Author: Nick Farrell

Oracle extends AT&T cloud deal

Posted on August 15, 2022 by - News

Oracle has extended its cloud agreement with AT&T for another five years.

The move will give new capacity and capabilities for AT&T’s database and application workloads running in Oracle Cloud, the company said.

This includes building on its use of enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer experience (CX) management, and Oracle’s cloud infrastructure (OCI) offering.

Jon Summers, senior vice president of information technology at AT&T said: “We’ve worked closely with Oracle on some of our toughest technology challenges over the years, and we’re excited to renew this collaboration for another five years.”

Crown Commercial Service opens door to Salesforce

Posted on August 12, 2022 by - News

Salesforce logoThe Crown Commercial Service has agreed a one-year Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Salesforce.

The idea is to make it easier and more cost-efficient for the public sector to use the supplier’s products and services.

The agreement extends to the supplier’s acquired technologies, collaboration platform Slack and data visualisation provider Tableau and its cloud services.

Channel hit by currency problems

Posted on August 12, 2022 by - News

The channel is being hit by the falling pound because most vendors still price in dollars.

Sterling has fallen by as much as 12.5 percent against the dollar since February 2022. Prices will either have to rise or more gear will have to be sold to obtain the same amount of profit.

Vendors like dollars because that’s their home currency. But if a vendor planned to sell $40 million of kit in the UK in 2022 with a profit of $4 million, at July currency rates it would need to sell £32.9 million of equipment instead of £29.36 million at February rates. Sales increases of nearly 11 percent to keep your head above water rarely happen.

PLM Global shakes-up to get bigger

Posted on August 12, 2022 by - News

PLM Global has shaken up its ownership and management teams as part of a cunning plan to get bigger.

Nottingham-based hardware repair and refurbished equipment firm appointed Shane Watson as CEO.  Watson previously held roles at the company as sales director and managing director.

His move to CEO received backing from SME Capital for funding, supported by local Nottingham companies HSKSG Corporate Finance Specialists and Acton’s Solicitors.

Watson will be supported in his new role by Wayne Swallow, who is taking on the role of chairman after being a non-exec in the company for the past two years.

Cybersecurity outfits form open saucy team

Posted on August 11, 2022 by - News

A group of key cybersecurity companies has allied to form a new open-source consortium to share key data.

The announcement by a group of cybersecurity companies—including Splunk, Amazon Web Services, Cloudflare, CrowdStrike, Palo Alto Networks, Okta, Trend Micro, Tanium and Zscaler, among others—revealed the launch of a new consortium called the Open Cybersecurity Schema Framework (OCSF).

The cunning plan is to share product-normalising data in order to improve cybersecurity. All members of the cybersecurity community are invited to use and contribute to the OCSF.

Kaseya abandons auto-renewal

Posted on August 11, 2022 by - News

Software giant Kaseya has made changes to its auto-renewal policy after its partners said the method was pants.

Kaseya president and chief customer officer C.J. Wimley posted a note on the company blog and said all auto-renew agreements will be renewed at the same number of months as the previous agreement.

“In order to address some of the mechanics of the process while ensuring that the two core elements [lowest possible price and not discontinuing service] are maintained, moving forward the following adjustments are being made”, Wimley wrote.

More than half of firms hit by ransomware

Posted on August 11, 2022 by - News

Ransomware attacks have grown by 62 percent with more than half of firms hit in the last year.

According to Sophos’ State of Ransomware in Financial Services report, 55 per ent of financial services organisations were hit with ransomware in 2021 – a steep 62 percent increase over the year prior according to the research that Sophos released today.

While the number and complexity of attacks grew, only 54 per cent of respondents reported that the attackers succeeded in encrypting their data, considerably below the global average of 65 percent.

Presidio interested in UK

Posted on August 10, 2022 by - News

US reseller Presidio is looking at UK expansion after its acquisition of Irish firm Arkphire.

Presidio Europe and APAC boss Brid Graham said the deal brought Presidio worth €160 million in revenues in the European market and 250 staff based in Dublin, London and Singapore.

