Over 200 guests attended the event and a reasonable list will have put the champers on ice: it might not be the Oscars but partner events are important for offering a decent pat on the back for channel partners and others who tirelessly push vendor services.

Insight UK climbed from Gold to Platinum partner status, judged on points including revenue, services accreditations, new customers won, and opportunities created.

Partner sales director UK & Ireland at NetApp, Pete Rawden, said that Insight is “clearly on the map within our partner community”, and that the opportunities for it and other companies over the next year is “huge”. That is, of course, if economics as we know it don’t fall apart.

Dave Allen, NetApp’s MD for UK & Ireland, said that the success of NetApp’s channel operations is “testament to its first-class partner performance”.

Insight’s sales director, Stuart Lemon, suggested that Insight was glad, but not surprised: “This is testament to the execution of the plan we have put in place with our strategic technology partners. We have already seen some great wins and awards of this nature help to support the vision of the Insight executive team.”

Here is the full list of winners:

Outstanding Achievement – Enterprise Partner: Kelway UK Ltd
Outstanding Achievement – SI Partner: CSC UK Ltd
Outstanding Achievement – Service Provider Partner: NTT Europe Ltd
Best New Partner: PlanNet21 Communications Ltd
Marketing Excellence: ANS Group PLC
Outstanding Achievement – Sales Individual: Chris Greehalgh – Q Associates Ltd
Outstanding Achievement – Technical Individual: Chris Kranz – Kelway UK Ltd
Outstanding Achievement – Professional Services Partner: Proact UK Ltd
Outstanding Achievement – IBM N Series Partner: IT Professional Services
Outstanding Achievement – FlexPod Partner: ANS Group PLC
Outstanding Achievement – MSE Partner: Insight (UK) Ltd

Answers to the gnawing questions of how to survive tough times in the Eurozone – both now and in the future – are far from obvious, and the channel is bracing itself for a significant impact if the worst fears are realised.

The Eurozone crisis and mooted Greek exit have been discussed for many months, but the situation is widely considered to be approaching where Greece will leave the single currency.

Channel players in the UK are already feeling the effects.

“Everybody should be concerned, if it wasn’t for the Eurozone then we would be pulling out the recession,”  one reseller said, speaking anonymously to ChannelBiz UK. “What is happening in Europe is going to have an effect on the UK market definitely. It would be foolish to think it won’t.”

Distie ComputerLinks also highlighted the difficult situation: “I think the current economic uncertainty in Greece and Spain could potentially mean that some UK IT projects or investment may be put on hold,”  David Ellis at Computer Links told us.

Vendors appear to be putting on a brave face ahead of any full decision regarding Greece, including Cisco, which told ChannelBiz UK earlier this week that the UK is experiencing a “buffer” from the Eurozone situation.

Vincent Fauquenot , Vice President, Products & Channels Lenovo EMEA said that no major action is currently underway with Lenovo’s channel.

“As a global company we operate in many countries in the world, including those that have volatile currencies,” Fauquenot said in a statement.

“Our channel programmes are focused on attracting and rewarding partners that are selling our offerings and as such we do not change programmes as a result of currency situations. We will of course be monitoring the financial and economic situation in Greece in coming weeks and respond accordingly to any local market conditions.”

Other large channel players in Europe ChannelBiz UK approached, including HP and Dell, would not comment on the situation.

With the Bank of England warning of a “storm” coming from Europe, and Fitch ratings agency indicating it will downgrade other countries in the event of a Greek exit, the effects will be felt throughout the channel ecosystem and the wider economy.

There is a strong chance of crisis in cash flow and liquidity.

According to Quocirca analyst Clive Longbottom, the situation is precarious to say the very least – and nigh-on apocalyptic in the worst case scenarios – as banks warn that they could cut off lending.

This could see the channel “really suffer”, he said.

