Enough of HP/Compaq
Compaq and Hewlett-Packard may be in the final stages of their merger announced last year, but reports in the UK trade press suggest that dealers have had enough.
According to Microscope, a UK trade weekly, several Compaq resellers are now actively switching their PC customers away from Compaq and on to rival vendors.
This fact comes as Fujitsu Siemens has been staging a marketing campaign to make dealers aware of the fact that their offerings are better than those of Compaq's, as well as the fact that their company can offer a more stable background to potential customers. According to Ian Snadden, Fujitsu Siemens' director of channel sales, its dealer base in the UK has risen by around 20 per cent in the last three months.
Although shying away from suggesting that all these dealers are disgruntled Compaq resellers, he says that a sizeable number are dealers ooking to safeguard themselves - and their customers - from the uncertainty surrounding Compaq.
Gartner criticises Dell over changing PC specifications
Ever since Dell entered the UK PC market in the late 1980s, the direct-sell vendor has been accused of hypocrisy over its sales of PC hardware through value-added resellers. Whether Dell likes to admit it or not, a sizeable number of its PCs are quietly sold through indirect channels, mainly VARs, every year.
Now a Gartner report has acknowledged that such sales exist, but has cautioned that, although there are cost savings to be had, company users - as well as dealers - should be aware of issues such as changing PC specifications from Dell. While the mainstream indirect vendors supply basic chassis machines to their dealers, Dell operates a build-to-order system in the UK, meaning that customers wanting extra or replacement machines may have to put up with different specification PCs at a later stage.
The problem, Gartner says in its research note, is that dealers and their customers should be careful to negotiate a contract with Dell about replacement systems. According to the IT research firm, Dell's flexible build-to-order manufacturing system means that its ability to deliver the same hardware configuration for the duration of a contract is limited compared to its rivals. Gartner claims that these differences may have been minor to Dell but that users have reported that changes "forced them to re-image their systems many times within a one-year period."
Activis appoints TSF as channel partner
Activis, the managed security services specialist, has appointed TSF as one of its primary channel partners in the UK. Plans call for TSF, which has been operating for more than 11 years as an IT systems reseller, to offer Activis' range of services to its company customers as part of a family of IT security offerings.
To safeguard against security breaches, TSF says it will also migrate companies to vulnerability assessment scanning services using either the online Vulnerability Scanning Service (VSS) or the new enterprise-class security assessment tool, Foundscan from Foundstone. According to Richard Masterson, TSF's services director, his firm's success has been built on the close partnerships forged with its clients. As reported in previous columns, the UK IT security business is one of the few IT markets that is still growing, and, thanks to this maturity, it's good to see companies offering managed services to their resellers - and for resellers to start selling such services.
Viking implements pan-European e-trading system
Viking Office Supplies, better known as Office Depot in some parts of Europe, has implemented an e-trading system for its 650 regular suppliers in the UK, Ireland, Italy, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxemburg.
The move to the e-trading system coincides with the discount office supplies company's increasing shift to Web-based trading for its customers, who are mainly small-to-medium-sized businesses in the UK. Viking straddles an interesting market in the UK, which is not quite at the same level as PC World, Office World and Staples, but at the same time, not quite discounting as low as Web-based IT resellers such as Dabs, Insight and others.
The company trades on the fact that it offers a very wide selection of office products, including IT hardware, which is available on next-day delivery, with delivery free of charge for customers who order 30 pounds worth of products.
For its e-trading system, Viking tapped the resources of Burns e-Commerce Solutions' Business Exchange (beX) electronic trading service, which moved all of Viking's procurement systems over to an e-trading platform at the start of the year. During normal trading conditions Viking says that it is now processing 80,000 transactions per month across Europe through beX, including purchase orders and invoices, from its range of 14,000 product lines.
According to Les Winder, Viking's development manager, switching to e-trading from fax and post ordering was a logical move for the company, and has helped the reduce the firm's procurement overheads. beX has allowed us to eliminate unnecessary supply chain costs for both ourselves and our suppliers," he explained, adding that, thanks to the e-trading system, Viking and its suppliers are saving around two per cent of their supply chain costs.
Credit card firms baling out Tiny PC customers
Time Computers, which rescued Tiny earlier this year from the receivers, reports that the UK's credit card industry has responded well to its discussions over who should be liable for Tiny's extended warranties.
Although Time acquired Tiny's operations at the start of the year, its management discovered that Tiny had failed to `ringfence' the money paid by customers for extended warranties on their machines. As a result, when Tiny went bust, the extended warranties effectively became worthless. Time stepped it to honour those warranties where customers had paid in cash, by cheque of on a finance deal, but said it was the responsibility of the credit card companies to pickup the tab for customers who had paid for their extended warranty by credit cards.
Some consumer groups criticised Time for its stance on the issue, but the PC vendor says that its discussions with the credit card companies have proved favourable. According to Time, around 80,000 PC users had paid for their warranties on credit card, although around 280,000 PC users who paid by cash or finance have seen their warranties honoured. Following a meeting in early April, Time says it is now working with the credit card companies on sorting out liabilities for work carried out under the extended warranties.
In the meantime, the company says that, as a gesture of goodwill, it is offering Tiny PC owners free telephony support. This is of small consolation for those Tiny PC users who paid for their warranties by credit card and whose machines have become faulty since the start of the year - they face delays of several weeks while Time works with their credit card issuer on resolving payment for warranty work completed.
European IT spending reaches the bottom says Gartner
Research just produced by Gartner says that, while IT spending in Europe has reached the bottom, it will stay at this level until the end of next year. The slowdown in IT sales, the research firm says, means that growth is still elusive and will not resume until at least the middle of 2003.
The problem that vendors and their resellers face, Gartner says, is that most companies that planning to reduce their IT budgets in 2002 decreased them nine percentage points compared to last year. In 2003, this equilibrium is expected to continue, with 26.4 percent of European firms expecting to increase budgets, 25.9 percent expecting to decrease, and 47.7 percent expecting to remain the same. "Budget growth will remain flat for at least the next 12 months because companies have gone back to basics and are focused on integrating and rationalising their existing IT infrastructure, and optimising the over-spend of the last few years," explained Steve prentice, Gartner's director of research, "This will mean that vendors offering hardware, telecommunication equipment, network bandwidth and certain software products will continue to be challenged over the next 12 months," he said.
Gartner UK, 0044-2784-267195 (GB), www.gartner.com;
Activis, www.activis.com;
Viking, 0044-161-929-8673 (GB), www.viking-direct.co.uk;
Time Group, 0044-1282-684696, www.timecomputers.com