This year marks my very first HPE Discover, stepping in to cover for IT Pro’s resident HPE expert Jane McCallion, and it’s been a good introduction to the company’s new direction – it’s safe to say that the HPE we saw this week is a rather different beast to the enterprise giant of old.

This year’s event was new CEO Antonio Neri’s first Discover as head of the company, and the first real opportunity for HPE’s customers, partners and staff to get a sense of his leadership style without the shadow of former boss Meg Whitman hanging over him. More than anything else, he came across as profoundly genuine; he’s been with the company for more than 20 years, starting out in the customer service department and working his way up the ranks, and it’s clear that he eats, sleeps, lives and breathes HPE.

He obviously cares deeply about the company, and one of the messages he kept repeating throughout the week was that he’s planning for the long game, rather than chasing short-term successes. As far as I’m concerned, HPE couldn’t be in safer hands from a leadership perspective.

With that said, however, I do have some slight reservations coming away from Discover 2018.

For one thing, the company’s strategy feels somewhat confused – HPE is an infrastructure provider first and foremost, but the company had virtually no new technology to show off. There were some minor updates to its Edgeline systems and new software-defined networking from Aruba, but other than that, the company’s traditional storage and server products hardly got a look-in.

This is slightly troubling for a company whose main business still revolves around these products. HPE has been putting a lot of effort into building out its GreenLake flexible consumption offering – which is a good direction to explore for HPE and its channel partners, especially in light of the growing desire for businesses to shift their spending from CapEx to OpEx.

On the other hand, the fact remains that even with flexible consumption, customers will still need something to consume, and we’re slightly worried that the company may soon end up slipping behind its rivals in traditional infrastructure R&D.

There is one notable exception to this – The Machine.

Long-time HPE followers will know that The Machine is the surprisingly awesome-sounding codename given to the company’s memory-driven computing project, which has had something of a chequered history. Martin Fink, the ex-CTO who was the brains behind the project, retired two years ago, and many believed The Machine had retired with him.

Amazingly, however, this year’s discover saw HPE actually launch something off the back of the project, in the form of a cloud-based environment designed to let developers play around with memory-driven computing. It may not be quite what we were initially promised – not yet, anyway – but it’s still surprising to see that The Machine is still chugging along.

As for the rest of the show, most of the focus was placed on what HPE is branding ‘the intelligent edge’. Translated, this means ‘anything that’s not a data centre or the cloud’. Astute readers will notice that this covers a pretty huge range of products, environments and use-cases, from industrial IoT systems, to office networking, to connected cars and more.

HPE has committed to a $4 billion investment in ‘the intelligent edge’ over the next four years, and while it’s a smart play for the company (not to mention being in line with its previous strategy), I can’t help but worry that covering such a broad area with a single blanket term runs the risk that it’ll lose all meaning.

One thing that was also repeatedly emphasised was HPE’s renewed focus on customers and partners, and unlike some other enterprise companies, it does seem sincere in this regard. Whether or not its more ambitious bets around edge computing and flexible consumption pay off, it seems like HPE has its heart firmly in the right place, and we’ll be watching with interest when Discover Europe rolls around in Autumn.

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Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are struggling in the face of growing challenges that are, in some cases, being made much more complex by the cloud rather than simplified.

So claims Datto CEO Austin McChord, who talked about how increasingly challenging the small business landscape has become and is becoming, while speaking at the firm’s Dattocon event in Austin, Texas this week.

Given such a backdrop, SMBs will increasingly turn to managed service providers (MSPs) to provide the added layers of expertise and proficiency they either lack or can’t afford to recruit internally.

“Small businesses are facing challenges. Whether it’s regulation, security or the fact that moving to the cloud makes things more complex not simpler. Many of these small businesses don’t have the knowledge or expertise to navigate this landscape,” McChord said.

“The opportunity is massive. More than $40bn runs through small businesses. And up to 50% of this touches MSPs. By 2022m it’s expected to be north of $72bn.”

Datto announced a series of enhancements to its solution set – both on the products MSPs service SMBs with as well as the PSA tools providers, many of which who are SMBs themselves, use to run their business.

It also made good on promises made at the last Dattocon event and also post news of the Vista Equity Partners acquisition and merger with Autotask. In particular, it pledged to continue to better help support partners so they can, in turn, better serve the varying needs of their own customers.

Choice seemed to be the watchword, and that led onto a commitment of greater openness and integration with companies such as Connectwise.

Mark Banfield, Datto’s senior vice president of international, echoed the need for MSPs to support SMBs as they navigate a maze of complexity and uncertainty.

