Author: Nick Farrell

Microsoft buys Metaswitch in 5G push

Posted on May 18, 2020 by - News

Microsoft has acquired a UK-based 5G specialist Metaswitch Networks, which has a number of high profile customers including BT and Sprint.

Microsoft said Metaswitch’s portfolio of cloud-native communication software will be expanded into its own range of services aimed at the telecommunications industry. It  said that it intends to use the talent and technology from Metaswitch’s portfolio to extend Azure’s reach in the telecoms industry.

Yousef Khalidi, corporate VP of Azure Networking, wrote in his bog: “We have a long history of working with operators as they increasingly embrace software-based solutions and continue to support the advancement of cloud-based networking while helping create new partnership opportunities for existing network equipment providers. Our intention over time is to create modern alternatives to network infrastructure, enabling operators to deliver existing and value-added services – with greater cost efficiency and lower capital investment than they’ve faced in the past.”

Vole has been busy building its 5G skills by acquisition. Two months ago it snaffled cloudy based Affirmed Networks.

 

Suppliers create virtual contact centre in just seven days

Posted on May 15, 2020 by - News

Essex’s most vulnerable residents now have dedicated access to support during the COVID-19 crisis, following the design and build of a virtual contact centre in just seven days. Cinos, a specialist provider of integrated audio-visual and communication solutions, Tiger, a specialist unified communications (UC) data analytics company, Provide CIC and Essex County Council have worked together to create the Essex Welfare Service.

The Essex Welfare Service has been set up to support the most vulnerable people across Essex. It will offer a single point of contact for welfare services – allowing Provide CIC to coordinate efforts with the council, voluntary organisations and charities.

Having already enlisted Cinos’ expertise on previous telephony and contact centre projects, and currently using the Tiger software, Ken Ngai, Technology Operations Manager at Provide CIC explains that the new cloud-based contact centre solution was deployed in just a week, with Cinos donating their professional services, and Tiger offering their software, both free of charge.

Openreach limits Huawei dependence

Posted on May 15, 2020 by - News

BT Group’s infrastructure unit Openreach has signed an agreement with American networking and communications firm Adtran to limit its dependence on Chinese company Huawei and to speed up construction of a fibre-based broadband system across Britain.

Under the government’s new  rules, ‘high-risk’ vendors (such as Huawei) are excluded from sensitive ‘core’ parts of 5G and gigabit-capable networks, with a 35 percent cap on high-risk vendors supplying parts to the non-sensitive areas of 5G and high-speed fibre-based networks.

Red Hat and AWS extend partnership

Posted on May 15, 2020 by - News

Red Hat and AWS  have extended their partnership to deliver Amazon Red Hat OpenShift, a jointly-managed and jointly-supported enterprise Kubernetes service on AWS.

Red Hat, vice president Sathish Balakrishnan, said Amazon Red Hat OpenShift will be a fully managed service that enables IT organisations to more quickly build and deploy applications in AWS on Red Hat’s powerful, enterprise Kubernetes platform, using the same tools and APIs.

“Developers will be able to build containerised applications that integrate natively with the more than 170+ integrated AWS cloud-native services to enhance agility, innovation and scalability. By blending Red Hat’s and AWS’ decades of enterprise IT knowledge and experience into Amazon Red Hat OpenShift, IT organizations will be able to launch cloud-native systems that can retain enterprise-grade security, be more agile and see improved performance while driving cost efficiencies”, he said.

Amazon Red Hat OpenShift will offer customers the ability to launch Red Hat OpenShift clusters and provide the benefit of an AWS integrated experience for cluster creation and management, AWS Console listing, on-demand (hourly) billing model, single invoice for AWS deployments and the ability to contact AWS for support.

Nutanix promotes Alvarez to channel and partner sales leader

Posted on May 14, 2020 by - News

Cloudy outfit Nutanix has promoted Christian Alvarez to Senior Vice President of Worldwide Channels. Alvarez will have oversight of the strategic direction of Nutanix’s channel partner ecosystem, fostering strategic relationships and developing global sales and distribution programs for value-added resellers (VARs), distributors, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), global system integrators (GSIs), and Telco/XSP partners.

