Ian Kilpatrick, chairman of Wick Hill Group, gives his top five IT trends for 2013.    1. BYOD    BYOD was arguably the biggest buzz word of 2012 and is now an unstoppable, user-driven wave which will continue to make a major impact on the IT world in 2013 and beyond. Smartphones, tablets and laptops all come under this category, as well as desktop PCs used remotely from home.   BYOD is a transformative technology and 2013 will see companies trying to integrate it into their networks. While tactical needs will drive integration, strategic requirements will become increasingly important.   Alongside this, and dependent on the penetration of Windows 8, we can ...

  This article is an excerpt from the latest White Paper “Cloud UK & Ire: The Critical Role of the Channel in Driving Cloud Adoption”, which provides a comparison of both end user and channel responses to key questions relating to the growth of this market, and offers direct guidance to channel participants to ensure they are ready to service customer requirements and be ready for the opportunities presented as the pace of adoption increases through 2013. For the purposes of this report the IT Channel is defined as Managed Service Providers, Systems Integrators and technical VAR’s.   This research paper is available for download from the Cloud Industry Forum website

  Software license compliance audits are an established industry practice by which vendors are allowed to investigate customers’ actual software usage, and seek additional compensation in the form of a “true-up” penalty if use exceeds licensing terms.  According to Flexera Software’s 2012 Software Pricing and Licensing Survey, prepared jointly with IDC, software vendors are continuing to exercise their rights to audit their customers and true-up. 64% of enterprises reported that they have been audited over the last 18-24 months. And large enterprises (those with greater than $1billion in revenue) were audited three times or more over the same period. Moreover, 24% of enterprises said their total true-up paid over the past year was more than $1 million.    Part of the problem however can be ...