HP launches next generation SAN and tape storage solutions
HP recently announced a new range of products aimed at providing faster application performance and increased scalability. The products include the P4000 G2 SAN, P2000 G3 Modular Smart Array (MSA) System and LTO-5 Ultrium Tape drives and cartridges.
“With explosive data growth, customers face many challenges including rapid demand for extra capacity, faster access to information and the need for reliable protection,” said Som Satsangi, Director, Enterprise Storage Servers and Networking, HP India.
“The next generation SAN storage solutions from HP vastly improves capacity utilization while reducing the customer’s risk of downtime and data loss with a better total cost of ownership. It integrates with HP’s converged infrastructure, helping customers to cost-effectively manage data growth by providing instant access to storage capacity as per business demand.”The HP StorageWorks P2000 G3 Modular Smart Array is a flexible entry-level array that helps small and midsized businesses (SMBs) as well as branch offices with limited IT expertise easily manage and protect growing data to reduce business downtime. “By providing the flexibility to share array resources over both FC and iSCSI protocols, it allows customers to match the performance needs and budgetary constraints of diverse departments,” said Prakash Krishnamoorthy, Country Manager HP Storage Works Divison, HP India.

IBM LotusLive adds business services
IBM recently announced that it has integrated several business products and services from Salesforce.com, Silanis, Skype, and UPS into its LotusLive hosted messaging service.
In conjunction with the new services, IBM is offering a cloud service package that weds social networking and e-mail, starting at USD 7 per user per month.
The package is essentially a combination of LotusLive iNotes and LotusLive Connections, providing e-mail, file storage and sharing, activity management, instant messaging and social networking capabilities.
"Our strategy is really around delivering a set of services that simplify and improve business interactions, and really provide the essential business services that every group would need," said Brendan Crotty, director of LotusLive at IBM, in a phone interview.
These services include making UPS shipping information available and more useful to LotusLive users, e-signing capabilities for electronic documents, VoIP telephony, and integration with Salesforce.com.
Jordan Colletta, VP of UPS customer technology marketing, says that demand for business process improvements related to basic work flow is rising around the globe. Integrating UPS shipping information and improving visibility into the process, he says, addresses customer needs.
Similarly, integration with Skype will allow LotusLive users to initiate VoIP calls with less friction and work flow disruption.
Crotty says that LotusLive extends new capabilities to users, but does so under the control of IT administrators.
"The administrator has the power to turn these on for everyone or individuals," he said, "so users don't get exposed to technology that the administrator doesn't want them to have."
IBM also said that it has added support for four more languages in LotusLive -- Danish, Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish -- bringing the total number supported to 15.

HP Completes 3Com Acquisition, Product Road Map To Come

Hewlett-Packard confirmed it had completed its planned acquisition of 3Com for about $2.7 billion. HP didn't disclose plans for how it will integrate 3Com's products or channels into its own portfolio, saying in a statement that those details will come at a later date.

Among scant details, HP confirmed that 3Com's network switching, routing and security products will become part of HP ProCurve. In a statement, HP also noted that the acquisition of 3Com gives it a much stronger position in China, bolsters its network security offerings thanks to 3Com's TippIngPoint line, and adds to what it can bring to market for Ethernet switching products.

The acquisition was approved by China's Ministry of Commerce late last week, the last of the transaction's regulatory hurdles, according to a Form 8-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission from 3Com dated April 7.

HP first announced the acquisition on November 11. At the time, VARs told CRN.com that the addition of 3Com would significantly add to what HP and its ProCurve unit can provide to customers and the channel, especially as it squares off against Cisco for network and data center dominance.

One big question from solution providers is how HP will deal with the significant overlap in 3Com's portfolio with its own. They also question how HP will work in the TippingPoint solutions, 3Com's unpolished jewel of a voice portfolio, and its low-end, OfficeConnect line that's seen as a potential competitor for Cisco's Linksys and small-business brands.

The memories of 3Com's recent channel strife and rocky 2008 are also fresh in the minds of many VARs. In 2008, 3Com channel chief Nick Tidd exited the company and a planned merger with Bain Capital partners went bust. At that point, 3Com dismissed then-President and CEO Edgar Masri, replaced him with board member Robert Mao, and set about restructuring its channels and enterprise business in late 2008 and into 2009.

3Com's most recent 10-Q filing with the SEC referenced a few accounting changes and a potential termination fee—now immaterial—if the HP acquisition were to fail.

3Com also discussed new sources of competition from formerly strategic partner Huawei, which according to 3Com might be looking to sell its own gear into 3Com's H3C installed base. According to reports, sales of 3Com gear through Huawei in China have been teadily declining.

