Category: News

Accenture denies ransomware attack hurt

Posted on August 13, 2021 by - News

Accenture was the target of a LockBit ransomware attack, but the company insists that it had “no impact” on its own operations or on its clients.

LockBit published more than 2,000 files on the DarkWeb following the attack, including PowerPoints and case studies.

But in a statement, the global IT consultancy firm downplayed down the whole thing.

“Through our security controls and protocols, we identified irregular activity in one of our environments. We immediately contained the matter and isolated the affected servers. We fully restored our affected systems from back up. 

“There was no impact on Accenture’s operations, or on our clients’ systems.”

Green IT Restore snaps up PRM Green Technologies

Posted on August 12, 2021 by - News

Data management and recycling specialist Restore has made good on expansion plans and written a cheque for IT recycling and asset disposal (ITAD) specialist PRM Green Technologies.

Last month the firm revealed it was engaged in more than 25 ongoing acquisition discussions, with several deals expected to be completed in the second half of 2021.

The first of those is IT recycling and asset disposal (ITAD) specialist PRM Green Technologies, with 100 percent of the share capital being picked up by Restore for an undisclosed sum.

PRM is based in Cannock with sites in Carlisle, Taunton and Alton. It has  59 staff, who will remain with the business. The firm has its own e-commerce platform and has built a reputation in the education market, having helped more than 8,000 schools, colleges and universities across the UK dispose of equipment.

It also has an average yearly revenue of £3 million and an average net income of £900,000 achieved over the past three years.

HPE insists employees are double vaccinated

Posted on August 12, 2021 by - News

HPE has issued an order that all its employees are double vaccinated before they are allowed to return to the offices.

In a tweet yesterday, CEO Antonio Neri said he “didn’t take the decision lightly”.

“HPE will be requiring all team members, contractors, and visitors to be fully vaccinated as a condition of entering our sites and attending business events where legally permitted”, he said.

“Throughout this pandemic, we have continually assessed the ever-changing dynamic, we have addressed what we can control, and we have adapted. It is now clear that COVID-19 is going to be with us for a while, and that getting back to normal will take more than masks and distancing.”

The US is seeing an increase in cases due to the spread of the Delta variant with 726,160 confirmed new cases within the last seven days.

HPE announced last year that it intends to move its head office to Houston, Texas and build a new 440,000 square foot campus to accommodate its existing 2,600-strong workforce in the area. However, this is ground zero for the coronavirus surge.

Other tech giants including Microsoft and Google adopted the same policy in requiring proof of vaccination before entering their offices.

 

The Great Resignation is upon us

Posted on August 12, 2021 by - News

Software King of the World Microsoft is warning that we are in the times it calls the “Great Resignation” which is set to hammer the channel.

Vole has asked more than 30,000 people and found that more than 40 percent of people are considering leaving their employer this year. If you compare this to last year four million people, or 2.8 percent of the workforce, resigned.

For some workers, the pandemic precipitated a shift in priorities, encouraging them to pursue a ‘dream job’, or transition to being a stay-at-home parent. But for many, many others, the decision to leave came because of the way their employer treated them during the pandemic.  Workers stayed at companies that offered support and left those that didn’t.

A recent Stanford study showed many of these companies with bad environments doubled down on decisions that didn’t support workers, such as layoffs, while, conversely, companies that had good culture tended to treat employees well. This drove out already disgruntled workers who survived the layoffs but could plainly see they were working in unsupportive environments.

Welsh MSP Capital Network Solutions forced to go with the Flow

Posted on August 11, 2021 by - News

Welsh MSP Capital Network Solutions (CNS) has been bought out by Flow Communications.

This is Flow’s first acquisition under new leadership in the shape of Capital Network Solutions (CNS), a Premier-level Cisco partner and a Microsoft, Barracuda Networks, Gemalto and Dell partner based in the Vale of Glamorgan in Wales.

The deal gives Flow Communications a secure operations centre (SOC) as well as skills across cloud, cybersecurity and infrastructure.

Crossword Cybersecurity swallows Stega

Posted on August 11, 2021 by - News

Cybersecurity MSP Stega has been swallowed by Crossword Cybersecurity in a £1.8 million deal.

Crossword says the acquisition of the threat intelligence and monitoring business will provide it with “30 new clients”, mainly in the financial sector, and will take its total number of fee-paying consulting clients to over 100.

Tom Ilube, CEO of Crossword Cybersecurity said: “Following our successful fundraiser last week, I am pleased to welcome Phil Ashley and his team at Stega to Crossword. Stega’s threat intelligence and monitoring services are a great addition to Crossword’s range of services which help to reduce cyber risks for our clients. Stega, Crossword’s second acquisition of 2021, will be an important part of our plans for continuing revenue growth.”

Pen pushers come up with ideas for channel sales pitches

Posted on August 11, 2021 by - News

If the channel wants to look for good ideas that civil servants think should be pitched at their masters they should have a look at the Civil Service Data Challenge.

The Challenge is a list that civil servants think would improve the current use of data within government and boost efficiency, improve public services and strengthen policymaking.

Nearly 200 submissions were received, which were then whittled down to the current longlist of eight.

