Gaining Mo'mentum
Channel shows real sense of fun and community.
Channel shows real sense of fun and community.
Many people would be lost for words when presented with an award in recognition of their contribution to the industry; Phil Cameron certainly isn’t one of them.
John Walters struggles to retain a healthy balance between his working and personal lives like most other people in the IT industry. He loves rugby, collects wine and gets a hit of golf in when he can. But having seen three months active service in the first Gulf war, he can put a bad day in the office into perspective better than most.
In putting together this special ARN Green Channel guide, our journalists spoke to a broad cross-section of the local IT community about a number of different matters relating to technology and the environment.
Although heavy-handed messaging has led to a great deal of scepticism in the market, there’s no doubting that environmental concerns are creating serious market opportunities. ARN recently brought together a group of IT industry thought-leaders to talk about myths and margins.
The past year has seen more column inches dedicated to the concept of green IT than just about any other topic you could name in this industry.
After six long and enjoyable years, this is my last ARN column. This half-page is normally dedicated to my musings on current events or trends within the local IT industry but I’m understandably in a reflective mood today.
Virtual desktops are being touted as a way of delivering applications to any user via any device. So does this brave new mobile world mean curtains for the humble PC? ARN recently brought together a panel of industry professionals to hear their views.
You really need to do something twice before you can truly call it an annual event. So it’s with great pleasure that I use this week’s column to thank everybody that helped make the second annual ARN IT Industry Awards such a resounding success last week.
In some respects, the Internet has a lot to answer for. On the positive side it’s arguably the most important technological invention in history, one that has changed so many aspects of our daily lives for the better; but from a commercial perspective it has heightened the sense that ‘price is king’ to a point where nothing else matters for many of the goods we buy.
Every now and again a technology comes along that, to some extent, sells itself.
In some respects, the Internet has a lot to answer for. On the positive side it’s arguably the most important technological invention in history, one that has changed so many aspects of our daily lives for the better; but from a commercial perspective it has heightened the sense that ‘price is king’ to a point where nothing else matters for many of the goods we buy.
Every now and again a technology comes along that, to some extent, sells itself. In recent years, the best example has been server virtualisation and many in the channel have had a great time closing deals based on this “no-brainer”. As usual in this industry, every man and his dog jumps quickly on the gravy train and skills that were recently seen as a market differentiator become commoditised before you can say ‘hypervisor’.
As the world’s largest distributor of IT products, Ingram Micro is something of a dichotomy. It reported global annual revenues of more than $US35 billion for its last financial year but despite its size – due largely to the low average margins of its broad-based business model – it is often more susceptible to changes in the economy than its smaller rivals.
As Optima’s administrators recommend the company be liquidated, I can’t help but think that repercussions for the local whitebox industry are going to be much deeper than I first feared. The reason why, in a word, is warranties.