Author: Nick Farrell

XBM snaps up iDoc Services

Posted on September 28, 2022 by - News

Sustainable office technology player XBN has picked up iDoc Services, one of Epson’s heat-free inkjet printer specialists.

XBM is big news in Epson’s channel, being one of its largest managed point providers and a Platinum Partner.

iDoc is an expert in sustainable technologies and its ability to offer support for heat-free technologies.

XBM MD Richard Taylor said: “We want to lead the expansion of our business with future-proof technologies, and Epson’s ego-conscious print portfolio is standing out in this area.”

“Sustainability has never been more prominent in the print industry, and acquiring another dealer and customer base that shares this sentiment only strengthens our pursuit to become the UK’s leading managed print provider.”

Apple admits it has no excuses for gender imbalance

Posted on September 28, 2022 by - News

Apple’s CEO Tim Cook told the BBC that there were “no good excuses” for a lack of women in the tech sector.

Just 35  percent of Apple’s staff in the US are female, according to its own diversity figures for 2021.

Cook told the BBC that he sees it as a “cop out” when firms blame their lack of progress on a shortage of women with computer science qualifications.

Cook said there are “no good excuses” that prevent the tech sector from employing more women.  Although he did not seem to be able to explain the lack of diversity at Apple.

The Apple CEO thinks that coding courses should become a compulsory part of education in schools so everyone is equipped with a “working knowledge” of how coding works and how apps are made.

“We have to fundamentally change the number of people that are taking computer science and programming.”

 

Malwarebytes hiring after investment boost

Posted on September 27, 2022 by - News

Malwarebytes is hiring again after receiving a $100 million investment that the security vendor plans to use to massively expand its MSP partnership programme.

For those who came in late, the company laid off 125 employees just a month ago so the fact it is hiring again is probably due to Vector Capital making the minority $100 million investment to promote Malwarebytes’ product innovation and consolidate its ownership structure.

But the investment firm also said the funding will be used to scale  Malwarebytes’ international channel partner program and its rapidly growing MSP business.

And that could lead to a doubling of Malwarebytes’ internal MSP channel team to 150 employees within a year, from its current 75 members.

Google wants more cloudbusters

Posted on September 27, 2022 by - News

After announcing a freeze on staff hiring, Google now says it wants more to join its cloud teams.

According to a recent internal memo sent to employees, the cloud operations are going to be exempt from the staff freeze which was implemented across parent company Google in July.

It would appear that Google’s cloud business would not feel too big of an impact in terms of the companywide hiring freeze as Google would still be hiring technical talent and it is “focused on hiring engineering, technical and other critical roles.”

Google also “on-boarded” thousands of new employees from Mandiant, which the company officially acquired in September for $5.4 billion in a blockbuster security move.

 

Ingram Micro Cloud gets MOME alone

Posted on September 27, 2022 by - News

Ingram Micro Cloud has jacked Microsoft Online Management Extension (MOME) under the bonnet of its Ingram Micro Cloud Marketplace powered by CloudBlue technology.

Ingram claims CloudBlue Commerce capability provides an automated management solution that enables Volish partners to sell and manage services in a single location.

MOME uses data from Microsoft Customer AAD Tenants to provide new customer management, domain management, and security score services that support MSPs. It gives resellers direct access to customer accounts and domain management to reduce the demand on process.

Alibaba pushes its cloud partnerships

Posted on September 26, 2022 by - News

Alibaba Cloud is putting a lot of cash into supporting its partner egosystem.

The outfit told its 2022 Alibaba Cloud Summit to update its plans to grow the enterprise business and has used it as a forum to outline plans to spend a cool billion on a global partner system upgrade.

That billion will be spent to support partner growth over the next three fiscal years and will include financial and non-financial support, including funding, rebates and go-to-market initiatives.

Lenovo releases new server and storage products

Posted on September 26, 2022 by - News

Lenovo has unveiled its new AMD, Intel, and ARM-based systems server and storage portfolio.

Dubbed Infrastructure Solutions V3 portfolio the range encompasses the next generation of ThinkSystem, ThinkAgile, and ThinkEdge servers and storage systems.

Lenovo its products will give businesses “greater agility, resiliency, and performance”.

Lenovo executive vice president Kirk Skaugen said that Lenovo has pioneered infrastructure “solutions” that have transformed entire industries for more than 30 years.

NTT Data buys Apisero

Posted on September 26, 2022 by - News

NTT Data is writing a cheque for Apisero as part of a cunning plan to boost its cloud and data integration offerings.

For those who came in late,  Apisero is a Mulesoft and Salesforce partner which looks after enterprise customers to help them break down data silos and automate business processes.

Its UK base is Harrow and NTT Data claims the acquisition will give it more than 2,100 global resources.

Watchdog puts Amazon, Microsoft and Google under microscope

Posted on September 23, 2022 by - News

The UK regulator Ofcom is to have a look under the bonnets of Amazon, Microsoft and Google in the cloud services market.

Ofcom announced the launch of a market study into the £15 billon UK cloud services market. In particular, Ofcom will focus on the hyperscalers which between them account for approximately 81 percent of UK public cloud service revenues.

The study will check how well the market is working and the nature of competition in cloud services.

Ofcom wants to think about any market features that might limit innovation and growth in the cloud services sector by creating barriers to entry for smaller companies and preventing them from effectively competing and growing their market share.

IDC predicts doom for PC monitor shipments

Posted on September 23, 2022 by - News

Beancounters at IDC are predicting that PC monitor shipments will decline in 2022.

IDC is predicting “cautious channel uptake” over the next few quarters following a 2.7 percent rise in shipments in Q2 compared to the same time last year.

Rising inflation and weakening consumer demand point to a “challenging outlook for at least the remainder of the year”.

Monitor shipments are now expected to decline 3.1 percent year over year in 2022 and 2023 will shrink another 4.2 percent before a weak recovery in 2024.

Converge gets Stoned

Posted on September 23, 2022 by - News

Toronto-based Converge has paid £39.2 million for UK edtech Stone Group.

The PC builder, reseller and ITAD has been owned since 2019 by private equity house Souter Investments which has decided that now is the time to off-load it.

Toronto-based Converge is paying £39.2 milion for an 89 percent stake in Stone, which specialises in supplying hardware and IT services to the UK education and public sectors. Management will hang on to the remaining 11 percent.

VMware in hot water with US Securities and Exchange Commission

Posted on September 22, 2022 by - News

VMware is in trouble with the US Securities and Exchange Commission who believes that it would have missed its earnings targets numerous times since May 2019 if it had not shifted “tens of millions of dollars” in revenue into future quarters and “obscured” a slowdown in demand for its product from investors.

The Securities and Exchange Commission issued a “cease and desist order” to force VMware to stop the practice of “discretionary holds” where a company withholds reporting all of its revenue until the following quarter so that its sales teams are given a “buffer” to meet future targets.

The SEC wrote: “VMware misleadingly reassured investors on quarterly earnings calls and in earnings-related press releases and other earnings materials … that its revenue growth was meeting expectations, when revenue actually would not have met expectations or would have missed expectations by a larger amount without VMware’s continual net reductions in its discretionary backlog.”

Bytes had a good first half

Posted on September 22, 2022 by - News

Bytes had a good first six months of its financial year.

The reseller says it performed well across its key financial performance metrics in an update on trading thanks to “robust demand” which helped achieve double-digit growth in gross invoiced income.

It secured year-on-year growth in gross invoiced income and gross profit of more than 20 percent, while adjusted operating profit growth was in the high-teens.

Some of the money was due to accelerated adoption by customers of cloud usage or subscription-based products and a consequent increase in debtor days.

Isolated cloud spotted by Wiz

Posted on September 21, 2022 by - News

Cybersecurity firm Wiz has found another major vulnerability within a popular cloud-storage environment.

After identifying multiple security vulnerabilities in Microsoft’s heavily used Azure cloud services, Wiz researchers are now saying they recently found a “critical vulnerability” in the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) that could have allowed “unauthorised access to cloud storage volumes of any customer.”

Wiz said the vulnerability was spotted in June and quickly fixed within 24 hours by Oracle, and was  one of the most severe cloud vulnerabilities reported.

Truss wants ARM to list in the UK

Posted on September 21, 2022 by - News

Prime Minister Liz Truss wants British chip maker ARM to list the company in the UK.

Japanese company SoftBank has been preparing to take ARM public after plans to sell the company to Nvidia fell through due to “significant regulatory challenges”.

But SoftBank wants to put the company on the NASDAQ exchange in New York instead of London.

In May, it was reported former PM Boris Johnson wrote to SoftBank while ministers and executives from the London Stock Exchange would try and persuade them to rethink. Talks broke down in the summer when Johnson had to rethink himself.

ARM has warned that it could cut up to 15 percent of its workforce as it prepares to go public.

Most of the proposed job cuts would be in the US and the UK, ARM added.