Author: Nick Farrell

Cisco wants Splunk

Posted on February 16, 2022 by - News

Networking giant Cisco is trying to buy the data analytics software company Splunk.

Cisco has made an offer worth more than $20 billion for the outfit recently although neither side is in active talks over a deal.

If it goes through the deal would mark Cisco’s biggest ever acquisition – smashing the $6.9 billion acquisition of Scientific Atlanta in 2005.

Splunk, which is currently searching for a new chief executive after Doug Merritt stepped down from the role in November, sells a platform that monitors and searches and visualises machine data.

The two companies already have a partnership, and Cisco has continued to put its efforts into moving towards software in recent years, with CEO Chuck Robbins praising partners in November for helping the company’s shift toward software and services.

 

Education supplier RM comes up with “satisfactory” results

Posted on February 16, 2022 by - News

RM chief executive Neil Martin said his outfit came up with “satisfactory” sales results in 2021.

Martin said that in the face of ongoing challenges in the education sector sales jumped 12 percent and revenue was £210.9 million for the full year ending 30 November 2021.

During the same period last year the company’s results were £189 million.

Adjusted operating profit grew 22 percent to £18.5 million but statutory profit after tax was down 45 percent, which RM said was due to “£8.3 million of investment programme costs expensed following a change in accounting treatment”.

Telefonia Tech gives five percent pay rise

Posted on February 16, 2022 by - News

Telefonia Tech has released that the secret to keeping staff during the post-pandemic “Great Resignation” is to give them cash.

The outfit has given all of its staff in the UK and Ireland a five percent pay increase.

CEO Martin Hess said that staff retention and recruitment was the biggest threat to any channel business in 2022.

He added that the pay increase will help reduce staff attrition rates at a time of wage inflation and an abundance of vacancies across the channel job market.

Redcentric CFO guilty of misleading financial statements

Posted on February 15, 2022 by - News

The former CFO of  MSP Redcentric has been found guilty of making misleading financial statements.

Ex-CFO Timothy Coleman has been found guilty of four charges for making false and misleading statements to the market after Redcentric overstated its cash position in results published in 2016 and will be sentenced in March.

Former finance director Estelle Croft was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment prior to the trial at Southwark Crown Court after pleading guilty to charges of making false statements and false accounting, and making false statements to Redcentric’s auditors PwC.

She was ordered to pay £120,346.70 following confiscation proceedings.

A third defendant, former CEO Fraser Fisher – who stepped down from the position at the end of 2017 – was acquitted by the jury on all charges.

SCC gets Civica’s licensing and cloud software lifecycle arm

Posted on February 15, 2022 by - News

SCC has snapped up Civica’s Licensing and Cloud Software Lifecycle (LCSL) business.

SCC gets the LCSL team and its customers, which include local councils, universities and housing associations, plus its partner relationships, with a plan to add those skills to existing software asset management and licensing efforts.

SCC chief executive James Rigby said: “We’re excited to welcome Civica’s talented team into SCC, and we look forward to meeting customers old and new, as this acquisition helps us to drive growth in a key strategic area. The depth of Civica’s knowledge, capability and customer relationships presents a wonderful opportunity to complement our existing software business. By joining SCC, Civica’s team gains access to a larger market and support team.” 

New Egg in hot water across the pond

Posted on February 15, 2022 by - News

PC retailer Newegg has found itself embroiled in a broad controversy over refusing to make refunds or accept returns.

It hit the headline when tech outlet Gamers Nexus returned a motherboard having realised that it was no longer required. Newegg then claimed that Gamers Nexus had damaged the motherboard, and then declined to offer a refund. After several months of wrangling with Newegg, it seems the company had attempted to get the motherboard repaired themselves, while also denying the refund.

After exhausting all customer service options, Gamers Nexus went public on his sizeable YouTube channel. As you might expect, this led to an immediate refund from Newegg, and a return of the motherboard in question.

Insight warns of supply and talent shortages

Posted on February 14, 2022 by - News

According to Insight executives, supply chain constraints and a shortage of qualified talent will continue to impact the IT environment in 2022.

Insight CFO Glynis Bryan said that a big focus for the company has been on ensuring customers get the products they need.

“In the second year of the pandemic, we continued to focus on helping our clients forecast their needs and ensure that they received supply as it became available,” Bryan said.

“This led to rapid bookings and backlog levels exiting 2021. For 2022, industry analysts expect low-single-digit growth in hardware. However, in our first quarter, we’re seeing hardware bookings in North America improve double digits year over year, compared to the first quarter of 2021.”

UK populated by tech unicorns

Posted on February 14, 2022 by - News

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport has declared 2021 the ‘best year ever’ for the UK tech sector, with significant growth in VC investment, IT jobs, unicorns and futurecorns.

