Category: News

HelpSystems snaps up Digital Defense

Posted on February 4, 2021 by - News

HelpSystems has bought threat assessment outfit Digital Defense.

The company said that Digital Defense’s cloud-native vulnerability scanning engine gives organisations in healthcare, legal, financial services, and other industries the ability to proactively detect infrastructure security gaps and take effective remediation steps to safeguard against internal and external cyberthreats. A

s part of HelpSystems’ cybersecurity portfolio, Digital Defense joins Core Security and Cobalt Strike to establish a security assessment toolkit.

Imperva jacks up channel support

Posted on February 3, 2021 by - News

Imperva has adopted a channel-first approach to get its security products in front of more mid-market customers.

The outfit is introducing a self-service product trial option and then sharing the leads with partners. Imperva is making subscription payment plans an option for its channel to put in front of customers.

The new subscription plans are supposed to streamline a partner’s sales process, eliminate the need for complicated sizing exercises and allow resellers to increase margins by reducing the overall cost of the sale.

Robot vendor UiPath raises more cash

Posted on February 3, 2021 by - News

Robotic vendor UiPath has raised $750 million in its Series F funding round bringing its market valuation to $35 billion.

The robotic process automation (RPA) specialist has raised a total of $2 billion in investment since 2017, with the latest round marking the largest amount it has raised so far. Its last funding round in July 2020 raised £225 million.

UiPath was founded in 2005 by Daniel Dines and Marius Tirca. Its Series A funding in 2017 raised $30 million.

Infovista appoints new channel head

Posted on February 3, 2021 by - News

Networking outfit Infovista has appointed Kristian Thyregod as President Global Enterprise, reporting directly to José Duarte, CEO, as a member of the Executive Leadership team.

Thyregod will help drive the company’s Enterprise business through accelerated expansion and customer acquisition towards sustainable growth. As part of his role, Kristian will provide executive leadership across product management, sales, go-to-market and channel strategies. Infovista Ipanema SD-WAN solutions are currently deployed at more than 100,000 sites, mainly in Europe, serving more than 400 customers.

 Tech Data promotes Watts to senior VP

Posted on February 2, 2021 by - News

 Tech Data announced that David Watts has been promoted to the role of senior vice president, UK and Ireland.

As part of a planned leadership change, Watts extends his current role as operational leader of Tech Data’s UK and Ireland business to assume the strategic development responsibilities previously held by Andy Gass. Gass continues in Tech Data’s European leadership team with an expanded role.

Watts joined Computer 2000 – which later became Tech Data UK&I – in 1998 and initially held positions in sales and management before becoming general manager of the PC division in 2003. Subsequently, he joined Samsung Electronics as head of ita UK display division before returning to Tech Data in 2007 as commercial director. He was appointed managing director, UK and Ireland, in an acting capacity in 2016 before taking the role permanently in February 2018.

Aryaka Networks scores multiple EMEA contracts

Posted on February 2, 2021 by - News

Cloudy Aryaka Networks says it is seeing major customer wins in the Europe Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region.

The new multi-year contracts span multiple verticals, across both combined managed WAN and security use cases. Importantly, Aryaka both won when competing with and partnering with global and European telcos.

Over the lockdown period, Aryaka signed several deals worth over $1million across its EMEA region, which spans from the Arctic Circle to the equator. The largest of these, with a deal value of over $10 Million, was with a financial services company with over 10,000 employees operating over 80 sites globally.

Cryptomathic and Connective team up on e-Signature and e-Sealing services

Posted on February 1, 2021 by - News

Cryptomathic and Connective have teamed up to offer governments, banks, notaries and e-ID schemes around the world can now access multi-jurisdictional advanced and qualified remote e-signature and e-sealing services from a single source.

Under the terms of the new partnership, Cryptomathic’s e-signature solution, Signer, will provide the remote qualified e-signing and e-sealing technology behind Connective’s multi-jurisdictional e-signature solution.

This will allow signatories across borders to remotely co-sign documents and transactions using up to the highest level of e-signature security and legal assurance according to their respective regulations, including eIDAS (Europe), ZertES (Switzerland) and also additional e-signature Laws from Singapore, US and others.

MSPs need to invest to recover

Posted on February 1, 2021 by - News

Prospects for managed service providers (MSPs) going into 2021 appear to be rising across a wide range of potential customers, according to an Infrascale survey.

A survey of 1,200 SMB and midmarket business leaders conducted by cloud data recovery specialist Infrascale suggests that the need for greater security is pushing organizations toward MSPs regardless of some recent high-profile breaches involving managed services.

Business executives in the education (44 percent), healthcare (51 percent), and manufacturing (53 percent) sectors cited the need for increased security as their top reason for selecting an MSP. Security and reduced costs (46 percent) tied as the top reason among e-commerce retailers, while finance industry executives cited reduced costs (57 per cent) as their top reason.

Nutanix scores Robert Gordon University contract

Posted on January 29, 2021 by - News

Cloudy Nutanix has scored a contract with Aberdeen based Robert Gordon University.

