Here’s some of the key stories to help you prep for party small talk WPC this week in Washington, D.C.
IDC: U.S. Q2 PC shipments up almost 7 percent
It would appear that the black cloud that was forecast to rain out the PC market this year has failed to show up on time. Just about every analyst that covers the PC market has been predicting a serious decline in unit shipments, primarily resulting from new technologies (read: “tablets”) entering the space. This serves as a telling reminder that industry analysts, for all their models and research and the alphabet soup on their letter-heads, are little more than TV meteorologists. They take input from a few sources, mix it up and then come up with a prediction. It’s a best guess. According to IDC research (not forecasts, but actual surveys), U.S. Q2 PC shipments were up a whopping seven percent while the global market contracted 1.7 percent – the smallest decline in two years. Credit for this goes to Chromebooks, Windows XP upgrades, and better channel alignment from the OEMs. Hewlett-Packard maintained its lead in the U.S. and second place in the global market. The big winner in the IDC report, however, was Lenovo which extended its lead in the global market to 19.6 percent. These results have prompted IDC to reverse its position on the PC market, which in May it predicted would shrink by 6 percent this year. Now the firm says the market will be flat globally for the year and robust in the U.S.
Okta beefs up its channel program to support cloud-based identity management
Motivated by rising demand for more robust authentication from companies migrating to Office 365 and other cloud platforms, San Francisco-based security vendor Okta is adding support and incentives to its channel program to better position it in the eyes of systems integrators, MSPs and VARs. According to the company the growing adoption of subscription-based services for such functions as CRM, unified communications and collaboration and office applications is driving a demand for comprehensive authentication and password management capabilities such as single sign on. Okta is approaching the market with a hybrid model, expecting about 25 percent of its business coming through the channel. The company has 120 global partners enrolled in its four-tier channel program that provides MDF and tech support resources along with up to 30 percent net margins on sales and 10 percent on referral margins.
CA technologies spins out Arcserve
CA Technologies is spinning out its Arcserve data protection software business – selling it to Marlin Equity Partners, a private equity company, for an undisclosed amount. Through the deal, which is expected to close in July or early August, Arcserve will become a standalone, private company. The new company will be 100 percent channel focused and include a significant number of SMBs in its list of 43,000 customers. CA will focus on its mainframe and large enterprise management business. In May CA unveiled the Arcserve Unified Data Protection strategy, which combines backup, replication, high availability and global deduplication in a single console.
Google offers 2TB of free cloud storage
The latest chapter of the Cloud Wars has Google offering customers two terabytes of free storage on the Google Cloud Platform for a year. This marks Google's first significant response to a number of aggressive object storage price cuts from Amazon and Microsoft. For example, in June Microsoft increased its file storage limit for Office 365 customers from 25GB to 1TB. In order to take advantage of the offer customers have to install cloud gateway software from Campbell, Calif.-based storage vendor – and Google partner – Panzura. Panzura's cloud gateway is a virtual appliance that connects to all three major public clouds (Google Cloud Platform, Amazon S3 and Microsoft Azure). Panzura, which until now charged a fee for the gateway, is hoping the move will drive demand for its higher end cloud storage offerings.
