indispensable channel analysis

MicroScopemicroscope.co.uk

December 2015

◆ ANALYSIS ◆ OPINION ◆ LETTERS ◆ FIVE-MINUTE INTERVIEW ◆

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CLOUD AND SECURITY LOOM LARGE ON

THE HORIZON

PLUS:◆ CAN GOOGLE REALLY TAKE ON AMAZON AND MICROSOFT IN CORPORATE MARKET?

◆ HOW CHANGES TO EMPLOYEE RIGHTS AFFECT CHANNEL BUSINESSES◆ VENDORS SHARE USEFUL ADVICE FOR RESELLERS SEEKING SUCCESS IN THE CLOUD

Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk DECEMBER 2015 | 2

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With most customers having adopted some sort of cloud computing, the challenge now is to help them develop their strategy and the applications that are going to be hosted off-site

Intuition overrules data intelligence

BILLY MACINNES OPINION

You can have all the facts and figures in the world at your fingertips, kid, but in the end, some-

times you have to go with what your gut tells you.”

We’re all used to hearing that kind of comment in films and TV shows. Usually it’s from a grizzled veteran to a rookie cop when they’re under pressure to make a momentous, pos-sibly career-ending decision to take on the bad guys. It’s something of a cliché that they always end up going with what their gut tells them.

Anyway, that kind of thing might make for good cinema or TV, but here, in the rather more sedate IT industry, decisions are taken after a dispassionate evaluation and analy-sis of the data. After all, what role could the gut possibly play in an industry built on data, analysis and intelligence?

The answer would appear to be quite a lot. Surprisingly, many CIOs faced with a choice between their instinct and experience versus data and advice from third parties go with their gut. According to a study com-missioned by Colt, 68% of CIOs base pressured decisions on instinct and experience, over and above any other criteria.

The study reveals that 71% of CIOs feel their intuition and personal

experience is more effective than data intelligence when making decisions. It also reports that 76% of senior IT leaders go with their intuition, even though it is sometimes at odds with the data or advice from third parties.

In terms of managing external events, responding to emerging cus-tomer requirements or dealing with changing compliance regulations, respondents believe professional experience is more important than using data and intelligence.

Colt argues that the reliance on personal experience may have some-thing to do with the increased indi-vidual risk that senior IT leaders feel when making decisions as IT has acquired a more strategic role in the business.

As Carl Grinner, executive vice-president at Colt, puts it: “When the stakes are high and a CIO is feeling the pressure to make the right deci-sion that will result in business and career success, the natural reaction is to draw on instinct and professional judgement.”

Which may be true, but the study throws up a couple of other ques-tions. For instance, why don’t CIOs trust the data to make important deci-sions? Does this suggest they don’t actually trust their own systems when it comes to making decisions that could affect their career? If so, is the data and intelligence they’re being asked to base decisions on not good enough? Is it, perhaps, not properly aligned with their decision making? If not, who is to blame? Aren’t CIOs responsible for the data policy in their organisations?

The good news for the channel is that 76% of CIOs cited trust between suppliers as the most important ele-ment to ensure successful outcomes during pivotal moments and 78% view technology partners as a source of technical innovation.

Although, given their reluctance to fully trust the data or third party advice, I suspect that sometimes CIOs approach the trust issue along the lines of: “Thanks for the data and advice guys, but I’m going to have to go with my gut and you’re just going to have to trust me on this one.”

Where does that leave channel partners? As trusted advisers, I guess they should make sure they have a supply of antacids to hand if any-thing goes wrong. ■

SIMON QUICKE EDITOR’S COMMENT

The curtain is coming down on 2015, which, for most people, has been a good year. There are many rea-sons to be optimistic about what lays ahead too.

With most people making the transition to the cloud, this was another 12 months where more customers and channel partners changed their business models. As one person remarked, “it is not about the cloud happening, but about the cloud that has happened”. Certainly, the debate has changed over the course of this year, shifting away from the hypothetical to instead focus on concrete examples of customers that are changing their businesses.

As a result, the phrase of the year has to be ‘business transformation’, with those words cropping up in almost every conversation with vendors.

With most customers having adopted some sort of cloud computing, whatever the mix of hybrid, private and public, the challenge now is to help them develop their strategy and the applications that are going to be hosted off-site. That should provide the channel with plenty of opportunities to put their consultancy skills into practice by sitting down with customers and discussing the future.

This year has also seen Sophos and Softcat go through successful IPOs, indicating that the investment community once again appreciates sound technology companies. That could be the precursor to more activity in 2016, and the pro-gress of those businesses that have gone public should help the channel as a whole in terms of profile.

On the technology front there has been plenty to talk about, with Microsoft’s Windows 10 a slow burner that should have some positive impact for resellers in the new year as more customers choose to upgrade. The signs are looking good as more users adopt the operating system, and there should also be some action for those selling hard-ware in the months ahead.

It has also been a year of splits, with Symantec and HP gaining the headlines as they each refocus their operations. It is still early days, but there are signs are that it will be a challenge for the slimmed down organisations.

At the other end of the spectrum, the largest ever IT merger was announced, with Dell moving to buy EMC. If the deal goes through as planned, it will generate plenty of headlines next year.

There is plenty to look forward to and we wish all our read-ers a Merry Christmas and a successful new year. ■

A year of business transformation

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Channel partners might need to stock up on antacids for when a CIO’s gut instinct proves wrong

Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk DECEMBER 2015 | 3

analysis

Businesses seek trusted partners to address heightened security fearsWith businesses crying out for help in securing their data, Sean McGrath suggests it is time for the channel to step up

to their channel partners, with ven-dors coming a distant second.

Opportunities are rife across busi-nesses, both large and small.

The Cyber Streetwise Forum, a gov-ernment initiative designed to raise security awareness among the small business community, said SMEs find it hard to navigate what they perceive to be a highly complex subject, often turning to their accountants or bank managers for advice.

One would assume that as we move further up the food chain, security capabilities might evolve. Not necessarily so. Quocirca and Trend Micro recently polled 600 large European businesses and found that out of 251 companies that had been targeted, 31 admitted they were not aware if any data had been stolen and six businesses knew of

successful attacks, but had no idea how much data had been lost.

Public and private interestIt’s not just private organisations that are crying out for help to secure their digital estate, but public ones too. Chancellor George Osborne con-firmed a £1.9bn cyber security budget

in his 2015 Autumn Statement. £165m has been earmarked for a Defence and Cyber Innovation Fund, created to support innovative pro-curement across both defence and cyber security.

The NHS represents an even larger opportunity than defence. The third largest employer in the world – behind only Wal-Mart and McDonalds – the National Health Service, while reliant on IT, remains light years behind other public sector organisations in terms of its techno-logical capabilities. This is, of course, no surprise. Delays in digitisation programmes are to be expected when handling highly sensitive patient data and when you consider the clear and present threats that exist.

However, progress is inevitable and as the health service is dragged – kicking and screaming – into a state of ‘digital by default’, it will fall on the IT industry to ensure that the NHS’s security framework and poli-cies match the increasingly perilous security threats.

Understand the opportunityOf course, capitalising on this oppor-tunity is not without its challenges. With vendors popping up left, right and centre, it can be difficult for part-ners to evaluate systems and under-stand how they might fit into their existing portfolio.

And cyber security isn’t a proposi-tion in and of itself. Bringing together compliance management, risk man-agement, mobile security, cloud secu-rity, identity management and event management to offer a complete secu-rity solution is no small feat.

However, there really has never been a better time to make a play on the market. When Quocirca and Trend Micro conducted their study in 2013, 26% of respondents were com-placent about the breaches they had suffered. In 2015, this figure has nose-dived to just 6%.

