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Establishing a technology benefits scheme is an effective way to engage and excite your people. Through salary contributions, you can enable access to the latest technology, at unbeatable prices.

Here’s 4 reasons why you should talk to us about establishing a technology benefits scheme at your organisation.

1. Purpose built XMA Benefit Store

Our exclusive secure online store, provides access to preferential pricing to employees of public and private sector customers, as well as parents and students in education. Simply register for an account using your organisation email address to access a huge range of promotions and discounted prices on leading high street technology brands.

2. The choice really is yours

With over 6,000 products to choose from, you’ll be spoilt for choice. We have an extensive range of computing products including laptops, desktops and tablets from all the biggest brands, printers and printing supplies, iPhone and Apple Watch, along with all the accessories you’ll ever need.

3. Hassle free

We provide a simple, easy to deploy programme with minimal effort and no cost to your organisation.

4. Quick and easy

It was always our intention to keep this process simple – and we won’t keep you waiting around. Simply let us know that you want to be a part of XMA Benefits Store we’ll do the rest. And for products in stock, we’ll even deliver them next day, for free, to your home or workplace.

We can give you the best advice, ordering experience, pricing and product selection, so why not visit the XMA Benefit Store and see for yourself.

Everyone seems to be looking for ways to be more “green” these days ­– hybrid cars, reusable grocery bags, etc. And those in IT are no exception. Traditional IT environments consume an incredible amount of energy resources, such as power and cooling. The key for organisations focused on moving towards a greener data centre is to emphasise efficiency in energy consumption and efficiency in IT processes and systems. In other words, green IT needs to align to efficient IT.

The road to a greener data centre is paved both by small, incremental changes as well as monumental technology shifts. Advancements in software often naturally lead to more energy efficient data centres. For example, hard drives are now built to consume less power than in the past, new server features help reduce superfluous cooling costs, and data optimization techniques, such as inline and at inception deduplication and compression, lead to efficiencies in processing, storage, and backup.

Hyperconvergence represents a major technology development capable of transforming the data centre into a lean, green, efficiency machine. By converging all IT below the hypervisor, hyperconverged infrastructure immediately makes the data centre more efficient and environmentally sound. The data centre goes from as many as 12 disparate IT components to a single solution, so there is no longer a need to utilise storage space, power resources, or cooling functions on these IT components.

In fact, an IDC whitepaper found 75% of respondents realised an average of a 65% improvement in utilisation of storage resources as a result of hyperconverged infrastructure. In addition, nearly half of surveyed customers realised a 47% reduction in cost of data centre power and cooling expenses.

Though revolutionary, hyperconverged infrastructure is not a rip-and-replace technology as it can be introduced into existing environments as part of normal refresh cycles. For example, a hyperconverged solution can first be deployed in place of traditional data storage as a first step to modernising a data centre, and can later replace additional IT components over time as needs arise. This approach offers an opportunity to simplify the existing infrastructure and the complicated process of updating that infrastructure. Once standardised on a hyperconverged solution like HPE SimpliVity powered by Intel®, IT teams would only have a single product to refresh instead of a variety of separate IT components – which helps explain why 26% of customers in that same IDC study cited the need for fewer tech refresh cycles.

Hyperconvergence has always been focused on simplifying and consolidating the data centre. It’s no surprise that organisations looking to reduce their environmental footprint have discovered significant “green” opportunity in hyperconvergence. The benefits in space utilisation and operational efficiency make it more than worthwhile to implement a hyperconverged solution and transform your data centre into a lean, green efficiency machine.

When you have existing printers you’ve already bought and paid for, it’s tempting to think that maintaining your existing fleet will cost less than purchasing new printers or signing up managed print services (MPS). Why replace them if it’s not absolutely necessary?

The costs of an ageing fleet stack up, and in the long term, managed print services are able to save you more than just money. Here are five benefits MPS could bring to your organisation. Many businesses allow outdated, legacy printing devices to negatively impact productivity. Learn about the positive impact Managed Print Services can have on your business in this report from IT Pro.

1 – Cost savings

The consequences of sticking with an old printer are sometimes hidden, and can work at various levels, from running out of toner when you want to print an essential document, to the device breaking and your IT department being too busy to fix it. These consequences cost money, and the benefit of using managed print services is that you have the maximum availability of print when you need it most.

