New data from Juniper Research has revealed that global eRetail sales are expected to reach $1.7 trillion this year, up by more than 17% on 2014’s total. It argued that while recent growth had been buoyed by factors such as public Wi-Fi deployments and 4G rollout, sales in the medium term would receive a strong fillip from the trend towards social media companies acting as direct sales platforms.

The new research, enticingly named ‘Mobile & Online Purchases: Cards, Carrier Billing & Third Party Payment Platforms 2015-2020’, observed that players such as Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram have already launched ‘buy’ buttons from their mobile apps. It claimed that such players are also likely to enhance their sales prospects through strategic retailer partnerships, with Twitter already enabling users to link their accounts to Amazon.

The research also argued that online retailers were increasingly seeking to reduce time-to-consumer by launching same-day delivery. At the same time, it noted that ‘bricks and mortar’ stores now widely offer next-day in-store collection, often charging a premium for this option.

However, the research cautioned that retailers need to deliver consistency of message, branding and shopping experience across all channels. It argued that integration between in-store and online is also critical if retailers want to maximise the extent to which they can identify a unique individual’s omnichannel shopping habits.

According to research author Dr Windsor Holden, “The key is to ensure that consumers are allowed to choose their own path to purchase rather than have it effectively mandated by channel limitations.”

The research also anticipated that smartphones will account for more than 40% of eRetail transactions by 2020, but noted ‘while carrier billing should provide content providers with a key mechanism for monetising digital content, its use for physical goods purchase is likely to be limited by comparatively higher share of revenues demanded by network operators and billing platforms.’

While reducing costs or overhead is still the prime strategic driver for the implementation of technology solutions, there is also a desire to reach new customers for growth and diversification. Many small to medium businesses (SMBs) want technology to drive new business for them, but are not currently in an ideal position to do so.

Jim Hamilton, CompTIA VP of  member communities, said SMBs’ relationship with technology is becoming more critical. “Without an abundance of capital to invest in technology initiatives, many firms seek the best value or the lowest cost option. On the other hand, there is an increasing sense of urgency since many technologies available today can significantly increase the abilities of a smaller business and create capabilities on par with a larger enterprise.”

Hamilton added that as small and medium businesses consider their technology strategies for the future, the ultimate goal is to build systems that help them move forward. “The challenge is that building these systems, and integrating them with each other and with a company workflow, is more complicated than ever, thanks to a wider range of options and a dynamic environment.”

As the technology landscape grows broader and more complex, SMBs need help with a range of technology issues including security, data management and modernising architecture. Work in these areas will require not only new technology, but also new workforce education and new processes. The three main technology areas causing SMBs concern are:

1. Security: Quickly becoming a top priority for all businesses as breaches occur more frequently and carry more serious repercussions. Small businesses are not immune to attacks simply because their data sets are smaller. Cyber attacks have a growing variety of motivations and occur in small businesses just as often as attacks on the largest enterprises. Further, the impact to an SMB is proportionally larger. The Ponemon Institute’s October 2014 Global Report on the Cost of Cyber Crime found that the per capita cost of a breach for the smallest businesses was significantly higher than at the largest firms—$1,601 versus $437.

2. Data management: Keeping data safe is just one aspect of data handling that is cause for concern among SMBs. As businesses undergo digital transformation, data turns into a more critical asset. The big data movement has also raised interest in using data for analysis and decision-making and, even when the data sets are not massive, there are tools and techniques required for performing good analytics. Many small businesses have never managed data as a primary resource, and they must take steps towards consolidating data silos, handling rapidly growing data collections, and establishing strong business continuity/disaster recovery plans.

3. Modernising architecture: The smaller the firm, the less infrastructure there is in place. In the early days of cloud computing, this slowed adoption since small or micro businesses did not see a return in migrating small installations to the cloud. The thinking has shifted as these firms begin to understand that cloud systems can give them expanded options at a reasonable price. As current pieces of infrastructure move towards the end of their lifecycle, SMBs need to understand how to choose the best mix of cloud and on-premise systems. That will lead to the challenge of managing a complex architecture.

