Midwich has opened a new multi-million pound training and events facility in Bracknell.
The 50,000 square feet Innovation House is home to five of the UK’s audio-visual distributors – Midwich, PSCo, Holdan, Invision and Sound Technology – and aims to bring together vendors, resellers, consultants, and end-users across the industry.
The idea is to showcase more than 200 world-leading audio-visual, unified communication and collaboration, broadcast, smart home and rental solutions from 50 world-renowned manufacturers all under one roof, Midwich says.
VMware’s COO of products and cloud services, Raghu Raghuram, will take over as the company’s new CEO at the start of June.
He has been with the company since 2003 and replaces Pat Gelsinger, who left the business earlier this year to be Intel’s new supreme Dalek.
“VMware is uniquely poised to lead the multi-cloud computing era with an end-to-end software platform spanning clouds, the data centre and the edge, helping to accelerate our customers’ digital transformations/ I am honoured, humbled and excited to have been chosen to lead this company to a new phase of growth. We have enormous opportunity, we have the right solutions, the right team, and we will continue to execute with focus, passion, and agility”, Raghuram said.
Raghuram has helped drive VMware’s direction in areas like its core visualisation business, software-defined data strategy, SAAS transformation and in mergers and acquisitions.
Maker of expensive printer ink, HP, has released Wolf Security, a new integrated portfolio of secure by design PCs and printers, hardware-enforced endpoint security software, and endpoint security services.
Essentially, HP Wolf Security unites the company’s security offerings into a single platform for its channel to take to customers who are keen to tighten security with the rise of remote working.
HP Channel & Partner Alliances director Neil Sawyer said that the mass shift to remote work as a result of the pandemic has led to new worker behaviour that is unwittingly increasing cybersecurity risk and increasing pressure on IT teams with less visibility.
NCC Group has bought the intellectual property management (IPM) business of US-based Iron Mountain in a deal worth £156 million.
Iron Mountain’s IPM arm provides software resilience services to more than 6,000 customers across the US and reported revenues of £23.3 million for 2020.
The move will provide “immediate scale to NCC Group’s software resilience business”, the company says, to “create a market-leading escrow business”.
NCC Group CEO Adam Palser said the deal will transform NCC’s software resilience business, making it a market leader, whilst delivering immediate financial and operational benefits to the whole of the Group.
Pure Storage is giving channel partners a five percent rebate on any eligible as-a-service deal as it brings a raft of new changes to its partner programme.
Elite-level Pure Storage partners will now be able to earn back five percent of the total contract value of Pure as-a-service deals of up to $100,000 per deal.
In a statement, the company said the rebate is available until 31 October 2021 and applies for the first Pure as-a-service opportunity for both new and existing customers.
The idea of the rebate is to create more differentiation between its Elite-level and Preferred-level partners. Pure claims that the number of partners selling Pure as-a-service has doubled this year versus last year.
Arrow has snapped up UK-tec Limited — the outfit’s second acquisition this year.
The acquisition provides Arrow access to a range of Network and Security products and services including SD-WAN and managed services and provides extensive experience in the delivery of services via the UK Channel.
UK-tec is built on the experience of serial entrepreneurs and technical specialists, Ian Jackson, Matt Johnson and Ed Davison. The company has quickly established itself as a leading provider of security, network and SD-WAN managed services for the UK channel including TalkTalk Business.
B2B supply chain integration and collaboration outfit DiCentral has opened its first UK office, in London.
This UK investment further expands DiCentral’s European footprint, which started with the creation of DiCentral Europe in Germany in December 2018, following the company’s acquisition of Compello GmbH. The new UK office will act as a local sales and support hub for DiCentral, with the company actively recruiting to grow the team in the region.
The UK office will be focused on growing the company’s business in the retail and automotive sectors. It will also continue to execute its channel strategy by using the company’s integration experience with SAP, Microsoft Dynamics and NetSuite.
NetApp has spruced up its Unified Partner Programme to capitalise on market changes resulting from accelerated digital transformation to the cloud.
The refreshed programme expands the firm’s partner ecosystem, adding new financial incentives as well as introducing new solutions and Services Certified specialisations.
The company said the changes will provide partners with a more “flexible, consistent and simplified” experience that will prepare them for a planned transition to a new tiering structure next year.
NetApp’s head of of Global Partner GTM & Programmes Chris Lamborn said that his outfit was transforming our Unified Partner Programme and evolving its structure to make doing business with NetApp simpler and more profitable for our partners.
Tech Data today announced an agreement with Secureworks to make the cloud-native Secureworks Taegis portfolio available to Tech Data partners across Europe.