An MPS provider will look for ways to rationalise and consolidate your printers, replacing many old, large laser printers with a smaller number of newer, better distributed, faster devices or multi-function printers with all the necessary functions built in. Costs are visible and predictable, and you never have to worry about the expense of replacing ink and toners at different times across the business.

Maintaining your old printers might seem to help you keep costs low in the short term, but in the long term you’ll miss out on cost-saving opportunities, while facing expenses and uncertainties that MPS providers are there to alleviate.

2 – Efficiency

Old printers waste valuable time, which always has an impact on the bottom line. Not only does the time spent waiting for a slower printer really add up over a business year, but every paper jam and malfunction means more wasted time that could be used more productively.

An MPS provider will come in and analyse your business, printers and requirements in terms of printing, scanning and copying. This doesn’t mean pushing expensive hardware into every corner of the business, but instead they will look at where teams need specific capabilities, then will find the printer/s that will match those needs.

A really good provider will go further and look at ways that the business overall can print more efficiently, and save money by reducing the everyday print costs.

3 – Minimised downtime

In many organisations, employees can end up spending excessive amounts of time dealing with printers – not just waiting for old, slow devices to print, but dealing with malfunctions, changing cartridges, adding paper or waiting for someone from IT to fix a problem.

A good MPS provider will help reduce support costs and minimise downtime. Because it’s their job to maintain your printers and keep them running with a steady stream of supplies, your own IT team frees up its time to work on other projects.

4 – Up-to-date security

Newer printers have better tools for maintenance, management and most importantly, security. This has never been more important, with every old and outdated device now a potential security risk. Options like pull-printing, cloud printing and printing from mobile devices have gone from being expensive extras to standard features, while NFC and ID card-based authentication are no longer the preserve of larger businesses.

MPS providers are there to sort out things like security updates or rapid changes to firmware. With more threats out there and greater penalties for data breaches, that’s good news for businesses of every size.

5 – Environmental benefits

Do your existing printers have effective, high-performance duplex printing enabled? If not, you could be missing out on features that could save you up to 40% of your paper costs, according to some studies.

MPS providers look for ways to reduce waste, helping businesses make more effective use of more advanced printers and functions. Such printers have management features that prevent or discourage wastage, can restrict the use of colour, make duplex printing the default, or switch on pull printing, so that print jobs only print when actively requested from the printer. This can see drastic reductions in the number of printed pages left abandoned in the output tray.

Meanwhile, more modern, high-quality draft and eco-printing settings could use up to 50% less ink than standard modes, while producing output that’s easily good enough for both internal and external usage.

Source: HP

When access to your data lags, your business lags. Understand how to apply machine learning in your data center to predict and prevent the problems that cause downtime.

This research by Nimble Storage, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company, outlines the top five causes of application delays. The report analyses more than 12,000 anonymised cases of downtime and slow performance. Read this report and find out:

• Top 5 causes of downtime and poor performance across the infrastructure stack
• How machine learning and predictive analytics can prevent issues
• Steps you can take to boost performance and availability

Download the free report by completing the fields below

Beating customer SLA’s

HPE InfoSight took infrastructure management out of the equation for Rent-a-Center, and freed up staff time to execute instead of managing storage. Hear from their Director of Technical Operations on how they transformed.

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It can seem to take forever to scan through the endless amount of HP print cartridges available online. As a job that is always left until the last minute, a rush to order means that some buyers may not pay as much detail as they need to the purchase.

Despite many reputable e-commerce websites to buy from, there are still third-party traders selling thousands of counterfeit goods – and HP print cartridges are no exception.

The cost of counterfeit

In fact, counterfeit goods are so much of an issue, that The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) estimates that the annual value of international trade in all counterfeit goods at $200 billion (£158 billion).

Easy to be tricked

In the printing world, counterfeiting consists of the manufacturing/remanufacturing or refilling of a print cartridge, with the intention to promote it in a way which suggests it is an original brand name product.

This usually involves an unofficial print cartridge being put into a box that closely resembles genuine HP packaging – deceiving the customers into paying a higher price as they believe the product is legitimate.

The disadvantages

As well as being deceived on price, the potential risk of using counterfeit print cartridges could play havoc with your printer. Problems you may incur, include:

• Poor quality print-outs
• Reduced page yield
• Damage to printer
• Premature fail or do not work
• Interruption of print infrastructure
• Invalidation of hardware warranty

Protecting yourself against counterfeit

Just like all counterfeit products you’ve probably witnessed, if an offer sounds too good to be true, it probably is. To avoid falling victim to questionable offers, you should look to buy from authorised resellers only. For HP, this includes us here at XMA.