There has been a paradigm shift in the value that businesses place on their data. In essence, organisations are overwhelmingly ready to jump – they just need the channel to give them a friendly push. ■

SECURITY

As the dust settles follow-ing Dell’s rogue certificate blunder and TalkTalk begins the long journey to

rebuilding its reputation, one cannot state it clearly enough – the current security landscape is a veritable gold-mine for the channel.

The 2015 Global Information Security Survey (GISS) found that 88% of the 1,755 global organisations polled did not believe their informa-tion security fully met the needs of the business.

And who are these organisations turning to in order to plug these holes? Training company QA recently asked 100 UK enterprises who they would reach out to for advice on increasing capabilities around cyber security. An over-whelming 92% said they would turn

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Organisations are ready to jump – they just need the channel to give them a friendly push

Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk DECEMBER 2015 | 4

analysis

Can Google really take on Amazon and Microsoft in corporate cloud?Sean McGrath considers whether Google really stands a chance in the enterprise space or if it's a case of too little, too late

Clouds apartOne of the big problems with Google’s cloud plans to date is that the offerings have been quite dis-parate. On the one hand, it has its Google for Work and Google Apps product suites, competing with the likes of Microsoft Office 365. On the other, it has its infrastructure business, competing with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure. What it doesn’t have is a full stack approach that will appeal to the enterprise. As a result, Google has

just a 3.6% share of the infrastructure as a service (IaaS) market.

By giving Greene carte blanche over all the cloud divisions, she will have the power to create cohesive propositions, well suited to the enter-prise environment. She has a moun-tain to climb. AWS is now on pace for a run-rate of $7.3bn – an 81% year-over-year increase. And to think that just last year the industry was asking if Amazon’s cloud business would ever make any money.

Google in the channelIt’s not just the executive appoint-ment that signals an assault on the enterprise. Google is turning to the channel to get the message out. In November, Google announced that it would waive the Google Apps licence fees for new customers already tied into enterprise agreements with the likes of Microsoft, with all deals going through its channel partners.

Too little, too late?Despite sending all the right mes-sages, Amazon and its investors

probably won’t be too fazed. Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster pre-dicted that Google’s late arrival would prove an unbridgeable chasm. “AWS has the development community behind it,” he told CNBC. “They give a ton of features away to small businesses to get on AWS. It’s growing at a wicked rate. And while it’s important that Google is there, the reality is this is going to be a placeholder business for it longer term.”

There is some hope for Google in the productivity applications market. The California-based company recently announced that more than two million businesses are now pay-ing to use some part of its online pro-ductivity suite. Still a drop in the ocean compared with active Office 365 subscribers, but at least Google is making inroads.

Ultimately, the company’s success in the enterprise will rely heavily on the channel and whether Greene can utilise Google’s vast resources to cre-ate propositions that will be valuable to both partners and customers. ■

Google announced last month that it would waive the Google Apps licence fees for new customers already tied into enterprise agreements with the likes of Microsoft, with all deals going through its channel partners

CLOUD

Google’s cloud offensive has got people talking. Last month, the search giant announced that it

was bringing in VMware co-founder Diane Greene to take charge of the company’s cloud businesses – a clear message that Google is ready to take a seat at the grown-up table.

Greene, an MIT-trained engineer and computer scientist and existing Google board member, brings a degree of enterprise pedigree previously absent in Google’s plans for cloud domination. She co-founded VMware with her husband Mendel Rosenblum in 1998, selling it five years later to EMC for $635m.

Google’s heritage is rooted deeply in consumer-focused online ser-vices – search, email and the like. Google pays the bills primarily through advertising on each of those platforms. The announce-ment that Greene is to head up the corporate cloud business sent a clear message to Silicon Valley that Google has Amazon and Microsoft in its crosshairs.

“This new business will bring together product, engineering, mar-keting and sales and allow us to oper-ate in a much more integrated, co-ordinated fashion,” said Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google.

“As a long-time industry veteran, and co-founder and CEO of VMware, Diane needs no introduction. Cloud computing is revolutionising the way people live and work, and there is no better person to lead this important area.”

Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk DECEMBER 2015 | 5

We asked channel and vendor luminaries to identify the tech-nologies and trends

that will present channel partners with the best opportunities in 2016, how prepared channel partners are to take advantage of these trends next year and what vendors and dis-tributors can do to help make 2016 a strong year?

In the first of two articles, we cover the top two areas highlighted by respondents: Security and cloud.

Ian Kilpatrick, chairman, Wick Hill GroupSecurity is prominent in the chan-nel’s mind at the moment. Recent commercial and non-commercial threats have moved it up boards’ agendas and their budget allocations.

Rapid (or perceived as rapid) changes in working behaviour, including, but not limited to, mobil-ity, cloud and wireless, have moved

own in providing advice, assistance, support and working solutions.

The challenge is to skill up for some of the newer solutions and pro-vide support in educating and sup-porting SMEs or IT teams. They may need support not only in evaluating and deploying security solutions but also, in many cases, in selling those solutions to higher management, who are now showing significant

Security and cloud look set to be top

trends for 2016Billy MacInnes finds out what industry

experts view as the technologies and trends that will present channel partners

with the best opportunities in 2016

interest in knowing that their com-pany is secure.

The additional challenge for the channel is dealing securely (pun intended) and confidently with ini-tial sales and pre-sales for what can be new technology for them. That’s where distributors and vendors come in – providing full sales and pre-sales support for the initial implementa-tions, as well as the training to deliver the associated services.

Tim Goodwin, Emea channel director, CyberArkA number of high-profile breaches in the second half of 2015 served as a reminder that legacy and tradi-tional technologies, which typically focus on the perimeter, aren’t doing enough to prevent the onslaught of cyber attacks. With the presump-tion that motivated attackers will find a way in, or indeed that they are already in, adding a new layer of security to protect sensitive data and

2016 predictions

business security from the “per-ceived” security of the gateway pro-tecting companies from all threats to a world where a breach can and will happen.

There is a great deal of confusion and ignorance of the real challenges, the nature of risk assessment, the solutions available and how to deploy and manage them. This is where the channel comes into its

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“A number of high-profile breaches in the second half of 2015 served as a reminder that legacy and traditional technologies aren’t doing enough to prevent the onslaught of cyber attacks” Tim Goodwin, CyberArk

Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk DECEMBER 2015 | 6

2016 predictionsinformation inside the network will be the key trend driving a continued increase in security spend and chan-nel growth in 2016.

The channel is likely to see an increase in customer concern around the rise in UK and EU legislation – in particular the EU General Data Protection Regulation. As these regu-lations force companies to disclose breaches earlier and more publicly, they will not only be looking to the channel to secure privileged accounts which give the malicious insiders their power, but also for assurances they are compliant and can make security commitments to their customers.

In a world where IT infrastructures are increasingly complex – with cloud-based applications, outsourc-ing and third-party access require-ments – it is critical the channel can offer the additional layer of security that focuses specifically on sensitive information and accounts that have access to it.

Chris Hurst, UK country manager, RedSocksThere is no doubt cyber security attacks will continue in terms of frequency and severity. In fact, the reality is that most companies have already been compromised.

Too many organisations rely on traditional security protection, includ-ing antivirus, endpoint protection and firewalls, which is clearly not enough. The net result is a solid opportunity for resellers to move their custom-ers along the security maturity curve towards more sophisticated solutions that offer superior detection and reme-diation capabilities.

As we look towards 2016, resellers that deliver value-add will thrive. The customer is increasingly looking to the channel for best practice, expe-rience and advice, especially when it comes to an issue as critical as mini-mising the risk of a cyber attack.