“All of the ratings agencies are downgrading more and more institutes in more and more countries,” Longbottom said. “As those banks are being seen as weak they will lend less and less out into businesses – both businesses in the channel, and businesses the channel are dependent on.”

“If cash flow becomes an issue, whereas in the past channel have been able to go to the banks and say ‘look we have this pipeline, the orders will be coming through, can you lend to us over a short period?’ the banks are now looking at their own liquidity and credit ratings and will not be lending the money,” he said.

A lack of cash in the channel will quickly prove disruptive, and the end result for many could see more insolvencies.

The whole international ecosystem is intertwined, and if there is less money in the end user organisations to buy equipment, Longbottom said, then they can’t go to the channel to spend it.

“They are not going to have as many orders coming through.  The sales cycle is going to be longer as organisations take longer to figure out whether they have got the cash to invest,” he said. “The channel will be looking at a load of orders and companies will be going bust.”

For major vendors operating in Europe and the UK there is little option to resolving a halt on lending by the banks.

“Because it is such uncharted territory it is difficult to really formulate any plan,” Longbottom said.

One potential option would be for vendors to increase lending to partners in the channel.

“The finance arms of the biggest firms HP, Intel, IBM and others could come up with a plan of how to at least makes sure that their largest distributors and largest reseller partners can have access to fund to at least take them through a period of time,” he pointed out.

However, this could prove divisive if funds are not handed out equally.

Business, politicians, and ratings agencies have little clear idea – or a consensus – on how to deal with the problem, and Longbottom mentions that it is almost crystal ball gazing that is taking place.

“Most of them have got some plans in place, but as David Cameron said we will be in uncharted territory.  So for any organisation to say ‘we are okay because our Plan B is rock solid’ is pretty much impossible,” Longbottom said. “When you look at companies the size of IBM and HP it is tempting to say that they are bigger than countries in many away.  Because of their globalisation they can work outside of legal constraints in one country.”

But when you start to look at geographical contagion on this scale, they can’t work around it, and it becomes a case of how to minimise any impact.

“Should they be pumping money into the channel to keep them afloat through IBM global financial services or whatever it might be?” Longbottom asked.  “I don’t think so.  It is going to be such a massive impact  that IBM shouldn’t turn itself into the European Central Bank, trying to keep everyone afloat.”

Ultimately Longbottom believes we are at a point of “seismic transition”.

“We could see a complete change in the way that organisations do business, and the way that the channel does business,” Longbottom said.

Channel partners fear that if cuts hit call centres then they will get a “slower, slacker service” than they already do, while one sales employee has told ChannelBiz that his department is always a target.

The fears come as the vendor announced that it would be axing around 30,000 staff in the near future following trouble with its bottom line business. CEO Meg Whitman (pictured) is expected to formally announce the cuts when HP posts its quarterly results.

The cuts are said to affect around eight percent of the company’s workforce with sources claiming that the axe is still grinding and more similar announcements will come.

According to one channel partner the cuts could be detrimental to this side of HP’s business.

He told ChannelBiz: “HP has always a little bit slow in responding to our queries and also providing us with adequate resources.

“While I don’t know where these job cuts are being made, I can assume that perhaps they will affect call centre staff who deal with us lot. At top level there may also be some channel head cuts.

“If this is the case I imagine we’ll get an even slower and slacker service than we do now.”

And sales staff are none too confident of their jobs. One middle level employee told ChannelBiz: “Whenever HP makes cuts, our guys are always in the firing line.

“In the past we’ve found that the company swings its axe from the top. We’ve said goodbye to high paid directors and heads, which the company obviously sees as an unnecessary hole in its budget.

“What it doesn’t understand is that these people oversee its strategies, offer support to the channel and are an integral clog. We don’t know if we’ve been affected yet, well nothing’s been made official- however there have been more than a few top end meetings with HR, execs and others amongst some of my colleagues.

“I’d like to think I’ll be safe but you never know. Job threats such as this come with working in such a big business, where unless you’re a super top seller, you’re just a number that can be picked up and thrown away.”