Hamilton said, “Many SMBs have no IT department to address these concerns, choosing to handle technology issues internally using employees who may be tech savvy but actually hold other jobs such as sales or accounting. Other companies, especially those on the medium-sized end of the spectrum, will build a formal IT function as infrastructure demands grow.

“However, without the resources for large internal IT departments, SMBs should look to third-party IT service providers to help them meet their business and innovation needs for less.”

Many organisations believe they have automated their accounts payable (AP) systems when in fact they still have data siloed across departments and systems. This means AP departments need to work harder to process invoices and retrieve related information. Streamlining AP processes can improve invoice workflows and approval processes, providing a holistic view of company spend.

Matt Goss, managing director ANZ, Concur, said, “Businesses may think they have an automated AP system because they have implemented workflow for invoice approval and reduced the number of manual checks. However, an AP department isn’t automated unless your system is integrated across every department, providing maximum visibility of data for line of business managers, the accounts team and executives.”

The five signs that indicate it’s time to rethink your AP systems are:

1) Whose desk is it on?

Organisations that don’t have monitoring and reporting systems find it difficult to understand how many invoices have been received and are awaiting payment.

2) Is the invoice approved?

Without visibility of where and who an invoice is with, it is time consuming for AP departments to determine whether an invoice is in the approval process and ready to be paid.

3) Can more money be saved?

AP departments without streamlined processes often need to do more manual work to see the aggregated spend. This makes it more difficult to take advantage of supplier discounts.

4) Can more time be saved?

Automated systems can help cut down cycle time and let employees review invoices faster. This not only saves time but can also help the business receive early payment discounts.

5) Where are the right people?

Finding the right person to approve an invoice can add weeks to the process cycle. A streamlined process has a clear workflow that lets employees know who to pass payments on to.

Goss noted, “A streamlined AP process automatically matches open invoices, credits and on-account payments to ensure that organisations have a clear view of payments pending.”

HP has allied with Intel to expand the accessibility of High Performance Computing. The companies will launch a Centre of Excellence (CoE) which will combine experts from each organisation to support the planning, development, deployment and management of HPC solutions. However, it gave no indication of if or when these solutions might be available to local businesses.

In a statement, HP said HPC is becoming relevant to companies of all sizes that want to accelerate the pace of big data analytics and business insight. The IDC forecasts that the base HPC compute server market will reach $US15.2 billion in 2019, driven by organisations seeking to run advanced analytics and big data workloads.

HP said market dynamics driving accelerated demand for HPC include big data sources from the adoption of mobility, cloud computing, multimedia, social collaboration and the Internet of Things (IoT);  transformation of business processes; and advancements in processing technology.

“As data explodes in volume, velocity and variety, and the processing requirements to address business challenges become more sophisticated, the line between traditional and high performance computing is blurring,” said Raj Thakur of HP South Pacific’s Enterprise Group. “With this alliance, we are giving customers access to the technologies and solutions as well as the intellectual property, portfolio services and engineering support needed to evolve their compute infrastructure to capitalise on a data driven environment.”

While the promise of access to HPC CoEs is undoubtedly attractive, businesses in Australia and New Zealand can temper their enthusiasm: one is located in Grenoble, France. Another is expected to open in in Houston, Texas ‘to better support the North American market’.

Business transformation is on the agenda and Microsoft has shared technology innovations aligned to its ambitions to reinvent productivity and business processes, and to create more personal computing. With its Worldwide Partner Conference underway in Florida, it also lifted the lid on investments that it says will enable partners to leverage these innovations for customers.

Announcements from the first day of WPC include:

• Project GigJam is a new way for people to accomplish their business tasks and transform business processes by breaking down the barriers between devices, apps and people. GigJam empowers workers to summon information from their line of business and SaaS apps, spontaneously divvy up the specific information and actions needed to get work done, keep track of each part, and bring it all to closure.

• Cortana Analytics Suite is a set of services to help transform data into action. It brings together machine learning, big data storage and processing with perceptual intelligence such as vision, face and speech analysis. Cortana Analytics Suite integrates with Cortana, Microsoft’s digital personal assistant to get things done in more helpful, proactive, and natural ways.

