720 million hack attempts are made every day... got your attention?

Here are a few more scary stats to set the scene…

• Cyber-crime costs have increased annually by 21%
• 60% of SMB’s go out of business within 6 months of suffering a cyber-attack
• 50% of cyber security professionals reported at least one incident of malware infected firmware in 2016

Food for thought isn’t it, and yes we all know that stats can be rolled out to support almost any claim, but these are different. They only support what we already know…The cyber-attack threat is real and we all need to be aware and prepared for it.

As defences against cyber-attack have evolved and become more effective, so have the methods employed by those that perpetrate those attacks. They probe and test every facet of a system, in a top down search for weak points to exploit, cracks through which they can slip in and wreak their own particular brand of havoc. Emerging technologies like IoT, mobility, and hybrid IT environments now open new business opportunities, but they also introduce new risk. Protecting servers at the software level is no longer enough; businesses need to reach down into the physical system level to stay ahead of threats.

Why we need another HPE access point

By David Anthony

I must admit, I thought to myself “why are HPE pushing an Office Connect access point? Isn’t this just going to take business away from Aruba and confuse the issue?”

Not for the first time, I’ll admit I was wrong. I’ve written previously about how smartphones have raised everyone’s expectations about what we should be able to do in the workplace. If we can run our lives from our phones, why not our businesses from our laptops, tablets and phones, wherever we are?

Data, data everywhere - Securing the Internet of Things Q+A

By Lee Prior & Paul Harman






















Take a look around the typical home 10 years ago and you could probably count the number of devices connected to the internet on the fingers of one hand for the most part, but take a look around that same home today and you’re likely to run out fingers before you run out of devices. Computers, Phones, Games Consoles, TV’s even ligtbulbs, thermostats and doorbells in some cases, and these are going to be joined by a whole host of other things in the coming months and years.

Westcoast Ignite – A fresh new vision

By Lee Prior

As the Marketing Manager for all things HPE here at Westcoast I’ve seen a lot of changes over the past 12 months. Acquisitions like Simplivity and Nimble have expanded the HPE offering, and added to an already deep roster that includes Aruba, Synergy, 3Par and Point Next not to mention industry leading Server and Storage products like Gen9/10 and the ever reliable MSA series.

With so much evolution happening so quickly it can be a challenge to keep up and make sure we’re serving up the information our partners need in a relevant and easy to use format, but we’ve been doing our best and think we’ve got a great tool in the shape of our brand new Westcoast Ignite Portal.

Arista - The Master of One

By David Anthony

HPE’s partnership with Arista is the latest stage in the rebalancing of their switching portfolio. Arista’s products focus exclusively on ultra-low latency and software defined data centre switching, ideal for financial services and service provider networks. This is the perfect complement to HPE’s Comware operating system switch range for the traditional, on premise, data centre and Aruba at the ever-evolving intelligent edge.

What makes Arista stand out in these sectors? It concentrates exclusively on that end of the market, focussing all its resources there. Arista has never tried to be a Jack-Of-All-Trades, it just masters one. Arista switches use two specific features to achieve this, EOS and SysDB.

HPE Gen 10 - A New Compute Experience

By David Martin

HPE’s annual Discover event is often the platform from which new ideas and innovations are launched, and Las Vegas saw a pretty important one this year as, with much trumpeting and fanfare the latest iteration of their market defining server series was introduced to a waiting world.

You can very often tell how excited a vendor is about a new product, solution or innovation by the focus it is given at every opportunity, and if that holds true then HPE are very excited indeed about Gen 10 and everything it has to offer, and in truth they have every right to be excited.

10 steps to increase your StoreOnce sales by up to 35% with NinjaProtected+

By Billy Robinson

Data is the currency of the modern business, and you don’t have to look back as far as Feudal Japan to see what happens to organisations that fall victim to data loss. Despite this though, it’s a fact that customers sometimes struggle to control their backup environment and understand problems like: backups lasting over a week, failures, data retention and that’s why HPE has developed a tool to get backup systems under control: The Ninja Protected+ Assessment.

