Cross Channel: Fujitsu And Lenovo PC Deal And G-Cloud Shunned

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.

Fujitsu and Lenovo enter collaboration deal in PC market

Fujitsu and Lenovo are “exploring a strategic cooperation” in the “realm of research, development, design and manufacturing of PCs” for the global market.

The two companies aim to create a “successful model” that uses Fujitsu’s global sales, customer support, R&D and manufacturing capabilities, together with Lenovo’s “operational excellence” to “improve competitiveness” in the “dynamic [and rapidly declining] global PC market”.

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Most public sector IT execs give G-Cloud a wide berth

Despite total sales on the government’s G-Cloud digital marketplace reaching £1.39 billion, over half (58 percent) of public sector IT executives have not used G-Cloud in the past year.

Only 8 percent of public sector IT executives have used G-Cloud more than five times in the last year. These are among findings from research carried out by cloud and network services provider Exponential-e. The study questioned IT professionals across the UK, covering local and central government, health, emergency services, education and the third sector.

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Microsoft stiffs enterprises with massive price increases

Microsoft is raising its enterprise cloud prices by 22 percent and its on-premise software prices by 13 percent because of the pound’s plunge against the euro, it says.

“Effective from the 1 January 2017, we will be increasing British pound pricing to harmonise prices for enterprise software and cloud services within the EU/EFTA region,” said Microsoft. “We periodically assess the impact of local pricing of our products and services to ensure there is reasonable alignment across the region and this change is an outcome of this assessment.

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Broadband providers under cosh of new ad rules next week

All UK broadband providers will be obliged to change the way they advertise fixed-line broadband packages.

The ruling by the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) will force providers to include line rental in the headline price, as well as prominently display any up-front costs. The ruling was based on findings from research commissioned jointly by Ofcom and the ASA. The research found that 81 percent of people shown a broadband advert were unable to calculate the total contract cost.

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