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.

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.

'Virtually' everything you need to know about HPE Easy Connect

By Lee Prior

You may have heard a lot about HPE Easy Connect recently, and are wondering what exactly it has to offer. Well in case you are, the Easy Connect EC200a is essentially a Managed IT department in a unit no larger than a cereal box with the power requirements and carbon footprint to match.

Easy Connect will enable you to transform your business from Reseller to Service Provider and in so doing it will help to deepen your relationship with your customers and cement your position as their “go to” resource for all things IT.

Whether you are a Reseller with no current Managed Services offering, a new MSP struggling to scale or an established provider seeking to improve efficiency the EC200a is the right solution…It’s that simple.

How long can your customers afford to be without a server?

By Lee Prior

Warranty is not enough! Warranty protects hardware but HPE support keeps businesses running.

Think IT support services will break your customer’s budget? Think again. Chances are that you’ll spend more per day on a morning cup of coffee than on HPE Support Services.

Are your customers adequately covered under warranty? Warranty is a limited offering only providing:

• Monday-Friday 8am to 5pm only (No weekend or Bank Holiday cover) 
• Next business day response – Reasonable endeavours 
• No software support 
• Selected options are not covered by server warranty i.e. SATA ATA PATA drives (1 year warranty) 
• If a fault occurs on Friday morning, it may be Monday afternoon before an engineer goes to the site

If your customers require support outside of standard working-hours and are not protected adequately can they really afford to be without a server...?

Read more here

Boost Your Margins With HPE Server Deal Registration Changes

As of June the 1st Platinum, HPE Gold, Silver and Business Partners can benefit from an increased amount of discount for New Business Opportunities (NBO) formerly known as Partner for Growth. The Look Back period has also been shortened to 6 months, previously it was 2 years.

In the afterlife of Windows 2003 ...

How Westcoast's Professional Services can Fast Track your customer's Windows 2003 Server Migration

As you all probably know, on the 14th of July Microsoft ended support for its 12-year-old operating system, Windows Server 2003. In our previous blog post, we outlined a whole host of risks associated with staying put (read it again here) so it should come as no surprise to you that migration is no longer an option, but a necessity.

At the beginning of Q1 2015, more than 60% of businesses were still running Windows Server 2003, and with the level of migration not picking up pace this remains a major concern and a major opportunity for IT service providers....

Businesses may be at risk from not migrating away from Windows Server 2003, says HP's Angela Cross

A significant percentage of businesses are putting their futures at risk and not migrating away from Windows Server 2003 as they think Microsoft aren’t serious about ending support on the 14^th July, says HP’s UK manager for servers. 

Angela Cross, HP’s server country manager for UK & Ireland, believes that an estimated 1 in 3 organisations have not migrated to Window Server 2012, despite the dangers surrounding security and compliance of retaining the soon-to-be obsolete operating system. "Customers are waiting for Microsoft to announce on the 14th July that support will be extended for another 12 months, but they have been very clear on this for the last six months that this will not happen. HP is concerned that customers are leaving themselves badly exposed."

The reason behind this reluctance to upgrade, suspects Cross, is a combination of Microsoft’s track record in extending the life of PC operating systems and the cost to businesses of migrating away from XP last year, which has stretched budgets. "I think there is probably in excess of at least 30 per cent of the market (in the UK), if not considerably higher, that have done nothing.” said Cross.

Westcoast continues to offer services for HP partners looking to help end users migrate from Windows Server 2003, including a webinar covering best practices on the 21^st July and an incentive for purchasers of new Gen9 servers or Windows Server 2012 to win tickets to the forthcoming Rugby World Cup. 

Highlighting Westcoast’s work in helping resellers to provide migration via the Windows EOS program and Upgrade And Win campaign, Cross added, “I don't think it's for any lack of communication. Some end users have decided not to migrate.”

Microsoft has made several warnings that continued use of Windows Server 2003 will bring risks to the security and compliance of business systems, yet as of January this year it was estimated that over 400,000 servers were still waiting to be updated.  "There are potentially customers that are very exposed to huge vulnerabilities," Angela said. "I think businesses take the view that such servers are probably only doing file and print tasks, they’re not frontline so it’s not critical – but it's still an access route into their network and therefore their business, so they are a weak point in their systems."

It is this sheer number of servers yet to be updated, with end users feeling they lack time or resources to undertake critical migrations, that Cross believes presents an opportunity to the channel. “A customer might have perhaps 20 or 30 servers but understanding the vulnerabilities they may contain is difficult if they don't have a sophisticated IT capability. And that scales all the way up to organisations running tens of thousands of servers. Where do you start?"

"Windows 2003, from an HP perspective, is probably running on at least generation 5 or older, so if you had 10 Gen5 servers, you probably need just one Gen9 server to deliver the same performance today. It isn't a hardware-heavy refresh; it's a consulting and transformation project, which is where partners can work with Westcoast to provide professional migration services to their customers and help them move away from retaining a server operating system that will soon become a risk to their operations”

Top 5 Takeaways from Westcoast's April Gen9 Technical Training Session

We are reaching the dawn of a new era of IT, and the most exciting shifts of our time in the tech world are underway.

With IT becoming more and more critical to business success, traditional infrastructure approaches are no longer good enough in ensuring the efficiency expected in today's ever changing business landscape.

So it's time to reimagine the server and step into the light of the Compute era for better business outcomes and, with HP leading the journey for redefining compute economics, our Gen9 Technical Training session this month allowed our partners to learn more about the technical aspects of the next generation of servers.

