SaaS market growth defies recession

The recession doesn’t seem to have dampened growth in the software as a service (SaaS) market with a 17.7% increase this year on last in terms of global revenues.

According to figures from Gartner the value of the SaaS market will reach $7.5bn this year and will continue to grow right through to 2013 by which time the market will have almost doubled to $14bn.

The vast majority of the revenue continues to come from content, collaboration and communications tools with CRM not far behind.

Sharon Mertz, research director at Gartner, said that there were more vertical specific applications that were helping to drive growth as well as the increasing numbers of vendors that were launching SaaS offerings.

“Adoption of the on-demand deployment model has continued to grow as on-demand vendors have extended their services through alliances, partner offerings, and more recently, by offering and promoting user application development through platform as a service capabilities,” she said.

Although the SaaS market continues to be swamped by hype the example of salesforce.com, which Mertz said had helped to drive the acceptance of hosted CRM, indicated that there was demand for specialist products.

by Simon Quicke
Microscope
9 November 2009

Software and Services Growth see IBM profits rise as System x gains market share

IBM posted a double digit rise in profits for the third Quarter with significant growth in software and services pre-tax profits.

Overall net profits were up 13.6% to $3.2bn on the same period in 2008.

Product revenues at the Systems and Technology arm fell 11% to $3.9bn. Only System x posted sales growth in the unit, as revenues for System z, Converged System p, storage and retail store solutions declined.

IDC announce 2Q09 Server Market numbers

IBM held onto its number 1 spot in the worldwide server systems market with 34.5% market share in factory revenue for 2Q09 and gaining 1.8 points of share in the quarter on the performance of System x and System p. HP maintained the number 2 spot with 28.5% share for the quarter, on a 30.4% year-over-year revenue decline. Dell and Sun held the number 3 and 4 market positions with 12.4% and 10.0% factory revenue share respectively. Dell’s factory revenue declined 26.8% and increased its market share by 0.6 points year over year while Sun’s factory revenue declined 37.2% year over year. Fujitsu/Fujitsu-Siemens maintained its fifth-place standing in terms of factory revenue, with 3.5% market share in the quarter.

SME spending on managed services set to grow

Microscope article focusses on the growth of managed Services in SMEs

The interest among the SME sector in managed services will defy the recession with growth expected for the next couple of years.

According to US based analysts Techaisle, EMEA spending by small firms on remote managed services will grow by 9.2% this year and 8.1% next year.

The sweet-spot for resellers will be firms with between 10 to 50 staff but these can often be some of the hardest to reach.

Abhijeet Rane, an analyst at Techaisle, said that the recession had forced companies to scrutinise spending and managed services were seen as smart investments were “certainly in the radar”.

Drilling down into the types of managed services most in demand those that covered the network and server space are predicted as having the strongest growth.

by Simon Quicke
24 August 2009

Next SyteLine Users UK Conference Announced

User Group News

The SyteLine UK User Group Committee have pleasure in annuncing that next User Group event will be held on Tuesday 22nd September 2009 at the Infor offices at Blythe Valley Park, Solihull.

The committee would like to welcome as many SyteLine users as possible on this day and would extend this invitation to non member organisations to ‘try before you buy’ membership. The booking office is now open – click here to book your place

http://www.sytelineusers.co.uk/booking.aspx

- you will be most welcome!

Programme:

09.30 Registration, coffee and networking

10.00 Introduction to Conference SyteLine Committee

10.15 Update Session
- Feedback on Enhancements
- Communication with SUN
- State of the User Group
SyteLine Committee

10.45 SyteLine 8 User Story – Hartridge Ltd
SyteLine 7.04.30 to 8 project – the pros and cons Anton Hobbs, Hartdridge Ltd

11.45 Refreshment break with networking

12.00 Tivoli Fastback Solutions
IBM Tivoli Fastback solutions provide fully automated back-up solutions for your SyteLine environment that allows for both central and remote office backup from one easy-to-manage system. IBM

12.30 New Server Technology
With SyteLine 8 support announced for VMWare, SyteLine users now have an opportunity to significantly reduce their costs, with the added benefits of reducing their energy bills and carbon footprint. IBM