Michael Hack, senior vice-president of Emea operations, IpswitchIT security spending exceeded a whopping $70bn in 2015. That’s a lot of revenue going through the

“Security remains the cause of many sleepless nights for IT professionals. They need the support of trusted IT partners to cope” Michael Hack, Ipswitch

channel. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, security remains the cause of many sleepless nights for IT professionals. They need the support of trusted partners to cope. Breaches, malware, vulnerabilities and zero-day attacks cause the majority of stress for IT professionals, pointing to the inevitable conclusion that, as a whole, we are not doing a good enough job at staying ahead.

Since the scrapping of the Safe Harbour pact, moving data securely and reliably to support critical busi-ness processes has come into the spotlight. In the absence of new guid-ance to replace the Safe Harbour sys-tem, partners can advise customers to audit data flows, pay close attention to the requirements of the EU data privacy law and assume that what-ever comes next will be more rigor-ous and require an evidence trail.

If the current timetable for the General Data Protection Regulation is on track, businesses will need to be compliant in two years. But our research shows one in five UK busi-nesses still have no idea whether the changes will apply to them, despite

confirming they store and process personal data. Significant invest-ment will be required to help firms process and store data, according to the new standard.

Channel partners that make it their business to stay on top of the GDPR updates, understand the likely impact of the changes ahead and how to implement solutions to success-fully reduce burden and achieve compliance will be in a great position to make the most of the opportunities this legislative precedent has to offer.

Andy Hardy, Emea managing director, Code42Endpoint data protection and secu-rity will be high growth areas of demand in 2016 as a result of com-pany data being increasingly moved away from datacentres onto endpoint devices such as laptops and work-stations, due to the proliferation of flexible working and bring your own device (BYOD) policies. Identifying vendors that can operate at the inter-section of these growing trends will stand channel partners in good stead for the coming year.

Channel salespeople should pre-pare for the transition to as-a-service solutions for 2016, as opposed to the physical products they are likely to have focused on previously. This means understanding the value of these solutions and being able to demonstrate their value to a cus-tomer is essential. One way to do this is to clearly illustrate the return on investment for everything-as-a-service contracts compared to legacy systems.

Vendors need to make pricing as clear as possible, and provide tools that enable the channel and its cus-tomers to easily understand what a solution will cost over time.

Admittedly, in terms of cloud and software-as-a-service (SaaS) pricing, illustrating the likely costs for a customer can prove difficult. This is because pricing for services are based on hard-to-predict variables, such as how much data will be stored or accessed. Channel partners can mitigate this by looking for solutions where costs are made more predictable, for instance by offering unlimited data capacity and access.

Dave Stanley, director, AditinetThe unprecedented loss of data in 2015 has left users searching for the right solutions to their problems. Channel partners have been building the skills to address this and are well placed to offer tangible and beneficial advice to their customers.

The channel is positioned to show value and separate the wheat from the chaff on behalf of their clients like never before. That said, partners still need to be wary of products that won’t make it through 2016, either due to failure or acquisition.

With lots of opportunity and more startups than previous years, we will see vendors fighting for market share and potentially damaging channel relations. One-tier or two-tier channel models need to be robust and consistent to build channel confidence and long-term success for all parties.

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“There is no doubt cyber security attacks will continue in terms of frequency and severity. The reality is that most companies have already been compromised”

Chris Hurst, RedSocks

Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk DECEMBER 2015 | 7

2016 predictionsJohn Campbell, Emea channel director, NetSuiteIn 2016, we will continue to see companies move their core business processes to the cloud as the poten-tial of the internet of things (IoT) creates more opportunities for agile businesses. Meanwhile, consumers will demand ever superior customer experiences. This presents a huge opportunity for value-added resellers (VARs) that can quickly adapt their business model and products and services to meet these ever-changing market needs.

We’ve already seen the success of businesses that have been able to reinvent their business models, moving from business to business (B2B) to business to business to con-sumer (B2B2C) to anything. Agile companies can use the technology platforms available in the market today to capture additional revenues via B2B and/or B2C e-commerce even as the pace of change acceler-ates faster than ever.

Meeting the business needs while delivering great services and experi-ence to clients is a win-win for every-one – vendors, channel partners and their customers.

Jan Lawford, Emea channel director, VCEAccording to Goldman Sachs, spend-ing on cloud computing infrastruc-ture and platforms will grow at a 30% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2013 to 2018, com-pared with 5% growth for the overall enterprise IT. However, its younger sibling, hybrid cloud, is set to really make its mark in 2016. Markets and Markets predicts the hybrid cloud market will be worth $84.7bn by 2019 with a CAGR of 27%.

Hybrid cloud is going to grow because it enables IT departments to adopt a “best of both worlds” approach in which a business can develop its own private cloud, but also make selective use of public clouds, while driving business value and innovative services. It helps

deliver today’s applications at a lower possible cost while allowing new applications and data-driven insights to differentiate businesses.

Channel partners should be play-ing a crucial role in educating cus-tomers on the benefits of cloud solu-tions, as well as recommending the appropriate service and acting as a trusted advisor, rather than simply just selling components.

Gabriel Gambill, director of product and programme management, QuorumAs virtualisation continues to grow, we will see many channel partners turning towards cloud solutions as a way to offer customers a flexible and cost-effective approach to IT. 2016 will be an important year for the growth of cloud technology, and channel partners will have an impor-tant role to play in this development.

Customers are becoming more aware of the risks of business down-time and will start to place an emphasis on channel partners able to offer highly available disaster recov-ery and business continuity solu-tions. Next year, it will become vital that channel partners work closely with vendors to offer solutions that can provide business continuity and educate customers on the conse-quences of business downtime.

Ankush Korla, Emea vice-president channel sales, CommVault2015 saw a continued evolu-tion to the cloud, both in terms of Commvault’s business strategy and those of our partners and resellers. As many customers are starting their journey to the cloud, we have seen a huge increase in the uptake of multi-channel environments and a more service-led approach. Resellers and partners have had to evolve to sup-port these hybrid models, expanding their expertise to cover all bases. Our partners are moving to more cloud-led business models, with services being extremely important

within that. The cloud is real, and it is here, and the channel has been required to adapt to this more in 2015 than any year before.

Looking forward to 2016, there will be a continued use of the mid-dle ground of on-premise, hybrid and cloud models for data man-agement. Software providers will continue to expand and refine their offerings, making 2016 the year of hybrid cloud scenarios becom-ing the norm. Presently, there is a debate about what putting your data into the cloud means. In 2016, we expect the journey to and from the cloud to continue for customers and expect our partners to accelerate their transformation to services and cloud-led models.

Chris Roberts, channel director, PulsantOver the past 18 months there’s been a transition by resellers, VARs and managed service providers (MSPs) to move closer towards fully adopt-ing cloud. There’s also been the general recognition, particularly by large licensing resellers, of the need for a stronger focus on the services around cloud to grow business and ensure success.

Part of this relates to the fact that organisations need to add value on top of their infrastructure offerings to differentiate themselves in a highly competitive and clustered market.

We need to see more focused, channel-friendly products from

vendors, particularly in light of the move towards hybrid cloud.

This could be hindered by consoli-dation in the market, something that will continue into 2016. There have been several mergers and acquisi-tions in the channel, resulting in larger resellers with larger offerings.

The danger is customers may be missing out on products, services and solutions that meet their needs. Resellers may be prone to sell what they want to sell, as opposed to what customers or the channel actually need. What’s needed is resellers that understand and meet the challenges and opportunities faced by organisa-tions, regardless of sector.

Campbell Williams, director of strategy and marketing, Six Degrees GroupCloud adoption rates will continue to accelerate in 2016 and drive changes in IT. Comms resellers need to stay ahead of demand and develop their cloud skills to meet the needs of customers that have gained cloud experience through their core IT infrastructure.