"If, as expected, Huawei Technologies, or Huawei, continues to significantly reduce its business with us, our business results will be materially adversely affected if we cannot increase other business to offset the decline," wrote 3Com in the 10-Q filing.

Lenovo: We Won't Get Into Services

Lenovo is a PC company. And it's slowly becoming a smartphone company, at least in China. The one thing it is not is a services company, according to Milko van Dujil, Senior Vice President and President, North America, Western Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, Lenovo.

Van Dujil spoke to more than 200 solution providers Monday at Synnex’s Varnex Spring Conference in US, where he said he hopes the absence of a direct services business will be a key differentiator for Lenovo compared to its competitors. Other PC makers like Hewlett-Packard, Dell and others also have services arms, often very profitable services arms, in addition to hardware.

"We are a PC company. We are dedicated to becoming important, more relevant with partners. That is the focus point in our company," van Dujil told the crowd during a keynote session. "Look at all the big players rapidly going into the services business. We don't. We won't. We want to partner with [solution providers] who provide that proposition."

Van Dujil also illustrated Lenovo's broadening PC-based portfolio by showing a video that touts the 20 new products announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in January. Lenovo is counting on those products to capture more mindshare with consumers and business customers, which should lead to services engagements for partners, he said.

"[The U1] looks like a Wintel notebook, but you have a full slate tablet that's seamlessly integrated. It's as thin as an iPad and if you want to switch from notebook to tablet you don't have to reboot. It's a breakthrough in that type of design," van Dujil said.

In the SMB space, van Dujil showed off one of Lenovo's upcoming Skylight Smartbooks, launching this July.

"Our strategy is like Rocky Balboa. Protect and Attack. We protect the enterprise and [midmarket] space then jab with our attack strategy in [small business]. That's how we're going to market with sales reps. We took some of our budgets, funds, and resources for the enterprise and moved them over to the transactional market, which is how we go to market with partners," van Dujil said.

Lenovo has announced a smart phone soon to be available in China and van Dujils said expect to see more convergence products from the company.

"Smartbooks, mobile phones are not going to go away. That will be the trend of the future. Notebooks will continue to be there, but more form factors, all-in-ones, netbooks, tablets, those are taking off unbelievably fast," he said. "And for those [partners] that provide services, there will be great opportunities for software and systems management. Cost of ownership will come down and productivity ROI will be tremendous."

Cyberstar Targets Rs 1,000 Crore By 2013

Cyberstar Infocom announced an aggressive growth strategy, pegging a turnover of Rs 1,000 crore by 2013. To drive its India operations and play a pivotal role in the growth, the IT distributor is also scouting for a sales director to be based out of its Bengaluru headquarters.

Till recently, Cyberstar's thrust was on distribution of niche products from Alvarion, Belkin, Creative, Hitachi, HP Procurve, Lexmark, Lite-On, Panduit and WatchGuard. Now, in addition to these value products, it will also emphasize on other volume products to garner a higher topline and balanced economies of scale. The company has been distributing volume products from Wipro and Dell.

Cyberstar has also earmarked a sizable marketing budget to increase brand visibility and channel partner connect across class A, B and C cities in India. As a first step, the company plans to launch a brand repositioning exercise.

“Having built a strong foundation over the last decade of our existence, we feel we are well positioned to avail benefit of the emerging growth opportunities in the IT distribution,” said Raj Rathi, Founder and CEO, Cyberstar Infocom. “Over the next three years, balancing aggressive topline volume growth with bottomline operational efficiencies, through economies of scale, will be our topmost priority.”

D-Link Flies DPL Winners To Hong Kong

D-Link flew 34 partners, selected during its nationwide channel promotion scheme D-Link Premier league (DPL), for a three-nights-four-days exclusive trip to Hong Kong, organized from April 2 to April 5, 2010.

In September 2009, D-Link had rolled out DPL for its channel partners, SIs and VARs. As per the program, partners who qualified as Kings and Royals were entitled for a trip to Hong Kong. 

During the trip, D-Link management team closely interacted with partners and also discussed the vendor’s roadmap.

The trip included a visit to Disney World, Ocean Park, Victoria Peak, Avenue of Stars and Hong Kong city tour.

Canon To Train Top 50 Partners on New imageRunner Advance Machines

The market for A3 multifunction copier was 70 thousand units last year and expected to reach 80 thousand units, Predicts Canons Vice President. Canon is leading the market segment with 23 per cent market share, A3 Flatbed Copier/MFP in the fourth quarter of 2009, followed by Ricoh with 18 per cent market share as per Gartner report. To attain the market share, Canon partners has been playing very important role.

To retain the leading position with increasing market share to 25 percent and with opening new opportunities for partners, Canon has announced next generation of Print Architecture in which company has rolled out 7 new models. The new models are capable of multitasking which is reconfigured to single touch button. Along with new architecture company has announced the collaboration with Adobe, Microsoft and NTWare.