Alvarez said: “Nutanix has aligned the right resources, investments and expertise behind its award-winning product portfolio, enabling our partners to add new services and expand their market share to drive accretive revenue streams.I am honoured to lead Nutanix’s worldwide partner organisation through our next phase of growth while helping our partners improve profitability with professional, managed and cloud services. The opportunity ahead of us continues to be vast as we carefully adapt to today’s unprecedented market dynamics.”

Wipro partners with ThoughtSpot on AI

Posted on May 14, 2020 by - News

AI-driven analytics outfit ThoughtSpot announced that has deepened its partnership with Wipro to offer search and AI driven analytics to joint customers worldwide.

The deal means that Wipro can help enterprises unlock unprecedented value from their data, using ThoughtSpot’s search and AI-driven analytics platform so its punters can analyse data and get immediate answers to most complex questions with a simple search. In addition, SpotIQ, the company’s AI engine can help users get answers to questions they care about, but may not even have thought to ask themselves. Wipro’s consulting and technical expertise in the area of data, analytics and AI combined with ThoughtSpot’s industry-leading platform, will help organisations bridge their technology, business, and strategic goals to deliver real business value.

Both companies will offer their customers “end-to-end solutions” with “defined business outcomes”, whatever those phrases mean. They will focus on delivering solutions in the areas critical to the current landscape, such as working capital management, business continuity, and workforce contingency planning. Aligned to the partnership, the two companies will go to market together with the solutions and ensure  its quick delivery to enterprises. 

VMware to acquire Octarine

Posted on May 14, 2020 by - News

VMware has announced its cunning plan to acquire Octarine, whose security platform for Kubernetes applications helps simplify DevSecOps and enables cloud native environments to be intrinsically secure, from development through runtime.

The company has also formed a Next-Gen SOC Alliance along with Splunk, IBM Security, Google Cloud’s Chronicle, Exabeam, and Sumo Logic which it hopes will provide SOC teams with visibility, prevention, detection and response capabilities using the VMware fabric.

The company said that building Octarine’s innovative Kubernetes security platform into the VMware security portfolio presents a major opportunity for VMware to further mitigate risks in several ways:

• Provide full visibility into cloud-native environments so customers can better identify and reduce the risks posed by vulnerabilities and attacks.

Check Point evaluates new partner programme

Posted on May 13, 2020 by - News

Five months down the line of its new partner programme, security outfit Check Point has issued an update.

For those who came in late, the security player kicked off a revised programme in January, with a focus on introducing more secured margins for some deals, including competitive win-backs or high-value competitive accounts. There was also the introduction of an Elite tier to reward those taking a wide range of products to market.

Check Point said that while the world is now a different place due to the coronavirus, the main themes of the Check Point partner programme proved to be essential in increasing collaboration with resellers and partner profitability.

The company said it had wanted to reward loyalty and expertise, but wanted to reach out to partners and engage them with the growth engines that were driving the business.

Profitability had been increased through more margin opportunities, while the Elite tier had given resellers a chance to increase their differentiation, it said.

Cognizant will lose $50 to $70 million on ransomware attack

Posted on May 13, 2020 by - News

Cognizant will lose $50 to $70 million as a direct result of a recent ransomware attack, the outfit revealed in its first quarter earnings call.

For those who came in late, the firm said it had been targeted by a “Maze” ransomware attack on 18 April, which effectively shut down its internal systems and causing service disruption for many of its customers.

Cognizant said it responded to the attack quickly but still expects its second quarterly earnings to take a notable hit due to the resulting downtime and the temporary suspension of customer accounts.

Cognizant CFO Karen McLoughlin said: “While we anticipate that the revenue impact related to this issue will be largely resolved by the middle of the quarter, we do anticipate the revenue and corresponding margin impact to be in the range of $50 million to $70 million for the quarter.

