IBM's Cloud Battle strategy in the Acquisition of Optevia

IBM has announced that it has acquired Optevia, a privately owned Software as a Service, (SaaS), systems integrator specializing in Microsoft Dynamics CRM solutions for public sector organizations. Optevia will join IBM Global Business Services and help meet the increasing client demand for CRM SaaS solutions within the public sector.

Industry experts estimate that the world-wide Customer Relationship Management (CRM) opportunity is in excess of $23B, with cloud-based CRM solutions expected to surpass 50 percent of that total. The acquisition of Optevia, will help IBM establish itself as a premier SaaS and digital consultant and accelerate leadership in CRM solutions.

Optevia’s main focus on UK Emergency Services, Central Government, Local Government, Health Authorities and Housing and Social Enterprises, allows them to offer their clients highly differentiated solutions. Optevia’s client base includes ministries, councils, regulators, licensing and grant management organizations, transport authorities and social housing organizations.

“By acquiring Optevia, IBM will be able to provide Public Sector clients and prospects with a range of unique, industry focused CRM based solutions,”said Joanna Davinson, IBM Public Sector Leader - Europe. “This strategic acquisition will help strengthen IBM as a SaaS provider and Global Software Integrator.”

It’s the rapid growth expected in the CRM and SaaS (software-as-a-service) space that has prompted IBM to pursue Optevia. According to the Cisco (CSCO) Global Cloud Index, SaaS is expected to be the fastest-growing cloud service segment through 2018, as the above presentation shows. SaaS is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (or CAGR) of 33%, whereas the cloud market as a whole is expected to grow at a CAGR of 24%.

CRM is the largest component of SaaS, which explains Salesforce’s continued double-digit revenue growth. Taking a look at Gartner estimates, though the CRM software market is expected to grow only at a 14.8% CAGR (compound annual growth rate) by 2017, SaaS CRM is expected to grow at 22.6%.

The growth in the CRM space that pushed IBM to acquire Optevia also propelled Oracle (ORCL) to speed up its effort and initiatives in this space. In its latest fiscal 3Q16 earnings release, Larry Ellison, founder and executive chair of Oracle, stated that the company’s positioning “should make it easy for Oracle to pass Salesforce.com and become the largest SaaS and PaaS cloud company in the world.” Oracle stated that it’s growing faster than Salesforce (CRM) in the SaaS space and has ten times more customers than Workday

It’s Salesforce’s dominance in the CRM space that made it a potential target for Microsoft (MSFT) though the acquisition did not happen. Salesforce leads the CRM and SaaS space. Investors interested in gaining exposure to IBM can consider investing in the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY), which has an exposure of 8.7% to application software and invests ~0.7% of its holdings in IBM.

Since its founding in 2001, Optevia has rapidly established itself as a trusted partner for Public Sector and Social Enterprise clients. The acquisition will allow IBM to scale Optevia’s solutions across other areas worldwide, where Optevia's software, assets and highly skilled, industry-focused workforce, coupled with their expertise will significantly increase IBM’s current capabilities.

Apple engineers to quit if forced to unlock iPhones

If Apple ends up losing their impending court battle with the FBI, and are compelled to help unlock the 'San Bernardino iPhone' through the creation of a custom software update, the engineers set to work on this task may throw up some roadblocks.

According to The New York Times, which talked to "more than a half-dozen current and former Apple employees", engineers tasked with breaking in to the iPhone may refuse to complete the work, while others may quit their jobs entirely. For some, quitting the company is a better option than helping defeat the security measures they designed in the first place.

This may present some issues for the FBI. While a court order can force Apple to help break into the iPhone, there is nothing stopping Apple employees from quitting rather than helping the FBI. If enough engineers decide to leave, it may take a very long time for others to force their way inside the device.

Apple is already on the offensive against the FBI in regards to the San Bernardino iPhone. The company has stated that circumventing the security measures they implemented is completely against their values, and they will fight to prevent the FBI from forcing their way in and creating dangerous precedents in the process.

In the event that the courts decide against Apple, the company believes it would take a team of around six to ten engineers between two and four weeks to develop the update needed to break the iPhone. If any of these engineers decide to resist or quit, that timeframe would extend.

It's looking likely that this case will drag on for years, so engineers at Apple can continue to work as normal for a while yet. But when the time comes, it's not going to be a straightforward task to comply with the FBI's demands.

Apple is gunning for PC users, but does Microsoft have anything to fear?

When Apple introduced a smaller iPad Pro on Monday, vice president Phil Schiller didn’t mince words when he discussed which customers Apple is targeting with the product, along with its 12-inch sibling.

