Author: Nick Farrell

Telefónica Tech wants to be a UK cloud leader

Posted on October 25, 2021 by - News

Telefónica Tech UK&I has its sights set on being the “leader in cloud and cyber in the UK and Ireland”.

Having acquired Cancom’s UK & Ireland business for €398 million in July, Spanish carrier Telefónica has renamed the business as Telefónica Tech UK&I.

Hess said he expected the 600-strong UK business to receive an influx of investment under its new owner.

“The big difference between Telefónica Tech and Cancom is the level of investment they will make to help us grow in the UK and Ireland”, Hess said.

“The ambition is to be the leader in cloud and cyber in the UK and Ireland, and I think they have the wherewithal to help us get there.”

FACT-Finder acquires Loop54

Posted on October 25, 2021 by - News

FACT-Finder is acquiring Loop54, making it one of the first major consolidations of leading e-commerce SaaS solutions in search personalisation.
Yes, it’s M&A time again.

The merging of the two company’s proprietary algorithms lets FACT-Finder customers provide digital experiences and expand FACT-Finder’s international presence.

The company reckons the takeover will accelerate new stiff in e-commerce solutions for FACT-Finder customers and partners, giving them access to the latest developments in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence.

Mpro5 launches channel drive targeting healthcare sector

Posted on October 21, 2021 by - News

Digital transformation solution outfit Mpro5 is actively recruiting channel partners in the UK as it steps up its expansion plans.

The company’s digital transformation solution has been developed to improve operational effectiveness, process compliance, productivity, and drive cost savings for businesses. It is now actively looking for specialists in healthcare and in particular channel partners and systems integrators looking for a solution to address new National Standards of Healthcare Cleanliness.

Mpro5 Sector Director Dan Teare said trusts must now undertake a Technical Audit that includes a “50-point check”. This covers elements present in most healthcare environments, from bedpans to medical equipment, that requires regular, thorough cleaning.

Quantiq snapped up by Avanade

Posted on October 21, 2021 by - News

Woodridge, IL, USA — Great White Shark Opening Mouth — Image by © Denis Scott/Corbis

The M&A tsunami hasn’t stopped. Microsoft Dynamics specialist Quantiq has been acquired by global giant Avanade.

CEO and founder Stuart Fenton will exit the London-based firm in mid-November, adding that the decision to sell up to Avanade would allow the company to more quickly realise its “ambitious” goals. Fenton has been behind the desk for more than eight years.

Avanade said combining Quantiq ERP customer experience with its expertise across the Microsoft platform would allow clients to benefit from solutions that will help accelerate digital transformation across all industry sectors, globally.

“This is an enormous market growing at a terrific rate. We had some big ambitions, and it was going to take some years to reach them, so it made enormous sense to join Avanade and instantly get the benefit of their depth of resources, financial strength, and geographic coverage”, Fenton said.

Claranet celebrates 25 years with charity drive

Posted on October 21, 2021 by - News

Global technology services provider Claranet has completed the first leg of its Leeds 2 Sao Paulo Challenge and has raised £8,239 for charity by travelling a total of 8,611 miles.

To celebrate Claranet’s 25th anniversary, the first part of the challenge saw participants set out on a 5-day cycle from Leeds to London. Additionally, up until the 5 November, Claranet employees participating in the challenge can walk, run cycle, swim, skate, skip, hop or samba to help reach the goal of 12,000 miles – the equivalent to the distance from their Leeds office to the Sao Paulo office in Brazil. The challenge has even seen 25 French participants taking part in the Paris marathon to boost the total miles travelled.

The total fund raised will be donated to charities local to Claranet UK offices; Simon on the Streets, Warrington Wolves Foundation, Hollie Gazzard Trust, Holborn Community Association, and the Fredricks Foundation.

ISG sees application development and maintenance providers making a killing

Posted on October 20, 2021 by - News

UK enterprises are turning to application development and maintenance providers to help them meet the twin challenges of COVID-19 and Brexit and expand their digital business capabilities, according to a new report published today by Information Services Group (ISG)

In its 2021 ISG Provider Lens Next-Generation Application Development and Maintenance Services Report for the UK finds the application development and maintenance (ADM) market is proliferating in the UK with the increase in digital business demands.

ISG Digital Strategy and Solutions partner Ola Chowning said that the ongoing pandemic and Brexit had increased the need for UK enterprises to optimise IT costs and harness new technologies to gain a competitive advantage in an ever-changing market environment.

Insight hires Joyce Mullen

Posted on October 20, 2021 by - Moving People, News

Insight Enterprises has named Joyce Mullen as its new president and CEO.

Mullen will succeed Ken Lamneck, who has led the reseller since 2010 and remains with the company to “assist Mullen as she transitions to her new role”.

Mullen has been Insight’s North America president for the past year. Before that, she spent 21 years at Dell Technologies, and worked in various sales, service delivery and IT solutions roles, including as president for the global channel, embedded and edge solutions.

“We are proud to announce this exceptional leader as our new CEO. Mullen is the perfect candidate to lead our business into the future,” Lamneck said.

Cohesity offers disaster recovery as a service

Posted on October 20, 2021 by - News

Proof that you can get everything “as a service” these days, Cohesity announced the general availability of disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS).

Cohesity sees gold in “as service” stuff. Last month it was offering a backup as a service (BaaS), and next month, it is planning to release a Data Management as a Service (DMaaS) portfolio.