13.00 Lunch and networking break

14.00 Discussion breakouts
Shop Floor Data Capture
Chaired by: Tony Tibbenham, SSDM CRM
Chaired by: Kevin Hall, Herman Miller Managing Personalisations
Chaired by: Graham Little, Renishaw

14.45 Refreshment break with networking

15.00 Discussion breakouts (continued)
Workflow Quality Systems
Chaired by: Graham Little, Renishaw Reporting – BI 3rd Party Tools v Crystal
Chaired by: Tony Tibbenham, SSDM

15.45 Infor Update
David will provide an update on Infor and the changes in the UK region and will also touch on the recent successes and the outlook for SyteLine in the UK over the coming months. David Grosvenor, Vice President UK, Ireland, Middle East and Africa, Infor
Infor ERP SyteLine Product Update Karen Lucas, Senior Director Product Management EMEA, Infor

Closing Comments

Please note that there will be an area available to enjoy and coffee and catch up on emails and work with WIFI should you choose not to join any of the above sessions

——————————————————————————–

M7 Study Tour venue is a hot hit

 

Montpellier, South of France,

is the home for IBM’s Next Generation Networks

Briefing Centre, the European Manufacturing Site

for high end systems and Systems

Benchmarking Centre.

 

On June 24th -26th, M7 Business Partners in

the Industry Systems Integration (ISI) program

visited the Briefing Centre as part of the 2009

M7 Study Tour. The tour provided an insight

into IBM technologies and future product

developments in the Networking and Systems

arena plus the opportunity to ask questions of

those closely involved in their design.

(The weather was great as well!)

 

This is one of the many benefits offered by the

ISI Program via M7, the first IBM Partner to

be authorised by IBM in EMEA . The

centre also provides a range of benchmarking and

performance services which are available to ISV’s

via M7. This includes free use of IBM hardware

configurations which can be accessed remotely

for proof of concept, sizing and benchmarking.

 

ISVs and SIs looking to build and support their

solutions on an IBM platform and who would

like to know more about the program should

call Mike Hewlett on 01443 657100.

M7 Launch CloudVault-7 and CloudRecover-7

CloudVault-7

 Utilising IBM server and storage technology, this offering provides a unique solution to data back up and security. By installing an intelligent storage server on your site we provide a single view of all of your company data including data held on servers, desktops and laptops. Our CloudVault-7 solution then enables, in the event of data loss, the local restoration of files back to servers, desktops and laptops.

 In addition to the local data storage, M7 replicate this single view, securely back to the M7 data centre, across the internet where it is then backed up using our Enterprise Standard Automated Tape Libraries and Storage Management Software. A full history including all changes is kept allowing the restoration of files which have been inadvertently changed, lost or corrupted.

 

The CloudRecover-7 service is a comprehensive disaster recovery service.

 Using virtualization technologies in the M7 data centre, CloudRecover-7 provides an affordable solution for minimizing potential downtime for companies where their recovery point objective (RPO) is in minutes or hours of an outage rather than days or weeks.

Intelligently engineered, the solution removes the traditionally high asset costs associated with disaster recovery solutions. It works by mirroring your primary servers within the M7 data centre. In the event of server or building loss, the current systems will failover to backup servers and you and your workforce can continue working from alternative and remote locations.

 

Our Small Business Server (SBS), online backup solution is purpose built for the smaller business, department or branch office that requires automated offsite backup of Microsoft Exchange, Office, SQL and standard data files.

CloudRecover-7 SBS is a secure and fully automated solution – with your data and server being replicated within the M7 data centre plus another copy of your data being held at a secure third location; removing the hassle, cost and unreliability of traditional tape systems. M7 staff will configure the service to ensure critical data is automatically backed up and a server environment always available in the event of an unplanned outage impacting on your business critical systems.

IBM warns mid-sized companies against neglecting data

According to research carried out by Quocirca for IBM’s software group there are a sizeable portion of companies that either store data on an ad hoc basis, use multiple database systems or deploy a short-term strategy to deal with data management.

 Just shy of half of those mid-sized company managers quizzed in the survey, revealed they were worried about data integrity but 68% did little in terms of monitoring or analysing their information.

