Category: News

Most CIOs fear IoT performance problems

Nearly three quarters of IT leaders are concerned that Internet of Things (IoT) performance problems could directly impact business operations and significantly damage revenues.

Software intelligence company, Dynatrace, has announced the findings of an independent global survey of 800 CIOs, which reveals that 78 percent of CIOs said there is a risk that their organisation will roll-out IoT strategies without having a plan or solution in place to manage the performance of the complex cloud ecosystems that underpin IoT rollouts.  69 per cent of CIOs predicted that IoT would become a significant performance management burden

Intershop lets Bird watchdog into the clouds

Omnichannel commerce outfit Intershop Communications has been building a webshop for the  Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) running on Microsoft Azure.

This cloud-based e-commerce solution has been designed to offer a fully integrated digital shopping experience to sell RSPB products online. The original shopping website had been in operation since 2012 – since then website technology and customer expectations had moved on. The old site was struggling to handle peaks in customer visits and no longer supported new features.

CySure sees EnterpriseRed

Cyber security outfit CySure has appointed EnterpriseRed as a specialist reseller partner in the UK further.

The move will extend Cysure’s international network of partners across the Republic of Ireland, South Africa, the USA and the UK. The Berkshire-based cybersecurity experts will resell CySure’s information security management system, Virtual Online Security Officer (VOSO).

After conducting a review of their solution portfolio, EnterpriseRed identified a gap for an information security management system to assist with compliance. CySure’s VOSO solution was chosen as it enables

Datto sticks to an indirect model

Andrew Allen of Aabyss

While other vendors hum and haw about whether it’s better to sell their kit to their “partners” while they knife them in the back by circumventing the channel, it seems to ChannelEye that Datto really does stick to its last.

Last, as more literate readers of this online paper will know, is an archaic word for a shoemaker’s model for repairing a boot or a shoe. And if the shoe fits

DXC Technology swallows TESM

DXC Technology has written a cheque for the London-based cloud service management firm TESM.

The move is part of a cunning plan to extend its ServiceNow capabilities. TESM is a cloud and automation specialist with offices in Dublin, New York, Sydney and Frankfurt.ServiceNow is a

Silver Peak spruces up global Partner Edge programme

SD-WAN outfit Silver Peak has announced a range of sweeping enhancements to the company’s global Partner Edge programme. In addition to onboarding seasoned channel executives to lead the organisation forward, the company is making strategic investments to build the industry’s most robust and expansive SD-WAN partner programme and equip partners to drive business opportunity and growth in a hyper-growth market that industry analyst firm IDC projects will exceed USD $8 Billion in 2021.

The outfit said it wanted its  Partner Edge programme to be more predictable while making incentives and value-added offerings easier to obtain for partners. The intent is to shift the focus toward being partner-first by offering clear and concise

Genee World calls in the liquidator

Genee World has gone into liquidation a former sales and marketing director has said on LinkedIn.

In a post on LinkedIn, Genee World’s former sales and marketing director Jez Warren claimed the firm had gone into liquidation, with all staff being made redundant.

Parker Andrews has since confirmed that it has been appointed as Genee World’s liquidator.

Genee World specialises in educational products, such as interactive touchscreens and software, and counts Altodigital among its partners.

Humans cause cloud security issues

Claranet has called for more focus on the human end of cloud security.

Steve Smith, senior site reliability engineer and AWS team lead at Claranet

“The cloud security challenges highlighted in this report have little to do with the platform itself, but everything to do with the people using it and, in our experience, people are the biggest weakness here. The major cloud providers like AWS set a lot of sensible defaults designed to support configuration – for example, S3 buckets are now private by default – but unfortunately, it’s straightforward to get things wrong if you don’t know how to use the platform,” he said.

IT needed to boost UK’s fluctuating manufacturing sector

A new report from the IHS Markit/CIPS Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) revealed the biggest decline in the manufacturing sector in two years. The index showed that the manufacturing sector fell to 51.1 this October, down from 53.6 in September.

According to Jason Chester, Director of Channel Programmes for InfinityQS: “The report is indicative of what we are seeing across the manufacturing sector. Economic uncertainty fuelled by the lack of a final agreement on Brexit (despite Britain’s departure from the European Union being months away), in conjunction with the gradual decline of high-street retailers and a contracting construction sector is having a negative effect on supply-chain demand and restricting further growth.

IT Operations primed for dramatic change

Cisco launched its new IT Operations Readiness Index revealing how data is transforming the way businesses operate their IT.

The Index surveyed more than 1,500 senior IT leaders from across the globe to understand where organisations are on their IT operations transformation journey, revealing a four-step model for IT operations maturity, focused on how organisations handle events they face.

Joseph Bradley, Cisco’s Global Vice President, IoT, Blockchain, AI, and Incubation Business says: “Gone are the days of IT leaders relying on past monthly reports and hours upon hours of

Management buy out of IDN Supplies

Bolton-based VAR IDN Supplies has been acquired through a management buyout, and the firm will now be headed up by new joint CEOs David Shuttleworth and Darren Clayman (pictured).

Under the deal majority shareholder, Gareth Stocks will exit the company.

In a statement, the company said that Stocks was leaving the company in an extremely strong position.

“This MBO has been on the cards for over a year, allowing careful planning and structure. This is great news for all involved – our staff, suppliers and customers – because it means there will be virtually no change. It’s essentially business as usual.”