Why your customers want you to discuss HPE Synergy and composable infrastructure

By Stuart Wareham

Remember when HPE (HP in old money) brought Blades and the virtualised infrastructure to the channel over a decade ago? That was a land mark moment for the evolution of the data centre. To reduce rack space, operating costs and drive efficiencies that an IT manager could not only visualise but also deliver the ROI that the business demands.

HPE Blades are still here, in fact there will be Gen 10 Blades released this summer. What do Blade customers want and expect from their IT infrastructure in 2017? The answer is a composable infrastructure – but do they know that and what does that mean? Isn’t that just another phrase banded about the channel like Hybrid IT, hyper-converged and the cloud? Let’s look at composable infrastructure in more detail.

SimpliVity - Simple but Effective

By Garrick Ward 

So far this year we’ve seen a raft of acquisitions from HPE, as they seek to strengthen their portfolio and deliver industry-leading solutions to improve business outcomes. SimpliVity is undoubtedly one of the most high profile of these additions – allowing HPE to create the most complete Hyperconverged platform on the market today!

What is it that they bring to the party and why should the Channel sit up and take notice?

It’s been said that a picture paints a thousand words, so rather than write a thousand words here’s a picture that should say it all…

Keep learning with Hewlett Packard Enterprise

By Dave Anthony

This year marks a decade in the existence of the smartphone. This period has revolutionised our relationship to information. Our expectation in our private lives is for whatever information we want, where ever and whenever we want it. This expectation has become a demand, one that hardware and software vendors have responded to, providing ever greater tools for living and enjoyment.

This demand is spreading into all aspects of our lives. Accessibility and flexibility is becoming the norm at work. The anticipation by 2020 is that more people will be connecting wirelessly than by wire in business. Not only does this mean that hardware needs to be of a higher performance and feature level to meet this increased data requirement, but the server, storage and networking infrastructure needs significantly more advanced levels of security to safeguard this new way of working.

Westcoast Ignite Partner Symposium 2017 - A View From The Top

By Lee Prior

Well it’s been a week since the event and already I’ve had several people asking me when the next Ignite Partner Symposium is likely to be. Short answer is “not until 2018,” but that’s not to say you won’t have every opportunity to learn more about Westcoast, HPE, Microsoft and all the subject matter that was discussed during another great day.

Those partners that made the trip 500ft up to Landing 42 of the Leadenhall Building on the 27th April were treated not only to a great view across our Capital, but also some insightful and informative presentations on the direction and relative benefits of Hybrid IT, an enthusiastic and thought-provoking session on Aruba, IOT and all things Mobility from Eugene Berger, and details on the future role of Simplivity from European VP John Lucey to name but a few.

Getting more from ‘best of both’ worlds

By Mark Davies 

It feels like it’s always been the same old story for the majority of businesses on their cloud journeys. Or sometimes the lack of journey.

They reach a stage where a certain amount of their data and applications have been successfully migrated to the cloud, while the rest - the ones that feel can’t be moved -remain on-prem.

Once those basic applications are moved to the cloud this should be their chance to take stock and see what else could be done to make their IT more efficient or cost-effective.

Cue head-scratching and deliberations on how they can best utilise both on-prem equipment and cloud based services.

But having applications running in two different places but connecting to each other has become very achievable especially with the advent of open 'apis' (application programming interfaces), which allow applications to communicate with each other.

The reality is that today, more and more businesses believe a blend of cloud and on-prem is a desirable end-position.

Complex Solutions - Simply Sold

By Lee Prior

“I know enough about technology to know that I don’t know enough.” That’s what I often hear myself saying when faced with a technical question that exposes the limit of my knowledge. It’s a flippant comment that most times will buy me the breathing room I need to look up the subject matter and return with a full answer a little while later…That’s fine for me I’m in marketing, but a sales person faced with a call or presentation where they are expected to have all the information to hand in order to secure the deal doesn’t always have that luxury.