“Certain markets in the UK are dominated by SMBs. Germany, Italy etc are the same. UK MSPs will be the engine to deliver IT services to the SMB market. With such complexity, they need MSPs more than ever.”

More businesses are seeking out qualified Kubernetes developers and engineers as they turn to the tech for building their DevOps environments, a report by security software company CyberArk has found.

The company’s IT Jobs Watch report revealed that demand for Kubernetes skills has grown by 752% over the last two years, making it one of the most in-demand IT industries in terms of growth – rising up 729 places to the top 250 most needed roles in IT.

“Kubernetes has become a massive money word, and these figures show that DevOps teams are seeking more skills to help them manage and deploy applications at scale,” said Josh Kirkwood, DevOps Security Lead at CyberArk said.

“There is a very real danger that the rush to achieve IT and business advantages will outpace awareness of the security risks. If privileged accounts in Kubernetes are left unmanaged, and attackers get inside the control panel, they could gain control of an organisation’s entire IT infrastructure,” Kirkwood said.

However, he warned that if businesses rush to onboard inexperienced Kubernetes staff, they risk opening up their organisation to attack. This is demonstrated in another CyberArk report, which revealed many of the DevOps professionals being employed by organisations have security knowledge gaps – particularly around privileged accounts and secrets and container environments.

“Many organisations simply task the same DevOps hires – often with no security experience – to protect these new Kubernetes environments, in addition to the numerous other responsibilities they have to deliver,” Kirkwood added. “That’s no longer sufficient, and security teams need to get more closely involved to support the platform.”

Kirkwood advised that businesses take advantage of cross-team collaboration to ensure they are able to recruit those needed to fill roles, while also securing their existing infrastructure sufficiently to ensure they can create the safest, secure and effective DevOps environment.

SAP’s licensing has struggled to keep up with how customers have used the vendor’s technology in recent years.

Its per-user pricing model doesn’t account for the world of IoT, in which devices, applications and bots, not human workers, access the German software maker’s ERP systems, and do so much more often than staff would.

But customers had previously felt comfortable setting up such access, with SAP personnel aware of these connections without raising any issues, or any customers falling foul of licensing audits, according to the SAP User Group Executive Network (SUGEN), which represents customers.

However, after SAP sued high profile customers brewery Anheuser-Busch InBev and British firm Diageo, against whom it sought huge multi-million-dollar damages, for cases of indirect access, customers understandably grew worried.

Their cases typified indirect access use cases; Diageo enabled access to SAP’s ERP system via third-party software, Salesforce. The accusations against Anheuser are less clear, but SAP alleged that it accessed its systems directly and indirectly without appropriate licenses. Anheuser settled out of court with SAP in March.

SAP moved to address customer fears over indirect licensing by introducing a new policy in April to cover third-party access to its ERP and S/4 HANA systems (on-premise or in the cloud), as well as taking steps to ensure the threat of audits isn’t used in sales negotiations.

The new pricing model for indirect access to SAP’s ERP applications, and its S/4 HANA suite of ERP tools, aims to bring SAP’s licensing into step with modern uses of technology – essentially, machine-to-machine interactions replacing a lot of human access to ERP systems.

After introducing some new licensing models some months previously, as of April SAP detailed a new licensing policy to account for IoT use.

Instead of following its per-user pricing model, this one differentiates between human access via SAP software and device or bot access to core ERP systems.

This new model charges for access on a per-transaction level (SAP calls it a ‘document’), where that transaction might be a POS transaction, an approved invoice or something else that requires accessing SAP’s ERP.

So, what’s changed?

SAP’s per-user licensing model remains unchanged, and organisations can also use SAP’s other two models, procure-to-pay and order-to-cash – both order-based pricing models – choosing between them to best suit how they use SAP’s applications.

This new per-document pricing model addresses the biggest fear among SAP’s customers though; indirect access.

It will price access based on the number of transactions or ‘documents’ (an item like an invoice that needs to be run through the ERP system) accessing S/4 HANA or SAP’s ERP suite.

You can decide whether your usage suits the document-based pricing model

Customers can choose which model suits their needs best, and can move to the document-based pricing model or remain on their existing model.

SAP has promised “conversion offerings” for those considering a switch. However, SUGEN warns that it’s not clear whether users will save money under the new model.

SAP promises to separate software audits from sales negotiations

With customers scared that SAP will use the threat of software audits in sales negotiations in light of SAP’s lawsuits against Anheuser and Diageo, the German tech firm has promised to ensure the two remain separate.