For existing cartridges that you may have that you are dubious about, you can action this three-step plan.

1. Check the security label – Tilt box front to back to see “OK” and “√” move in opposite directions. Then tilt box right to left to see “OK” and “√” move in the same direction. If it doesn’t, this is not a HP print cartridge.
2. Scan the code – Use the HP SureSupply app or a generic QR code reader to scan the QR code on the cartridge’s security label. Or go to www.hp.com/go/ok to validate online.
3. Report counterfeit – Keep the cartridge, packaging and any documents relating to the product, such as invoices, etc, and report it on the HP website.

Beating counterfeit cartridges

Unofficial traders have become smart in how they package and sell counterfeit cartridges online. Whilst HP and other companies are combatting the global issue, with this information, you can ensure that you are buying the right cartridges for your printers – delivering the quality, performance and value that you expect from a HP printer cartridge.

For more information on buying official HP printer cartridges from XMA, an approved HP reseller, speak to your Account Manager today.

With increasing choice, the ability to deal hunt for the best price, convenience and order management, it’s not surprising that organisations are moving some of their purchasing online. In fact, a recent study by Magento revealed that 56% of business are expected to be making at least half of their work related purchases online, boosting the UK ecommerce market share to almost £75billion.

Our state-of-the-art Ecommerce platforms are already helping to address these trends. With HE Hub built exclusively for the Higher Education community, The EDUstore tailored for students and educators and XMA Shop facilitating complex purchasing needs, we are successfully providing the user experience our customers require.

XMA Store is open for business!

To extend this success, we are excited to announce the launch of XMA Store – providing a gateway to over 100,000 products, real-time stock inventory and automatically updated pricing for organisations wishing to make straightforward transactional purchases.

XMA Store offers an enhanced user experience, with improved search and filter capability, so you can find the product you are searching for with the minimum of effort. And if you still can’t find what you need, we have built a number of “Help Me Choose” tools such as an Apple Mac configurator, and ink and toner selector.

It’s our mission to make your day easier. Start browsing

Businesses, large and small, are now taking a considerable interest in the environment. ‘Sustainability’ has become a buzzword as many businesses look to become more socially responsible in how they buy and work.

Companies such as HP, are no exception. HP is leading the shift to more environmentally friendly printing by introducing key sustainability initiatives that helps both themselves, and end users become more aware of the environment.

Sustainable printer supplies

A key part of HP’s product innovation involves developing and delivering print cartridges that help reduce environmental impact and are manufactured and recycled responsibly – promoting good corporate citizenship. From the outset, HP’s Design for Environment (DfE) programme ensures HP cartridges are designed with the environment in mind.

Also, HP requires its suppliers to certify that all HP printing supplies and their packaging comply with the HP General Specifications for Environment (GSE) – a set of guidelines that prohibits the
use of specific substances that are potentially harmful to the environment.

Recycling empty cartridges

Developed over 20 years ago, HP Planet Partners Programme pioneered a simple and free-of-charge system for customers to return and recycle their used Original HP LaserJet toner cartridges through state-of-the-art ISO 14001 certified facilities.

This programme has since expanded to include Original HP ink cartridges and is now available in more than 60 countries and territories around the world. Through our Planet Partners Programme, HP guarantees that it will never refill or resell print cartridges, or send them to a landfill. The results of this recycling have been phenomenal.

HP has produced more than 2.6 billion original HP ink and toner cartridges with recycled plastics since 2005. 628 million HP cartridges have already been recycled since 1991. This has resulted in:

• A 33% carbon footprint reduction
• A 54% reduction in fossil fuel consumption
• A 75% reduction in water used

This has assisted HP in being awarded the Green Apple Award in 2014 and the Green World Ambassador Award in 2015 – both to recognise their efforts towards sustainability.

Sustainability in the future

Of course, HP cannot achieve these sustainability and recycling results without customers buying original and genuine printer supplies from HP. It is this support that is helping both the company and its customers look after the environment.

Counterfeit products that are not purchased from an authorised resellers, as we’ve spoken about in a previous article, can be detrimental towards our shared sustainability goals. Only buying your HP printer supplies from an authorised seller, like XMA, can guarantee that the company continues to fight sustainability in order to look after the environment.

For more information on buying your next HP printer supplies, speak to your XMA Account Manager today.