Growth in the UK technology sector was fuelled by £29.4 billion of new investment, a 230 percent increase on the 2020 figure of £11.5 billion.

This is the biggest annual percentage increase in money raised by UK startups and scale-ups since 2013/14 when investment grew from £1.5 billion to £3.5 billion.

PC market grew by double digits claims Sirius Computer Solutions

Posted on February 14, 2022 by - News

Sirius Computer Solutions claims the health of the PC market grew by double digits in the fourth quarter.

SCS CEO Christine Leahy said that the company’s UK business delivered “high teens local market growth” fourth quarter, contributing to a 20 per cent year-on-year increase for its “Other” business segment which includes sales for the UK and Canada.

Sales for this segment reached $699 million during the quarter.

Leahy added that customer priorities in the UK and Canada were “similar to those in the US”, with cloud adoption growing and security remaining a top priority.

Apple iPhones need an urgent update

Posted on February 11, 2022 by - News

 

Apparently the security is wide open again

Apple has released an update for its iPhone and iPad for an already exploited attack which exploits a software bug.

Jobs’ Mob’s released iOS 15.3.1 and while it comes with various bug fixes for the “perfect operating system”, but one which surprised the Tame Apple Press was a that one of the fixes was a  security flaw. Now, everyone in the Tame Apple Press knows that Apple never have security flaws, that only happens to Microsoft based software.

Apparently this security flaw is a vulnerability in WebKit where it would let hackers create a website that could then execute code.

This means that fanboys could visit a website and find that hackers had control of their Coldplay and U2 collection.

Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been actively exploited. The Tame Apple Press, desperate to deny the existence of any security vulnerability, said that the fact that Apple is aware of a report, did not necessarily mean that the “feature” had been exploited really.

Proact suffers delivery delays due to supply shortage

Posted on February 11, 2022 by - News

Proact claims that delivery delays are behind a dramatic decline in its Systems sales in the UK.

The outfit claims that chip shortages continue to affect the business on a pan-European level and its UK revenues tumbled by 19 per cent year on year.

The decline was driven by a 42 percent year-on-year drop in so-called “System” revenues, which Proact claims were a result of delivery delays linked to ongoing chip shortages.

Adjusted EBITDA for its UK business also saw steep declines, falling 73 percent as a result of lower System sales.

Services revenues fared substantially better, with UK sales up eight percent during the fourth quarter with support revenue growing by eight per cent and cloud services revenue growing by five per cent.

Atos issues another profit warning

Posted on February 11, 2022 by - News

Atos has announced another downward revision of its 2021 financial forecast.

The services giant now expects a revenue drop of 2.6 percent at constant currency to €10.8 billion, compared to its previous forecast of a 2.4 percent dip from last month.

The group also predicts its operating margin to come in at 3.5 percent versus the four percent announced in January. The free cash flow remains unchanged at negative €420 million.

Atos confirmed it will report its full-year earnings on February 28, as well as its 2022 plan.

This is the third profit warning in eight months for the company, which recently named a new CEO following the unexplained departure of the previous chief executive, just days after its second forecast revision.

Insight doing well

Posted on February 11, 2022 by - News

Channel player Insight is delivering a decent set of numbers in its fourth quarter and full year results.

CEO Joyce Mullen said the outfit saw sales increasing 12 percent  in the fourth quarter and 13 percent to $9.44 billion for the full year.

“During the fourth quarter, our net sales were $2.6 billion, representing record net sales in a quarter for Insight. We had hardware net sales growth of 13 percent and drove services gross profit growth of 14 percent, year over year, allowing us to maintain gross margin of 15 percent, which was consistent with the prior year quarter”, she announced.

FCDO hit by secret hack

Posted on February 10, 2022 by - News

The UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) was the target of a “serious cybersecurity incident”.

The details – which were first revealed by The Stack – came from a tender document published on a government website that showed that BAE Systems was called upon for “urgent support”.

The BBC report claims that “unidentified hackers got inside the FCDO systems but were detected” and that it is “not believed that any classified or highly sensitive material was breached”.

It added that the contract – which finished on 12 January of this year – was valued at £467,325.

Microsoft mulls snapping up Mandiant

Posted on February 10, 2022 by - News

Microsoft campusMicrosoft is in talks to acquire cybersecurity firm Mandiant after the company has been involved in a game of pass the parcel with other buyers.

Mandiant was acquired by FireEye in 2013 for a deal in excess of $1 billion, but its security product business was then sold to a consortium led by Symphony Technology Group for $1.2 billion in June last year.

Both Mandiant and Microsoft declined to comment on the reports and the talks may not go anywhere.

Vole has been spending a lot on security outfits lately and wrote cheques for CloudKnox Security and RiskIQ last year. To be fair though, it has needed their services having been attacked itself rather too many times of late.