Category: News

Cinos unifies with its Unified Communications arm

Posted on July 24, 2019 by - News

Cinos has folded its separate Unified Communications firm, Cinos Communication Services (CCS), into its core business. The move follows a four-year incubation period for CCS and will see combined revenues of more than £20 million.

The company said the merger acknowledges the market’s need for IT and AV convergence at the customer level, where AV assets are increasingly purchased as part of the complete IT solution. The unified business’ primary market will be the public sector, with around 70 percent of customer projects being NHS, police, and blue light centred.

Eurostop scores George Fisher contract

Posted on July 23, 2019 by - News

Eurostop has announced that outdoor clothing and equipment store George Fisher has selected its retail system for its in-store retail operations.

The store is using Eurostop’s connected retail solution to manage stock and sales for all clothing, footwear and equipment, as well as at till points.  Eurostop’s new Café Mode POS will enable customers to pay for store items, food and drinks at the same time in its top floor café, famous for its far-reaching views.

DataStax survey show challenges with architecture modernisation

Posted on July 23, 2019 by - News

DataStax announced results from an IT Architecture Modernisation Trends survey, showing that 99 percent of IT execs were having problems with architecture modernisation and 98 percent report challenges with their corporate data architectures with vendor lock-in of particular concern.

The survey, conducted in conjunction with Dimensional Research and DataStax, takes the pulse of IT architecture modernisation trends by investigating current experiences with and plans to reduce complexity and cost around architecture modernization. Respondents included more than 300 executives who work for companies of more than 5,000 employees.

IBM and Cisco lead in GlobalData’s Industrial Internet numbers

Posted on July 23, 2019 by - News

IBM, Fanuc and Cisco are the leading companies in the Industrial Internet sector, according to the latest “Thematic Scorecard” for the industrial automation sector from GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

The three companies all gained the highest Thematic score (five out of five) in GlobalData’s Thematic Scorecard for the industrial automation sector. A Thematic score of five out of five indicates that this theme will significantly improve their future performance.

Salesforce provides partners with three new tools

Posted on July 22, 2019 by - News

Salesforce has enhanced its Sales Cloud Partner Relationship Management (PRM) service with three new tools.

The first new tool, called Einstein Analytics, helps businesses identify and prioritise leads using AI-driven insights. Through its powerful data mining capabilities, the software uses past lead and opportunity performance to provide predictive recommendations for the future.

Salesforce said Einstein Discovery could analyse recent opportunities and find that trade show attendance strongly impacts winning deals, which would enable firms to allocate budget for shows and extend invites to prospective customers.

Cisco considers buying Signal Sciences

Posted on July 22, 2019 by - News

Cisco is mulling another security purchase to build out its growing portfolio.

The tech giant is in talks to purchase Signal Sciences, a Los Angeles cybersecurity startup in which Cisco already has a relationship. Five-year-old Signal Sciences is a web application security company that develops software to protect applications running in private data centres and the cloud.

CrowdStrike shares rise on doubled revenue

Posted on July 22, 2019 by - News

CrowdStrike’s share price has soared after it doubled its first quarter revenue.

The cybersecurity outfit saw sales rise 103 per cent to $96.1 million during the period ending 30 April 2019. Losses narrowed to $25.8 million.

CrowdStrike added that recurring revenue grew faster than overall sales, climbing 116 percent to $86 million.

Trust cuts both ways says Microsoft CEO

Posted on July 19, 2019 by - News

Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella told the assembled throngs at the firm’s Inspire partner event that trust has to be earned.

“You can’t claim trust, you have to earn it every day” was a comment that drew a loud round of applause from the partner audience. The comments were part of a chat about  how partners should work with customers. However it is not much a leap to see that it is connected to Microsoft’s decision to reverse proposed changes around internal use rights policies to protect its relationships with resellers.

IBM declines before putting on its Red Hat

Posted on July 19, 2019 by - News

IBM has reported fourth consecutive quarter of revenue decline in its last results before it has to include Red Hat.

Sales for the three months ending 30 June 2019 declined 4.2 percent year on year, with IBM’s systems division taking the most significant income drop at 19.5 percent.

Global Business Services, along with Cloud and Cognitive Software, were the only two of IBM’s six units to report an increase in sales. Revenue generated from Cloud and Cognitive Software was up 3.2 percent year on year, with Global Business Services up 0.5 percent.

EMEA outsourcing returning to pre-2015 Levels

Posted on July 19, 2019 by - News

Europe’s managed services contracts in the second quarter exceeded £2.4 billion for the second quarter running, indicating a potential return to pre-2015 spending levels, according to the latest state-of-the-industry report from Information Services Group (ISG)

The EMEA ISG Index measures commercial outsourcing contracts with annual contract value (ACV) of €4 million or more, shows the region’s combined first-half ACV, including managed services and as-a-service contracts, was up 12 percent.

BT has sold its global London-based headquarters

Posted on July 18, 2019 by - News

BT has flogged off its ts global London-based headquarters to a European property fund for nearly £210 million.

The BT Centre building in St Paul’s has now gone to Orion Capital Managers but it will lease back the building for up to 30 months until it finds a new home in London.

The move comes just a month after BT announced it would be closing 90 percent of its UK offices as part of its Better Workplace Programme.

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Record year for industrial and logistics investment

Posted on July 18, 2019 by - News

2018 was a record year for industrial and logistics investment volume with £8.4 billion of assets changed hands, driving the sector to outperform the rest of the commercial real estate market, according to the Lambert Smith Hampton Industrial and  Logistics Market 2019 report

Despite the growing uncertainty around Brexit, the research shows occupiers were active during 2018; although overall take-up was four per cent down on a five-year average, it was only slightly below 2017’s total.

Mindtree reports growth

Posted on July 18, 2019 by - News

Technology services and Digital transformation outfit, Mindtree has reported  growth of more than ten percent.

Mindtree CEO & Managing Director Rostow Ravanan said that despite shedloads of uncertainties this year, the company had delivered stable results.

“This quarter saw us achieve an all-time high contract closure which sets the pace for the rest of the year. While the external factors pose some challenges, nonetheless our focussed strategy and strong client relationships make us confident of delivering above Industry growth rates in I 2020 as well.”

Microsoft warns that the Cloud has changed things

Posted on July 17, 2019 by - News

Microsoft’s global partner boss Gavriella Schuster told the assembled throngs at Vole’s Inspire event in Las Vegas that the Cloud has changed the way it had relationships with the Channel.

Schuster said that traditional reselling did not stimulate the levels of trust between the vendor and partners that cloud services managed to capture.

“Let’s face it; our traditional way of partnering was built much more around a supply chain. Microsoft would build some software. A partner might resell it, a partner might integrate it, manage it, deploy it, support it, and it was a series of hand-offs. There wasn’t as much trust inspired in those hand-offs”, she said.

Commvault spruces up partner programme

Posted on July 17, 2019 by - News

Data management outfit Commvault has refreshed its partner programme which will double rewards to top resellers,

Commvault EMEA vice president channels Bruce Park said his company had taken steps to make it more transparent how rewards work and to increase the amount on offer to resellers through the Partner Advantage Programme.

The firm’s top partners, the market builders, will benefit the most from the new programme with the chance to earn an average of 2.5 times payout increase on a year-over-year basis. Distributors will see improvements with those bringing in new business and making the required transactions able to earn 1.65 times more.