Monthly Archives: July 2015

Antonio Neri, Bill Veghte, Chris Hsu, HP, Meg Whitman, News & Analysis, Vendor

HP exec leading the Enterprise split leaves company

Bill Veghte hasn't revealed where he's heading next

Bill Veghte hasn’t revealed where he’s heading next

Bill Veghte, executive vice president of HP’s Enterprise Group (EG) and the man leading HP’s corporate divorce from the enterprise business side will be departing the company later this summer to pursue a new opportunity, the company announced this week.

The move comes barely a month after Tom Joyce, the company’s former vice president of global development and M&A lead, left HP for Dell.

Veghte previously served as chief operating officer, chief strategy officer and executive vice president of software at HP before taking on the Enterprise Group split lead, and will be replaced by Chris Hsu, who will assume the role of COO for Hewlett Packard Enterprise upon separation.

Antonio Neri, who has been serving as leader of the Enterprise Group (while Bill focused primarily on the separation efforts) and previously held leadership positions in the company’s server and networking technology divisions, will officially take over the role as Executive Vice President and General Manager.

“The decision to leave a company and people you are passionate about is never an easy one,” Veghte said.

“It has been a privilege working with Meg and a great leadership team as we transform Hewlett Packard to help customers on their journey to the New Style of IT. HP is equipped to take the business to new heights with great leaders like Antonio Neri and Chris Hsu and the progress we have made over the last 4 years,” he added.

Meg Whitman, chairman, president and chief executive officer of HP said: “From the moment he arrived at HP, Bill has made a huge difference. He brings energy, insight, and leadership to everything he does. I am grateful for all he did to help me lead HP through the turnaround and into the separation. I know Bill will continue to enjoy great success in the years to come.”

HP is just over midway through splitting its PC and printer business from its enterprise services and technology business, with the hopes of having everything done and dusted by November – the beginning of its 2016 fiscal year.

Atos, M&A, Managed services, Michel-Alain Proch, News & Analysis, outsourcing, Thierry Breton, Xerox

Atos completes acquisition of Xerox’s IT outsourcing biz

Atos has finalised the acquisition of Xerox's outsourcing business

Atos has finalised the acquisition of Xerox’s outsourcing business

French IT services outfit Atos announced this week the company has completed its €811m acquisition of Xerox’s IT outsourcing business, a move the companies said would give the combined entity a massive leap forward in the outsourcing market.

Originally announced on the tail end of last year Atos and Xerox agreed to a net total acquisition price of $966m (€ 811m), composed of $950m and an additional $50m assuming certain performance metrics were hit, plus $100m representing the estimated value of future tax benefits to Atos.

Xerox’s ITO business includes about 9,800 employees in 45 countries, with most – 4,500 – based in the US and more than 3,800 in global delivery countries.

Atos said the move, which gives it some strong capabilities in business process outsource and document outsourcing, means North America becomes its largest segment. While the company is popular in the Europe and the UK it’s currently ranked number 9 in North America in terms of outsourcing revenue.

“Today marks a major step in the development of the Atos Group, as we welcome 9,600 Xerox ITO employees to Atos,” said Thierry Breton, Chairman and chief executive of Atos. “With the US now our largest market, we have a stronger and more balanced global presence, which combined with our digital skills, allows us to be the trusted partner for our clients’ digital journey anywhere in the world.”

The companies also announced a deal that would see Atos become one of Xerox’s primary IT service providers globally.

Michel-Alain Proch, group senior executive vice president and recently appointed chief executive of Atos’s North American operations added: “Together with Xerox teams, we have worked extensively to be ready from day one post-closing and we are now fully operational to ensure continued delivery of services to our clients while at the same time leveraging the combined strengths of the two groups for profitable growth.”

arvato, Content & Applications, News & Analysis, Retail, Software AG, systems integration, Vendor

Software AG and sys integrator arvato to partner on app integration

Software AG and arvato are partnering on application integration for the retail sector

Software AG and arvato are partnering on application integration for the retail sector

Software AG and systems integrator arvato Systems announced a partnership this week that will see the two companies jointly develop application integration offerings for the retail and digital commerce sectors.

The two companies plan to offer an integrated digital business solution that uses arvato’s order management system, which connects all of the data and systems needed to manage customer relationships across various channels, and Software AG’s digital business platform, which offers real-time integration capabilities between different channels like websites, in-store apps and POSs, warehouse inventory databases.

“We are delighted to join forces with Software AG in enterprise application integration, and to be able to provide our customers with an even more extensive integration portfolio,” said Axel Mattern, director of arvato Systems. “We are now able to offer a complete solution to help our customers in retail to become masters of their digital transformation.”

