Datto appoints Tim Weller as CEO

Datto has announced the appointment of Tim Weller as its new Chief Executive Officer.

Weller succeeds Founder Austin McChord who got away from the daily management of the company but continues as a board member.

A Spokesdatto said that Weller will assume the position immediately, providing a seamless transition from his interim role of leading Datto’s Executive Team over the last two months.

Networking infrastructure set to boom

Extreme Networks is expecting this year to be a good year for those flogging network infrastructure.

While the current trend appears to be software and hosted applications the much predicted “death of hardware” might not be a thing in the networking world.

John Morrison, VP, Extreme Networks said that this year could see a shift in focus away from software and apps back to infrastructure.

Desktop monitor sales grow

Beancounters at Context have  been adding up some numbers and worked out that revenues from desktop monitors through Western European distributors showed strong growth in early Q4 2018.

The first half of the fourth quarter built on the growth seen in the previous three quarters of the year with sales were primarily fuelled by business monitors, with gaming monitors making a significant contribution to revenue growth.

The combined sales of business and gaming monitors i

Retailers moved from AI hype to reality in last year

A study from the Capgemini Research Institute has dispelled some rubbish surrounding AI’s value to retail businesses and shown a path to tangible growth opportunities.

Capgemini beancounters calculate a $300 billion+ opportunity for those retail companies that can scale and expand the scope of their existing deployments.

Things are never as good as that, and the report

Amazon cements its position as market Queen

Amazon is the latest technology titan to claim the crown of world’s most valuable public company –  the outfit is worth $797 billion and beats surpasses Microsoft with $784 billion in value.

Apple, which had been part of a close three-way race for the seat, is now down to about $702 billion in market value after plunging last week on the news of its weak iPhone sales. Google parent company Alphabet has surpassed Apple with a market value of about $748 billion.

Large discounts on sites like Groupon hurt sales

Large discounts on sites like Groupon hurt the sales of small to medium-sized businesses, according to research from Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (RSM).

This is because, for less well-known merchants, discounts are often considered a signal of low quality.

The researchers monitored the hourly sales of 19,978 product and service deals listed on Groupon.com in 172 cities in the

BlackBerry offers security packs

BlackBerry announced it is scaling its BlackBerry Secure technology and licensing strategy to enable its partners to rapidly bring-to-market safe and secure IoT devices.

According to a recent survey commissioned by the company, approximately 80 per cent of consumers in the US, UK and Canada do not trust their current Internet-connected devices to secure their data and privacy. Additionally, when asked about future purchases, respondents said they were more likely to choose a product or do business with a company that had a strong reputation for data security and privacy.

Microsoft UK boss got New Year’s gong

Microsoft UK CEO Cindy Rose was awarded an OBE for her services to UK technology over the holiday break.

Rose was appointed Microsoft UK CEO & Area Vice President in July, 2016. In this role, she is responsible for all of Microsoft’s product, service and support offerings across the United Kingdom, continuing the company’s transformation into the leading productivity and platform company for the mobile-first, cloud-first era.

Microsoft releases two new 365 products

Microsoft campusSoftware King of the World Microsoft will  launch two Microsoft 365 subscription security bundles next month.

The first bundle, which will cost $12 for each seat is the Identity and Threat Management Protection package will contain security offerings across Windows 10 and enterprise mobility, including Microsoft Threat Protection, Azure Advanced Threat Protection (ATP), Defender ATP and Office 365 ATP.

SoftwareONE has new number one

SoftwareONE has appointed Dieter Schlosser as its new CEO following the death of Patrick Winter.

Winter led the company to become one of the world’s largest software licensing specialists, boasting revenues of €6 billion and a headcount of 3,000 staff until his death.

Schlosser joined the outfit in 2012, and lately held the position of global COO and transformation leader. He will take the reins as chief exec on 1 January 2019.

Daniel von Stockar, SoftwareONE’s chairman, welcomed the news and said there is “no better person” to oversee the company’s merger with rival Comparex.

Smarter Business Processes crosses the pond

Smarter Business Processes has opened its first US office in New York on the sound basis that if it can make it there it can make it anywhere.

MD Richard Rymill said the opening of its office in One World Trade Centre in New York came about because of a doubling of its headcount from seven employees to 14.

The company thought about Boston, LA and San Francisco as locations for its US office.