“When [users of old PCs] see the features and performance and capabilities of a product like the iPad Pro, designed for the modern digital lifestyle, many of them will find it is the ultimate PC replacement,” Schiller said during a press conference on Apple’s campus.

It’s unlikely that Microsoft executives are quaking in their boots, however. Apple’s position is clear: Windows is the past, and there are plenty of people with old PCs who are ripe for being turned into iPad users. Schiller said that Windows was designed for a world before the Internet, app stores and social media. What’s more, he said that there are more than 600 million PCs that are at least five years old and still in use.

But it seems unlikely that Apple will manage to commandeer massive swaths of the Windows user base. Businesses appear to be doubling down on Windows with massive, earlier-than-expected rollouts of Windows 10, while consumer interest in iPads appears to be waning, not growing.

“So far, we haven’t seen any real impact from the iPad Pro on Windows 10 uptake with enterprises,” Gartner analyst Steve Kleynhans said. “I’d say generally, enterprises are moving very rapidly towards Windows 10, and nothing from Apple has slowed that down. I don’t think a smaller version of the same device is going to really change that."

Enterprises, which are in a position to make large-scale purchases of devices like iPads and Windows tablets, are usually slower to adopt things that they aren’t familiar with. IDC Vice President Lauren Loverde said it’s still easier for businesses to manage Windows devices than ones running iOS. That may lead companies to stick to the platform they’re comfortable with.

As Gillen pointed out, people with old PCs may not be in the market for an iPad anyway, since they likely already have some newer device that they’re using as well.

“Rather than buying a new PC, they went and they bought a tablet, and whether it’s an Android tablet or an iPad or something else, chances are good these customers have bought something they’re using as an alternative to the PC,” Gillen said. "They still have that old PC for the times when you really need to have that functionality of a full screen, a keyboard and mouse dexterity, that sort of thing."

Even if all those millions of old PC users were to leave Windows for iOS, it wouldn’t be a complete disaster for Microsoft.  One of the tenets of Microsoft’s strategy under Satya Nadella is that it's trying to make its products more broadly available, so it’s still making money from people who use Office 365 on the iPad Pro, along with applications powered by its Azure cloud services.

And there's also another outstanding question: how many people actually want a new iPad these days? Apple’s financial results over the past year have shown continually shrinking iPad sales. The company still sells millions of tablets every quarter, but sales aren’t as good as they used to be.

Apple is far from doomed in the tablet market, but interest in the iPad has, objectively, cooled. And Windows tablets have the benefit of being appealing to companies that want to upgrade aging technology but still rely on legacy applications built to run on Windows.

If there’s one arena Apple still has an advantage, it’s with consumers who want to make sure their tablet has dedicated mobile apps built for it. Schiller touted that the iOS App Store has over a million applications for the iPad, a not-so-subtle dig at Microsoft’s Windows Store, which is growing, but still missing key applications.

Get ready for Microsoft to fire something back at Apple soon, when the company holds its Build developer conference in San Francisco. It’s not yet clear what the folks from Redmond have up their collective sleeve, but odds are good that the Windows Store and Windows adoption in general will be on the menu.

The worst, most irritating smartphone features ever

Courtesy: https://recombu.com

Lets run down the most baffling and pointless smartphone features we've ever had the misfortune of battling with, from eye-tracking shenanigans to face-warping weirdness.

It's probably no surprise to users of Samsung phones that about half of this list contains annoying features found on Galaxy handsets throughout the ages. Samsung is the king of adding pointless crap to its mobiles, seemingly on a whim - although those days appear to be over after the pleasingly lean and user-friendly Galaxy S6 landed just a month ago.

And of course it isn't just Samsung who's guilty of throwing irritating and useless features onto its phones...

Knuckle mode

For instance, Taiwanese company Huawei recently got our hackles up with the infuriating 'knuckle mode', dumped merrily on to the P8 flagship phone. This ill-advised display feature was supposed to determine between your fingertip and knuckle, and if it thought you were dragging your knuckle across the display, it would capture that part of the screen so you could share it around or paste into documents.

Problem was, it was a bit shit. So occasionally the P8 would mistake your swipes as knuckles jabs and end up tracing blue lines around the screen instead of doing anything useful, like below.

Chances are this will happen while you're playing a game which requires fast actions to avoid death - so not only will your game character meet an unfortunate and avoidable early demise, but so will the P8 as you hurl the bloody thing at the nearest brick wall.

And the best part? As far as everyone can tell, knuckle mode is impossible to disable. Cheers fellas.