We are really pleased with how the training went and have had some great feedback from attendees that it was of great value. So, for those that didn't make it, we wanted to share with you the highlights from April's Gen9 Technical training in order to ensure our partners have every success in adopting the new style of IT!

Take a look at our top 5 Takeaways from the Event:

1. Infrastructure matters – and Compute is its Engine

There is increasing pressure on a business' IT to quickly and efficiently deliver more applications and services – not to mentioned to try and store and deliver exponentially increasing amounts of data at the same time – Oh and then trying to do all that while reducing costs!

How would yesterday’s servers ever conquer these challenges with their manual complexity, and expensive, over-sized, siloed, inefficient... (Need we go on?!)

Compute is THE ONLY way to go to overcome the above and beyond to allow maximum operational efficiency, business expansion, and increase the whole customer experience.

2. HP's Gen9 Portfolio has been streamlined for greater efficiency

Every growing business is committed to efficiency! The streamlined nature of the Gen9 portfolio makes it far easier and faster for the customer to position the right server for the right workload - delivering flexible, scalable computing resources that are aligned to their business goals.

3. Introducing the rack and tower Gen9 Family and meet the new additions for April!

HP ProLiant rack and tower servers represent the industry’s trusted portfolio of multi-workload servers built for today and tomorrow.

- 10 series: Simple, easy to deploy, affordable servers, designed for the right-sized first time workload deployment for SMB

- 100 series: Optimized with the right balance of storage, performance, efficiency and manageability to address multiple workloads for growing SMB and Enterprise

- 300 series: THE industry-standard, tailored with flexible choices for compute intensive workloads requiring high system performance, manageability, expansion and security for SMB, Enterprise and HPC businesses

- 500 series: Designed for today’s most demanding scale-up workloads, delivering unparalleled scalability, reliability and availability to confidently unleash the power of your business data for Enterprise and HPC businesses

And HP has just released two new Tower servers aimed at small and medium sized businesses. The HP ProLiant ML10 v2 and ML110 Gen9 servers:

- ML10v2: Ideal first server for small businesses to run general purpose applications

- ML110 Gen9: Performance optimised, expandable and affordable tower server designed to meet SMB compute demands

4. You can now write your own scripts with new API for Gen9

Now, you can reduce server configuration complexity for Gen9 servers and standardise server interactions through a single programmable interface! The HP RESTful Applicable Programmable Interface (API) tool enables you to write your own scripts for configuration, inventory, and monitoring of ProLiant Gen9 servers

5. So many ways to managing Gen9 servers

Server manageability could not be easier now that there are multiple ways to manage the Gen9 servers – all completely dependent on your requirements:

On Cloud - Using Insight Online cloud-based management for service ticket and warranty tracking, plus health & alerting

On Premise - Using HP Oneview for Converged management of servers, storage, and networks with automation simplicity

On System - Using HP iLO Management and Smart Update enabling setup, health and alerting, and firmware maintenance

To advance in the compute era, choose HP ProLiant Gen9 for breakthrough innovation in cost of service, time to service, and value of service for you customers. ….

For more information about the HP Gen9 family and help in positioning these products and solutions to your customers, HP have put together a great sales pack that will walk you through Gen9 transitions, some quick platform reference guides, intel processor comparisons and much more.

< Download the Sales Pack here >

PLUS, as a Westcoast Partner, there are even more reasons to choose HP Gen9 – including exclusive rewards, ongoing support, customisable marketing collateral to send to your customers and much more!

Speak to your account manager today: 0118 912 6000

A Time for Change – The Windows 2003 EOS Opportunity is knocking!

From the day this blog has been posted, there are just 130 days until Windows Server 2003 support is ending on July 14, 2015.

Now, for many of you, it comes as no surprise (we hope!) and I'm sure it's something you've been hearing about for the last year.

However, this opportunity for change is now just around the corner and with 900K instances still running in the UK, let alone the millions worldwide, it has been described as one of the largest IT opportunities of this decade.

The Windows 2003 EOS could signal the beginning of a new stage in the evolution of many organisations which is a HUGE opportunity for partners to innovate not only their customers' datacentres, but across the delivery and production of applications that drive their business too.

From hardware/software refreshes to assessment and migration services, the opportunity spans across Windows Server 2003, SBS 2003, SQL Server 2005 and older versions of Exchange for partners to help plan the updates and ensure customers' understand the options.

That all sounds good news for partners..... so what about the challenge?

Well, when we take a look at the migration time estimates (and bear in mind these are on the rather optimistic side!) you will really see that it's no longer 130 days of waiting but 130 days of getting out there and keeping your customers current.

For small to mid-size businesses, a Server Migration is estimated at 30-90 days and an Application Migration can take 60+ days!

2 down, 1 to go!

To help partners prepare for Windows Server 2003 migration, Westcoast has been busy hosting regional roadshows to provide them with everything they need to help them successfully migrate customers from Windows 2003.

The first two roadshows in Birmingham and London have been a great success and have been described as “Excellent and Informative”. Therefore we'd firstly like to thank all those that have attended already and wish you every success in the opportunity that the Server 2003 EOS date is providing!

BUT.... We aren't finished yet! It's not too late to find out what Server 2003 EOS means for your customers.

Please refer your colleagues to come to the next ones or if you haven't managed to attend yet we hope to see you at our final event:

Thursday 12th March – Manchester

Register for your place here