By: Anton Herbst

With the World Cup over and as the harsh realities of the recovering market begin to set in, things are returning to somewhat of a state of normality.

But is it really ‘business as usual’? And should we let the same challenges we were facing prior to the World Cup madness continue to prevail?

I’d like the answers to those questions to be ‘no’. And my reasons for this are simple.

Leading up to the World Cup, the market took on a very transactional focus with companies vying for the big deals, sizeable tenders and attractive contracts the event brought with it.

But now those deals are done and those contracts are over – and for the most part, our minds must shift back to adding value to our customers in order to make a living.

And I think there are still huge gaps when it comes to solution provision in the sense of building innovative routes around the printers and consumables we sell, to not only make our customers’ lives easier but allow us to add something unique to their businesses that differentiate us and them from the herd.

And it’s clear that concepts such as cloud computing and the increased exposure of IT infrastructure as ‘services’ are shaping the future.

While many believe that printing won’t have a place in this world, I couldn’t disagree more.

The way we think about print services and how printing solutions are packaged just need to change slightly.

A perfect example of this is HP’s recently launched e-Printing solution, which is nothing more than the ability to e-mail your document to your printer’s e-mail address from anywhere in the world and swing by it later to collect the print-job, or simply tell your client it’s waiting for them at their printer.

This will undoubtedly change the way people print forever. But how will this apply to us in the consumables market?

Well, the important thing is that printing is still taking place, even though the printer itself might be located somewhere else than your client’s office. The fact is that a printer – possibly at the office of your client’s client – will still need its ink or toner cartridges to be replaced regularly.

It’s up to you to put the models in place that embrace this and many other new ways of working, so that you can capitalise on these opportunities when the shift comes.

And believe me, that shift is coming faster than most of us think.

Besides good memories, the World Cup leaves South Africa with more bandwidth than what it’s ever had before.

In fact, we as a country might finally be ready to embrace cloud computing on a local level. If we don’t capitalise on that, customers will move their cloud services offshore – and we will most certainly lose out.

While it’s difficult to map out exactly which business models will work, the one thing these kinds of changes generally herald is new cost efficiencies and more streamlined supply chains.

But if we don’t keep an eye on these developments, we’ll never know.

So in the spirit of knowing, let’s keep our eyes peeled and our ears close to the ground.

Acer South Africa has appointed Damien Durrant as its new channel manager.

Durrant joins Acer from HP, where he was the telco sales manager for the company’s Personal Systems Group.

Durrant started his career at Packard Bell in 1998 as a technician in the call centre. He then joined HP, where he held a number of positions that ranged from managing the service call centre to product marketing. He brings with him a range of marketing, technical and management skills, and has experience in the retail, SMB, corporate and government markets.

While LCD monitors have become commonplace additions to any desktop, it’s not uncommon to see creative specialists in the graphic design, engineering, CAD/CAM and print/production markets still making use of older, conventional CRT monitors.

“That’s because there aren’t a great deal of flat panel monitors available today that are capable of delivering the kind of accurate colour reproduction these experts rely on daily,” says Sophia Evans, HP product manager at Tarsus Technologies. “

Exacerbating the issue, Evans says that those LCD displays that are available with this level of colour accuracy cost a pretty penny.

“That’s why the arrival of HP’s ZR22w and ZR24w performance series monitors is so significant,” she adds.

“As their name suggests, these monitors are available in 22-inch and 24-inch derivatives, and are capable of reproducing the colours used by creative professionals with upwards of 96% accuracy,” she says.

“They feature a 16:9 and 16:10 aspect ratio respectively, offer a dynamic contrast ratio of 30 000:1 and support inputs for HDCP-compliant DisplayPort and DVI, as well as VGA,” she says.

However, the HP Performance Series’ party piece is its super configurable 8-way comfort-adjust stand.

“The stand provides tilt, pivot, swivel, and height-adjustability in the column, helping increase comfort and productivity throughout the day,” says Evans.

“Apart from standard adjustments, these screens can even be reconfigured in portrait-mode for certain niche needs,” she continues.

Rounding off the features, all the models in the Performance Series range have an integrated four port USB 2.0 hub and an integrated cable management system located inside the framed stand which keeps clutter to a minimum and adds to the overall aesthetics of the user’s desk with a snap-on cable cover.

“Tarsus is delighted with the arrival of the HP Performance Series of monitors, since it addresses the dire need for cost-effective, professional LCDs in the creative market,” she concludes.

Tarsus Technologies has announced the local availability of HP’s ProCurve 2520 range of layer two switches, capable of laying the perfect infrastructure foundation for small corporates that want to upgrade their networks to accommodate voice, video and wireless data traffic.

Pieter Engelbrecht, HP ProCurve product manager at Tarsus says the 2520 series is offered in four varietals, two eight-port and two 24-port models that offer a choice between Fast Ethernet (10/100) and Gigabit Ethernet (10/100/1000) performance.

“Both of the eight-port models come with two dual personality uplink ports to facilitate fiber uplink connectivity, while the 24-port Fast Ethernet model includes 4 Gigabit uplink ports, two of which can be used with either SFP transceivers or with standard copper cabling.

“The 24-port Gigabit version has four SFP slots that can be used in place of four of the copper ports,” he adds.

Engelbrecht says that a notable feature addition with the arrival of this switch family is support for PoE, making them perfect for simultaneously providing power and connectivity to VoIP handsets and wireless access points.

“The 2520 switch supports up to 15.4W on any given port, but has a limited power budget of 67W and 195W on the eight and 24-port models respectively. The power budget is, however, enough to power class two PoE devices simultaneously on all ports,” he explains.

From a management perspective, Engelbrecht says all four of the new switches can be fully managed via SNMP, a command-line interface (CLI) and graphical user interface (GUI) and offer a Layer 2 feature set, something that brings a previously unavailable level of flexibility and control to SMB networks.

“Additionally, all four switches offer simple network security, and are capable of protecting SMB and small corporate networks against Denial-of-Service attacks,” he adds.

“The 2520 switch family is also designed for energy efficiency and quiet operation, making them adaptable enough to be used in both the datacentre environment and in open spaces. To support this, the eight-port models do not have fans and the 24-port models have variable speed fans to optimise power and noise levels,” he continues.

“Overall, we’re extremely bullish about the response that this new switch family will garner from the market, since it offers a wide range of features, superior manageability, security and flexibility at an unprecedented price point,” he says.

 “Bundle this with HP’s limited lifetime warranty and SMBs truly have a winning solution for evolving their infrastructure to embrace convergence,” he concludes.