Stories by Mike Gee

  • Australia performs well as Ingram Micro's net sales drop 7.4 per cent in FY2015

    ​Australia has a small but significant sentence in Ingram Micro's annual report for the 2015 financial year ended January 2, 2016: "Australia generated double-digit growth in local currencies driven by strength across most product lines, including solid performance in consumer sales, particularly PCs, tablets and smartphones.​"

  • IN PICTURES: ARN Disruption and Distribution Roundtable, Sydney, 25.02.16 (+53 photos)

    Digital disruption is impacting on established business models - and the traditional IT distribution channel is being challenged, even threatened. Indeed, the lines are blurring in terms of roles and opportunities. With the race to sell Cloud solutions, distributors and partners are competing against each other, often causing havoc and disruption in the three tier model. The disruptive technologies and digital tools are entering the business environment, prompting significant changes in the way we work, communicate and sell. In the age of disruption, distributors now have to innovate quicker than ever before, create new business models and bring new products and services to market faster than before. While digitisation is not new, it is having a profound impact, causing massive disruption in the ICT industry. Digital transformation is happening at the distribution level and right across the channel. There’s no doubt the digital economy is entering a new age that represents unprecedented challenges for all businesses. The exclusive roundtable looked at the changing role of distribution, how lines are blurring across the channel in the age of digital transformation, and examine the ever-evolving business models. Discussion was intense with many differing points of view. The roundtable was sponsored by Avnet, Distribution Central, DPSA, Exclusive Networks and Hemisphere Technologies. Photos by Editorial Director, Mike Gee.

  • How Ingram Micro told its vendors it was being sold

    When the news broke last week that leading IT distributor, Ingram Micro had been acquired by Chinese company, Tianjin Tianhai, in a deal valued at $US6 billion, the distribution and ICT worlds shook a little.

  • IN PICTURES: Samsung Galaxy S7 - check out the new phone (+42 photos)

    Samsung has announced its next-generation flagship smartphones - the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge running Android 6 (Marshmallow). Both phones look strikingly similar to last year's models (the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge), but include features like a return to water resistance that was last seen in the Galaxy S5. The S7 has a 5.1-in. display while the S7 Edge features a 5.5-in curved display.

  • IN PICTURES: The Distributor is the New Age Facilitator - An ARN Roundtable, Sydney, 18.02.16 (+45 photos)

    The market has disrupted – the traditional IT distribution channel is being challenged and it is impacting business models. As such, the role of the distributor needs to evolve to keep up with current times. In addition, the engagements between resellers, distributors, facilitators, and vendors are changing, causing ISVs to become suppliers and competing vendors to collaborate with each other. From a distribution perspective, competitors are now working together too. As the discussion moves away from talking about the push down from vendor to reseller to partner, to how knowledge sharing flows through the channel, businesses should start looking for ways where they can add value to this changing role of the partner. This exclusive roundtable discussed the way the channel is changing, how partner go-to-market strategies are evolving to become integrated networks, how businesses should collaborate with each other to go quicker to market and ways it can support an end-to-end Cloud strategy. The roundtable was sponsored by rhipe. Photos by ARN Editorial Director, Mike Gee

  • IN PICTURES: ARN Backup and Disaster Recovery Roundtable, Sydney, 17.02.16

    When disaster strikes, it is not just data that needs restoring, but the full working environment, which means disaster recovery. No doubt the increasing use of virtualisation and the transition towards Cloud computing is changing the way backup and disaster recovery are being carried out. With the growing reliance on Cloud, many organisations are opting for a hybrid Cloud model, whereby Cloud storage and Cloud backup are paired with an on-premise backup appliance. It is an ideal way to expedite data recovery and meet demanding SLAs. This exclusive roundtable highlighted the latest partner opportunities, discuss customer pain points and market trends (including the emergence of disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) and the growing adoption of Cloud backup), and examine the latest state of play. The roundtable was sponsored by Bulletproof, Storagecraft and Veritas. Photos by ARN Editorial Director, Mike Gee.

  • What do we know about Tianjin Tianhai, the company buying Ingram Micro?

    As journalists around the world scrabble to find out information about a company few - except for experts in Chinese business - know nothing about, the salient fact is that Tianjin Tianhai Investment Co Ltd, the buyer of Ingram Micro, is the front play for the real power behind the throne, HAN Group.