Presidio’s European and APAC footprint now consists of up to 320 staff. Most are based in Ireland, but the company has around 40 staff working in the UK as well as a team of around 10 based in Singapore and a team of four in Tokyo, Japan.

Synopsys highlights cyber attacks on supply chains

Posted on August 10, 2022 by - News

Supply chains are attracting the interest of cyber crooks and Synopsys Software Integrity Group says firms are stepping up security.

The Synopsys report found software supply chain attacks had seen 73 percent of respondents increasing efforts to strengthen security. This included greater adoption of multifactor authentication, getting security testing controls, improving asset discovery and updating the surface inventory.

Even with those investments, a third said applications had been exploited due to a known vulnerability in open source software.

Open source software has been a supply chain concern , but there are fears that other areas could be avenues for attackers, including cloud app development and application programming interfaces (APIs).

Arrow on target despite supply problems

Posted on August 10, 2022 by - News

Arrow claims it had a spiffing second quarter in the face of supply chain prolems.

The outfit reported sales of $9.46 billion, up ten percent year on year with its net income climbed 53 percent to $370 million compared with $241 million in the second quarter of 2021.

While changes in foreign currencies had negative impacts on growth of approximately $291 million on sales and $0.17 on earnings per share on a diluted basis compared to the second quarter of 2021.

Logicalis snaps up Q

Posted on August 9, 2022 by - News

Logicalis has acquired Q Associates as part of a cunning plan to expand its Microsoft and data-centric IT service capabilities across the UK.

Other than being a Star Trek villain, Q is a NetApp, Cisco and Lenovo partner providing tech to UK universities, research councils, government security services, Home Office departments and commercial clients.

The company has its headquarter in Newbury with regional offices in London, Manchester and Newcastle as well as a Microsoft technical delivery team in Zimbabwe.

Nvidia warns its results will be rubbish

Posted on August 9, 2022 by - News

Nvidia has warned that sales in its second quarter results will fall short.

Second quarter revenue is expected to come in at $6.7 billion, down 19 percent from the previous quarter, according to a US Securities and Exchange Commission filing Monday. The company previously said it expected $8.10 billion in sales for the quarter.

Nvidia, which is named after a Roman vengeance daemon,  said the problem was gaming revenue which was $2 billion, down 44 percent from Q1 and a drop of 33 percent from the prior year.

Nvidia’s stock sank more than eight percent on the back of the news.

Once considered recession-proof, the gaming industry is weakening as consumers reconsider purchases of discretionary items such as video-game consoles when faced with a choice of it being either that or the power bill or food.

Microsoft expands Defender

Posted on August 9, 2022 by - News

Microsoft campusSoftware maharāj of the world, Microsoft, has expanded its suite of ‘Defender’ products for channel players and customers.

Vasu Jakkal, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of security, compliance, identity, and management, highlighted in the post that the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s 2021 IC3 report found that the cost of cybercrime now totals more than $6.9 billion.

IT security spending ignores economic woes

Posted on August 8, 2022 by - News

European companies are ignoring any economic worries to splash out on IT security.

Beancounters at IDC expect IT security to grow by almost 11 percent this year.

The IDC’s Worldwide Security Spending Guide highlights that European IT security spending will reach almost $47 billion in 2022, with a forecast five-year (2021-2026) compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.4 percent to surpass $66 billion in 2026.

Security services will have the highest growth over the forecast period, IDC says, at a 10.2 percent CAGR and will also represent the biggest spending category, followed by software and hardware.

Tablet and Chromebook market crashing

Posted on August 8, 2022 by - News

Chromebook and tablet markets are being gutted by weak education sales and general lower consumer demand.

Beancounters from Canalys have added up some numbers and divided by their shoe size and seen a year of decline in both, with the second quarter of 2022 continuing a trend in shipment declines that started in 2021.

Those selling the hardware have had to contend with component shortages and rising inflation, but there are also a couple of specific issues in the tablet and Chromebook space that have contributed to respective 11 percent and 57 percent year-on-year second-quarter drops in shipments.