The new offering extends the exceptional disaster recovery (DR) capabilities provided by Cohesity SiteContinuity. It adds the ability to use Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a recovery location for failover and failback in a Software as a Service (SaaS) model.
The big idea is that it will minimise downtime and data loss, meet service level agreements (SLAs) and generally simplify operations.

MSP CloudCoCo expects to break revenue records

Posted on October 19, 2021 by - News

MSP CloudCoCo expects its revenue for the full year 2021 to “marginally exceed” the £8 million it scored last year.

The Warrington and Leeds-based firm expect this year’s trading EBITDA to be “in excess of £700k” which is “up significantly on the £261k reported last year “despite ongoing COVID-19nrelated challenges in the period”.

CloudCoCo CEO Mark Halpin said that the outfit had delivered a robust performance in spite of the challenges posed by COVID-19 with a substantial increase in trading EBITDA.

“We focus on doing the basics well and we will continue to invest in our people and ways in which we provide support to our customers.  The future for CloudCoCo is an exciting one and I look forward to updating shareholders on the next stages of our growth strategy”, he said.

ETB Technologies wants to push into Europe

Posted on October 19, 2021 by - News

Scottish refurbished kit specialist ETB Technologies has plans to expand deeper into Europe.

The firm has revealed it is on target to break through the £15 million turnover barrier, just a couple of years after it hit £10 million and has increased staffing levels by 50 per cent since last year.

For those who came in late, ETB, which refurbishes servers, storage and networking kit from Dell, Cisco, HP and Juniper, is working on a five-year plan that includes more growth and a determination to use recently opened sites in Bellshill and Sheffield to connect with local talent pools as well as increasing its customer numbers in the UK.

Acronis appoints Maritz as new Chairman

Posted on October 19, 2021 by - Moving People, News

Paul Maritz 

Security outfit  Acronis has appointed Paul Maritz as the Chairman of the Board of Directors, effective 21 September 2021.

It will be a busy time for the company. Earlier this year, Acronis raised $250 million at a $2.5 billion valuation and announced former GoDaddy’s partners business president, Patrick Pulvermüller, as the new chief executive officer.

The outfit provides  MSPs with tools to manage the environments of their customer’s security using its Acronis Cyber Protect product.

The company said that it will continue to make acquisitions to become one of the world’s major players of providing  backup, security, and management tools on the market. Over 12,000 service providers use Acronis Cyber Protect to manage over 2,000,000 workloads around the world, positioning Acronis for even more company growth in the future.

Acronis CEO Patrick Pulvermüller said that Maritz bought a wealth of experience developing products to meet market demands and take companies to the next level.

Global IT and business services revenue is expected to grow

Posted on October 18, 2021 by - News

Global IT and business services revenue is expected to grow by 3.4 percent in 2021, according to IDC beancounters.

The outfit claims that the market will grow by six percent year on year, due to foreign exchange fluctuation, the analyst added.

IDC claims the services market is forecast to top $1.1 trillion in 2021, adding this is consistent with what major vendors have been reporting in the first and second quarters of this year.

IDC Global Services Markets and Trends research director, Xiao-Fei Zhang said that the need for digital transformation and the demographic squeeze on talent, expedited by the pandemic, global supply chain disruptions, and loose monetary policies, have created the perfect push and pull for enterprise buyers.

Coveo snaps up Qubit

Posted on October 18, 2021 by - News

AI outfit Coveo has written a cheque for Qubit, a leader in AI-powered personalization technology for merchandising teams, based in London.

The move is part of Coveo’s geographic expansion into the UK and European markets.

Apparently, the idea is that Coveo and Qubit’s combined ecommerce experience will provide solutions for retailers who need to compete as the digital shift accelerates and will help them meet new consumer expectations around relevance – at scale – made possible through AI.

Coveo Chairman and CEO Louis Têtu said that Qubit’s IP and expertise comes at a perfect time as enterprises turn to AI-driven solutions to provide highly relevant responses, offers and recommendations to their customers at scale.

William Jarrod Partnership sold to Marathon

Posted on October 18, 2021 by - News

Marathon has acquired Horsham-based William Jarrod Partnership as the business continues a “period of rapid growth”.

William Jarrod Partnership is a cybersecurity-focused outfit that was founded in 2011 and offers services including security awareness training, disaster recovery and backup recovery, mobile device management and email security. Its staff will join Marathon as part of the acquisition.

Marathon has been doing well this year – it became a Microsoft Gold partner and Co-Sell accreditation as well as ISO 27001 certification companywide. It also moved into a new company headquarters in Chessington.

Microsoft pees off its partners

Posted on October 15, 2021 by - Gossip, News

Software princeling of the world, Microsoft, has managed to get its channel partners hot under the collar over changes to its billing which will see them made responsible for their customer’s debts.

Vole has decided, in its ineffable wisdom, to suggest that its partners should take on financial responsibility if their customer becomes unable to pay for their O365 licence, after all, someone must and it is certainly not going to be Microsoft.

The idea is part of something dubbed a New Commerce Experience (NCE) which includes a number of changes for its “partners”. Under the new agreement, partners claim that they would have to take on the financial risk of paying the rest of a subscription if a customer was no longer able to due to insolvency or another reason.

If a company takes out a three-year Office 365 on CSP and they go bust in year two, then the reseller still has to pay the remaining two years. If it’s a big licensing agreement and they go bust, they still have to pay Microsoft the remainder of that contract.