Hungry, Hungry HPE

By Lee Prior 

So far 2017 has been a pretty interesting year for HPE. We’re only half way through March and already we’ve seen them extend their portfolio through the acquisition of enterprises like Simplivity, Niara and now most recently Nimble, with each of these additions being met with the slow head nod of general approval by the wider technology sector. That in itself is an achievement some would say, but when you consider the pace of change we are seeing, with Hybrid IT finally releasing the long promised potential of the Cloud and the reality of the Internet of Things cresting the horizon, to be able to navigate the turbulent waters of such rapid progress with a steady course, speaks volumes about the crew at the helm of the good ship HPE.

Once upon a time a story about a large IT company consuming one of their smaller rivals wasn’t really “Big News”, and had more to do with Darwinian natural selection, stock market roulette, Sabre Rattling or just plain good old fashioned billionaire vs billionaire ego than it did with a clear strategic vision or a drive for innovation - but things have changed.

As a lowly Marketing Manager, albeit for the biggest HPE Distributor in the UK, this type of corporate manoeuvring was an interesting side note that held my attention for as long as I was able to read without interruption, but ultimately news of a buyout had very little bearing on my day to day life. That is most decidedly not the case now, and rather than acquisition for acquisition’s sake these additions have the whiff of strategy about them, with each bringing their own particular part of the answer to a far larger question.

Big Data: Answering the questions that don’t yet exist

By Phil Le Blond 

Data is growing fast, real fast! It’s predicted that humanity’s accumulated digital universe will be 44 trillion gigabytes by 2020. That’s a lot of data to crunch considering today only 0.5% of data is ever analysed. Somewhere in that data we will find the cure for all disease, the ability to conserve our planet, to generate unlimited free energy, prevent war, and produce enough food for every person on the planet. Technology will have to help us, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning will guide us to the answers we seek, or perhaps decide to kill us all.

Westcoast Ignite Partner Symposium 2017 – Taking IT to the Next Level

By Lee Prior

It seems almost ridiculous that we’re approaching a full year since the inaugural Westcoast Ignite Partner Symposium, almost a full year since we spent a great day at the Mermaid theatre with colleagues, clients and partners and almost a full year since I had to promise everyone that came along that “Of course we’ll do another event in 2017.”

Expanding your HPE Services & Support portfolio

By Lee Prior

People come to you to with a need, but they’ll stay with you because of the services you offer, so how do you ensure loyalty from customers that are constantly being told they can get a better deal elsewhere?

The business case for Mobilty & Security – Selling Mobility and Security effectively

By Lee Prior

Mobility & Security must go hand in hand. You cannot truly have one without the other, and both are vital components in the modern economy. Mobility has transformed the way we live and work, and so it’s important that It service providers understand how position the benefits this fast moving technology as to offer.

iQuote version 2: Overview of the new features and functionalities

By Phil Leblond

This week sees the launch of the revamped iQuote version 2 at Westcoast. The platform which is integrated within the Westcoast website, now incorporates an array of new features and benefits.

For those who aren’t aware iQuote is a popular quotation tool that enables channel partners to grow their HPE/HPI business. It gives quick and accurate HP PC and server quotes at the most competitive price.

In this blog I will go over some of the new features and benefits that iQuote version 2 offers to users and at the end are a number of helpful training videos and materials around the tool.

The business case for Hybrid IT – Selling Hybrid IT effectively

By Lee Prior

Hybrid IT is all the rage in the IT world right now but what exactly does the term Hybrid IT actually mean?

Hybrid IT is the magic recipe for the perfect 21st century IT solution, and the ingredients are the right mix of private cloud, public cloud and traditional IT.

The recipe however is different for every organisation, and the only way to ensure you end up with the solution you need is to build it using HPE products backed up with the services and support of their largest and longest serving Value Add Distributor in Westcoast…That’s what the blurb from our new Ignite website says about Hybrid IT, and as descriptions go it’s not a bad one. But we thought we needed to give it a little more depth.