As brick-and-mortar and online shops become increasingly being woven together the companies claim apps and databases are becoming siloed and more challenging to link together, a problem this partnership intends to address. The challenge seems quite acute in some sectors – like food retail – and has even contributed to the rise of platform companies looking to whitelabel their sophisticated, highly-integrated offerings for sector-specific marketplaces and back-end systems.

cloud migration, Microsoft, News & Analysis, Office 365, SkyKick, Software as a service, Todd Schwartz, Vendor

Office 365 migration provider SkyKick scores $10m

SkyKick bagged $10m this week and is strengthening its capabilities beyond cloud migration

SkyKick bagged $10m this week and is strengthening its capabilities beyond cloud migration

SkyKick, a cloud migration specialist turned cloud service management provider, secured $10m in funding this week, which the company said would be used to accelerate product development and broaden its portfolio.

SkyKick specialises in migrating Microsoft productivity apps (Office 365, Exchange, etc.) and data into the cloud, and the company recently pivoted into the rest of the lifecycle by offering cloud app and permission management as well as backup and restore capabilities (which are only available in the US for now).

The $10m in funding brings the total amount secured by the firm since its founding to just over $17m, and will be used to expand sales and marketing as well as product development efforts.

“We are excited to usher in the next era for SkyKick—a global software company delivering cloud management solutions for partners,” said Todd Schwartz, SkyKick co-founder and co-chief executive.

“Cloud usage is expected to double in the next three years, and the average IT partner will soon have over 5,000 customer cloud touch points to administer, which can be incredibly complex and time-consuming for solution providers to backup and manage.”

The move to broaden its portfolio comes at a time of increasing saturation in the Office migration environment. Microsoft itself already offers a number of free cloud migration tools and there are a few others developed by third parties like SkyKick, so its ability to develop and offer strong capabilities relevant for post-deployment lifecycle needs is essential to its future growth.

Carl Franklin, Guest Blog, MacBook Pro, Parallels Desktop, Parallels Desktop 10, Parallels Desktop 10 for Mac, Parallels Desktop for Mac, run windows on mac, Visual Studio, Windows 8.1, Windows on mac, Xamarin

Guest Blog: MacBook Pro + Parallels Desktop + Windows 8.1 + Visual Studio + Xamarin = Awesome

This blog post is being reprinted with permission from the original author, Carl Franklin. We are extremely excited and pleased to get to share his post as a special guest blog this week! Read on to learn about his experience choosing and using Parallels Desktop on his MacBook Pro. I went searching for the ultimate developer machine […]

The post Guest Blog: MacBook Pro + Parallels Desktop + Windows 8.1 + Visual Studio + Xamarin = Awesome appeared first on Parallels Blog.

Uncategorized

Four in five execs think conventional security is not enough for cloud environments

(c)iStock.com/alengo

Earlier this week, this publication reported on a C-level study which showed a distinct lack of trust in cloud storage for fully securing corporate data. Now, a new survey from CloudPassage sheds light on the security executive perspective; 80% of security execs in North America don’t believe conventional network security solutions are enough to protect their cloud computing environments.

This is an interesting finding, not least because the amount of IT real estate based in public, private, or hybrid cloud environments is expected to reach 58% in the next 18 months compared to 43% today, according to the respondents. Similarly, while two thirds of customer data resides on-premise, that number is expected to fall to 50% in 18 months with 31% in private cloud and 19% in public cloud – so the pressure is on.

There were not many surprises when respondents were asked on the top drivers for adopting cloud infrastructure; improved agility and scalability (74%) won out ahead of cost efficiencies (67%), reduced IT overhead (60%) and faster time to market (55%).

Surprise, surprise, security concerns (66%) in general were the number one barrier impeding cloud infrastructure deployments, ahead of reconfiguring systems and applications (52%) and lack of confidence meeting compliance requirements (37%) – an issue spotted in another recent study, this time from Forrester. Only 4% said they had no concerns with cloud infrastructure deployments.

According to 65% of survey respondents, it takes three months or longer to deploy a new security solution for their cloud infrastructure environment, which leaves enterprises open to new threats and vulnerabilities which may emerge during deployment time. Only 2% of those polled said they were not concerned with the security of customer data residing in the public cloud.

Mitch Bishop, the chief marketing officer of CloudPassage, bemoaned how concerns about cloud security “continue to dog the industry.” “The plethora of point solutions on the market are overwhelming and confusing for security teams,” he said.

“A whopping 77% of survey respondents are experiencing tool fatigue and want a single solution for visibility, enforcement and compliance that is on-demand, deploys in minutes, fully automates a majority of security functions, and works across all their infrastructure: private, public, hybrid clouds and even bare metal servers.”

You can look at the full study here (email required).