 

Beautify mode

This baffling camera feature plagues almost every Asian smartphone and never fails to amuse, turning us into some kind of bizarre anime character/grey alien hybrid. Rather than making us drop dead gorgeous, the beauty or beautify mode often makes us look like the result of decades of inbreeding.

Torch mode

Rarely found these days, but a fair few early smartphones boasted the highly useful 'torch mode'. This essentially turned the screen white, to help you stumble your way around at night. Because phone screens apparently don't pump out enough light already.

3D

Attempted back in the day by LG's Optimus 3D, glasses-free 3D wizardry was a really nice gimmick for about ten minutes. Then you realised that practically no apps and movies supported it, and now you were stuck with this chunky handset for two years.

Amazon seemed to forget that 3D was a crap idea when it released its first own-brand handset, the Fire Phone, which went on to sell about three units. We're taking bets on which manufacturer will try and fail in another couple of years to resurrect this pointless tech.

Dual camera/focus shifting

HTC's One M8 was a great handset, boasting plenty of nifty features and a gorgeous design, but we still wonder what the point of the dual-lens Ultrapixel camera was. HTC bigged up the fact that you could do 'focus shifting', i.e. change the focus of a photo after you've already taken it. Which is all well and good, but the only time we ever used it was to test it out for the review, after which we promptly forgot it was even a thing.

Heart rate sensor

We're sure that some people do actually use the heart rate sensor crammed onto the back of recent Samsung flagships and pretty much every wearable ever conceived. And to those five people, we say: fair play.

Samsung's Smart Scroll, Smart Pause, etc.

It's impossible to choose just one Samsung-birthed eye detection feature to pick on, so we've lumped them all together into one steaming heap of smartphone fail.

The Galaxy S4 was absolutely stacked full of irritating tools that were supposed to track your eye motions using the front-facing camera. Smart scroll, for instance, could allegedly work out when your eyes reached the bottom of a web page and then scroll down automatically for you. Because swiping with your finger is so 2011.

Needless to say, it worked about as well as a chocolate tractor and was immediately disabled by every user.

Galaxy Beam projector, K Zoom camera and other phones that aren't really phones

Okay, look, we didn't mean to pick on Samsung this much. It just happens to plough a lot of rubbish features into its phones - or at least, did. 

Like glasses-free 3D, the Galaxy Beam - which packed in an actual projector - was great fun for a number of minutes. But as soon as we got bored of projecting cat videos on the wall, we realised that we were stuck with a fairly bog-standard mobile that was also far too chunky to fit in our pockets. Ditto with the K Zoom, which was basically a decent digital camera with a crap phone attached.

Curved edge

We'd be the first to big up how sexy the Galaxy S6 Edge looks, with its unique and innovative design. However, while those curved edges are a sexy addition, they're also completely pointless. The best excuse Samsung could find for them is flashing coloured lights when the Edge is face-down, so you can tell who's calling during meetings and quiet moments. Because that's not at all distracting.

Acer Scores Five iF Design Awards in 2016

Acer has scored five winning entries in the computer category at the 2016 iF Design Awards, one of the most coveted international design awards. The awarded products include a desktop and monitor from the Predator gaming line, a modular mini PC, and two high-end monitors.

The winning Acer products were selected among 5,300 entries from about 2,500 participants from more than 50 countries, by a jury of 58 high-profile international experts.

“Acer is especially pleased that our newly launched Predator gaming line have been recognized by the iF Design jury,” said Maarten Schellekens, Vice President of Global Marketing and Branding, Acer. “The new products have been well received by media and consumers across the globe, and these awards are a further testament to our never-ending pursuit of design and engineering excellence.”

Powered by the latest 6th Generation Intel® Core® i7-6700K processors, the Predator G6 (G6-710) delivers maximum power by utilizing the massive potential of the Intel core, the latest Windows 10 OS, and a market-dominating 64GB of DDR4 dual-channel memory. All this is packed into a radically redesigned armor-like shell crafted to look the part of an unstoppable fighting machine. The casing allows for a bi-directional inflow of air to enable the IceTunnel cooling, and also houses the expansion slots, letting the beast support up to 12TB of storage.

The Revo Build (M1-601) is a mini PC that is easily customized with blocks that provide different functions such as extra storage, speakers and microphones, or even wireless charging. The blocks connect precisely via magnetic pogo pins that make assembling a computer as easy as playing with toy blocks. The blocks can also work independently or with other PCs. The Revo Build mini PC is packaged in a tiny one liter chassis with a 125 x 125 mm footprint that takes up minimal space and can be placed almost anywhere.