The new year will see another phase of comms convergence, where the channel will increasingly deliver unified communications software on infrastructure as a service (IaaS) cloud platforms. It will be interest-ing to see how resellers keep up with the speed at which the cloud market is growing and who gets left behind. ■

“Channel partners should be playing a crucial role in educating customers on the benefits of cloud, as well as recommending the appropriate service and acting as a trusted advisor, rather than simply just selling components” Jan Lawford, VCE

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Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk DECEMBER 2015 | 8

In a decision that will cause con-cern for all employers of mobile workers, the European Court of Justice has concluded that the

first and final trips of the working day to and from work could be con-sidered “working time”.

This could have an impact on the time that counts towards the maxi-mum number of hours people can work, and potentially even how much a channel employer will be required to pay its workers.

Workers question contractThe decision was made by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in the case of Federacion de Servicios Privados del sindicato Comisiones Obreras v Tyco Integrated Security SL and another.

Tyco employed 75 workers to fit and repair security equipment at the premises of customers throughout Spain. In 2011, Tyco restructured its business and re-assigned all its employees to the central office in

How changes to employee rights affect channel businessesMark Stevens looks at what proposed updates to working time, minimum wages, the employment of illegal immigrant workers and zero hours contracts mean for employers

employee rights

Madrid. The local offices across Spain were closed down.

Each technician was responsible for a particular region of the country. Even though the workers were assigned to Tyco’s Madrid office, they did not have a “habitual place of work”. Tyco arranged its team of technicians so that each of the workers was assigned a company car to use to travel from their home to customers. Having completed all of their client visits, the technicians would then return home at the end of the day.

Tyco controlled the assignments that the technicians undertook by creating a task list and sending an itinerary to the technicians via their mobile phones. Tyco’s policies defined working time to specifically exclude the time that each worker spent travelling from their home to their first customer’s premises and the time they then spent returning home from the last customer. The distance between customer premises

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One of the key announcements in July’s budget related to the introduction of a National Living Wage (NLW). The NLW will be a premium amount on top of the National Minimum Wage (NMW) for workers aged 25 and over. The government’s first premium will be set in April 2016 at 50p, increasing the NMW to £7.20 per hour. This means that the minimum employers will need to pay workers within that age bracket from April 2016 will be £7.20 per hour.

On 1 September 2015, the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS) announced measures to increase compliance with the NMW and NLW. There are new measures proposed by BIS:■ If an employer fails to pay their staff at least the NMW, the penalty will be

200% (rather than the current 100%) of the money the employer owes their staff. However, this penalty will be halved if it is paid within 14 days. The cap of £20,000 per staff member remains the same.

■ A new team will be set up within HMRC to investigate the most serious criminal cases involving companies who deliberately obstruct the NMW and NLW. They will have the same powers as the HMRC, including the ability to ‘name and shame’ employers. HMRC currently tackle the most high-risk areas, such as social care, hairdressing and retail.

■ A new role – director of labour market enforcement and exploitation – will be created to oversee enforcement of the NMW and NLW, the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate and the Gangmasters Licensing Authority. Those found guilty of not paying the NMW or NLW will be at risk of disqualification from being a company director for up to 15 years.

Introducing a National Living Wage

Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk DECEMBER 2015 | 9

employee rightsand a technician’s home would vary, and could be more than 100km.

Tyco’s technicians tried to chal-lenge this classification, arguing it was in contradiction of the EU Working Time Directive, and that their initial and final trips of the day should be counted as working time. The Spanish courts referred the case to the ECJ for a decision.

The legal positionArticle 2 of the EU Working Time Directive defines “working time” as any period during which the worker is working; at the employer’s dis-posal; and carrying out their activity or duties in accordance with national laws and/or practice.

The directive was implemented in Great Britain by means of the Working Time Regulations 1998.

The ECJ’s decisionThe ECJ was satisfied that the time spent by Tyco employees in travel-ling to and from the first and final tasks of the day fell into the defini-tion of working time. The ECJ deter-mined that travelling to and from customers’ premises was an inher-ent part of the job and, as such, the requirement for the technician to be working, had been met.

In addition, the ECJ found that the workers were at Tyco’s disposal dur-ing the travelling time because Tyco could control the activities under-taken by the worker during the

The Immigration Bill 2015-2016 had its first reading in the House of Commons on 17 September 2015. Several proposals have been introduced to reduce illegal working in the UK and the exploitation of illegal migrant workers. All employers should be aware of the proposed measures, which include:■ Widening the scope of the criminal offence for knowingly employing an

illegal migrant. An employer will be at risk in circumstances where it would have ‘reasonable cause to believe’ a person is an illegal worker. Conviction for this offence would also be increased from two to five years in prison.

■ Requiring businesses to close for up to 48 hours as a result of an inspec-tion. Licensed premises, such as restaurants or public houses, could be at risk of losing their licences if they employ illegal migrants.

■ Making illegal working a criminal offence. This will allow wages paid to illegal workers to be seized as proceeds of crime.

■ The creation of an enforcement agency to take action against employers who exploit migrant workers.

■ An offence for employment agencies to recruit from abroad without advertising the job in Britain.

■ Introducing an ‘immigration skills charge’. Under this proposal, employers will be required to pay a levy to allow them to bring certain workers to the UK from outside the European Economic Area. This is to increase funding for apprenticeships in the UK and address the current skills gap in the UK workforce.

Zero hours contracts – and their use by employers – remains a hot topic in employment law. In October 2015, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) published new guidance for employers regarding the use of zero hours contracts. The government has since also published draft regulations aimed at enforcing the ban on “exclusivity” in these type of contracts.

The use of exclusivity clauses in zero hours contracts has long been controversial. The idea that an employer could sign up an employee to a contract which provided no guaranteed work, but also stop them from undertaking work under any other contract or arrangement, risked placing many employees in real hardship. Following concerns regarding the use of such clauses, the government legislated to ban exclusivity clauses in zero hours contracts from 26 May 2015.

This does not, however, appear to have gone far enough for the government. The new regulations – Draft Exclusivity Terms in Zero Hour Contracts (Redress) Regulations 2015 – state that individuals employed under a zero hours contract have a right not to be unfairly dismissed, or suffer a detriment, if the reason for that treatment is because of their failure to comply with an exclusivity clause. Any such dismissal would be automatically unfair, meaning that employees will not need to have the two years’ service necessary for an ordinary unfair dismissal claim to take action.

This therefore increases the risk to employers which continue to use and enforce such terms. While the regulations are only in draft at this stage, the clear intention is to ensure that employees on zero hours contracts who refuse to comply with exclusivity are protected. There remains the risk that some employers will seek to circumvent the legislation by, for example, offering a guaranteed one hour of work per year. In the circumstances, it seems likely that further regulations will be issued by the government to cover this type of situation.

The guidance issued by BIS provides useful examples of what the government considers the appropriate use of zero hours contracts. Examples given include new business startups, seasonal work and special events. The guidance also provides suggestions for what terms an employer should include in zero hours contracts. It also draws employers’ attention to other types of contractual arrangements, that may actually be more appropriate for what the employer is seeking to achieve. These include fixed term and annualised hours contracts.

While zero hours contracts are a useful tool for employers to engage individuals in circumstances where the need for work and or the level of work fluctuates, this is an area that the government is keeping under close scrutiny to protect employees from abuse.

Changes to reduce illegal working

Proposed changes to zero hours contracts

journey. While the technician had some discretion as to the exact route they could follow during the course of the working day, if a customer can-celled or there was a change to the itinerary, Tyco would contact the technician to re-route them or add another job to their itinerary.

Finally, the ECJ said that the work-ers were travelling to customers to provide services for Tyco’s benefit. The ECJ noted that the fact that the journeys of the workers in question, at the beginning and at the end of the day, to or from the customers, were regarded by Tyco as working time before the abolition of the regional offices, was also persuasive evidence that Tyco had previously considered journeys to customers’ premises to amount to working time.