The University has deployed Nutanix Xi Frame to complement and extend its existing on-campus End User Computing (EUC) solution to support demanding researchers in Schools of Architecture and Engineering plus students on the Scottish Graduate Apprenticeship (GA) scheme studying remotely whilst working.

Although happy with the University’s on-premise EUC technology, End User Computing Team Leader Timon Watson and his team had reservations when it came to extending access to remote teaching and learning resources beyond the shared desktops provided in on-campus IT Labs and libraries.

Comms365 launches IoT focused portfolio

Posted on January 29, 2021 by - News

Comms365 has launched its IoT-dedicated portfolio under a new brand, ‘IoT- CaaS’ (IoT Connectivity as a Service).

The outfit said that IoT-CaaS has been formed to address growing market demand for Enterprise-grade IoT connectivity for millions of devices, and to deal with connectivity market fragmentation caused by partial network rollouts, by combining multiple global IoT connectivity standards for UK and European IoT project deployments under a single service provision.

The company said that it is the first in the UK to build on existing private network infrastructure and dedicated connectivity to IoT Operators and MNOs, Comms365’s IoT-CaaS combines NB-IoT, LTE-M, LoRaWAN, SigFox, 4G, 5G  This comprehensive suite of IoT connectivity offerings is designed to be adapted by systems integrators, software, hardware and platform providers as there are no upfront commitments, targets or lock-in mechanisms, which is in direct contrast with traditional offerings.

Atos and OVHcloud want to create a Euro cloud

Posted on January 28, 2021 by - News

Atos and OVHcloud have teamed up to build a “100 per cent European market-leading multi-cloud solution”.

The French systems integrator giant and Europe’s sole hyper-scale say they have developed cloud transformation capabilities and services for enterprises and the public sector that comply with EU privacy regulations like GDPR.

Using Atos OneCloud and OVHcloud’s cloud solutions partners and customers will have access to a joint network of more than 130 datacentres to host dedicated private environments.

IT spending will not get back to normal until 2022

Posted on January 28, 2021 by - News

IT spending won’t return to normal until 2022, claims according to analyst outfit Garter group.

The analyst firm believes that, despite the availability of Covid vaccines, a return to pre-pandemic spending levels will be thwarted this year by continued government measures to contain the virus. Other non-Covid factors such as Brexit and US-China trade tension will also prevent a spending recovery in some regions, Gartner said.

“Overall, returning global recovery back to 2019 spending rates will not occur until 2022, although many countries may recover earlier. People-gathering industries, such as restaurants, travel, and entertainment, will hover at the bottom long-term”, the analysts tutted.

The prediction comes as Gartner forecasts worldwide IT spending to grow by just 6.2 percent this year to $3.9 trillion.

It comes after spending fell by 3.2 percent in 2020 as COVID-19 forced CIOs to prioritise their spending on “mission-critical” technology and services.

Microsoft posts strong results

Posted on January 28, 2021 by - News

Microsoft campusMicrosoft posted strong second quarter figures, showing a sizable increase to both revenues and profits as a shift to remote working continues.

Revenues surged by 17 percent year on year to $43.1 billion while operating income grew by 29 percent to $17.9 billion.

In a webcast following the results, CEO Satya Nadella told investors that we are amid “the dawn of a second wave of digital transformation sweeping every company and every industry”.

The figures showed that Azure, Dynamics 365 and Office 365 were boosted by work from home economy and this lifted Microsoft’s second quarter and highlighted the strength of its cloud offerings.

Tech Data launches awards for women

Posted on January 27, 2021 by - News

Tech Data is launching an awards scheme to shine the spotlight on the invaluable contribution that women make to the advancement and success of its business in the UK and Ireland.

The company said that the idea for the Women in Tech Data Awards emerged after one of the company’s most recent Elevate events, during which colleagues from right across Tech Data meet to discuss different aspects and issues around the development and progression of female workers within the company.

David Watts, Managing Director at Tech Data, UK and Ireland, said: “The whole idea of Elevate is to encourage the progression of women within Tech Data. We thought it would be wonderful to recognise the achievements of our exceptional female colleagues. We want the Women in Tech Data Awards to be a real celebration of the tremendous amount of female talent that we have in the company, all of whom will inspire the next generation of young women onto even greater heights.”

EU businesses will snub large IT expenditure

Posted on January 27, 2021 by - News

More than half of EU businesses will move away from using large capital expenditure to acquire IT assets in 2021 in favour of more flexible procurement models, with mobility remaining an urgent IT priority in the wake of COVID-19, according to a report  by 3stepIT.

The survey of over 1,000 IT decision-makers reveals that EU businesses are prioritising the ability to replace assets easily when making purchase choices, in order to meet changing circumstances.

The research also shows that businesses who already adopt a more flexible approach to IT acquisition were better able to cope with the disruption caused by COVID-19. 89 percent of companies that finance assets were able to make swift IT investments early last year, enabling employees to quickly make the shift to working from home. This compared to 75 percent of businesses that own their IT assets outright.

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