Category: News

Armour partners with Global RadioData

Armour Communications has partnered with Global RadioData Communications (GRC) to provide a joint solution with 24/7 support. GRC has already secured its first two customers for the new combined solution that provides additional levels of security.

The new service is available via the UK Government Digital Marketplace G-Cloud 10, under the cloud hosting, software and support framework listed as SCYTALE Armour Comms.

Apple SMEs more vulnerable to Ransomware attacks

SMEs who base their systems around Apple software and hardware are more likely to be taken down in ransomware attacks according to a new study.

Datto Businesses third annual Global State of the Channel Ransomware Report said that there was a fivefold increase in the number of MSPs reporting ransomware attacks on macOS and iOS platforms over the last year.

Cisco spruces up its SD-WAN

Cisco is unifying its security and software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) technologies to help organisations embrace the cloud faster with choice and confidence.

Scott Harrell, senior vice president and general manager, Enterprise Networking at Cisco said the WAN is undergoing a radical transformation. Today, organisations host their applications in multiple clouds – public, private and SaaS.

Distributors see third quarter growth

Beancounters at Context have said that distributors across Europe have done well in the third quarter and should see more growth.

An analysis of how distribution has performed across Europe in the third quarter from Context showed that there was 7.1 percent year-on-year growth in Q3.

That growth can be added to 5.4 percent in the second quarter and the 4.7 percent generated in the first.

Customers more likely to opt out of direct marketing

Consumers are now most likely to opt out according to the results of the latest international consumer research study from Eagle Eye.

SaaS digital marketing provider Eagle Eye released its  white paper entitled “The Digital Imperative: Harnessing the Power of ‘Now’ with Performance-Driven Marketing,” which suggests punters are more likely to opt out of marketing communications, now compared to six months ago. This means that Social media,  Email, SMS-based, In-app or online location tracking and online web tracking marketing is taking a hit.

Gartner warns about Brexit recession

Gartner research VP John Lovelock has warned that the channel should be making contingency plans for a recession triggered by Brexit.

Lovelock explained that although Brexit will have a “dampening effect” on spend in EMEA, full spending on IT will resume 12 months after Brexit.

He warned that a range of scenarios could upend their forecast, such as a no-deal or hard Brexit.

The spending that has come out of the market in 2017 and 2018 is from businesses reacting to the uncertainty of what the deal will be. While businesses are uncertain as to what is happening, they can’t plan and tend to stick their hand back in their pocket and wait until they have more certainty on what the rules will be and how they will be able to engage with them, he said.

His advice was not to necessarily look at our forecast, which is the ‘most likely’ scenario.

“There is a rising chance of a recession in 2019 or 2020 – it’s not so large that it is in our ‘most likely’ scenario – but it is possible and they ought to have a plan should a recession occur.”

Overall IT spending in EMEA is expected to hit  £742 billion in 2019, representing a two percent increase from 2018’s estimated total of $954 billion. The UK is predicted to see $204 billion spend next year – a 1.9 percent decrease on 2018’s figure.

Brexit is tiggering IT spending across EMEA, causing it to be the third-slowest-growing region for IT spend in 2019, after Eurasia and Latin America.

Lovelock says this is due to a number of factors, including Brexit, but price problems with mobile phones causing supply and demand to plateau.

Gartner predicts enterprise software will continue to be the area seeing the most expenditure, predicting a growth of 7.3 per cent – a slowdown from the 12.7 percent rate it grew at in 2018.

Enterprise application software can grow at such a strong rate is because it starts to take money from other areas as it goes into the cloud, he said.

“For example, if I am buying licensing software from a vendor, I need to also buy a server and storage, networking and backup equipment. If I buy cloud software, I don’t have any extra charges, so I can take money out of my server and storage spending and put it into cloud software.”

Arcserve’s new channel man is Vince Blackall

Data protection firm Arcserve has appointed Vince Blackall as its new EMEA Channel Director. Again.

The company said that Blackall comes with a proven track record of delivering transformational revenue growth and sales productivity across existing and new sales teams, and will oversee the development and delivery of Arcserve’s EMEA channel growth strategy.

ASL buys Geerings in second acquisition this year

Managed print service outfit Automated Systems (ASL) has written a cheque for Geerings Digital – its second acquisition of 2018.

Geerings was founded in Ashford in 1903 to focus on print, but over the past 115 years it has diversified into supplying office equipment and supplies to the commercial and education sectors across Kent, Essex, London, Sussex and Surrey.

It is jointly managed by Will and Adam Geering, the great-grandsons of its founder.

DBDB Labs signs up for Bidooh digital billboards

Manchester-based Bidooh which makes real-time, real-audience, digital billboard advertising gadgets has signed a contract with DBDB Labs, a media agency based in Seoul.

The outfit will use Bidooh digital billboard platform across 10,000 screens in South Korea. The 10,000 screens will be rolled out throughout three years. 2,000 screens currently in operation will be fitted with a Bidooh Box, and a further 8,000 new screens will be deployed. The deal follows the successful trial of a screen live in a corporate office in Seoul, which uses facial analysis technology to provide targeted, real-time advertising.

Insight’s EMEA business bucks global trend

Insight’s latest figures show that EMEA business is its shining star, while other world regions are grinding to a halt.

Insight’s EMEA business has been doing well since the completion of an expensive $3.5 million restructure last year and the third quarter proved to be another three months of positive developments for Insight’s EMEA business.

Revenues increased by 11 percent to $345.2 million, while earnings from operations rocketed by more than 100 percent on a year-on-year comparison. Earnings climbed from $2.1 million in the red from the third quarter last year to a positive $4.6 million this year.

Retailers getting all data-centric

In-memory analytics database creator, Exasol, has discovered that 82 percent of retailers are committed to implementing a data-centric strategy in the next five years, with almost a third stating this is already in place.

Its research found 58 percent of retail decisions are being guided by data, although almost half are yet to implement a single customer view in the omnichannel era.

Retailers are relying on data to drive better insights and decision making to address specific challenges within their businesses, but the adoption of data analytics is not universal. Respondents stated they used data for decisions on sales and marketing campaigns (70 percent) price optimisation to overcome issues around diminishing margins and increased competition for revenues (64 percent), and better supply chain management (55 percent).

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