Lenovo launches three tears and devises ass-service model

Posted on August 10, 2021 by - News

Lenovo is offering all its devices ranging from laptops to tablets on a monthly as-a-service model.

This means that partners now have access to the DaaS offering, claims Jane Ashworth, director of SMB and channel for the UK and Ireland.

Lenovo’s DaaS offering is split into three tiers: Simplify, Accelerate and Transform, accessible through the Lenovo Partner Hub or through Lenovo.com.

Its Simplify tier is intended as a “starting point” and is targeted at small businesses. After that, partners can use Lenovo’s online tool to add devices and services on behalf of the customer and calculate the total monthly cost of the service.

Cloudsoft helps UK government trial a COVID-19 test

Posted on August 10, 2021 by - News

Cloudsoft, a Scottish managed services provider, supports a  UK government trial a Covid-19 test that can detect COVID-19 using only voice data.

Dubbed  ‘cough-in-a-box,’ the application uses artificial intelligence (AI) to diagnose Covid-19 through audio recordings of a user coughing directly into their smartphone’s microphone.

Analysing more than 70,000 recordings submitted by volunteers, which included around 2,500 from people confirmed to have Covid-19, researchers from MIT trained the AI model to correctly identify 98.5 percent of positive cases, including 100 percent of asymptomatic patients.

Tech Data wants more Cradlepoint partners

Posted on August 10, 2021 by - News

Tech Data has launched the next phase of its recruitment drive for Cradlepoint partners.

The outfit formed a partnership with Cradlepoint in November last year and has recruited and enabled more than 25 resellers onto the vendor’s multi-tier channel programme and supported them in completing a significant number of sales. It is now making further resource investments to drive business development and partner recruitment.

Tech Data, UK and Ireland Endpoint Solutions James Reed, managing director, said his outfit had made great strides with Cradlepoint. However, it saw even more potential ahead.

“We believe there is a great opportunity with Cradlepoint – and we are ready to work with more partners and get them trained and enabled to take solutions to market.”

Channel players face stiff staff shortages

Posted on August 9, 2021 by - News

The KPMG and REC-generated UK report on jobs survey in the channel suggests that salaries have been rising because of a significant shortage of candidates.

In the post-COVID crisis, the demand for talent has been outstripping the number of people available in the market and forcing those who want to move to jack up their prices.

Kate Shoesmith, deputy chief executive of the REC, said it was a good time for people to be looking for a new job, with rewards on offer for those interested in the tech industry.

IDC says cloud IaaS and PaaS are critical to avoid future Pain in the Ass (PitA)

Posted on August 9, 2021 by - News

Analyst outfit IDC is rattling its crystal balls and is predicting cloud IaaS and PaaS are ‘critical’ components for the future of digital infrastructure

The number cruncher said that the combined global Public Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) markets will reach revenues of $400 billion in 2025.

In addition, the analyst claims the combined markets will have a CAGR of 28.8 percent during the 2021-2025 forecast period.

Cloud Infrastructure Services research manager, Andrew Smith said enterprise spending on public cloud infrastructure continues to grow faster than traditional IT infrastructure segments.

“We expect all workload segments to grow in the double digits — some slightly faster than others — as enterprises emerge from 2020 and continue to prioritise workload migration and modernisation using public cloud infrastructure.”

Sisense appoints Katz as senior VP

Posted on August 9, 2021 by - Moving People, News

AI outfit Sisense has appointed Gilad Katz as Senior Vice President, Engineering.

Katz will lead the company’s global engineering and development department and use his background in building SaaS architecture as Sisense tries to spin itself as one of the only cloud-agnostic and cloud-native analytics vendors on the market.

Sisense CEO Amir Orad said that Katz was an innovative engineering leader with an impressive track record of scaling and leading high performing teams and developing cloud-centric solutions that support large scale production systems and serve customers’ most complex technical needs

Interest in MSP model growing

Posted on August 6, 2021 by - News

Datto’s latest Global State of the MSP report says that interest across the channel in the managed service model has continued to rise with the coronavirus pandemic only accelerating the trend.

Datto thinks that MSPs are becoming the dominant channel delivery model.

The firm found there was plenty of poitivity among UK managed service providers (MSPs), with 98  per cent thinking “it is good to be MSP right now” and 81 percent reporting that they came through the pandemic with revenues either unchanged or improved.

More than 97 percent of UK MSPs that expected revenues to increase over the next three years.

When it came to hunting out the potential problems, Datto found that revenue growth, competition and profitability were all issues that caused concern for MSPs.

Government spends half its IT budget on outdated systems

Posted on August 6, 2021 by - News

A Cabinet Office report called Organising for Digital Delivery has found that the government spends half of its £4.7 billion IT budget patching out of date systems.

The report said that the UK government spends £2.3 billion a year on patching legacy IT systems, making up half of the £4.7bn it spends on IT each year.

The UK government could spend £13- £22 billion over the next five years on maintaining its outdated IT systems.

The so-called “technical debt” racked up by the government stems from its use of “obsolete technical platforms” using programming languages that are no longer widely supported.

Some IT systems fail to meet “even the minimum of cybersecurity standards”.