Author: Nick Farrell

China is nicking our tech

Posted on July 8, 2022 by - News

British and USA spooks are warning tech companies about the threat of Chinese espionage.

Christopher Wray, the FBI director, and Ken McCallum, the MI5’s director general, stood alongside each other at the MI5’s London headquarters to warn businesses that China is “set on stealing technology from other nations” and to stress the magnitude of the threat it poses.

“The Chinese government is set on stealing  technology, whatever it is that makes industry tick, and using it to undercut your business and dominate your market”, Wray said.

Reseller SHI hit by malware attack

Posted on July 8, 2022 by - News

Malware, Wikimedia CommonsReseller SHI has revealed that it was the target of a “co-ordinated and professional malware attack” over the 4 July weekend.

The company, which provides IT products and services to businesses around the world, said there was currently no evidence to suggest that its customers were impacted by the attack.

In a statement the company said: “Thanks to the quick reactions of the security and IT teams at SHI, the incident was swiftly identified and measures were enacted to minimise the impact on SHI’s systems and operations. These preventative measures included taking some systems, including SHI’s public websites and email, offline while the attack was investigated and the integrity of those systems was assessed.

Node4 snaps up Risual

Posted on July 7, 2022 by - News

MSP Node4 has acquired Risual to boost its Microsoft Azure skills.

Risual will add an operation that has Microsoft Azure Expert MSP status, 170 staff and a customer base that has been built up over 17 years. The company’s staff were one of the main benefits of the deal and will strengthen Node4’s ability to support customers looking for support with digital transformation.

Node4 CEO Andrew Gilbert said: “As Node4 evolves as a business delivering more cloud-led transformation services, risual represents a perfect fit given its track record, consultancy skills and managed services in the public cloud.With complementary Microsoft skillsets, Node4 and risual are ideally suited to deliver the change that matters for clients and the transformation outcomes they need.”

Xerox buys Go Inspire to improve customer service.

Posted on July 7, 2022 by - News

Xerox has picked up UK-based print, digital marketing and communication services provider Go Inspire to bulk out its service operation.

Go Inspire has a customer base that stretches across EMEA and offers Xerox a chance to expand its digital services capabilities, it appears.

Xerox UK & Ireland managing director and senior vice-president for EMEA global document services  Darren Cassidy said Go Inspire’s capabilities will support the transformation of our transactional and direct mail services into multi-channel communications, accelerate growth in EMEA and create new avenues for us to help current and new clients.

Biggish Blue buys Databand.ai

Posted on July 7, 2022 by - News

A not so mobile X86 PCIBM has written a cheque for Databand.ai, an Israel-based developer of a data observability platform, which claims to catch bad data before it impacts a customer’s business.

IBM’s cunning plan is to use Databand.ai to strengthen its data, AI, and automation software portfolio to ensure trustworthy data goes to the right user at the right time. The company also expects the acquisition to help Databand.ai take advantage of IBM’s own R&D investments and other IBM acquisitions.

Observability helps not only describe a problem for engineers, but also provides the context to resolve the problem and look at ways to prevent the error from happening again, according to Databand.ai.

“The way to achieve this is to pull best practices from DevOps and apply them to Data Operations. All of that to say, data observability is the natural evolution of the data quality movement, and it’s making DataOps as a practice possible”, the company said.

Channel feeling pretty confident

Posted on July 6, 2022 by - News

Beancounters at Agilitas have been asking around and have discovered that the channel is pretty confident, given the mess that the world is in.

Agilitas’s findings revealed confidence that the channel was working collaboratively to balance profit and purpose.

Many business leaders saw themselves in a good position when it came to delivering strong customer experiences, with confidence around that area returning to pre-pandemic levels.

Rigby Group sells Nuvias’ cybersecurity and networking business

Posted on July 6, 2022 by - News

Nuvias has been acquired by Infinigate in a move which will form a pan-European player with €1.4 billion in revenues.

Nuvias’ Unified Communications business, which is based on its 2016 acquisition of Siphon, is not included in the deal and will become a separate entity under Rigby.

Rigby Group will become a shareholder in Infinigate Group following the acquisition, along with Infinigate investor Bridgepoint.

Elisa Polystar buys Cardinality

Posted on July 6, 2022 by - News

Elisa Polystar has acquired Cardinality, a UK-based cloudy data management outfit for communications service providers (CSPs).

By combining with Cardinality, Elisa Polystar claims it will have stronger data management, AI-driven analytics and automation portfolio with comprehensive data ingestion and cloud-native capabilities enabling simultaneous top- and bottom-line improvements for network operators.

The agreement has been signed and the transaction is subject to local regulatory approval. The closing is expected during the third quarter of 2022, with ownership transferring from the current operational management and Maven Capital Partners.

Since Cardinality was founded in the UK in 2015, it has grown into an international business with about 70 experts. The company’s platform includes plugins for hundreds of different data sources and enables large-scale data management in on-premises, cloud or hybrid deployments. Cardinality has been ranked as the UK’s best-performing scale-up technology company in the Business & Consumer Software sector in the Megabuyte Emerging 25 review in 2022.