The Predator Z35 is the first product of Acer’s Predator Z Series curved gaming monitors with NVIDIA® G-SYNC™. Its 35-inch 21:9 UltraWide Full HD (2560x1080) panel features a curvature of 2000R for immersive, wraparound gaming. It also supports overclocking to a lightning-fast 200Hz refresh rate, so gamers can find their enemies before they spot them and enjoy crystal clear turns on the racetrack, and features powerful audio with DTS® Sound, 9Wx2 speakers and Acer TrueHarmony technology.

The Acer XR342CK monitor features a curved 34-inch 21:9 panel with a 1900R curvature and delivers immersive, picture-perfect visuals. Special features like 6-axis color adjustment and DTS® Sound deepen the audio/visual impact, while a customizable ambient light at the lower edge of the monitor provides lighting effects that match the desired mood. The base can swivel from -30 to +30 degrees, allowing users to easily adjust the monitor to their desired viewing angle.

The Acer H277HU is part of the H7 series monitors, which are the world’s first to support USB Type-C, so that users can conveniently transfer data and display content from notebooks or smartphones, while charging them at the same time through just one cable. With a premium ZeroFrame design, diamond-cut and brushed-metal stand, the 27-inch H277HU boasts WQHD (2560 x 1440) display resolution, superior audio with Acer TrueHarmony and DTS™ Sound.

About the iF Design Awards

Organized by the International Forum Design of Germany, the iF award logo has become synonymous for outstanding design around the world since 1953. For more information about the iF design awards please go to http://www.ifdesign.de/

Focus Softnet Nigeria introduce ERP solutions Promo: 75% Price slash for SMEs

One of the most creative players in the enterprise computing landscape in the global market, Focus Softnet has launched its annual product promo for some select products in their stable for the Nigerian and West African markets. Operating in Nigeria as Focus Softnet Services Nigeria Limited, the company recently indicated that the promo, which comes in the form of a massive 75% price cut, is aimed at helping Small and Medium Enterprises (SME), and multinationals leverage on the strength of its range of ERP solutions to deepen their resource planning base.

Making this known recently in their Lagos office, the Managing Director Emeakpo‎ Moses Uvomata, explained that the justification for this unusual promo is based on the company's conviction that the enterprise in Nigeria is still operating in less than desired standards. “When you look at the fact that most companies in Nigeria including major ones, are still stuck in the 80s in terms of usage of information technology to drive their businesses, this is our own way of trying to grow the adoption of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) tools to enhance productivity and growth for the enterprise and the nation” he said.

According to him, “ERP vanquishes the old standalone computer systems in Finance, HR, Manufacturing and the Warehouse, and replaces them with a single unified software program divided into software modules that approximate the old standalone systems. Finance, Manufacturing and the Warehouse all still get their own software, except that now the software is linked together so that anyone in Finance can look into the Warehouse software to see if an order has been shipped. ERP allows trace-ability of an order from the point it is entered to the point it is shipped, by anyone from any department. Thus, customer service is truly enhanced”.

Uvomata said, "By re-engineering business processes and optimizing resources, developing and deploying user-friendly, flexible and cost effective industry specific solutions, we back our clients with complete and disciplined strategies for managing their work force globally through our HR services ranging from sourcing assessing and providing training and development needs of an organization work force. Focus Softnet has helped over 30,000 clients across the globe increase productivity and efficiency and run better.

‎"Our methodologies and strong technical expertise have been proven across markets around the globe. Our expertise in wide range of business applications in multi-tier distributed architecture and mobile device applications provide innovative and quality IT products and solutions to help the enterprise implement agile integrated system and processes that will ensure that their businesses continue to grow".

‎The strength of Focus is said to lie in the flexibility of their products. Not only can Focus ERP solutions be easily adaptable to any business process, a standard availability of additions like workflows and online approvals completely eliminate paper and scheduling of reports is a fantastic feature.

While unveiling some of the solutions in their stable that'll be available on the 75% promo, the CEO listed them as follows:

1) Focus 6 – this is a comprehensive accounting solution that empowers businesses to maintain, analyze and interpret financial health of an organization. Available at practically zero cost, this solution fits any startup requirement that envisions growth through transparency and efficiency. With detailed features that can handle Procurement, Financial Accounting, Inventory Control, Order Processing, Fixed Assets Management and payroll, Focus 6 has been adjudged as the best enterprise management tool for the small business.