 “The cost of storage is falling but the cost of management is rising so this is unsustainable,” warned Clive Longbottom, service director at Quocirca.

 “If you haven’t planned ahead you could be out of business,” he added that far too much information was not being shared and resided on user’s C drives.

Source: Microscope 2 July 2009

Global Study Identifies SMB ‘Security Gap’

 A new study from Symantec finds that while small and midsize businesses are acutely aware of today’s security risks, a large number have yet to take even the basic steps needed to protect themselves. Further, the study shows that simple protection measures could have prevented many of the security breaches reported by these companies.

According to the study, based on surveys of 1,425 SMBs worldwide (defined as companies with 10 to 500 employees) in the first quarter of 2009, the lack of a dedicated IT staff and tight budgets were the main reasons for the lack of action. Respondents also cited a lack of employee skills as a top barrier to security.

 So what does it mean to say that SMBs have yet to take the basic steps to protect themselves?

  According to the study:

• 59% of respondents said they have no endpoint protection (i.e., software that combines antivirus with advanced threat                 protection technologies such as desktop firewall and intrusion prevention for laptops, desktops, and servers).
• 47% do not back up their desktop PCs, leaving their important information at risk.
• 33% lack even basic antivirus protection.

What were the leading causes of the security breaches that these SMBs experienced?

  The reasons most frequently cited were:

• system failure
• a lost or stolen laptop, smartphone, or PDA
• human error
• the loss or theft of backup tapes or devices containing sensitive data
• the use of improper or out-of-date security solutions

Narrowing the data security gap

With security threats becoming more complex and targeting critical business information such as confidential documents and customer data, it is becoming increasingly apparent that SMBs need a higher level of protection.

 SMBs must ask themselves if the way they back up critical information is sufficient to protect themselves from system failures and disruptions and data loss. A recent survey of SMBs by Rubicon Consulting found that, of the companies that lost data, approximately 30% subsequently lost sales, 20% lost customers, and 25% claimed the data loss caused severe disruptions to the company. The same survey found that about 20% of the SMBs interviewed conduct no server backup whatsoever.

        So what can SMBs do to narrow or close today’s security gap?

• Use trusted advisors for needed expertise. Trusted advisors such as IT consultants or resellers help businesses match their IT needs with appropriate solutions. This is especially important when reduced staffing is an issue.
• Use layered security. Employ in-depth defense strategies to guard against single-point failure in any specific technology or protection method. This includes the deployment of antivirus and antispam software, firewalls, intrusion prevention technologies, device and application control, and security patch updates.
• Protect end to end. SMBs must actively protect all their devices against unknown threats, including laptops, desktops, messaging servers, and mobile devices.
• Back up data. IT systems can be brought down for a number of reasons, including natural disaster, human error, hardware failure, etc. It is critical to back up data regularly and store extra copies of this data offsite. Encrypting those backup stores adds an additional layer of protection.
• Protect from the inside. Protect your company from data loss, random theft, vandalism, and employee malice. Put policies and controls in place to automatically safeguard company data and prevent sensitive information from leaving the company network.
• Don’t forget physical security. SMBs can strengthen their organization’s security with practices such as using the screen-locking feature when away from the computer, shutting the computer off when done for the day, locking laptops with a cable, and not leaving passwords on sticky notes next to the computer.

Conclusion

Small and midsize businesses clearly grasp the importance of security risks today. But in too many cases they are not acting to protect themselves. Basic safeguards are not in place, putting information at risk. If you believe your business data is at risk please call 01443 657100 and ask for Martin Tipples

Infor Acquire SoftBrands in $80M Deal….

This is Infor’s first deal in two years. With it, Infor picks up software for manufacturers and the hospitality industry.

 On the hospitality side, SoftBrands’ customers include more than 4,000 hotel properties. It claims to be the second-largest global property management firm. This part of the business fits nicely with Infor’s existing offering for that sector. Infor provides the back-office software (e.g., financial applications, CRM, and workforce management) that can be linked to the SoftBrands reservation systems.

More on Infor and their 2010 Kick Off to follow shortly.

If you are looking for some one to host your Infor Applications please contact us.