Author: Nick Farrell

Babble gets Active

Posted on May 17, 2022 by - News

Babble has acquired unified comms provider Active as part of its drive to expand its presence in the North West of England.

Active has more than 500 customers and has 34 staff across its head office near Stockport and an office in Ellesmere Port.

It is a Gamma, Microsoft, Sophos and O2 partner which offers business mobile solutions and phone systems, IT support and connectivity to customers across industries including construction, transport and logistics, professional services and manufacturing.

The latest deal marks Babble’s 17th acquisition in the UK and follows on from other acquisitions in the North West of England such as its 2021 acquisition of comms partner Concert and its 2020 acquisition of Lake.

Unicon sues IGEL Technology over leaks

Posted on May 17, 2022 by - News

Endpoint management vendor Unicon is taking legal action against fellow IGEL Technology over an allegation that former employees leaked company data.

Unicon CEO Philipp Benkler said customers, business partners and employee trust was a key priority for Unicon.

“We feel compelled to exhaust all legal options against IGEL Technology and some of its executives after we learned that strictly confidential trade secrets were extensively and systematically stolen from us.”

At the end of 2020 and the beginning of 2021, several employees as well as Unicon’s former managing director had left to join its direct competitor IGEL Technology.

Salesforce recruits Troops.ai

Posted on May 17, 2022 by - News

Salesforce has acquired revenue and communications platform Troops.ai, a which uses Slack and Microsoft Teams bots to surface CRM data from platforms such as Salesforce.

Salesforce said Troops and its team will become part of Slack when the deal closes in 2023. Troops.ai had raised $19.4 million to date according to Crunchbase, including investment from Slack’s own venture fund.

The move is a surprise as Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor recently told analysts that Salesforce doesn’t have “plans for any material M&A in the near term”.

Deep Instinct uses frequent flier model to spruce up channel

Posted on May 16, 2022 by - News

Deep Instinct wants its partner programme to energise its channel base while making it a more attractive prospect to new clients.

The firm unveiled its programme at the start of the month with a system that is more akin to a frequent flyer model than the traditional three-tiered approach. Partners accrue points based on a number of metrics, including bringing fresh business to the vendor and sealing deals with the existing user base.

Ivanti selects Nuvias to help two-tier channel model.

Posted on May 16, 2022 by - News

Ivanti has chosen Cloud Distribution as the distributor to help build a two-tier channel model.

The vendor has appointed the distributor to handle its full range of network solutions across the UK, with an expectation it will get the products into the hands of more resellers.

Ivanti’s head of EMEA channel David Weeden said that Cloud Distribution has indicated it will hire a specialist team and support the channel with its Partner Growth Services as it shows its commitment to the signing. The relationship covers existing products from the vendor along with technology gained from acquisitions.

More woes for Kaspersky

Posted on May 16, 2022 by - Moving People, News

Security outfit Kaspersky’s channel operations in North America defected from the embattled cybersecurity company to somewhere a little less controversial.

Matthew Courchesne, who has led Kaspersky’s North American B2B channel team since early 2019, recently posted on his LinkedIn page that he was “happy to announce” that he was joining cybersecurity firm Cyware, also as channel chief for North America.

Content+Cloud appoints former Softcat to board

Posted on May 13, 2022 by - Moving People, News

Content+Cloud has appointed former Softcat MD Colin Brown to its board as a non-executive director.

Brown will apparently provide the outfit advice on the business’ growth roadmap.

Brown spent eight years at Softcat and was part of the leadership team that brought the organisation to its IPO. After stepping down as MD in 2020, Brown assisted with the reseller’s transition to a new leadership team.

He now acts as a non-executive director for a number of other technology and services companies.

Content+Cloud CEO Peter Sweetbaum said: “We are delighted to have Colin on board where we look forward to him bringing his exemplary experience at the core of the UK IT Services market in the UK and Europe”, he said.

Big Blue open to new partnerships

Posted on May 13, 2022 by - News

Biggish Blue CEO Arvind Krishna told the outfit’s company’s annual Think conference this week that his outfit is open to new partnerships.

Krishna said: “You have technology, but you also have to work with an ecosystem. No one company has all of the expertise, has all of the technologies that any of our clients need to be able to scale their businesses. So you must, must work on co-creating within a large ecosystem. … We want to build an ecosystem that unleashes the full potential of hybrid cloud and artificial intelligence for your benefit.”

MSPs slapped by “threat actors”

Posted on May 13, 2022 by - News

MSPs are being targeted by “threat actors” to access customer networks, according to a new advisory report penned by the United Kingdom, Australian, Canadian, New Zealand, and US cybersecurity authorities

The idea is that the “threat actors” are targeting MSPs to access customer networks in “efforts to exploit provider-customer network trust relationships”.