Maze software steals business’ data and stores it on an external server, allowing them to demand payment for its safe recovery with a threat of releasing the information if it is not received.

How Huawei’s supply chain saved the company

Posted on May 13, 2020 by - News

Huawei’s President of Supply Chain Management, Xiong Lening, says that the company managed to survive everything the last year has thrown at it because of the outfit’s long-term Business Continuity Management (BCM) system and the company’s diversified supply policies.

Huawei by all accounts has had a pretty rubbish 18 months with the US trying to shut it down and leaning on its allies to go somewhere else.

Despite the political climate, Huawei had signed contracts for more than 50 5G projects worldwide by the end of 2019. Meanwhile, shipment volumes of wireless network, optical transmission, data communications, and IT products had been growing rapidly.

Midwich doing well

Posted on May 12, 2020 by - News

Midwich chairman Andrew Herbert told his outfit’s AGM that the group delivered a strong performance in 2019, achieving revenue and profit growth while successfully completing four acquisitions.

“We remain committed to our established strategy of delivering strong organic growth, supplemented by targeted acquisitions, as well as building our expertise in a broader range of markets and products.”

Acquisitions made last year included Prase in Italy and MobilePro in Switzerland back in January, and Norwegian distributor AV Partner in May. Already in 2020, Midwich has sealed a deal for US AV distributor Starin Marketing.

Herbert said that the coronavirus was having an impact on the business and that would remain the case for most of the second quarter.

SentinelOne appoints Ardemagni to push its singularity

Posted on May 12, 2020 by - News

Security outfit SentinelOne has appointed Paolo Ardemagni to lead its sales team in continental Europe and maximise market expansion  around its edge-to-edge Singularity Platform. Ardemagni brings more than 28-year track record of success in enterprise cybersecurity business development, building and evolving local sales teams and working closely with channel partners to yield hyper growth.

SentinelOne VP EMEA Daniel Kollberg said: “We see huge growth opportunities in the heart of Europe as enterprises in every sector look to SentinelOne’s unique endpoint security specialisation and market-leading technology as more than simply a replacement for legacy AV. Paolo is the right fit to lead and develop our growing team for the key markets of DACH, France, Italy and Iberia, and will add significant value to our enterprise sales strategy alongside SentinelOne commercial, marketing, and channel teams.”

Getsafe stalls European expansion due to pandemic

Posted on May 12, 2020 by - News

Germany’s Getsafe has delayed its expansion into more European markets due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Marketing itself as a digital-first insurer, the outfit  currently offers home contents coverage in Germany and the UK, with several additional protection products sold in its home nation.

Editor of Verdict’s Life Insurance International Patrick Brusnahan, said: “The insurtech had planned to venture into several markets on the continent following its success in its native country, but the situation caused by Covid-19 and the associated lockdown measures have forced it to reconsider.”

IBM expands PartnerWorld programme

Posted on May 11, 2020 by - News

Biggish Blue has expanded its Business Partner programme to give its partners greater flexibility and help develop new revenue streams as businesses continue to shift to the cloud.

The PartnerWorld programme now features two new tailored, specialised tracks – Build and Service – alongside its existing Sell pathway. IBM says the addition of these new tracks aligns the company with the growing trend of partners shifting and expanding their models to better compete in a market driven by cloud adoption.

As it continues to enhance its Systems portfolio with IBM Cloud, the company’s multi-cloud approach will also deliver greater overall agility, it added, as well as the ability to bridge mission-critical applications on IBM Z, Power and Storage systems.

Channel is bouncing back

Posted on May 11, 2020 by - News

Beancounters at Context have added up some numbers and reached the conclusion that the channel has already started to show signs of bouncing back.

The outfit said that after looking at its four-week rolling average for year on year revenue sales growth climbing from minus ten per cent in week 16 to an increase of 4.6 percent in week 17, outperforming 2019 figures for the same period of minus 1.9 percent .

The analyst house highlighted is expecting second quarter numbers to come in with a 4.1 percent decline after a robust first quarter had delivered 4.8 percent increases.