Newport Wafer Fab involved in struggle between West and East

Posted on July 5, 2022 by - News

Newport Wafer Fab has been thrust into the struggle between the West and China.

Last July the outfit hit financial difficulties and was bought by Nexperia, one of its customers. Nexperia is headquartered in the Netherlands but its ultimate owners are Chinese firm Wingtech Technology.

Suddenly the British government realised that it was not in the strategic interest that China gains prominence in the global semiconductor industry. Well we say realised it was told by America which seemed to take the problem a little more seriously.

It was only this May, close to a year after the sale and after heaving lobbying, that ministers ordered a national security review under new powers.

The national security concerns are not about highly sensitive technology being made at the site with a defence or intelligence role. Rather it is about not having to rely on chips made overseas.  Suddenly making your own chips is fashionable.

Most EV users clueless about smart charging law

Posted on July 5, 2022 by - News

Less than 48 hours until the UK’s smart charging legislation comes into force, current and future EV owners are confused about what the change means for them, a new survey has found.

About 44 percent of surveyed EV owners and those considering purchasing an EV as their next vehicle weren’t confident in the definition of ‘smart charging’, a YouGov survey commissioned by Monta discovered.

However, when prompted with correct responses, 62 percent of respondents were correctly able to identify that smart charging is better for the national electricity grid, while 67 percent knew that smart charging schedules charges at times when there are more renewables, a lower cost, and less CO2 emissions.

Yet 30 percent and 35 percent of respondents were unsure about  accurately defining smart charging when presented with two correct definitions, meaning around a third of current and future EV owners are unaware as to what the new smart charging legislation means to them.

Portus Digital issues cheap all-in-one models to rival Dell

Posted on July 5, 2022 by - News, Products

Portus Digital is the second company to offer an all-in-one computer powered by the 12th-generation Intel Core processor as it launches the E-Pro.

The E-Pro series includes six all-in-one computers with 24-inch screens that feature chips from i3 to i7, with prices half those of Dell’s equivalent models.

The Portus E-Pro AIO-204 costs £1,049 for an i7 12th-gen Intel Core processor with 512GB solid-state drive and 1TB hard disk drive.

This is nearly half the £2,065 cost of the Dell OptiPlex 7400, which has an i5 processor and only a 256GB SSD.

Incisive Media bought out by Channel Company

Posted on July 4, 2022 by - News

The Channel Company has snapped up London-based Incisive Media which famously owned the INQ before shutting it down.

The deal which involves a lot of leveraging and similar buggering about is apparently part of the Channel Company’s efforts to “create a global IT end-user community. ” It is not enough to have a community, it must be a community which owns its ends.

Channel Company CEO Blaine Raddon apparently wants to “expand his footprint” we guess it is because he has seen a nice pair of shoes that don’t quite fit.

Forescout investing big in Europe and UK

Posted on July 4, 2022 by - News

Security outfit Forescout has been making shedloads of investments in Europe and London lately.

The vendor has cut the ribbon on a new London HQ, invested in a European Operations Centre in Cork, Ireland, and hired Matt Poulton as general manager and VP of Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA).

The firm has seen its staff swell by 40 percent across EMEA since the start of the year and can now house more people at its London operation.

The vendor has named Exclusive Networks as its primary distribution partner across Western Europe, solidifying a relationship that has been running for three years.

Gerard Allison, senior vice-president EMEA at Exclusive Networks, said the distributor would provide the vendor with a focused push across EMEA, backing that with support for resellers.

Juniper Research sees identity and access management spending increase

Posted on July 4, 2022 by - News

Juniper Research has found that global spending on identity and access management will rise from $16 billion in 2022 to $26 billion by 2027 and grow 62 percent over the next five years.

The report with the catchy title Identity & Access Management: Vendor Strategies, Vertical Analysis & Market Forecasts 2022-2027 includes B2B security solutions that enable the monitoring and management of users’ access to an enterprise’s applications, databases and IT services.

Apparently the increasing demand for identity & access management will originate from small businesses which, until the proliferation of the subscription model, were often unable to afford comprehensive suites of identity & access management services.

The new research found that 94 percent of global identity & access management spend will be attributable to the subscription model by 2027; rising from 60 percent in 2022. It anticipates that the use of the subscription model will become increasingly popular amongst small businesses, by minimising the initial acquisition cost of identity & access management services.

PC shipments expected to fall 10 percent

Posted on July 1, 2022 by - News

Augurers at Gartner have been shuffling their tarot decks and consulted the entrails of various livestock and reached the conclusion that worldwide PC shipments will fall by almost 10 percent in 2022

The PC market is expected to experience the steepest decline of all device segments this year, the researcher says, with the EMEA PC market forecast to record a 14 percent decline in 2022 because of a lack of consumer PC demand.

This was caused by Tsar Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, price increases and unavailability of products due to lockdowns in China are significantly impacting consumer demand in the region.