• Microsoft HoloLens is, says the vendor, the world’s first fully untethered holographic computing device. On-stage at WPC, CEO Satya Nadella demonstrated how a partner will use HoloLens to change how design professionals and create, communicate, visualise and work.

To enable partners to take advantage of these innovations, Microsoft announced:

Expansion of its Cloud Solution Provider (CSP)program to cover additional markets (bringing the total number to approximately 131), as well as additional cloud solutions – CRM Online and Azure will join Office 365, Intune and Enterprise Mobility Suite.

Creating additional Surface opportunities: More partners will be able to sell the device – from ‘a couple hundred to a few thousand partners’ globally, in the coming months.

• Investing in mobility: Competencies for Windows 10 and Enterprise Mobility Suite, which will enable partners to differentiate and grow their mobility practices, are in the pipeline.

• Additional productivity investments: A new premium Office 365 enterprise suite called E5 will be available before the end of this year. The suite will provide a new opportunity for partners to build service offerings around real-time communication and analytics.

The biggest contribution will come from new strategic ICT services revenues at nearly US$173 billion, which will increase at a CAGR of 9.9 percent over the period 2015–20.

These services include business IT and IP applications, compute and hosting, enterprise mobility, managed networks, professional services, and unified communications. They represent the new generation of dedicated IT and IP communications services that telecoms service providers are able to offer under contracts with enterprise customers.

“Telcos have relied on adapting traditional voice and data services to serve increasingly complex enterprise business users, but now have a powerful range of ICT services that have been integrated across the operators’ global networks,” said David Molony, principal analyst in Ovum’s enterprise practice and author of the report. “Telco revenues from strategic ICT services are growing faster and, according to our calculations, will overtake legacy service revenues in 2018.”

By definition global services means there are prospects for growth worldwide, but regionally the growth areas for telco strategic services are in Latin America (17.8 percent CAGR), Africa (17.5 percent), the Middle East (16.4 percent), and Central Asia (13.0 percent). The big markets of 2015 – Europe and North America – will grow more slowly, but will still be the largest in 2020.

In addition to growing their service portfolios, more telcos are offering enterprise managed services through dedicated business units or divisions. They are also increasingly challenging (as well as partnering with) systems integrators and IT services providers in the large enterprise sector.

“Telcos have taken more than 14% of the global ICT services market in the last couple of years,” said Molony. “We expect that share to reach more than 18% by 2020.”

Recognising that, HP is introducing ControlPoint and Storage Optimizer software products to automate identification and classification, which it says contributes to improved management and governance.

Market analysts are enthusiastic in their anticipations for big data. In 2014, the IDC said unstructured (human-generated) data volumes are increasing 43 percent annually; last week, Ovum said it expects growth of 50 percent for ‘big data software’ by 2019.

HP’s getting in on that action with these new products. Storage Optimizer is a file analysis tool – software which analyses, indexes, searches, tracks and reports on file metadata and, in some cases, file content. It enables various actions to be taken depending on what is identified.

Storage Optimizer, said HP, combines file analytics with policy-based storage tiering and information optimisation. That allows intelligently distribution of information across multiple storage repositories including the cloud. ‘With deeper information quality and insight, more granular policies can be applied for each set of data, before the data is stubbed and stored according to policy. This provides a holistic view of all unstructured data within the organisation’, said HP’s statement.

Storage Optimizer provides connectivity to a wide range of repositories including Hadoop, SharePoint, Exchange and others, scales for the enterprise, includes workflow security and auditability features, and retrieval by end users.

“With Storage Optimizer, one can materially lower cost on primary storage and backup-related storage, more intelligently tier storage, streamline backup processes and increase application performance,” said Josef Elliott, director, Oyster IMS

Meanwhile, HP’s ControlPoint file analysis product analyses enterprise information and automates data migration to the most appropriate on-premise, cloud, Hadoop, or virtual repository.

Branko Bugarski, GM HP Software said ControlPoint serves a critical role in migrating to the cloud, “ensuring that organisations are not simply transferring a data lake from a file share to the cloud, but instead moving the right information based on its inherent value.”