And it’s not just HP that’s handing out the pink slips. Yesterday our sister site TechWeek Europe reported that Dell was also preparing to cut its UK workforce in order to “serve [its] customers and grow [its] business.”

It said to do this it had to “operate as effectively as possible.”

However, the company refused to pinpoint how many staff it was planning to axe.

The price of oil fell yesterday, touching the lowest level since December last year.

It dropped by $1.17 to finish at a low of $92.81 per barrel in New York and was also down nearly 13 percent since the beginning of May.

Brent crude, which helps set the price of oil imported into the US also fell by 53 cents to finish at $111.71 per barrel in London.

It has been suggested that the lower prices have been driven by an oversupply of oil, with crude supplies in the US rising to 2.1 million barrels.

According to an analyst familiar with the situation, the prices will also have a great effect on the already teetering European market that’s heading once again into a recession. He said this would in turn have a knock on effect on the way businesses and consumers spend their cash.

“If we’re talking about the channel of course there will be a problem here.

“Oil prices rule the world and of course this means the drop will have a significant effect on big investors and banks who have been sitting and living off their oil shares for a while now.

“With these now going down they may lose out a great deal. Banks will tighten margins meaning less borrowing for consumers. Less money consumer wise means less spending which will hit retail and in turn the channel, especially distribution which could be left with an oversupply of goods.

“If big businesses decide to cut down on their channel offerings then partners could be hit. There’s already companies such as Oracle threatening to do this with their marketing budgets, but it could get worse.”

According to GfK, sales for IT goods, such as laptops, PCs and tablets, were the only area to see growth in the first quarter of the year, with sales rising 8.7 percent on a yearly basis to £2.57 billion.

This compares with consumer electronics, classed by GfK as entertainment items such as TVs and blu-ray players, which fell 20.4 percent to £1.53 billion.

Overall the GfK figures show that technical consumer goods are down 7.2 percent, to £6.78 billion.

The reason that the IT sector is managing to outperform other areas despite continued economic gloom, is that there is a considerable amount of innovation going at the moment with PC form factors, GfK Business Group Director Carl West told ChannelBiz.

“Innovation is really driving some resistance in the sense of the economic pressures,” West says.

“Within IT we are seeing innovation due to tablets, tablets are experiencing anything between 100 and 400 percent growth over the last year depending which period you are looking at.”

On the other hand consumer electronics is largely hampered by the maturing LCD TV market in the UK, a problem which has reverberated down the supply chain to vendors.

“If you look at CE, outside of the digital switch-over with spikes in sales of set top boxes, everyone has got a flat screen television,” West says.

“Large screen television is reaching saturation point.  The only place we are seeing growth is in the supersize 43 inch and above flat panels, or with DVD combos.

“Innovation and new form factor of the tablet has added to a reasonably strong base of PC sales, with notebooks and netbooks.”

He says that one of the shining lights of the market is the introduction of ultrabooks, championed by Intel, with sales starting to pick up.

“Ultrabooks are definitely beginning to have an impact, it was now we are seeing more and more models hit the market, as a form factor it is growing.

“It has definitely added value to the PC market.”

With Ultrabook and tablets booming he says that the IT sector is set grow and “continue to grow the value of the IT market” over the coming months.

With prices coming down on external storage drives this could have some pressure on the segment West says, but this will be counterbalanced by a raft of new devices Ultrabook and tablet devices coming out, not to mention AMD’s Ultrathins.

Application performance management may be a priority for IT staff over the next years, but it is perhaps difficult to communicate the benefits of IT housekeeping to other parts of an organisation.

However, a white paper from Quest Software shows that by keeping good track of applications, other senior staff concerned about more about bottom lines and immediate returns can be kept happy too.

Three opportunities for CIOs to build business trust have been highlighted in using application performance management.