Canon To Train Top 50 Partners on New imageRunner Advance Machines

The market for A3 multifunction copier was 70 thousand units last year and expected to reach 80 thousand units, Predicts Canons Vice President. Canon is leading the market segment with 23 per cent market share, A3 Flatbed Copier/MFP in the fourth quarter of 2009, followed by Ricoh with 18 per cent market share as per Gartner report. To attain the market share, Canon partners has been playing very important role.
To retain the leading position with increasing market share to 25 percent and with opening new opportunities for partners, Canon has announced next generation of Print Architecture in which company has rolled out 7 new models. The new models are capable of multitasking which is reconfigured to single touch button. Along with new architecture company has announced the collaboration with Adobe, Microsoft and NTWare.
While sharing the business value proposition for customers, Puneet Datta, Assistant Director- Marketing, BIS, Canon India shares, Partners can find more values in selling these machine as the features they offer makes it more convincing to the customers. Machine is more convincing on extra valued add partners are charging. IT has all the features what a customer thinks to have. It is highly scalable and modular which brings more benefits to both customer and partners say for example at  this time you customer need only printing module which can be offered that and later if customer need copier module or scanning module we can add on easily. The machine is two generation ahead what is available today.
Along with features like easy touch interface and guest login, the integration with Microsofts business collaboration platform Microsoft SharePoint to create a better collaborative workplace will help partners to add more values to customers business. With this collaboration we are giving option to consumer to get rid of going to multiple vendors for Document management solutions and deploying multiple hardware with machine. The machines need no middle ware to get connected with SharePoint, added Mr Datta.
Apart from new architecture and features, Canon will be running dedicated partner program to train partners in next couple of months. Canon is also organizing special launch of the new machines for its top 50 partners on April 9th. Here company will be demonstrating the products and will give opportunity to partners for hand on experience on the machines.
The company will be training 200 Microsoft partners also on Canon machine after training their partners and vice versa. Then the Canon partners will become authorized to sell SharePoint. The new ImageRunner Advance machines will be pushed through its internal Team of 70 people and partners both.

Gigabyte Taps Students To Grow Desktop Market

To ensure that the market for desktops continues to grow in the country, Gigabyte is targeting students from different technical steams. In a bid to interest students to build their own desktops, instead of buying notebooks, the motherboard vendor is running a number of programs, schemes and online promotions.

”During the current year, we are targeting do-it-yourself (DIY) market in the country. The system builder market is slowly declining, and as a leading motherboard vendor, we feel it is important for us to find ways to keep the numbers strong,” explained Rajan Sharma, General Manager, Sales and Marketing, Gigabyte India. “We have figured that students, especially from the technical steams, form a very significant market, and are prime influencers too.”

As a first step, Gigabyte has announced a campaign called Award Winning Celebration. An end-user focused scheme, it is targeted at buyers of some of Gigabytes top-end motherboards. The users who purchase one of these award winning motherboards, and build their own desktop stand to win gifts through lucky draws.

 “We are also trying to directly communicate with students by participating in select activities at their colleges like annual fests. We want to drive a message that you can create a much powerful computer for lesser costs, customized your needs, when you build one yourself,” states Sharma.

 Sharma admitted that with MNC PC vendors targeting students for netbooks and notebooks, armed with discounts and schemes, the task is difficult. “However, students in our country are fast to react and they are seeing value in DIY PCs.”

 Sharma added that stockists and regional distributors of Gigabyte are also being readied to provide right advice. “Our new motherboards come with cutting edge technologies such as USB 3 and SATA 3. It is important that the DIY buyers have the right building blocks to make best of the motherboard.”

HP Expands UC&C Portfolio

HP today expanded its Unified Communications and Collaboration (UC&C) services portfolio with offerings that help clients simplify and integrate business communications, to help lower costs and accelerate growth.

 The new consulting services are designed to help clients plan strategically, target the company’s long-term vision while implementing short-term steps to ensure end-user adoption and maximum program success.

 Underwriters Laboratories (UL) is working with HP on a two-year project to standardize processes and technologies. This transformation will allow them to speed knowledge sharing and collaboration between workers and clients. With a UL Virtual Workplace console on every desktop, connected through the company’s new UC&C infrastructure, employees can collaborate with clients around the world without being constrained by medium, location or device.

 

Christian Anschuetz, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer, UL, said, “As our global systems integrator and strategic partner, HP is working with us in a highly collaborative fashion to plan, design and orchestrate the rollout of our UL Virtual Workplace solution.”  

HP also has signed global agreements with Polycom and Network Equipment Technologies to offer clients broad choice in UC&C technology options.