Author: Nick Farrell

Interest in MSP model growing

Posted on August 6, 2021 by - News

Datto’s latest Global State of the MSP report says that interest across the channel in the managed service model has continued to rise with the coronavirus pandemic only accelerating the trend.

Datto thinks that MSPs are becoming the dominant channel delivery model.

The firm found there was plenty of poitivity among UK managed service providers (MSPs), with 98  per cent thinking “it is good to be MSP right now” and 81 percent reporting that they came through the pandemic with revenues either unchanged or improved.

More than 97 percent of UK MSPs that expected revenues to increase over the next three years.

When it came to hunting out the potential problems, Datto found that revenue growth, competition and profitability were all issues that caused concern for MSPs.

Government spends half its IT budget on outdated systems

Posted on August 6, 2021 by - News

A Cabinet Office report called Organising for Digital Delivery has found that the government spends half of its £4.7 billion IT budget patching out of date systems.

The report said that the UK government spends £2.3 billion a year on patching legacy IT systems, making up half of the £4.7bn it spends on IT each year.

The UK government could spend £13- £22 billion over the next five years on maintaining its outdated IT systems.

The so-called “technical debt” racked up by the government stems from its use of “obsolete technical platforms” using programming languages that are no longer widely supported.

Some IT systems fail to meet “even the minimum of cybersecurity standards”.

Cloudy Windows 365 sign ups go bonkers

Posted on August 6, 2021 by - News

Microsoft has abandoned free trials for Windows 365 due to “significant demand”.

People still can buy a Windows 365 plan, however, while those interested in a free trial can sign up to receive a notification for when they resume.

In a tweet, Microsoft’s Windows 365 director of program management, Scott Manchester, said: “We have seen an unbelievable response to Windows 365 and need to pause our free trial program while we provide additional capacity.”

Cloud delivered security to grow 21 percent

Posted on August 4, 2021 by - News

Dell’Oro Group’s latest five-year forecast (2021-2025) for the Network and Security and Data Center Appliance (NSDCA) market said that the industry is about to bounce back from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The outfit said that the worst of the market turbulence appears behind us. Increased vaccination rates–albeit not fast enough for some countries and regions–have led to an unwinding of lockdown mandates and boosted economic activity. In addition, economic stimuli from central governments have provided additional market tailwinds.

Chip shortage was worse than COVID-19 for car makers

Posted on August 4, 2021 by - News

The global semiconductor shortage could have a greater impact on the automotive industry than the COVID-19 pandemic.

Software provider VNC Automotive CEO Tom Blackie said that talking to clients and suppliers, it’s become clear that the effects of the semiconductor shortage will long outlast the pandemic, and will potentially have a far more serious impact on sales and future development.

“Some of our suppliers are seeing prices for chips that are more than 30 times higher than before, and at that level, their use is no longer sustainable. We’re even seeing vehicle buyers and fleet operators having to consider purchasing models that aren’t on their preferred lists because that’s all that’s available. At a time when the industry is asking people to consider making the switch to EVs, supply restrictions are leaving them frustrated”, he said.

IBM and Tech Data get booted and suited job

Posted on August 4, 2021 by - News

The UK Fashion & Textile Association (UKFT) is working with IBM, Tech Data, and the Future Fashion Factory to design, prototype and pilot a new technology platform to help the UK fashion and textile industry dress up the supply chain and make it more environmentally friendly.

Retailers Next, H&M, N Brown, New Look, COS and yarn manufacturer Laxtons will be part of the initial pilot.

The Sustainable Supply Chain Optimisation project has been awarded £1.4 million funding by Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, on behalf of the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF) Manufacturing Made Smarter Challenge.

Nutanix shakes the management tree

Posted on August 3, 2021 by - Moving People, News

Cloudy Nutanix  has announced a number of organisational changes to its EMEA senior leadership team.

Sammy Zoghlami will resume his role as Senior Vice President of Sales for the EMEA region. In this job, Zoghlami will continue to lead sales and customer support, strategic business development and strategy, management of Nutanix’s offices and operational teams in each EMEA country, as well as the company’s partnerships, alliances and channel activities.

Zoom pays millions to make privacy suit go away

Posted on August 3, 2021 by - News

Online conferencing outfit Zoom has agreed to pay $85 million to settle a lawsuit that claims the video communications platform violated the privacy of its users.

The lawsuit claimed that Zoom handed over data of users to Facebook, Google and LinkedIn. It was alleged that Zoom misled users by claiming it offers end-to-end encryption in its video calls and that it failed to prevent hackers from ‘Zoombombing’ calls, which sees them enter meetings they were not invited and includes cases of indecent images being streamed to participants.