The first of these is to turn disruptive technology into an opportunity.  With new technology comes potential risk, but by using application performance management this can be done more safely and with reduced costs, opening up possibilities for using new technologies for business.

Secondly, the white paper suggests reducing the risk of modern applications by creating a more comprehensive view of potential problems in real time through application management.  A ‘real world view’ gives a better ability to prevent any problems and to react to them.

Thirdly, CIOs should set out a vision of how to complete tasks to other ‘C’ level staff in order to show the business value of identifying new technology enabled revenue streams.

“More than 60 percent of the IT department’s time is spent on operations – making sure ‘the lights are on’,” says John Newsom, vice president and general manager, Applications Business Unit, Quest Software.

“Using APM, those resource-intensive operational tasks can be automated, leaving more time for CIOs and their departments to focus on innovation.”

“In speaking with CIOs across the country, it’s clear that to build trust with other business executives, they need to deliver tangible results pointing to outstanding IT service delivery. APM is the way to not only meet, but exceed that expectation.”

Clients will be able to receive payments from customers using just a smartphone, serving as an alternative to cash, cheque, or bank transfer. The bank is touting it as an easy and convenient way for customers to pay off bills, though there may be some hesitance at first for consumers to trust their handsets with such tasks.

Another option Barclays is providing for businesses is the chance to register for unique Corporate IDs or Premium Corporate IDs for the service. Companies will also be able to register for Quick Response codes, which too will be linked to a Barclays corporate current account. They will be able to use these on statements and invoices, so customers can use Pingit to quickly initiate payments.

Businesses will also be able to generate QR codes for specific customer reference details, so that when a customer initiates a payment through QR, it will take all the required reference data with it.

Barclays believes that its customers are looking for ‘accessibility and ease’ when dealing with their finances. According to the bank, Pingit is just the ticket. John Kelting, head of products at Barclays Corporate Banking, said the app gives customers a “clean, straightforward and safe way” to pay bills just using their mobiles.

“With the payments landscape rapidly evolving and expectation of immediacy of payment among consumers growing,” Kelting said, “the need for businesses to look for new and innovative ways to meet consumer demand – and streamline payment processes – will become increasingly important”.

We imagine, whether consumers want it or not, contactless and instant mobile payments will be foisted upon them, and as with most technologies, they will get used to it in the end. For now, they will be getting used to it on Android, iPhone, and Blackberry, where PingIt is available.

The company has appointed Stephen DiFranco as its vice president of Americas Enterprise channels, OEMs and alliances for HP’s Enterprise Group.

DiFranco faced an uncertain future at the company after his previous role as channel chief and SVP and GM of HP’s Personal Systems Group, was made non existent following HP’s integration of its PC and printer units into a single entity.

He was also overlooked when senior management for the newly devised division – HP Printing and Personal Systems- was put together. However, at the time HP made some assurances claiming DiFranco would continue to play a key leadership role within the company.

In his new role, DiFranco will be responsible for the Enterprise Group’s channel relationships and report to Rich Geraffo, head of Americas sales for the Enterprise Group.

However, according to a report at CRN, HP has lost former executive William Hamber who has been poached by Juniper Networks to help run its European channel.

Under his new title of senior director, distribution partners for EMEA, Hamber will work under former HP colleague Darryl Brick.

He will be responsible for working on the strategy for distribution channel sales as well as partner initiatives for the EMEA region.

Juniper would not confirm the report. HP, at time of publication, has made no comment.

Some say that resellers and disties who are not adopting some form of social media strategy will be cast out as heretics and forced to live in Coventry.

While others say they could potentially be missing out getting their brand and marketing message out to the influencers of technology buying decisions, as readers of Channel Biz will know The-Evolution-of-the-UK-Channel.pdf

But this strategy will only work, if you take an innovative new approach into using social media outlets and don’t treat them like traditional online vehicles for advertising,according to the social marketing gurus.