With the integration of payment service Snapper into the Semble mobile wallet app, customers can use their phones to pay for public transport services – but only in those cities where the Snapper payment service is used.

Available initially as a beta release on suitable Android devices, Semble said an estimated 50,000 Wellingtonians could potentially fire up the service right away.

Snapper’s original app and a partnership with 2degrees was launched three years ago. With Snapper in Semble, those on Spark and Vodafone networks can now also use the payment service, said Snapper CEO Miki Szikszai. “We want to provide our public transport users with the easiest way to pay for their trip and we think the smartphone is that way. Customers can now pay for their trip, top up and buy passes, all directly from their phone. This makes catching the bus, taxi or paying for parking even easier than before.”

But only if your public transport service works on Snapper; Auckland Transport’s HOP significantly, doesn’t. Encouragingly, however, the press release did state: ‘We will continue to have ongoing discussions with other transport service providers about partnering with Semble.’

Semble CEO Rob Ellis described the addition of Snapper as a ‘significant period of growth for the New Zealand mobile wallet’.

Using Snapper on Semble doesn’t depend on the app running; if set to ‘on’, it is always active, even when the handset is switched off.

To get Snapper in the Semble app, start by checking if your phone is NFC compatible, then download the app from Google Play and add your card to the wallet.

Existing Semble customers can just add a new card from within the app.

With skills shortages routinely highlighted as a problem for business at large, it makes good sense to get younger generations interested and active in the technology industry. That’s just what 120 teens set about doing at the start of the school holidays as they stuck into a fierce coding competition at JHack, New Zealand’s first junior hackathon.

Organised by the Manukau Institute of Technology and IT industry partners, the event took place over the first weekend of July. Working in teams of three under the guidance of 30 IT industry mentors, the teens programmed against the clock and each other to manipulate coding in Minecraft.

Organiser Edwina Mistry said the competition gives the kids a head start in coding: “We’re blown away by their enthusiasm. In the month leading up to JHack, the kids had completed more than 2,500 hours of programming in our online challenges.”

For fourteen year old Grace Hollamby from Glendowie College, JHack has motivated her to think about programming as a career. “I’ve always wanted to have a talent for something and I think I’ve found it,” she said.

Daniel Martushev, HP master technologist JHack mentor pointed out that demand for IT work in New Zealand is ‘phenomenal’. “There’s a huge skills shortage in the IT industry. We’re trying to get these kids to become part of the digital economic future that’s unfolding globally. We want to show them that technology can be fun and interesting, and then show that you can make a living out of it.”

Learning about teamwork was particularly important to twelve-year-old Paige Stephen, from Whangaparoa College. “We’re working well as a team because we’re communicating and cooperating. You can do a lot of things using code, and it’s fun to learn,” she said.

JHack was organised to encourage teens to think about a career in NZ’s digital industry, which has grown by 9 percent annually for the past seven years. In 2014 alone, the number of ICT jobs in NZ increased by 2,800, and the sector now employs more than 26,700 people.

Sacred Heart College’s Cannoning Routers and Epsom Girls’ Grammar School’s ScrambledEGGS earned coding gold; silver was scooped by Howick College, Whangaparoa College and Pakuranga College.  The top teams will participate in a ‘coding boot camp’ at MIT in October this year.

JHack was sponsored by MIT, Learn to Mod, HP, Propellerhead, Auckland Transport, Sovereign, Wynyard Group, Orion Health, Air New Zealand and Eagle Technology.

A native Kiwi, Sheers has returned to New Zealand after more than 30 years working abroad for a wide variety of international tech businesses across the EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa) and APAC regions. Most recently, Sheers was VP and GM for Dell’s APAC Software Group.

Sheers said there is a transformation happening at Microsoft. “You can see it in the accelerated pace of innovation, the renewed passion and energy of our people and the value that customers and partners tell us we are delivering to them.”

Muckleston has served as MD since 2010. He said the company is implementing a planned and structured transition from his leadership to that of Sheers. The two men will be working closely together over the coming months to ensure a smooth induction process.

Sheers officially joins on July 6th 2015, and will report directly to Microsoft APAC president Cesar Cernuda.
Muckleston confirmed that he will be staying with the company.