Category: News

Neil MacDonald runs HP’s UK and Ireland channel biz

Posted on February 1, 2022 by - Moving People, News

HP has tipped Neil MacDonald to run its UK and Ireland channel business.

MacDonald has been with the HP business since 2011. He was the vendor’s consumer director for the UK and Ireland for almost five years before taking a new role in March 2020 as EU head of excellence for marketplaces and Amazon.

He will begin the new role today.

MacDonald will be responsible for go-to-market strategy and sales performance for HP’s print, personal systems, services and solutions business across the region, as well as leading the commercial, consumer and distribution sales teams along with the relationships with HP’s channel partners.

Citrix to be merged with Tibco

Posted on February 1, 2022 by - News

Citrix  Systems is being acquired and taken private in an all-cash deal valued at $16.5 billion and will be combined with data integration and analysis software developer Tibco.

Citrix is being bought by Vista Equity Partners and Evergreen Coast Capital, the latter an affiliate of Elliott Investment Management. Tibco has been owned by Vista Equity Partners since 2014.

The deal has been unanimously approved by the Citrix board of directors and is expected to close by mid-year, subject to customary closing conditions, Citrix shareholder approval and regulatory approvals. Elliott Management and its affiliates, which own about 12 per cent of Citrix shares, will vote their shares in favour of the deal.

The Citrix-Tibco merger “will create one of the world’s largest software providers, serving 400,000 customers, including 98 per cent of the Fortune 500 with 100 million users in 100 countries”, the companies said in a statement.

Capita flogs Trustmarque

Posted on February 1, 2022 by - News

Capita has sold off IT reseller and solutions provider Trustmarque to private equity firm One Equity Partners for £111 million.

For those not in the know, Trustmarque provides managed services and hardware re-sale and was first purchased by Capita in 2016 for £57 million.It has Microsoft, HPE, AWS, IBM, Dell among its vendor partners and had net reported revenue of £122 million in 2020, Capita said.

Capita has been selling off what it calls “non-core businesses” to strengthen its balance sheet and to achieve a target of £700 million of proceeds from disposals.

Arrow takes on VAST distribution

Posted on January 31, 2022 by - News

Arrow Electronics announced a new distribution agreement with VAST Data, a storage software infrastructure company.

Arrow will help accelerate the adoption of VAST Data’s high-performance Universal Storage platform by broadening its reach with key channel partners and markets across Europe.

Launched in 2019, VAST Data’s Universal Storage platform mixes software algorithms with new hardware and networking technologies to sort out AI big data analytics and provide fast data protection.

Fitzpatrick defects from Vole to Chipzilla

Posted on January 31, 2022 by - Moving People, News

Intel has appointed Microsoft’s former general manager for worldwide partner sales to head up its own partner sales organisation.

Alyssa Fitzpatrick told her LinkedIn friends about her new role as the chip maker’s vice-president and general manager of global partner sales after six years with Microsoft.

Her responsibilities are listed as “leading the programmes, support, and end-to-end partner journey under the Intel Partner Alliance with a focus on ISVs, systems integrators and cloud partners”.

Tech Data teams up with MSI for games

Posted on January 31, 2022 by - News

Tech Data has partnered up with MSI to distribute the solution provider’s range of gaming laptops.

Tech Data said the partnership has been designed to give retailers and webstores access to Tech Data’s strengths in stockholding, logistics, business development, as well as credit and financial services.

The distribution giant will work with MSI partners and aims to extend the vendor’s reach into the gaming and education markets through its network of partners across the UK.

Tech Data PC manager Jay Allen said the partnership will help drive growth for specialist retailers.

“MSI’s gaming laptops have a reputation for top performance, distinctive looks, quality, and reliability. It’s a fantastic addition to our portfolio and this agreement enables specialist retailer and webstore partners to take advantage of our exceptional distribution services and expert marketing and business development capabilities to support their growth ambitions.”

IDE sees revenue grow 20 percent

Posted on January 28, 2022 by - News

MSP IDE Group saw year-on-year revenue growth of 20 per cent, it has said in a trading update.

The figure is based on the company’s continuing business only, having undergone a dramatic change recently with the sale of its loss-making networking business to CloudCoCo for £250,000.

Plans to sell off its Connect unit were first announced during the release of the business’ 2020 results and a deal was later confirmed in October.

Datto takes time over Infocyte integration

Posted on January 28, 2022 by - News

Datto said it is taking its time merging its newly acquired security outfit Infocyte into its operations.