So instead of serving millions of hateful and intrusive banners and skyscrapers at your users in the hope that 0.01% will click through to your site and potentially do something that will eventually turn into a sale; you apparently have to get them to “like” you instead!

Alternatively, you could also dress up in a gorilla suit and play the drums on You Tube, with a faint whiff of your corporate branding somewhere out of focus! But most agree, getting some sort of social media presence is essentially a good thing!

And by adopting a social media strategy, it will tell lots of social marketing surveillance operatives who are paid by businesses to snoop on our your users’ online activity, what sort of “engagement” they have with your company or if you are “trending” well.

But is a “like” an intention to buy or an affirmation of the clever marketing? And is the marketing innovative or just the same clever marketer’s using the most modern tools available at their disposal?

I used to smoke Silk Cut cigarettes for years and we all know what its marketing was all about and some would say that in my flares and shoulder length hair I was in my day, well trendy. Stuck in a bunker on a channel golf day, always a Hamlet to hand! No de Facebook then!

Yes the Chocolate-munching-drumplaying-Gorilla was good, yes it trended well, yes it got many “likes” but is this just another piece of (big) data that helps marketeers make money from lead nurturing programmes? Or will it help me sell more of my products and services?

For people like General Motors, the answer is nee (nay). They have recently pulled out of de Facebook advertising, but are keeping a presence with their own page.

But for others including “Sparky” Mark (Zuckerberg) and his chums at Facebook, ”liking” and the equivalent on other social media platforms is almost like the marketing equivalent of the Higgs Boson particle that will explain the mysterious relationship between endorsement and sales.

And to ensure that his users are monetisable in the run up to a massive IPO, El Sparkola is turning his audience into a potentially unwitting social product endorsement and advertising minions.

No more will an innocent “like” of a drum playing gorilla be seen as a mild distraction from a world of austerity and cutbacks, it will be seen as a strong endorsement of the brand and will be sent to all those deemed algorithmically relevant.

Naturally, we can all see why Sparks et al is doing this to keep business interest and so that it continues on post IPO where others such as Myspace and Friends Reunited failed but will the encroaching commercialisation ultimately cut off its nose to spite its Facebook followers?

And will the next generation of users skip Facebook completely and turn to more real time paridigms?
If you want to know more download the research and tell us your experience. And remember, without your Dutch uncles like me, there wouldn’t be a de Facebook at all!

Proost!

The agreement between the provider of Business Intelligence (BI) products and the analytical database company, which created Vectorwise, will complement DSCallards existing reseller agreement with BI product Yellowfin.

It means that the pair will be able to offer partners “a total business analytics package”, at a price point which is claimed to  increase the accessibility of reporting and analytics.

As a result of DSCallards experience in BI, the pair also claim that they will be able to support an underserved majority of companies in the UK where high-end analytical products are too costly and lower end products aren’t strong enough.

Adrian Handley, managing director, DSCallards, said: “We’re very excited about our partnership with Actian and that in Vectorwise, we now have a solution that will help our customers to rapidly zero-in on the information they need – without wasting time sifting through vast amounts of irrelevant data.”.

“With Vectorwise and Yellowfin BI, we have the perfect marriage of speed and ease-of-use that can benefit everyone in the organisation, not just a select few. The result is instant answers to complex queries and better decision-making across the enterprise.”

Steve Shine, CEO of Actian returned the praise adding: “It is not a question of how you store or analyse your large data volumes these days, it is how quickly you can act upon the intelligence and insight you can get from your data.

“The two-pronged approach of using our database, Vectorwise, as the back end, and Yellowfin’s BI layer at the front end, will not only give enterprises turbo-charged business analytics at breakneck speed, but also the chance to take action on their Big Data.”

He said that by working with DSCallards to take this proposition to market, the pair were set for immediate growth. This, he said was because DSCallards could complement the products “with their expertise and experience”.

The announcement has been made ahead of a joint launch event that takes place on July 3rd, 2012 at IBM South Bank, London.