IDN was founded in 1988, initially selling IBM printer ribbons, and now provides a range of IT and audiovisual products.

The firm reported sales of £24.5 million for the year ending 31 July 2017, up from £21.7m in the previous year. Operating profit was £271,245.

Co-CEO Shuttleworth said: “The company has been growing from strength to strength. We have high hopes for the future of IDNS, and a clear vision and plan on how to move the company forward.”

Cloudy Nutanix updates its Beam

Every silver has a cloudy liningCloud outfit  Nutanix, Inc has updated its Beam tool to extend its cost visibility and optimisation capabilities into on-prem deployments.

Nutanix helps customers can get visibility and insight into their infrastructure environment, including public and private clouds so that they can choose the right cloud for every application. Applications that are more predictable, such as data back-up, databases and enterprise applications can be more cost-effective when operating in private clouds, while less predictable workloads like mobile/digital and IoT services can be more suitable for public cloud infrastructure. Beam will also now provide a global multi-cloud view so customers can visualise cloud spend patterns from a single dashboard, making it easier to make decisions which save their business money and ensure compliance with regulations.

The company said that organisations are trying to wrangle public cloud deployments to gain more visibility into what is being consumed, existing private cloud deployments, including potential cost savings, are often ignored, resulting in an incomplete picture of a company’s enterprise infrastructure.

Anuj Gupta, CEO, Hitachi Systems Micro Clinic said: “We’re growing at an aggressive pace and with a large public cloud footprint, making sure that we have granular visibility and fine-grained control is crucial to ensuring we do not overspend. As we doubled our cloud deployments, Nutanix Beam identified so many savings that we saw no increase in our overall spend. We’re so excited to have that same visibility in our future on-prem deployments to ensure complete cost optimisation across our multi-cloud infrastructure.”

Sunil Potti, Chief Product and Development Officer at Nutanix said: “Hybrid cloud is no longer considered a brief stopping point in the journey toward an all public cloud future. It’s a first-class destination as customers realise they want thebenefits of the public and private cloud. For this to be successful, companies need to understand how they’re using infrastructure no matter what the platform and from a single view. Nutanix Beam now provides that visibility so customers can finally make informed decisions about their entire infrastructure.”

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BT Global Services sits heavily on company bottom line

BT Global Services is causing its parent company a few headaches.

The wider BT business saw revenue for the six months ending 30 September drop two per cent year on year to £11.6 billion, mostly due to regulated price reductions in Openreach and struggles in its enterprise businesses.

The outfit said that its Global Services arm was the “main contributor” to the overall revenue decline, with the division’s sales for the six-month period dropping to £2.3 billion.

Outgoing CEO Gavin Patterson said: “We continued to generate positive momentum in the second quarter, resulting in encouraging results for the half year.

“We are successfully delivering against the core pillars of our strategy with improved customer experience metrics, accelerating ultra-fast deployment and positive progress towards transforming our operating model.

“Our strategy is delivering, with benefits evident from the steps we’ve been taking to simplify and strengthen the business and improve efficiency.”

The company has been restructuring this year to cut costs in Global Services “significantly”.

So far that has involved getting rid of 2,000 people mostly from Global Services.

It added that the cuts are so far saving it £350m annually, but the costs of the cutting programme currently stand at £206m.

BT also flogged off its German VAR last month, which sat in the Global Services arm.

Academia takes a third of Vital York

Education reseller Academia has taken a third of the device-as-a-service (DaaS) outfit Vital York.

The deal, which values Vital York at over £1 million, will see Academia invest in the firm to help it scale its DaaS business.

Academia boss Mike Bacon said Vital York was ahead of the market and had been doing well selling to York schools

It had 70 or 80 per cent of the primary schools and 40 per cent of secondary schools, but they haven’t got the ability to scale in the timescale they want.

The problem is that a DaaS outfit needs shedloads of cash and you don’t get the money back quickly.

Academia partnered with Vital York a year ago, in a move that helped the Enfield-based firm service partners further north.

Vital York business will continue to run as a separate entity under its current management.

Computacenter warns of slow-down

Big snail in Old TaipeiComputacenter warned that a slowdown in the infrastructure managed services market could hamper future growth.

The outfit saw sales declines in its third quarter results and Group revenues, excluding acquisitions made during the quarter, shrank by three per cent year on year to £900 million.

While Services revenues grew by a per cent, the outfit’s  Technology Sourcing segment, which alludes to its supply chain business, declined by five per cent.

The UK was Computacenter’s poorest performer in the third quarter. Revenues shrivelled by nine per cent to £296 million, as Technology Sourcing revenues tumbled by 12 per cent and services by four per cent.

The next worst was France which had a six per cent dip in revenues to £119 million. Technology Sourcing revenues decreased by eight per cent, or seven per cent in constant currency, while services declined by one per cent.

Only Germany did well and continue its upward trend established in the first six months of the year. Even it saw its growth slow dramatically in third quarter. Sales grew by one per cent to £451m, or two per cent in constant currency. Services and Technology Sourcing sales both grew by one per cent during the quarter.

Computacenter warned that channel partners have a tougher year ahead as revenue growth from reselling product begins to slow down.

The channel giant said that while its pipelines for professional services is “building nicely”, growth for its infrastructure managed services business is “somewhat more challenged” due to tougher market conditions.