The only thing that had changed was the departure point of those jour-neys – rather than starting and finish-ing their work at the regional office, the technicians now started and fin-ished their days at home. The ECJ was satisfied that the requirement that the workers were carrying out work activ-ity and duties had been met.

Pay implications for mobile workersThis case will affect employers of mobile workers such as salespeople, lorry drivers, plumbers, electricians, technicians, nurses and carers.

Employers should now consider the pay implications that any

judgement may have for genuine ‘mobile’ employees. For those employees who are paid hourly, the decision is likely to mean that employers will need to review what payments are made during time spent travelling to and from the first and last jobs of the day. For those employees who are paid monthly, employers will need to consider whether counting the

time spent travelling to and from the first job of the day towards the employee’s total hours will mean their monthly income no longer meets the National Minimum Wage (see box)

The Employment Tribunal is cur-rently considering a case being pur-sued against MiHomecare, a home-care services company in the UK. Essentially, a worker is claiming that MiHomecare is failing to meet its obligation to pay the National Minimum Wage by refusing to include staff travel time between home visits in pay calculations. An outcome is awaited.

This decision will have an impact on workers’ rights to a daily rest period and their maximum working hours under the Working Time Regulations here in the UK.

Firms may now want to minimise the amount of working time under-taken by a worker in these circum-stances. This might mean employers need to consider sending mobile employees to locations near their homes and potentially making a pro-vision in any new contract obliging employees to live in a certain area to reduce travel time.

No change for office-based staffIt is important to remember that the Tyco decision does not relate to those workers who have a fixed working base. For them, travelling to and from their workplace will not become ‘working time’. ■

Mark Stevens is a solicitor at Veale Wasbrough Vizards.

Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk DECEMBER 2015 | 10

Customers continue to spend on cloud. Business transformation is the catchphrase of

the moment and, for the channel, there are plenty of opportunities to talk to customers about changing their technology.

This roundtable highlights some specific things that vendors believe partners should be doing to maxim-ise their chances of success.

Do cloud budget increases and demand for converged infrastructures reflect what you are seeing in the market?Craig Parker: We are way past 20% on converged, and that’s as a percent-age of server and storage revenues. That’s across all of the segments I sell through. In the channel, converged infrastructure is a really good play. On hyper-converged we are still in the small numbers. Converged has been really interesting because it has given value-added resellers (VARs) the chance to be solution providers. A lot of them were selling volume

happening in the UK and an adop-tion of newer technologies.

Sachin Sony: Based on the cloud providers we have today, UK and Germany seem to be the most prom-ising markets, although France is not far behind. That may be because the business focus is, to a large extent, on these geographies.

Gary Moore: I think France is asleep at the wheel when it comes to cloud adoption. Whether that’s because Microsoft and Amazon haven’t opened datacentres there, whether that is the chicken or the egg, I am not quite sure. We have

Give customers cloud confidence

MicroScope gathered together a group of vendor representatives to

discuss the latest trends and challenges in the cloud market. They shared some

useful advice for resellers seeking success in the cloud market

cloud roundtable

servers, but making that leap had been too much – they had talked about it but couldn’t do it. But con-verged infrastructure solutions have enabled them to do that.

A lot of what they are selling is going very well through the channel. It has created better conversations for us with our reseller partners and we have gone deeper with them – it has enabled us to differentiate our ser-vices on that and have a discussion with them that has taken us into places where everyone wants to be. From a geographical point of view we see a lot of innovation is

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Attendees Alessandro Perilli, Red Hat General manager, cloud management strategy

Gary Moore, Colt Business development director

Thomas Owen, Memset Security manager

Simon Hansford, Skyscape CEO

Craig Parker, Fujitsu Head of product marketing and technical pre-sales

Sachin Sony, Equinix Marketing field development manager, cloud and IT services

quite a good sales team and busi-ness in France, but it has been much slower in cloud adoption than the UK and Benelux.

TechTarget research indicates that quite a few customers are looking to switch cloud providers, revealing some levels of dissatisfaction with what is available. Do you see people moving around and choosing to change provider?Moore: We exited the managed cloud business as a result of the trends in the market. You need scale to be suc-cessful in this business, and even with Colt’s datacentre scale it just wasn’t a profitable business for us.

Thomas Owen: The flip side to that is that you only need scale to be very specific. Memset and Skyscape basically share the market and are the only two SME providers in the public sector.

Simon Hansford: According to TechMarketView, Memset had £340,000 in revenue from

“In the channel, converged infrastructure is a really good play – it

has given value-added resellers the chance to be solution providers”

Craig Parker, Fujitsu

Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk DECEMBER 2015 | 11

cloud roundtablegovernment this year and Skyscape had £18.9m, so we are not exactly sharing the market.

The most popular activity is still using the cloud for application testing and other test and development work. But year over year we saw the strongest growth in platform as a service. Email is also one that users want to get off their domain, as well as disaster recovery. Where are you seeing users adopt cloud services?Parker: We are seeing unified com-munications (UC) as one of the areas that is growing strongly. It is one of those nice ones that is cost per seat and is nice and simple.

Alessandro Perilli: What we are seeing at Red Hat is very con-sistent with this. At the AWS re:invent keynote last month we saw giants like GE saying they are going to Amazon Web Services (AWS), and switching off three datacentres is a pretty big indica-tor. We have seen exactly the same at Red Hat, which is why we are moving more investment into our management platforms.

We are increasing the number of public cloud service providers we are going to support. Right now, we focus exclusively on AWS, but the reason this is expanding to the usual suspects and addressing more specific providers is because we understand that in Europe there are concerns and compliance issues that drive users to use someone more local. That’s the kind of thing we are looking at. The driver for that is that we now see confidence that didn’t exist before.

Sony: What is also interesting to note is when someone moves to one category in the cloud, such as soft-ware as a service (SaaS), do they then get the confidence to move to somewhere else like UC?

At the moment users seem to be working with quite a lot of cloud suppliers, but we expect that to consolidate over time because it is not going to economical or easy for users to manage so many different relationships. Do you think things will change on the relationship front?Perilli: It is because of the complex-ity of managing so many different providers. It is not just that you have brought your world closer to the pub-lic provider, but it is the automation, workflow and orchestration engine that needs to support all of them. If you have three or four more, like it was in the first phase of cloud adop-tion, then you need to replicate the same identical tasks in many differ-ent languages according to the enter-prise performance management plat-form that they provide. So it is very taxing for large organisations, and that is why we have looked at this problem too and we are trying to get into an orchestration solution that is agnostic to the different platforms so it needs to be written once and then it can be replicated to any platform. At least this is the goal.

Moore: That is all fine in theory, when it remains infrastructure as a service (IaaS). But what I am hear-ing is that people are using more of

the platform-as-a-service (PaaS) fea-tures. Microsoft Azure has always had that PaaS feature as a service characteristic. But AWS now has more PaaS features and it is very difficult to make those supportable at a PaaS level.

Perilli: I am talking about those customers that want larger flexibil-ity over their organisation so still look at IaaS.

When we talk to users about their cloud spending it becomes clear that customers are looking to solve a larger problem and are also looking to spend in areas such as networking, security and data management. Do you see evidence of resellers pitching products that are becoming more complex using cloud as an element?Perilli: We have a few partners, and this is increasing in numbers, that are looking at the cloud as part of a very complex solution, such as the internet of things (IoT). We have some partners building IoT solutions that are architected using a gateway and an intermediary to collect the data, and it ends up in the public cloud. So you have a bunch of dif-ferent technologies. You could have the public cloud IaaS, then the mid-dleware to put together the gateway, and then the partner can use our management technology to pull it together. These are real projects that we have deployed – we are not just talking about the potential, these are real projects.

