Author: Nick Farrell

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.

Ingram Micro going public again.

Posted on September 21, 2022 by - News

Distributor Ingram Micro is going public again and has taken its paperwork to the the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

In its press statement, Ingram Micro wrote: “The number of shares to be offered and the price range for the proposed offering have not yet been determined. The initial public offering is expected to take place after the SEC completes its review process, subject to market and other conditions.”

The US distribution giant was once the world’s largest distributor until Synnex acquired Tech Data last year to create a $57 billon-revenue business. It was then bought by private equity powerhouse Platinum Equity in a blockbuster deal that freed the distributor from Chinese conglomerate HNA Group.

The deal gave Ingram Micro new financial resources to focus on new ways of doing business, including building its cloud and digital transformation businesses.

Ingram Micro went private in late 2016 when it was acquired by HNA Group.

 

Exclusive Networks has a good set of numbers

Posted on September 20, 2022 by - News

Exclusive Networks has had a good first half of the year with a 33.3 percent increase in revenue to €1,473.7 million.

This is a 49 percent increase in adjusted net income to €47.4 million for the six months to 30 June 2022. The firm also reported first-half operating free cash flow before tax of €166 million.

More than 72 percent of growth was from existing partners while the the rest of the growth came from expanding relationships. The firm saw its retention rates with suppliers improve.

Nokia introduces new Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)

Posted on September 20, 2022 by - News

Former rubber boot maker Nokia introduced a new Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), AVA Charging, to help communication service providers (CSPs) and enterprises commercialise new offerings for 5G and IoT use cases.

Using software consumed on demand through a subscription-based model, Nokia AVA Charging incorporates business intelligence derived from hundreds of customer engagements to enable fast monetization of 5G and IoT services.

Nokia claims that AVA provides “Intelligence Everywhere” through AI, no code configuration, open APIs, multi-cloud orchestration, and digital ecosystems.

5G Fixed Wireless Access services will be a money spinner

Posted on September 20, 2022 by - News

A study by Juniper Research has found that total operator-billed revenue generated from 5G Fixed Wireless Access services will rise from $515 million in 2022 to $2.5 billion next year.

This growth will be driven by 5G’s advanced network capabilities, such as ultra-low delay and increased data processing to provide connectivity services that were previously unachievable with 4G technology.

FWA includes services that provide high-speed Internet connectivity through cellular-enabled Customer Premises Equipment for uses including broadband and IoT networks.

Red Hat and Dell team up on containers

Posted on September 19, 2022 by - News

Dell and Red Hat have entered a new partnership which they think will simplify deploying and managing on-premises containerised infrastructure in multi-cloud environments.

Dell says the deal will help companies speed the development and operations of cloud-native applications while removing IT management barriers.

Dell president of infrastructure solutions Jeff Boudreau said: “The Dell and Red Hat collaboration is key to our efforts to build a multi-cloud ecosystem that offers customers greater flexibility and choice as they develop new applications and modernise existing ones in multi-cloud environments,”

Capita flogs more family silver

Posted on September 19, 2022 by - News

Capita has sold off another company claiming that it is part of a cunning plan to become “more focussed and sustainable”.

The professional services giant confirmed it has agreed to sell Pay360 to Access PaySuite in a £150 million deal on a cash-free and debt-free basis.

For those who came in late, Pay360 is a UK-based, FCA regulated payments business with 2,500 customers across the public and private sectors.

Its gross assets at 30 June 2022 were £63.6 million and for the year to 31 December 2021 it generated revenue of £45.8 million , EBITDA of £10.5million and profit before tax of £7.1 million .

Hyperscale cloud certifications through the roof

Posted on September 16, 2022 by - News

Hyperscale cloud certifications in the IT services sector have rocketed over the past three years, according to ISG.

The outfit said that Enterprise demand for cloud modernisation is at an all-time high. Much of this is taking place on hyperscale clouds.

A new report said that hyperscale cloud certifications grew by more than 300 percent between 2020 and 2022.

Of the total cloud-certified workforce, more than half have Azure certification, over 30 percent  have Amazon Web Services certification and eight per cent have Google Cloud certification.

SAP jacks up support costs

Posted on September 16, 2022 by - News

The outfit which makes expensive business software, which no one is quite sure what it does, has jacked up its support fees.

SAP is increasing its support fees for the first time in nearly a decade for existing agreements for SAP Standard Support, SAP Enterprise Support, and SAP Product Support for Large Enterprises, based on the respective local Consumer Price Index (CPI).

Support costs will be raised from 1 January 2023 by a maximum of 3.3 per cent (or the local CPI rate, if lower).

Tech Data offers zero carbon service

Posted on September 16, 2022 by - News

Tech Data is providing a new net zero carbon consultancy service (NZC) to help partners sort out their carbon emissions.

The service will help tackle a partner’s own emissions (Scope 1 and 2) and that of their supply chain (Scope 3).

It uses the greenhouse gas (GHG) protocol – it will provide a plan detailing practical and actionable strategies to help the partner achieve net zero carbon emissions.

Dell and Microsoft agree to be double act

Posted on September 15, 2022 by - News

Dell and Microsoft have teamed up in a new partnership which integrates Microsoft Azure with Dell’s infrastructure products.

Dell’s SVP and GM for the UK, Dayne Turbitt, was joined by Microsoft UK’s Azure boss Michael Wignall at Dell’s new executive briefs centre in London to announce the new partnership.

Turbitt claimed many of Dell’s largest partners in the UK run Dell and Volish practices and the new partnership will bring these together.

“We have partners in our ecosystem like Kyndryl and Computacenter and CA which all have Dell practices and Microsoft practices. So I’ve been saying to the Dell Partner Advisory Board that we might want to connect these two”, he said.

Twilio decimates staff

Posted on September 15, 2022 by - News

Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson is laying off more than 11 percent of its employees because the cloud communications company is growing “too fast”.

Lawson said that the layoff is the last thing he wanted to do, but it was “wise and necessary”.

“Twilio has grown at an astonishing rate over the past couple years. It was too fast, and without enough focus on our most important company priorities. I take responsibility for those decisions, as well as the difficult decision to do this layoff.”

Lawson is remaining at the company.

Automation and Tech Academies key to closing skills gap

Posted on September 15, 2022 by - News

Global IT services provider NTT DATA UK&I advises that a combination of automation and tech academies is the winning formula for bridging the skills gap.

Its research has found that employers now take an average of 66 days to hire a new technology employee, up from 55 days in 2018 and 43 days in 2015.

There is not enough technology talent available to meet demand and the issue has only been exacerbated by the pandemic. As a result, hiring managers are losing time and money as they struggle to fill technology-related positions.

NTT DATA said that combining automation and tech academies enables organisations to increase the talent pool while shrinking the processes that need to be carried out by skilled personnel.