As SAP put it, somewhat mildly, audits coinciding with talks around new software purchases “can sometimes cause frustration” for customers.

It’s promised to change this to ensure audits aren’t co-opted as a nasty sales tactic, and will introduce self-service auditing features for customers to check how their usage measures up to their licensing agreements.

So, what questions should you still have about SAP’s new licensing direction?

Will you save money under the document-based pricing model?

The biggest question is whether you’ll actually save money by switching to the new licensing model. SUGEN believes it’s too early to tell.

“It is difficult to know if existing customers will pay more under the new model, as the measurement and auditing tools required aren’t currently available,” SUGEN core leadership team member Philip Adams says.

“It won’t be until Q1 2019 that customers will be able to assess any potential cost impact. However, we have urged SAP to publicly promise that customers would be able to adopt the new model without incurring further costs if the business value or scope of their usage has not changed.”

Will the new per-document model be priced reasonably?

The lack of certainty above is in part because the catch-all nature of the term ‘document’ will mean different things for different industries – it could be an invoice, a retail transaction, an oil production contract, or anything else: clearly some will be easier to process than others, or require fewer touchpoints with an ERP system.

“Generally I think it’s a good move by SAP but there are many details that are still unclear,” says Duncan Jones, principal analyst with Forrester. “For instance, will the price for the new per order be reasonable and will SAP sales teams discount it appropriately?

“My general advice is to prepare a solid negotiation strategy to embrace the change but get sufficient safeguards and compensation in return.”

Will organisations using non-SAP software pay more to integrate these apps into their ERP platform?

This is something else that’s too early to answer, and may play into your decision as to whether you want to change your pricing model at all.

“What is clear is that if you move to the new model, ‘indirect’ transactions from non-SAP systems to SAP systems would be counted and charged for in the new way,” explains SUGEN’s Adams, “hence customers with existing contracts need to look at and understand whether they are licensed for these types of transactions under their current contracts.”

Diageo’s court case came about because of its use of Salesforce, and SAP will be keen to encourage customers to use its newly-launched C/4 HANA suite of CRM apps over rival offerings.

Should you trust SAP?

This one’s easy to answer – wait and see.

SUGEN points out that SAP has known about situations where customers connect third-party systems to its ERP platform for at least six years, but only started punishing companies for doing so recently, leaving its customer base panicked and confused about what they could and could not do.

“Expecting customers to talk to and trust account managers in an environment where SAP has admitted to having lost customer trust is asking a lot,” says chairman Gianmaria Perancin.

“If SAP publicly provided reassurances that customers won’t be asked to pay more for use cases and implementations that were undertaken in good faith, this would go a long way to encourage customers to engage with SAP proactively.”

However, Adams adds: “Without these reassurances, customers will find themselves in a state of paralysis, unable to move forward as they do not yet know what the new licensing model will mean for them. Over the coming months, we will be surveying customer organisations to see if their licensing positions are clearer, and what this means for their future plans and investments with SAP.”

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Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced a new cloud computing specialisation degree created in collaboration with Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA).

The program will be one of the first cloud computing degrees in the US offered by a community college and will be part of its Information Systems Technology (IST) Associate of Applied Science degree starting towards the end of 2018.

AWS said the two-year degree program is built to address the high concentration of tech employers in the Northern Virginia region and the demand for employees with cloud computing skills.

“A key part of the new Virginia economy is building up our talent pipeline to match our education system, and aligning our training programs around the skills needed, such as cloud computing, for 21st-century jobs,” said Ralph Northam, Governor of Virginia.

“Community colleges like NOVA are important engines for workforce development, and this collaboration with Amazon Web Services marks an exciting first step in a broader plan to bring cloud computing education to students across the Commonwealth of Virginia.”

The 63-credit associate degree program is mapped to skills and competency-based credentials required by AWS and other employers who leverage cloud-based services. All students will receive membership in the AWS Educate program and gain hands-on experience with leading cloud technology and tools.

This degree program is the first step in a much broader plan by AWS to bring cloud computing education to students throughout the state of Virginia and potentially to other educational institutes around the world.

“We’re thrilled to collaborate with NOVA on this degree program, as they break new ground to open up opportunities to careers in cloud computing for students in the state of Virginia and around the globe,” said Teresa Carlson, vice president of worldwide public sector at AWS.

“We believe that this degree offering, and our collaboration with community and vocational programs around the world, can fundamentally alter the role that these institutions play in helping to build and diversify the pipeline of new, exceptional talent in the tech community.”

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