NTT Data carries out major reorganisation

Posted on August 3, 2021 by - News

NTT Data has brought its Everis business and its EMEA division under the same umbrella to create EMEAL.

The new outfit will have  38,000 employees across 25 countries and a revenue of €3 billion.

NTT Data claims the move is a “fundamental step towards operating as one NTT Data globally”.

Everis CEO Fritz Hoderlein, will take over as the CEO of the newly created division.

Check Point warns of more cyber shenanigans

Posted on August 2, 2021 by - News

Check Point Research (CPR) has released its ‘Cyber Attack Trends: 2021 Mid-Year Report’, which shows how cybercriminals have continued to exploit the global shift to hybrid working and target organisations.

Organisations have experienced a 29 percent increase in cyber-attacks globally. The EMEA region showed the highest growth with 36 percent, followed by the Americas with an increase of 34 percent, with APAC witnessing a 13 percent growth in attacks. This year has also seen a new ‘Triple Extortion’ ransomware technique emerge. While there have been successful international operations targeting cyber-crime, such as the take-down of the notorious Emotet botnet, threat actors launched sophisticated attacks which exploited organizations’ supply chains to cause widespread disruption.

Savings to be had by improving “endpoint visibility”

Posted on August 2, 2021 by - News

Tanium claims that public and private sector European organisations could realise by improving endpoint visibility and control across their IT estates.

While you might expect an endpoint management and security software company to say something like that, the company has found some interesting numbers to justify its claim.

In a report, Tanium said that UK organisations that fail to implement comprehensive endpoint management technology risk losing out on significant cost savings. UK organisations are estimated to save on average a total of £995,120 in their first year of using endpoint technology, followed by an additional £343,463 in year two and £517,817 in year three.

Displaylite supplies Philips in the UK

Posted on August 2, 2021 by - News

Touchscreen and display specialist Displaylite is to supply the latest Philips touch monitors in the UK.
The agreement with MMD covers Philips Touch Glass, In Cell and Open Frame monitors. With a 70,000 MTBF, 3-year warranty and 48-hour onsite swap-out warranty, the touch monitors are suitable for a variety of applications including Point of Information, Point of Sale and Kiosks and Industrial Control Rooms.
Key features include SmoothTouch technology, an articulating stand and an optional bracket for securing a mini-PC.

Cloud print growing

Posted on July 30, 2021 by - News

The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated a move to the cloud in the print industry, according to industry analyst firm Quocirca.

The report found 75 percent of those it surveyed had already used marketplaces including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, and just over half had been on platforms such as Amazon Business. Only 30 percent said they were still buying direct from a channel partner.

The trend towards cloud marketplaces is set to continue, with 88 percent of customers expecting further growth in the next couple of years.

Red Hat teams up with Nutanix

Posted on July 30, 2021 by - News

Open saucy Red Hat has coupled with the cloudy firm Nutanix to build, scale, and manage cloud-native applications on-premises and hybrid clouds.

The collaboration brings together different technologies, enabling installation, interoperability and management of Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat Enterprise Linux with Nutanix Cloud Platform, including Nutanix AOS and AHV.

Under the plan, Red Hat OpenShift is the preferred choice for enterprise full stack Kubernetes on the Nutanix Cloud Platform. In addition, customers looking to run Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat OpenShift on hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) will be able to use an industry-leading cloud platform from Nutanix, which includes both Nutanix AOS and AHV.

Nutanix Cloud Platform will be the preferred choice for HCI for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat OpenShift. This will enable customers to deploy virtualised and containerised workloads on a hyperconverged infrastructure, building on the combined benefits of Red Hat’s open hybrid cloud technologies and Nutanix’s hyperconverged offerings.

Google Cloud expands SAP alliance

Posted on July 30, 2021 by - News

Google Cloud and SAP have expanded their strategic partnership claiming it will help customers execute business transformations, migrate critical business systems to the cloud, and augment existing business systems with Google Cloud capabilities in AI and machine learning.

Under the new deal, Google Cloud will be a strategic cloud partner for the RISE with SAP offering. The two companies will partner to accelerate customers’ cloud migrations and business process migrations.

This means that clients get global availability of multiple SAP services and products on Google Cloud’s reliable, scalable cloud infrastructure and high-speed network, including the SAP Analytics Cloud and SAP Data Warehouse Cloud solutions within SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP).