Author: Nick Farrell

AdEPT’s moves from phones pays off

AdEPT has told its investors that its business is continuing its transition from telephony towards a managed service-driven outfit.

The firm shared first-half numbers for the six months ended 30 September, with revenues remaining essentially flat due mostly to  global supply chain issues. Adjusted profit after tax was also similar to the level reported at the end of FY22, at £3 million.

There was a three pe cent growth in cloud-centric strategic services, and revenues from £0.5 million to £15.1 million. means that 89 percent of group revenues are now coming from those sales, which replaced more of the legacy telephony business.

Channel’s service focus is paying off

The channel is continuing to focus on services and looking to ensure it has strong sustainability as it looks ahead, according to new research from distributor TD Synnex.

The research, based on a benchmark survey carried out by Canalys, found that almost three-quarters of partners expect to sell more managed services in the next three years.

With pressure rising to have a story around environmental, social and governance (ESG), the distie found that 40 percent were also looking to offer sustainability/ESG reporting within the next two years, TD Synnex said.

Application monitoring as a channel opportunity

Dynatrace vice-president Michael Allen said that there was a huge channel opportunity in the area of application monitoring.

He said there had been increasing pressure on channel players delivering application and infrastructure monitoring as the big hyperscalers started to muscle in on that space and his firm had already seen a change in approach for system integrators.

Allen said that large, regional and global system integrators were running datacentres and hosting the compute workloads of their customers and many of them had that business eroded by the hyperscalers as their customers decide to run more and more of their workloads, certainly the cloud-native ones, in the hyperscalers.

“What we’ve seen is that those infrastructure services partners have said, ‘Well, if I can’t beat them and I’m going to lose some of those workloads, let’s partner up with the hyperscalers’.

That drove partners to really look at a new way, because if you provide an infrastructure, whether it’s delivered by the hyperscalers or delivered by the SI in their own datacentres, or a hybrid of both, the most basic part of that service is that you need to monitor it and make sure it’s available for their customers.”

European Commission investigates Broadcom-VMware merger

The European Commission is investigating the $61 billion Broadcom-VMware merger.

The regulatory arm of the European Union said it was notified of the deal and expects to deliver its initial decision on 20 December.

The investigation is in what’s called “phase one” and many deals are approved afterwards. However, the agency can elect to take a more detailed “phase two” look and there were rumours that the Commission wants to take the Broadcom-VMware merger to the second base.

Broadcom was not too worried that the regulator might squash the deal even if the last time Broadcom tangled with the European Commission, it settled a case in which regulators accused the company of giving illegal rebates to customers who signed exclusive supply agreements for its semiconductors.

Big tech owns most of the cloud

Amazon, Microsoft and Google own more than 76 percent of the enterprise cloud services market in the United States and that anti-competitive state is likely to deteriorate,

IT market research firm Synergy Research Group said American enterprises’ annual spend on cloud infrastructure services was now approaching a significant milestone.

Synergy Research Group chief analyst John Dinsdale said that US spending on cloud services was approaching a $100 billion annual run rate and continues to grow by 30 percent per year, which was unusual for such a large IT market.

Over the past 14 quarters, the US year-over-year growth rate for cloud services has been between 27 percent to 34 percent and the growth is being led by Microsoft, Amazon’s cloud business—Amazon Web Services (AWS)—and Google’s cloud arm Google Cloud, he said.

Redcentric looks strong after snapping up four companies

Managed service provider Redcentric has snapped up four companies in the last two years, which it claims have significantly enhanced its public cloud, security, and consultancy offerings.

Redcentric has acquired Piksel Industry Solutions, 7Elements, 4D Data Centres, and Sungard AS data centre and consulting business assets.

The company said that the multiple deals were driven to meet increased customer demand and a requirement for specific and tailored IT solutions. These include cloud consultancy expertise in the public and hyperscale space, cyber security and expanding its physical presence through the data centre estate and UK portfolio from 4D and Sungard.

5G network security capabilities need to be stepped up

Former rubber boot maker Nokia and research analysts at GlobalData warned that communication service providers (CSPs) worldwide want stronger 5G network security capabilities.

GlobalData, commissioned by Nokia, found that 56 percent of CSPs said they need to substantially improve their cyber capabilities against telecom-specific attacks, while 68 percent said they need to sharpen their defences against ransomware threats.

Surveyed CSPs said they believe 5G Standalone (SA) deployments could increase security vulnerabilities as they disaggregate and open their networks and as industrial enterprises increasingly connect more of their mission-critical assets to their networks.

About three-quarters of the CSPs said their networks had experienced up to six security breaches in the past year, resulting in regulatory liability, fraud and monetary theft, and network services being knocked offline.

The precision medicine market is growing

A new study from Juniper Research found that the total spend on precision medicine will reach $132.3 billion globally by 2027, increasing from only $35.7 billion in 2022.

Juniper Research said that this 270 percent growth resulted from emerging technologies and infrastructure, such as AI, which aids precision medicine by predicting risks for certain diseases.

These technological advancements, combined with the healthcare sector’s need to increase efficiencies in the face of an economic downturn, will encourage healthcare providers to invest further in precision medicine.

Cisco’s Pasalic launches Lifecycle Advantage programme

Cisco has launched its Lifecycle Advantage programme claiming that it provides the tools to help partners deliver higher levels of customer experience.

Cisco director of digital experience, Europe, Middle East and Africa, Zarina Pasalic said that digital was growing in dominance as users change their researching and buying patterns.

“Digital is the experience our customers are having with us. That experience means everything in a subscription world, so if the experience is the product that we’re all going to be selling, we have no choice but to unify around that endeavour”, she said.

The pandemic accelerated these trends and placed “a lot more focus and energy and urgency on digital transformation, and the need to deliver digital-first services.”

She thinks that the last two years have dramatically changed the way customers engage with brands. The lines between B2C [business-to-consumer] and B2B [business-to-business] have become blurred.

“Customers, as well as partners, in B2B expect the same experience that you and I are having in B2C, and they want to communicate in digital-first channels that they prefer. They want speed and they crave empathy.”.

Cisco’s enhanced Lifecycle Advantage to make sure it is responding to partner feedback and providing the tools that are required.

“We’ve got to make things easy for [partners] by providing that end-to-end experience. That is their path to value. It’s tied to their business outcomes”, said Pasalic.

“We really allow our partners to digitally engage with their customers to drive adoption through the lifecycle to upsell and cross-sell opportunities, based on data and analytics, and, of course, to secure renewals. Globally, we have got well over 7,000 partners in the programme, and more people are finally recognising just how innovative and valuable it is.”

 

Cybersecurity companies seeing downturn

There are signs and portents that the cyber security industry  has received a rap on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper and seeing a downturn in business interest.

A new report from Progress Partners, a Boston-based investment bank, claims that venture funds invested in cybersecurity companies declined in the third quarter compared with the same period last year, to $3.3 billion from $5.6 billion, or by 41 percent.

The pullback comes amid uncertain economic times, with market gyrations, high inflation and predictions of a coming recession dominating recent headlines.

Softcat heads to Newcastle

Softcat has a brand spanking new office in Newcastle and is looking for staff to fill it.

The reseller is getting its ninth UK office ready and believes that there is a “large opportunity for growth and recruitment” between its existing bases in Leeds and Glasgow.

Softcat opened its eighth UK office in Birmingham in 2019, and has a Marlow HQ, and offices in London, Leeds, Glasgow, Bristol, Manchester and on the South Coast, as well as Dublin.

Arrow adds Oracle cloud to its ArrowSphere

Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) member, Arrow Electronics has added the vendor’s Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) services to ArrowSphere.

Oracle’s cloud services are designed to help enterprises run their most demanding workloads securely.

Arrow’s enterprise computing solutions business in EMEA Eric Nowak said that his outfit’s relationship with Oracle had lasted 20 years and adding OCI services to ArrowSphere is the next logical step.

Companies confident about sustainability goals

More than 60 percent of executives believe they can achieve their corporate sustainability goals over the next year, according to a recent global survey commissioned by Honeywell International.

Only 16 percent think they’ll do so primarily through technology-driven changes, such as upgrading or replacing existing systems with newer, more efficient or more sustainable technologies.

Most of them say they can hit their short-term goals mainly by modifying or eliminating operational processes or business behaviours.

Emma de Sousa exits Insight

Insight’s EMEA president, Emma de Sousa has announced she will be leaving the building for the last time on 31 December.

After 20 years working for the reseller giant she is leaving to make way for Adrian Gregory, an Atos executive who has previously run its Northern European and APAC business.

De Sousa moved into the EMEA president role just under three years ago, having previously led the UK business.

She seems to have left leaving a statement which was possibly written by a PR AI, as it is difficult to imagine a human saying it.

“It was a very difficult decision to make, but it has been a privilege to be part of this wonderful organisation that continually strives for greatness and lives by its core values of hunger, heart and harmony”, de Sousa apparently said.

Insight CEO Joyce Mullen said: “We have enormous respect for the decision that Emma has made, and we fully support her.

“We thank her for her phenomenal leadership and many years of success leading the UK and our EMEA business. Widely respected both with the industry and Insight, I’d also like to pay tribute to Emma’s enduring commitment to building a high performance, highly inclusive culture at Insight. We have taken this opportunity to look carefully at the market and have found a terrific successor in Adrian.”

 

 

More of Brighton and Hove goes full fibre

Broadband users in Moulsecoomb & Bevendean, and in parts of Hanover & Elm Grove, Woodingdean and East Brighton can access some of the fastest internet services available thanks to CityFibre.

The outfit has completed its network rollout in these areas and homes have been designated ‘ready for service.’ This means residents can choose to connect to the fastest and most reliable internet services in the UK when they go live in their area.

In Brighton & Hove, residents can already sign up to UK launch partner, Vodafone, TalkTalk, Giganet, IDnet, Yayzi, Air Broadband, NoOne and Octaplus with other providers expected to join the network soon.