Cross Channel: Cisco Job Cuts And NetApp Focuses On Hybrid Cloud

Welcome to Cross Channel, a weekly round up of the most pertinent stories from our sister site ChannelBiz, where you can find out all the latest developments, views and strategies from the world of the channel.

Cisco posts poor first quarter as staff cuts continue

Cisco sales fell three percent to $12.4 billion (£10bn)and net profits slumped 4 percent to $2.3 billion (£1.87bn) over the past three months.

Operating expenses were $5 billion, up 5 percent, “driven in large part by higher restructuring charges”, said Cisco – in other words continuing to sack thousands of staff globally in a continuing attempt to turn things around.

“We had a good quarter despite a challenging global business environment and we performed well in our priority areas,” claimed Chuck Robbins, CEO of Cisco.

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NetApp transforms to flash and hybrid cloud business

At the NetApp conference in Berlin, the company outlined how it is moving the focus of its business to the hybrid cloud.

“As customers move towards the hybrid cloud we have to be clear that the vast majority of data will either be stored on flash-based systems on-premise and everything else in the cloud – on systems located in other people’s data centres,” said Joel Reich, head of product operations.

While Reich did not commit to a timeline when most organisations would come to rely on flash and the cloud for their data storage, he maintained that the transformation was inevitable, whether it took “between two and 15 years”. He added that firms were keen to “modernise” on flash and cloud systems as they wanted to break down data silos.

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SAP makes it easier for channel to cash in on cloud

At SAP SME Summit in New York, the company showed off its new SAP Partner Edge Cloud Choice referral option.

The new option is designed to reward members with a finder’s fee if they generate new leads for SAP solutions that convert into fully paid deals. This builds on the SMB incentives programme it launched in August.

It is open to any business that is involved in the small and mid-size market. This includes SAP PartnerEdge partners, as well as any business that deals with small and mid-size companies on a regular basis.

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