Softcat makes more dosh than expected

Technology and services vendor Softcat has reached its highest ever market valuation after the outfit announced that it will be doing better than City expected.

he FTSE 250-listed IT reseller said it had delivered “strong” year-on-year growth “across all income and profit measures” for its third quarter to 30 April, leading it to foresee numbers that will be “slightly ahead” of the latest forecasts.

IMImobile teams up with Telia Norway

IMImobile, a global communications software provider, has signed a partner agreement with Telia Norway, with an option to extend to the wider Telia Company – the leading telecom operator in the Nordic/Baltics.

The partner agreement involves Telia to flogging IMImobile’s cloud products, including its enterprise cPaaS (Communications Platform as a Service) offering, IMIconnect, to its enterprise customers. IMIconnect enables businesses to launch and orchestrate two-way, trigger-based customer communications across 10+ channels.

Artificial Intelligence lacks brains

Most organisations are fully invested in AI but more than half don’t have the required in-house skilled talent to execute their strategy, according to new research from SnapLogic.

The study found that 93 percent of US and UK organisations consider AI to be a business priority and have projects planned or already in production. However, more than half of them (51 percent) acknowledge that they don’t have the right mix of skilled AI talent in-house to bring their strategies to life.

HP selects Stone

Public and private sector ICT service outfit Stone Group has been selected by HP as one of three resellers on the National Desktop and Notebook Agreement (NDNA) framework for higher education (HE), across all three available lots.

Stone can now provide HP branded hardware across the framework, including:

Cisco pulls back from China

Cisco has said that it will limit the use of Chinese parts following the trade war with the United States.

CEO Chuck Robbins said the firm has taken steps to mitigate any adverse effects from the increases. China revealed last week that it would be hiking tariffs from 10 percent to between 20 and 25 percent

Recarta snaps up Möbius

IBM partner Recarta IT has acquired virtualisation and cloud specialist Möbius Business Technologies and created a £15 million VAR in the process.

Founded in 2010, Möbius holds Silver partner accreditations with Microsoft, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Veeam.

Oncore IT snaps up Fuse Technologies

MSP Oncore IT has written a cheque for Fuse Technologies allowing it to add unified comms to its list of services.

The London-based MSP counts Citrix, VMware and Hitachi Data Solutions among its partners, and the purchase of Fuse will bring vendors such as Microsoft and Cisco into its portfolio.

Gartner fails to spot four MSSP giants

Gartner’s latest managed security services provider (MSSP) report is missing the names of four big IT giants who made it last year but have disappeared.

DXC Technology, BT, Orange Business Services and HCL Technologies appeared to have softly and suddenly vanished away and will not be met with again.

Humans still letting down company security

Secure USB drive outfit Apricorn has released research claiming that 89 percent of organisations have experienced a data breach, and human error is still the chief cause.

Two-thirds (63 percent) of respondents noted that human error was the leading cause of a data breach within their organisation – be it mobile workers, unintentional error, or employees with malicious intent.

Hutchinson Networks goes into administration

Edinburgh-based Hutchinson Networks has been put into administration.

Paul Hutchinson (pictured)  started the company in 2011 after “breaking away from the Cisco learning partner’s space”, where he had been for “probably 15 years’’ and was working towards becoming a Cisco Gold partner and worked with Riverbed, F5 Networks, VMware and Velocloud.

SecureLink teams up with Digital Shadows

Security company SecureLink has partnered with digital risk protection outfit Digital Shadows, to launch SecureDetect Intelligence.

The idea is to create a product that offers cyber threat intelligence and digital risk protection as-a-service. It will be immediately available to European enterprises in countries including the UK, Germany, Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden.

Epson reinforces complete indirect strategy

Printer maker Epson has launched an expanded Partner Programme to cover its business printers, scanners and displayse. It means Epson now provides dedicated benefits to its value and solutions partners, including dedicated account management and access to vertical end user sales teams.

Chris Smith, head of business sales at Epson UK, said: “We do not sell direct. We will only sell through our resellers, and with recent developments within the channel we felt now it was time to further prove our commitment.

UK economy benefits from Huawei

Huawei’s channel has been told how much of a  contribution that the firm makes to the UK economy.

The firm has now shared some numbers for those wondering just what it does for the UK economy pointing out that it stimulated a £1.7bn contribution to GDP last year and its activities support 26,000 British jobs. It also paid £470 million in tax in 2018.

A lot of those jobs and money are being generated in the channel and the theme of the vendor’s partner conference was to focus on generating more growth in the future.

Organisations need to ban consumer-grade, free apps

London, UK – July 19, 2018: The buttons of Whatsapp, Messenger, Telegram, Pinterest Twitter, Facetime and other chat apps on the screen of an iPhone.

Security outfit Armour Communications has warned organisations to stop using consumer-grade, free apps when handling sensitive or commercial information.

Armour director David Holman said that for those with jobs where security is paramount, for example, journalists, humanitarians, activists or special services working in unfriendly regimes, a phone that has been hacked via an app could put lives at risk. For others, the risk of an individual’s private information or financial data being accessed will damage an organisation’s brand integrity and share price.