2) Focus RT – this is a Multi-Tier application that works seamlessly over Local Area Network and the Internet in a distributed business environment. It operates with amazing speed when it is required to update data from remote locations over the internet in real time or in batch mode. Rated as superior to most mid-sized ERP solutions, the Focus RT has the ability to Track events across business locations, significantly increase operational efficiencies, scale up with ease, quick deployment and assured high return on investment

3) Focus I – this product has so far been rated highly against competition at all levels. Designed for the mid-level to high-end enterprise, Focus I is a revolutionary product that combines business intelligence (BI) tools with traditional ERP features enabling users to run statistical models, analyze data, extract, and generate business intelligence reports on the go.

“From the Accounting, Business Intelligence, HR, Inventory and CRM capabilities, our solutions have often been rated higher than most products from our competition including the likes of SAP, Tally, and Microsoft. Though our pricing is still lower than these mentioned ones, our sales promotional offer has even further reduced our selling price by almost 75%, thereby making it the most scalable and functional ERP solution in the market with the lowest cost”, the CEO concluded.

The promo is expected to run till the end of April 2016.

About Focus Softnet Services Limited

Established in 1992, Focus Softnet has a rich history of innovation, expansion and growth. With business associates in 25 offices across 15 countries, Focus Softnet’s experience and multi-domain expertise, in consulting services and skillsets are backed by a vast knowledge-base and a keen understanding of what it takes to run and grow a business. By re-engineering business processes and optimizing resources, developing and deploying user-friendly, flexible and cost-efficient industry specific solutions, we back our clients with complete and disciplined strategies for managing their work force globally through our HR services ranging from sourcing, assessing and providing training and development needs of an organizations work force. Focus Softnet has helped over 30,000 clients across the globe increase productivity and efficiency, and run better.  

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* :muvomata@focussoftnet.com  

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Kropmann Communications to Provide Argyle Data's Fraud Analytics App to African Telcos

Nigerian-based communications professional services provider Kropmann Communications Limited, has signed a reseller agreement to provide Argyle Data's native Hadoop fraud analytics technology as part of its services to mobile communications operators in Africa.

Kropmann is in the forefront of delivering new technologies to help address business challenges in Africa. Since its inception in 2005, Kropmann has entered into strategic partnerships and alliances to deliver actionable intelligence platforms for banks and telecommunications companies in areas including customer engagement optimization, compliance, business intelligence, security, fraud and risk.

Each year Africa's mobile/cellular carriers lose the equivalent of almost US$1.75 billion through theft of service, interconnect and related frauds. Fraud prevention and revenue assurance has become a major priority for all operators. 2015 research indicates a general consensus among regional telecoms carriers that between 1 to 3% of revenues are unbilled and that between 2 to 6% of billed revenues are unpaid(1).

"The downside of the growth in mobile services in African countries is that it has attracted the attention of global criminals which, combined with the high cost of delivering service in this region, highlights the importance of operators actively engaging in identifying and reducing revenue leakage," said Kim Fraser, CEO of Kropmann Communications Limited. "While the region's telecommunications industry has seen a quantum leap in the past decade, revenue fraud and the high cost of service delivery is a challenge for which the telecoms industry in Africa urgently needs new solutions. Argyle Data's fraud detection technology allows operators to fight known and unknown fraud types in real time, and we are very pleased to add their application to our portfolio."

Argyle Data's system is used by some of the world's largest mobile operators to gain real-time visibility into revenue threats and attack patterns, which cost the mobile communications industry an estimated U.S.$38 billion a year. Argyle Data's is the first in a new generation of native Hadoop applications that exploit the power of machine learning to uncover critical insights in real-time from vast data lakes.

"Research from the CFCA(2) shows major growth in both International Revenue Share Fraud and Premium Rate service fraud, which in Africa is over 28% of the total," said Vikash Varma, President and CEO at Argyle Data. "Subscription and dealer fraud constitute a further 29% of the total revenue loss to fraud in Africa. Argyle Data's breakthrough approach has already been proven to dramatically improve fraud detection and prevention. We are very pleased to work with Kropmann to provide operators with a way of reducing revenue losses to fraud in the region."

About Kropmann Communications Limited
Kropmann Communications Limited is incorporated and headquartered in Nigeria. The company became fully operational in 2009, with a vision to be the foremost indigenous professional services and VAS content provider in Nigeria. Managed by experienced executives, Kropman is in the forefront of delivering new technologies to help address business IT challenges in Africa. Kropmann Communications Limited is also a licensed Internet Service Provider and a VAS content Provider to both organizations and individuals.

About Argyle Data
Argyle Data is used by the world's leading mobile operators to detect the fraud, profit, and SLA threats that cost the industry $38 billion per year. Argyle Data's industry leading native Hadoop application suite uses the latest Hadoop and Big Data machine learning technologies, proven at Facebook and Google, to identify the revenue threats and attack patterns being waged against mobile networks in real time.