Securework’s Taegis platform unifies detection and response across endpoint, network and cloud environments. The solution leverages advanced analytics and community-applied intelligence – powered by AI-based detection and findings from 1400+ incident response engagements – to detect, investigate and respond to cyberattacks
David Ellis, vice president, cybersecurity and mobility, Europe at Tech Data said: “’Today’s complex environments have increased risks for end-users across the cloud, network and endpoint. In addition, the well-publicised cyber skills shortage makes management of this area difficult for customers. We believe the Taegis XDR platform can help MSPs, MSSPs and resellers manage threats far more effectively for their clients. It also creates a very profitable and differentiated cybersecurity service offering, resulting in very sticky and close customer relationships. We are very excited to work with Secureworks to take these solutions to the European market.”
Infosec has partnered with Sandler Partners to offer its cyber awareness and training platforms to Sandler’s worldwide network of technology sales partners.
Sandler Partners has signed up for cyber education from Infosec IQ and Infosec Skills. Infosec’s SaaS-based cyber education platforms feature training for the enterprise — from the accounting department to the security operations centre (SOC). Both platforms leverage adult learning best practices like microlearning and experiential, hands-on training proven to maximise knowledge retention and deepen engagement.
Infosec CEO and founder Jack Koziol said: “Without also investing in employees’ cybersecurity skills, even the best tech solutions fall short of helping organisations stay ahead of rapidly evolving cyber threats. We’re proud to add Infosec Skills and Infosec IQ to Sandler’s solutions portfolio and equip even more organisations with the knowledge, skills and confidence to outsmart cybercrime.”
Dell Technologies founder and CEO Michael Dell has warned that the chip crisis “will probably continue for a few years”.
Speaking to Handelsblatt, Dell said it would take some time before enough semiconductors were available.
He said that even if chip factories were built all over the world it took time and older chip models were as rare as hen’s teeth.
“We are talking, in particular, about components that are in the one-dollar range and are used practically everywhere. But even newer technologies are not easy to come by”, he said.
Dell’s comments come as Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen confirmed that the country will cooperate with the European Union to ensure a more “resilient supply” of semiconductors.
European Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton previously met with Taiwanese semiconductor giant TSMC to discuss opening a fabrication plant in the region, with France, Germany, or Poland mentioned as potential locations. Breton hopes that a major factory in Europe would help the continent to become less reliant on shipments coming in from Asia, which has proven increasingly difficult due to pandemic travel and transport restrictions.
Cloudy Redwood Software announced that it has scored a £270.5 million strategic investment from growth equity firm Turn/River Capital.
The investment from Turn/River will enable Redwood to accelerate new feature development for its industry-leading IT and business process automation platform, which FeaturedCustomers recently recognised as a rising star in the Spring 2021 RPA Software Customer Success Report.
Statista estimates the global automation industry will generate $214 billion in 2021, with process automation exceeding $83 billion.
Founded in 1993, Netherlands-based Redwood Software serves thousands of global enterprise customers, including Coca-Cola, GM, Halliburton, Grainger, Wells Fargo, UBS, Mercedes-Benz, Airbus, Siemens, and Heineken. Redwood was named the “Best SaaS Workload Automation Solution” in 2019 by EMA.
Databarracks has acquired, for an undisclosed sum to create a combined company with 75 staff, including 50 data protection experts.
Databarracks Managing Director Peter Groucutt said: “4sl is a company we have always admired for its expertise and skill in enterprise data protection. It is a globally recognised leader in delivering managed Commvault services, providing a gold standard of support to its customers. Getting to know Barnaby and the team, we have been impressed by how similar the cultures of our businesses are, and how much we have in common.”
Groucutt said that over the last year his outfit had been working on its core services and migrated our customers’ backups and disaster recovery workloads from our data centres into Microsoft Azure, AWS and Google Cloud.
Peoplesafe has entered into a strategic partnership with Bullitt , the global licensee for Cat phones, to offer a lone worker service in the UK that better protects workers in harsh and unforgiving environments.
The Peoplesafe app is now available on Cat phones’ full UK range of rugged smartphones via the integrated Toolbox catalogue, which aids customer discovery and easy installation of relevant apps and content.
Peoplesafe offers 24/7 emergency support at the touch of a button. The app also provides enhanced location information to help locate workers in remote locations and includes fall detection capabilities to automatically raise an alarm.
Ingram Micro has expanded its relationship with Robotic Process Automation (RPA) outfit UiPath
The move means UiPath’s entire RPA and software portfolio is now available to Ingram Micro’s worldwide channel partners.
For those who came in late, RPA is designed to help organisations increase efficiency, workflow determinism, operation accuracy and regulatory compliance by automating manual tasks. Software-powered robots establish end-to-end automation across the organisation while keeping costs low.
Ingram Micro vice president Sabine Howest said the segment has become one of the organisation’s fastest-growing global practices.
Midwich has opened a new multi-million pound training and events facility in Bracknell.