Sony: We are talking to a lot of enterprises, and most of them are using multiple cloud providers – one for storage, one for IaaS, one for data backup and recovery – so there is a shift that is happening from tra-ditional centralised architecture to buy the infrastructure as a service from the cloud, and that is growing.

So if you are a managed service provider or a channel partner look-ing to service the old traditional

centralised architecture, you are being left behind the curve. You need to help some of these enter-prises migrate to the cloud, because that is where they want to go. As long as these managed service pro-viders (MSPs) and systems integra-tors and channel partners know how to handhold these enterprises to move to the cloud, that is where the opportunity lies and where the future lies.

The way we see it, most of the data is going to go into the cloud, at least non-mission-critical data is going to go into the cloud, which is a significant chunk of what there is today. Unless they are able to cater to that migration and able to cater to that demand in the market, they are going to be left behind. That market for traditional centralised architec-ture is going to become commod-itised and there are going to be crashing margins, which is going to hit their revenues.

Parker: I have built a few services in the past that have failed – one of them was backup as a service. Talking of hyped services, that is one that should be up there as well. Doing point services like that is something you should be advising resellers not to do because it is diffi-cult to sell as a service. You do need to have a few things together. Backup is one of those areas that people think is such an easy toe in the water into cloud development, but it’s not. You really do need to look at things together, with wide storage services and virtual com-pute. People often don’t think about the connectivity to the datacentre and that last link is such an impor-tant one. The advice is to consider things as a whole and look at the complete infrastructure as a service.

Moore: If you are going to get into cloud-centric solutions, you will need network expertise and ideally a network vendor behind you that you can rely and which has some good cloud expertise and can help you with latency and colocation.

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“If you are an MSP or channel partner looking to service the old traditional

centralised architecture, you are behind the curve. You need to help

enterprises migrate to the cloud, because that is where they want to go”

Sachin Sony, Equinix

Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk DECEMBER 2015 | 12

cloud roundtableAre you recruiting new partners that can deliver those needs or are you hoping that some of the traditional partners can be transitioned over to delivering a cloud solution sale?Moore: I haven’t met very many cloud channel partners yet. I spent two or three years in Colt in the managed cloud business and we had a very big emphasis on channel partners and trying to enable them to consume this and promote it to their customers.

We were the service provider of the year three of four times from VMware, so we had all of its support and buy-in, but frankly we just didn’t find very many resellers that have the ability to take a discussion with a customer about something quite vague and fill in any of the blanks themselves. All they could do was bring the opportunity and we had to do everything else. Our portfolio was reasonably broad at the infrastructure level, but we didn’t have all of the solutions from desktop management to backup, restore and archive. I struggle to see how someone is going to succeed unless they have that breath of capability in that solutions space, and I haven’t met very many resellers who have.

Parker: There are a couple of dif-ferent models. Service providers and resellers becoming service pro-viders is a distinct model, but that is reliant on resellers having the ability to invest and create a service themselves. Those partners that are able to do so are seeing growth in their services and businesses.

Moore: We have a very healthy channel that is focused around net-working. These are people who are network professionals and operate managed networks for customers and can give certain classes of cus-tomers localised attention that most

telcos can’t. So there is a channel partner there that is network- centric, but I am more sceptical about the reseller community as a whole, accepting that there will always be strong exceptions.

Moore: It is very difficult to sell the wiring. The plumbing that vendors sell is valuable, but how do you make that sexy and sell that and get that in front of the people who are buying the technology?

Where are VARs adding value in your business?Sony: I think that the value they add is the managed services element. Most enterprises we speak to want a service wraparound what someone brings to the table. They don’t want raw service providers.

Invariably there are multiple dependencies that they need to con-sume and they need a single pro-vider, vendor or a managed service provider to aggregate all those requirements and add it with a ser-vices wrap. There are very few who are able to do that in a good way. There are a few who can do parts of it, but not many can provide the holistic approach to the enterprise.

We are trying to bridge the gap and create a platform where we can bring together different service providers which can fill different parts of the elements. We want to bring together managed service providers so they can work with these service provid-ers so they can build a holistic solu-tion and take that to enterprises. That is how we hope we can help these MSPs, VARs and systems integrators.

Moore: Selling the network ele-ment of either Azure or AWS, I haven’t come across a single MSP which is operating the account on behalf of the customer. So the rela-tionship is remaining direct with AWS or Microsoft and the cus-tomer. Typically the enterprise will

have a subscription and then they will go to an MSP, maybe between the telco and the enterprise, for the network solution. That is typical. When I stepped into this sector I expected to find a lot more of the MSPs holding the subscription levers on behalf of the customer, but I haven’t found very many of those at all.

Parker: When VARs are develop-ing their own service or building a private cloud for customers there is a lot of value-add there and a lot of roles for them to play. But when it is just a resell of that account and the integration of that, you don’t see that much of that. But there are many places for them to play and there are opportunities for them out there.

Moore: Let’s not write them off.

What advice would you give to resellers that were starting out to try and position the business to take advantage of the cloud?Parker: For me, it would be to focus on a vertical first and become rel-evant to that vertical. Then it is about adding services into that in a very focused way. Working with VARs that have vertical specialisations really does work for us.

Sony: We see four pillars to the interconnected enterprise: People, location, cloud and data. That’s where we think most customers will be four or five years down the line. An interconnected enterprise needs to be connected to a storage provider, data backup, a SaaS pro-vider, among other cloud service providers, and need to do it in the most simplistic manner.

If I am a managed service pro-vider, if I can find a niche for myself and provide an end-to-end solution that will help an interconnected enterprise, then the customer can come and choose which elements

they want to take and put into the cloud and to ensure they are able to get those services. That is where the niche is for them to go.

Perilli: Red Hat has an annual target of 70% revenue coming from the channel so partners for us are very important. We have solutions that are engineered bundles that certainly provide vertical and end-to-end business that are answerable to the needs of the customers.

We see more and more customers demanding freedom in terms of mixing and matching different pro-viders in different layers of the computing stack, compared to the past two or three years. In the last five years there has been dramatic change in terms of what customers want and we see now much bigger demand for a mix and match and a best of breed approach.

So the advice I would give, and the advice we give to our partners, is to be ready to offer the integrated solu-tions we provide but remind custom-ers they have the freedom to use Red Hat in conjunction with other ven-dors. That is one of the design princi-ples we have in the management portfolio. One of the main principles of our product design is to make it support multi-vendor solutions. End-to-end works great on paper, but in practice that is not what we are hear-ing from customers and that is not what they want.

Moore: that’s a tricky message for a reseller because it means they need to have more relationships and become semi-experts on more technologies.

Perilli: Customers are looking first and foremost for guidance, in my experience. There are vendors queuing up outside their offices trying to sell something, but hav-ing more functions doesn’t really change anything because you can have more features today. Very large enterprises that are looking for a

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“Red Hat has an annual target of 70% revenue coming from the channel so partners are very important for us”Alessandro Perilli, Red Hat

Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk DECEMBER 2015 | 13

vendor of choice are not looking at the immediate competitive advantage that can be provided by features, but they are looking at a business partner. The only way you can change the business partnership reputation is that you show expertise and you show guid-ance and how to mix and match things together.

I am not suggesting that a VAR should provide the broadest range of solutions possible. They will be rewarded for providing the guid-ance around the top two or three vendors, and for providing guid-ance on how to integrate them. It is not just about putting everyone in the same bucket and building the biggest portfolio ever. Be the advi-sor for the user organisation.

Parker: There are interesting things happening in the market now. If you look at the government’s directive to go open source it does bring into play that discussion and we are starting to see customers requesting the alternative platform. That is going to be a challenge for people in the channel because they will have to provide some extra breadth of services. That is defi-nitely an interesting dynamic. Customers are now starting to ask and react, and that is going to be a challenge.

With opportunities for resellers out there, do you think the channel is in the right place to exploit them, and what are you doing to support your partners?Sony: From our perspective, I think channel partners need to evolve. Besides providing certain niche services all I can say is that they need to think more long term and provide portfolio services that add to the long-term requirements of the enterprise. Those long-term requirements are about migrating to the cloud and moving away from a centralised architecture to a distributed architecture.

So to be able to have the scale to address those requirements and to have the ability to ensure they can provide a complete service, or at least bring together the elements that would deliver a complete service, the initiative for themselves in providing those services is how they will differ-entiate themselves against other ser-vice providers. Those that do make that change will survive and those that don’t will perish.

Perilli: Over time, the channel needs to evolve into an advisory role and learn how to distinguish between the offerings that are out there and develop the skills to be able to advise customers what is best for their business.

One of the messages we have in Red Hat refers to a concept we call ‘frictionless IT’, and it has nothing to do with the products per se. It talks about how we see the world changing in the next 10 years and how we recommend customers to get ready to transform their IT infra-structure to meet the demands of the next generation.

A business partner can help them navigate through the future. This guidance can come from two differ-ent levels. The first is the vendor, which clearly sees the world in a cer-tain way, and tries to sell you a self-serving vision of the future some-times. The other one has to be a more unbiased connection and that has to come from a reseller or VAR. Advisory is the key going forward.

Hansford: Buyers are opting for a mix of solutions, and cloud is just one of them. There is time to make hay out there because if you are a trusted advisor there is opportunity for you. You have to look at the long term though and, ultimately, I think this is all going to the cloud.

There isn’t a date because it is an evolution. Some customers are there today, like startups. You have to change and adapt your business, but you have years to do it – but you have to start now.

Parker: The important thing is that customers go on a journey. A lot of them are still in virtualisation – it might be stage three of virtualisation, but they are still on a journey and it could be a journey to their own pri-vate cloud or a hybrid cloud, but cus-tomers are on those journeys. The resellers need to have offerings that can help customers on that journey, but don’t sell something now that locks them in and prevents them from moving to something else in the future. What is also important is that in the cloud world a lot of service providers painted themselves into corners historically, so don’t make that mistake. As a reseller, pick some fairly standard things that you can build services on and react to some of the bigger trends, where customers are looking for openness. Give cus-tomers that opportunity to do hybrid or on-premise.

Owen: The partners that we see growing the fastest and the ones that

cloud roundtable

excite us the most are those that have intelligent and interesting con-versations with us about where we are going and then have intelligent and interesting conversations with the customers about where they are going. We like those plodding part-ners that sit there and consume our services in a utility fashion because they are the engine of the business, but they could disappear over time so they need to be thinking about having more on top of it.

Moore: You need something that differentiates you – a sector focus, for example. I am not sure a vendor focus cuts the mustard any more. Customers want you to be talking about more than one vendor, at least an interoperable vendor. With that tone, I would say that if you are going to specialise in cloud as a reseller, pick yourself a network operator and start learning about the network topic. If all the customer’s content starts in a datacentre 100km away you had better be certain you have engineered a good network.

This is only going to get more complicated in the next couple of years with software-defined net-works and network function virtu-alisation, so you want to pick your network services partner to help you educate yourself in how you will engineer these solutions for your customers. Pick a partner which has a big focus in this area because you are going to need to upskill yourself. ■

“The partners we see growing the fastest and the ones that excite us the most are those that have intelligent and

interesting conversations with us about where we are going and then have intelligent and interesting conversations with

the customers about where they are going” Thomas Owen, Memset

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opinion

Finding value in a network auditAn audit reveals information that is vital to the smooth operation of your network, writes Networks First's Jason Peach

develop a roadmap to take the organi-sations on a journey to help them realise their business goals.

Uptime pressure squeezes out necessary downtimeOf course, the bigger the organisation, the more important network audits become. We’ve worked with some enterprise organisations that really didn’t have a full view of everything they were running and supporting. There is increasing pressure to keep networks running and operational 24/7. Update windows or cycles inherently mean downtime and so the 24/7 uptime pressure means it’s very difficult to remain on top of managing software updates.

For example, one organisation we worked with was running a layered set of firewalls in its datacentre, all from the same preferred vendor, and all at the same software level. Given

the single-vendor approach, if one vulnerability exists in this product and software combination, the lay-ered firewall approach could be cir-cumvented by hackers using that one vulnerability.

In terms of software updates, with-out the network audit this would not have been highlighted as a priority action to senior management, even though, operationally, good practices should have dictated firewall soft-ware levels are regularly patched to with the vendor releases.

The network audit further high-lighted the potential weakness in the same firewall vendor design, as it enabled the datacentre topology to be accurately and fully illustrated, put-ting related network components into perspective of each other.

What a network audit here can do is help IT teams to put together a strong business case on why a proac-tive downtime window for upgrades is not only necessary, but preferred over a security breach or other unplanned downtime concern.

Align business goals and network operationsComplacency has crept into trying to maintain an always-on network. There needs to be a re-connect between the business goals and

network operations, as without an optimal performing network, how can an organisation ever deliver an optimal business performance?

Networks are dynamic. They tend to evolve and grow organically to keep pace with ever-changing business demands – both tactical and strategic. This commonly results in additional hardware being installed at short notice with little or no time spent updating documentation or inventory lists to ensure it’s reflective of what’s actually installed and operational.

The net result is a lack of visibility of installed hardware. In the event of an incident with unrecorded devices and topology in play, identifying and reacting quickly to isolate and resolve any issue becomes a protracted event.

But the real value of having accu-rate topology and inventory docu-mentation is that customers are able to ensure that they’re maximising the investment in their network assets – avoiding unnecessary spend and downtime in many cases. For those that rely on managed service provid-ers, it also means they won’t ever be paying to support devices that are operating sub-optimally or are even no longer on their network. ■

Audits and compiling network documentation will not be the most exciting job you’ll ever do – and that’s one of the reasons why it is outsourced so much

An audit tells you exactly what assets are deployed, the software levels of the assets, how up to date they are, as well as how it’s all bolted together

NETWORKS

One of the more popular professional services we are asked to provide are network audits. I’ll hap-

pily admit that audits and compiling network documentation will not be the most exciting job you’ll ever do – and that’s one of the reasons why we see it outsourced so much.

Audits are an invaluable tool that shouldn’t be neglected. On the face of it, network documentation gives you an inventory of what’s on your network. But when you scratch the surface, it can give you valuable insights into potential weaknesses in the network, identify unused assets and even help you plan and upgrade your network.

That’s the real value of an audit – it tells you exactly what assets are deployed, the software levels of the assets, how up to date they are, as well as how it’s all bolted together. From personal experience, without this information, managing your net-work becomes very difficult and dealing with network issues is an entirely reactive process.

Audits help you identify assets that are not up to date, allowing for a more proactive approach to manag-ing your network, but it also ties into the larger strategic piece of work around planning and upgrading. While there isn’t anything inherently wrong with upgrading and improv-ing networks on an ad-hoc basis, it does make the management of the network that little bit more difficult.

For example, five-year plans would need to take into account how the company plans to grow and expand, and what impact that will have on infrastructure. Using these plans in conjunction with the net-work audits and documentation will go on to help with a gap analysis between what an organisation has today and where they want to be. That gap analysis can then be used to

Jason Peach is principle consultant at Networks First.

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community

“Energy efficiency requires a change in business models and corporate culture” Martyn Williams, Copa-Data UK

READERS’ LETTERS

Seize the ESOS Martyn Williams, managing director, Copa-Data UKThe Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme (ESOS) is a hot topic for UK businesses. There are two ways of seeing ESOS – as an exercise in tick-ing boxes and as an authentic busi-ness opportunity. The first approach can only lead to a dead end and will most likely have negative conse-quences on businesses.

Energy efficiency is not like a nag-ging salesperson – it won’t go away if you ignore it for long enough. It’s per-haps the only single thing that can make industry future-proof and give companies a sustainable competitive advantage.

ESOS is only a shy first step in this direction. Although it introduces financial penalties, it only requires companies to perform energy audits. ESOS doesn’t introduce any manda-tory energy-efficiency measures. Not yet, anyway.

Making a business more energy efficient is not just about using eco-friendly motors. It’s a continuous process that involves implementing the hardware and software that per-forms regular energy data analysis. It also means identifying energy-intense processes and opportunities for making them leaner and greener.

Businesses need to understand that energy efficiency is not about “tick-ing the box” and collecting energy data. It is important to relate your energy data to production data to cre-ate individual energy performance indicators targeted to your company. This allows you to draw meaningful conclusions and thereby reduce energy consumption in a continuous improvement process.

In a nutshell, energy efficiency requires a change in business models and corporate culture. And this is why it shouldn’t be regarded as another box to tick.

Take control of power qualitySteve Hughes, REO (UK) LtdHaving seen the recent news that Google lost data at one of its datacen-tres in Belgium after lightning struck the local power grid, I feel it’s time for a discussion about power quality.

Due to their strenuous power demands, datacentres require close

attention in terms of protection against the adverse effects of power surges or shortages. Although the Google centre had taken the neces-sary steps, it was still affected by the lightning strikes to the power grid.

This is just one high-profile exam-ple of how poor mains power quality can have a detrimental effect on busi-nesses if not properly protected.

We operate in a digital age where the safe management of electroni-cally stored data is paramount. Local and national power suppliers need to step up to the mark and do more to ensure businesses are protected and have access to reliable electricity. I

think it’s time for a wider discussion on how more can be done in this regard, don’t you?

Office 2016 harks back to the pastTristan Rogers, CEO, ConcreteWhen I read the Microsoft Office 2016 features set it reminded me of a Toyota Prius. Toyota talks about the virtues of hybrid technology, and the benefits of having both a combustion engine and an electric motor. But those who have driven a Tesla know that a Prius is a halfway house, car-rying the baggage of the 20th century with a malnourished electric motor and battery, making the whole thing overly heavy, slow and poorly pack-aged. Just like Office 2016.

I suppose Microsoft has no choice. It “owns” the desktop, so giving it up is unthinkable. Pedalling Office 2016 as a “rich, native desktop app” is a fluffy way of making desktop soft-ware appear a bit more “hip”. Fair enough, if you are the marketing team tasked with flogging it. But

Ed Shropshire, managing director, Aquarium SoftwareRecent cyber attacks, particularly on Talk Talk – the third time the telecoms provider has been targeted this year – has brought cyber insurance policies to the forefront of the business debate.

Companies must exercise personal responsibility and vigilance when it comes to reviewing their insurance policies relating to cyber attack, especially in the initial stages. Terms and conditions must never be assumed, with wordings checked thoroughly.

Where cyber insurance can become complicated is when a supplier claims to be ISO 27001 certified, but in reality it’s not. Its datacentre may be, but the company itself is not fully compliant. If using any form of web-based platform, the supplier must be checked carefully.

It’s vital, too, that companies perform their own independent penetration test on any proposed solution. If a company uses a web-based solution and it is attacked, the policy may not cover the loss. Penetration tests aren’t cheap if performed correctly, but for smaller companies, setting up a collaborative user group could be a wise and creative way of sharing costs.

If Talk Talk and other high-profile attacks have taught us only one thing, it is that companies must be extra careful and assume nothing when it comes to cyber security and associated insurance policies. The risks are clear for all to see.

Vigilance key for all companies in wake of Talk Talk cyber breach

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what if you were a technologist tasked with creating a “productivity suite” for businesses today? Would you come up with file-based work-ing, post the social media revolution? No. Would you come up with “intel-ligent junk filtering”? Well, you wouldn’t introduce email in the first place – so, no.

The world has moved on, and those businesses entrenched in 20th century investments perhaps can’t help have one eye on the past, com-promising their focus on the future. If Tesla can rewrite the rulebook on how cars are propelled, with no prior pedigree in auto, there is every opportunity for a software company with a clean sheet of (digital) paper to reinvent a business productivity suite for the customers of today. And I don’t think it would look like Office 2016.” ■

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Daily channel news at MicroScope.co.uk DECEMBER 2015 | 16

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my experiences to work with talented people who I could learn from.

What is the best or worst business advice you have received and from whom?My partner always says to me “start with the end in mind” and tells me to be “an outcome-focused person” and it’s something that really resonates with me. I think it’s really important to have something to aim for and to set clear goals for yourself.

What advice would you give to someone starting out today in IT?Put yourself out there and if you are an ‘A’ player give me a call.

What’s running on your smartphone?I’ve got everything – music, work stuff and fitness programmes.

What does the next five years hold for the channel?Technology is advancing fast so it’s impossible to predict the next five years,

but that’s what makes technology such an interesting sector to be in. In terms of WhereScape and its channel partners, we want to continue to support them and to grow the channel even more for 2016.

What gets you up in the morning?I’m a morning person so I don’t have a problem waking up. I basically have my own internal alarm clock. I love to see what each day brings, the challenges, the surprises.

Tell us something most people do not know about youI have a black belt in martial arts. It was a while ago, but I was one of the first women in my small home town in the Welsh Valleys to get the black belt 1st Dan.

What goal do you have to achieve before you die, and why?My goal is to live as long as possible, so I spend my time keeping fit. Failing that, I might get cryogenically frozen...

What is the best book you’ve ever read?The Chimp Paradox. I love anything motivational or that makes me think.

And the worst film you’ve ever seen?Hostel – there’s an hour and a half I won’t get back.

What would be on your Desert Island MP3s?Any type of fitness tune to keep me motivated.

What temptation can you not resist?I love Chihuahuas and chocolate, though not together, obviously.

What was your first car and how does it compare with what you drive now?My first car, was a scruffy second-hand VW Golf – not a patch on my current one. Now I have a Mercedes with all mod cons – it’s automatic and has air-con.

Who would you least like to be stuck in a lift with? Why, what did they do?This has already happened to me. Many years ago I got stuck in a lift with an actor off Coronation Street. He was slightly drunk and tried to kiss me. It was very funny.

If you could be any animal for a day, what would you be and why?I would choose to be an eagle. Who wouldn’t want to be able to fly? The freedom of being able to soar through the sky would be amazing.

If you could take part in an Olympic event, which would you choose and why?The 100m sprint. It would take me back to my teens when I used to compete.

If you were facing awesome peril and impossible odds, which real or fictional person would you most want on your side and why?I would want my fiancé with me. Marriage involves facing challenges together as well as enjoying the good times. So, yes, I would definitely want my future husband with me.

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?My money’s on the grizzly bear - it’s larger, heavier and it has lethal weapons called claws! ■

FIVE-MINUTE INTERVIEW

Tell us what you do for a livingI am the general manager for WhereScape in the UK and Ireland. WhereScape is the leader in data warehouse automation. I am respon-sible for all the sales, pre-sales and professional services.

Why are you the right person for this job?I think I am the right person for this job because I have the ability to simplify complex problems and I love to build relationships with clients and employ-ees. I also have a passion for our customers and partners, which is a big part of my job.

Who helped you get to where you are today?I am really passionate about learning and I’ve always been driven to succeed in whatever I do. I have worked in a variety of sectors, from insurance and financial services to retail, and I’ve taken something away from each experience. I have been really lucky through all

Miriam CookWhereScape

MicroScope puts its questions to Miriam Cook, general manager for WhereScape in the UK and Ireland

› Click here to read more five-minute interviews online