“Threat actors successfully compromising an MSP could enable follow-on activity—such as ransomware and cyber espionage—against the MSP as well as across the MSP’s customer base”, the warning said.

A document released by authorities provides steps and advice for partners to bolster their security strategy.

This includes identifying and disabling accounts that are no longer in use (shadow IT), enforcing multi-factor authentication (MFA) on MSP accounts that access customer environments and ensuring MSP-customer contracts transparently identify ownership of ICT security roles and responsibilities.

Tech Data spruces up print services

Posted on May 11, 2022 by - News

Tech Data has enhanced its managed print service claiming that the move will give resellers greater visibility and control.

The distributor’s cloudy managed print offering, OpenMPS, gives resellers a vendor-neutral platform that can manage customer printing.

The enhanced version of OpenMPS includes improved data visualisation, gives more control of user pricing and more protection against fraud. Those partners that use the service can also get auto-alerts when orders are placed, as well as faster search capabilities, which should streamline the process.

OpenMPS covers the vendors the distributor works with – HP, Canon, Epson, Xerox, Brother and Lexmark.

Microsoft ups the ante with security products

Posted on May 11, 2022 by - News

Software King of the World, Microsoft, is boosting its managed security range by adding three services aimed at operation centres and enterprises.

As part of Microsoft Security Experts the services are called Microsoft Defender Experts for XDR, Microsoft Defender Experts for Hunting and Microsoft Security Services for Enterprise.

Microsoft corporate vice president of security compliance, identity and management Vasu Jakkal said the new services were designed with “input from our incredible partner ecosystem”.

“It’s getting harder every day for organisations to build and maintain a full security team, let alone one with the ever-expanding skillset required to meet the range of today’s security demands. With input from our incredible partner ecosystem, we’ve designed three new managed services that can help you scale your team of experts to fit your needs—without the challenges of hiring and training them.”

Amazon signs green deal with AES

Posted on May 10, 2022 by - News

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has signed a deal with green energy storage firm AES as part of its move to be powered by renewable energy by 2025.

In a statement, AES said the PPAs are part of a number of projects that will help Amazon achieve its goal of having its global operations powered by 100 per cent renewable energy by 2025, which is five years ahead of its original schedule.

AES CEO Andrés Gluski said: “Together with Amazon, we are showing how customised energy solutions and innovative thinking can help organisations of all kinds to decarbonise their operations and the grid.”

Palser replaced as NCC group CEO

Posted on May 10, 2022 by - Moving People, News

NCC Group has announced a replacement for CEO Adam Palser who is leaving the company after four and a half years.

The head of EY’s cyber security, privacy, and technology practice for EMEA  Mike Maddison (pictured) will take over from Palser who will remain CEO until mid-June to support the handover.

Palser said: “I have thoroughly enjoyed my time at NCC Group and leave safe in the knowledge that its prospects have been transformed over the past four and a half years. The Group now has a great opportunity to grow by offering its unmatched skills to a blue-chip client base at a time when cyber risk has never been higher.”

Maddison previously led PwC’s Risk Services practice across the Middle East and was head of Deloitte’s cyber security consultancy in EMEA for ten years.

Digital Markets Unit watchdog gets statutory powers

Posted on May 9, 2022 by - News

The Digital Markets Unit (DMU) will get statutory powers to enforce a “pro-competition” regime, under a new government plan.

The goal will be to rebalance the relationship tech giants have with consumers and businesses and will allow the DMU to designate firms light Meta, Google, Amazon and Apple as having “strategic market status.” These firms will be forced to adhere to binding codes of conduct.

Failure to comply with the DMU and its rules could result in fines of up to 10 per cent of annual global turnover for tech companies, with additional penalties of five per cent of daily global turnover for each day the offence continues. Senior managers could face civil penalties if their firms fail to engage properly with the DMU’s requests for information.

Dell focuses on telco and edge computing

Posted on May 9, 2022 by - News

Dell Technologies is setting its sights on telco and edge computing and is chucking money in that direction.

Speaking to the gathered throngs at the Global Channel Summit at Dell Technologies World in Las Vegas Dell SVP global alliances, Denise Millard said that if you looked at the cash the company is distributing it is in telco, and edge areas. Dell also wants to “capitalise on the shift to 5G”.

Dell wanted to highlight a  $1.3 trillion market opportunity around edge computing. Millard referenced a recent IDC study that estimated that by 2024, more than 90 percent of operational processes will be deployed at the edge. Today the figure is 20 percent.