Datto said it will be taking on all of Infocyte’s 27 employees and is “taking its time” with the integration of Infocyte’s technology into its own stack.

A number of Infocyte’s services are still in the market and Datto CEO Tim Weller said that other technology will start to be integrated into products that sit on top of Datto Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) in the second half of this year.

Northern Ireland looking for a reseller to end-user devices Troubles

Posted on January 28, 2022 by - News

The Northern Ireland Department of Finance is looking for a reseller to supply end-user devices, accessories and services as part of a £75 million framework.

It will be used by the Department of Finance and other public sector organisations. The contract is for an initial period of one year with four optional extension periods each consisting of another year.

Services listed under the framework include the supply of PCs, networking equipment, tablets and other hardware – as well as services like support, repairs and consultancy.

The award criteria is rated 70 to 30 in favour of cost over quality and the deadline for applications is 28 February.

Businesses are taking cybersecurity procurement more seriously

Posted on January 27, 2022 by - News

IDC’s Future Enterprise Resiliency and Spending (FERS) report claims that enterprises are now taking cybersecurity procurement more seriously in an effort to try and stave off a business-threatening event.

The report said that those companies are transforming their business models from linear-based value chains to integrated ecosystems leveraging shared data and insights, applications, and operations.

It said that organisations need to adapt to disruptive trends by forming partnerships that “extend beyond their respective industries” to generate value, build resiliency, foster innovation, and anticipate threats and opportunities.

IDC Future of Industry Ecosystems & Product Innovation Strategies research VP, Jeffrey Hojlo said the industry was still in a version 1.0 phase of IT investment for the future of industry ecosystems with the future of industry ecosystems technology investments still at an early stage.  This highlighted customer data management and systems integration as other key areas for investment.

Microsoft saw a 20 percent hike in revenue

Posted on January 27, 2022 by - News

Microsoft campusSoftware King of the World, Microsoft, reported a revenue hike of 20 per cent in the second quarter of its fiscal 2022 financial results, earning revenues of $51.7 billion.

Operating income for the quarter ended December 31, 2021 saw double-digit growth of 24 percent to $22.2 billion.

The boost, which shocked the cocaine nose jobs of Wall Street, was due to a tremendous growth seen in its Microsoft Cloud business, which spiked 32 percent year on year to reach revenues of $22.1 billion.

VMWare announces new BT agreement

Posted on January 27, 2022 by - News

BT has signed up for VMware’s Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) as a managed service.

The agreement will mix BT’s networking capabilities and in-depth security expertise with VMware technology to help customers accelerate their digital transformation.

BT says the managed service will provide employees with flexible, secure, and reliable access to cloud-based applications and services, deployed in private clouds, SaaS, or at the enterprise edge. It also aims to support the adoption of technologies such as the IoT and hybrid working.

Enterprise server market slumps

Posted on January 26, 2022 by - News

The latest Context figures show the enterprise server market slumped by 15 percent in the fourth quarter of 2021 and declined 4.4 percent across the year.

The IT market intelligence company said the decline was driven by “product supply issues and the reintroduction of stricter Covid-19 measures and resulting business uncertainty”, as well as long-term trends like “migration to hybrid cloud infrastructure and the increasing software-centric datacentre”.

Vectra snaps up Siriux Security

Posted on January 26, 2022 by - News

Security outfit Vectra AI acquired Siriux Security Technologies, a leading provider of identity and software as a service (SaaS) posture management.

The acquisition means Vectra can configure and detect active threats in cloud identity and SaaS areas, including Microsoft Azure AD and Microsoft 365.

Vectra AI CEO  Hitesh Sheth said: “SaaS applications have become a haven for cyberattacks and cloud identity is the way in. Through the combined expertise of the teams at Vectra and Siriux, we are now able to deliver the best protection for customers facing these threats.”

Arrow gives partners Pure as-a-Service and Pure Cloud Block Store

Posted on January 26, 2022 by - News

Global technology provider Arrow Electronics has added Pure as-a-Service and Pure Cloud Block Store to ArrowSphere, its global cloud delivery and management platform. Under the agreement with Pure Storage.

The solutions will be available to channel customers in a number of regions and countries across Europe, including the UK, Belgium and Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, France, Italy, Spain and Sweden.

Pure as-a-Service is a service-oriented flexible consumption model for delivering Pure’s solutions in a pay-as-you-go format. Pure as-a-Service helps deliver more than simply operating expense savings, it transforms customers’ enterprise infrastructure environments by providing services, such as monitoring, service-level objectives (SLOs), and specific service level agreements (SLAs).