eSP - IT Solution Providers in Europe

Jabra announces the Evolve2 range of UC headsets with the Evolve2 85, Evolve2 65 and Evolve2 40, all aimed at the collaboration market and designed to work with all leading leading UC platforms, with Microsoft Teams certification pending.

The Evolve2 range integrates with software/monitoring vendors to allow IT directors and other decision makers to analyse the performance of each Jabra headset. They also identify the root cause of poor call quality, be it due to the wifi router, UC infrastructure or individual headset settings. Jabra Xpress software enables headset management, allowing for firmware updates and new feature implementation.

Intel pledges $50 million in an initiative to fight the coronavirus (aka Covid-19) through a fund designed to accelerate access to technology at the point of patient care, speeding scientific research and ensuring online learning access for students.

The funds involves an additional fund for requests where access to Intel expertise and resources can have immediate impact, and come in addition to a prior announcement of $10 million in donation to local communities. Around $40 million will fund Response and Readiness and Online Learning initiatives. The Response and readiness initiative provides funding for advances in diagnosis, treatment and vaccine development, while the Online Learning initiative supports education-focused nonprofit organisations and partners provide students without access to technology with devices and online learning resources.

According to IDC, total spending on infrastructure products (server, storage and ethernet switch) for cloud environments, including public and private cloud, is up by 12.4% Y-o-Y to $19.4 billion in Q4 2019, marking recovery after two consecutive quarters of decline.

Thanks to the positive Q4 2019 results, full-year 2019 is in positive territory as annual spending totals $66.8bn, a 2.1% increase over 2018. Meanwhile the overall infrastructure market continues to struggle after a strong 2018, since while spending is up by 3.3% in Q4 2018 to $38.1bn, it is down by -1.1% to $134.4bn for the full year. Non-cloud infrastructure sees a -4.6% Y-o-Y decline to $187bn for Q4 2019 and is down by -4.1% to $67.7bn for the year.

HP Enterprise (HPE) designates over $2 billion in financing to help customers and partners to face the challenges brought about by the coronavirus pandemic, including cash-flow or liquidity issues.

The financial services wing of the company also has a number of initiatives, including a Payment Relief Program to help customers acquire new technology and alleviate some financial strain. The $2n fund, HPE says, will help customers ensure business continuity and adapt to the current environment by addressing new technology financing needs, and convert infrastructure to new sources of capital. In addition, customers can acquire technology by paying just 1% of the total contract value each month for the first 8 months, deferring over 90% of the cost until 2021. From 2021, each monthly payment is approximately around 3.3% of total contract value.