Category: News

Intel losing share in servers

Posted on October 23, 2020 by - News

Intel’s data centre revenue from enterprise and government customers took a major hit in the third quarter, dropping by 47 percent year on year.

Chipzilla was swift to blame the coronavirus claiming it also hurt its IoT and memory businesses, but Wall Street was not believing these dog ate my homework excuses, as the company’s stock price dropped by more than nine percent in after hours trading Thursday.

Intel said that despite a per cent decline, its $18.3 billion in third-quarter revenue was above guidance the company gave back in July — and $40 million higher than Wall street’s expectations. The company’s earnings per share of $1.11 was in line with what analysts were looking for.

Proact snaps up Cetus Solutions for £7.7 million

Posted on October 23, 2020 by - News

Proact has bought Cetus Solutions for £7.7 million as part of its cunning plan to “enhance” its UK presence

Cetus , which is based in Manchester, is supposed to be good at digital workspace, hybrid cloud and business continuity.

In a statement CEO Jonas Hasselberg said: “We are very excited to welcome Cetus into Proact. We share much of the same cultural values and the same fundamental views of making IT simple in order to help our customers store, connect, protect and drive value through data. We have the same passion for customers and the same ambition to provide great services and products to the market, which makes the combination of Cetus and Proact an excellent fit.”

Agilitas channel chairman gets gong

Posted on October 22, 2020 by - News

Agilitas  Chairman, Tom Kelly, was presented with an honorary OBE for services to the information and communications technology sector.  The award was presented by the Lord-Lieutenant of Cheshire, David Briggs MBE, during a ceremony held at Tatton Park.

Kelly has been a key figure in the channel industry and helped shape and grow many successful technology businesses over the past 30 years, including Logicalis, which under his stewardship became one of the UK’s leading systems integrator and managed service providers, before joining Agilitas as Chairman in 2015.

Kelly said he was honoured to be recognised for his contribution to the IT sector with this OBE.

“I feel privileged to work in an industry that still motivates and energises me after all these years. It is fantastic to be a part of a company like Agilitas, and to work closely with Shaun Lynn and his team to help make the business’s ambitious plans for sustained growth a reality.”

 

Dell expands it as-a-service capabilities

Posted on October 22, 2020 by - News

Dell has expanded its as-a-service capabilities with Project APEX to simplify how customers and partners access Dell technology on-demand—across storage, servers, networking, hyperconverged infrastructure, PCs and broader solutions.

Dubbed Project APEX will unify the company’s as-a-Service and cloud strategies, technology offerings, and so called go-to-market efforts. Dell said that businesses will have a consistent as-a-service experience wherever they run workloads including on-premises, edge locations and public clouds.

Dell Technologies chief operating officer and vice chairman Jeff Clarke said: “Project APEX will give our customers choice, simplicity and a consistent experience across PCs and IT infrastructure from one trusted partner—unmatched in the industry. We’re building upon our long history of offering on-demand technology with this initiative. Our goal is to give customers the freedom to scale resources in ways that work best for them, so they can quickly respond to changes and focus less on IT and more on their business needs.”

Tech jobs on the rise in the UK

Posted on October 22, 2020 by - News

Demand for technology professionals across the United Kingdom experienced a bounce back in Q3, with more than 166,000 job postings from employers, according to an analysis by CompTIA, the nonprofit association for the global technology industry.

Job postings for core technology occupations totaled 166,603 for the quarter, CompTIA’s examination of data from Burning Glass Technologies Labour Insights shows. The third quarter total was 33 percent higher than the second quarter, when the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting staffing changes implemented by many firms led to a sharp decline in technology job postings.

Though not immune from the effects of the pandemic, demand for technology workers in the UK has held up for much of 2020. The number of third quarter job postings was just one percent lower than the total for third quarter 2019, compared to a 19 percent decrease in all job ads. IT positions accounted for 11 percent of all job postings in third quarter.

A Cloud Guru (ACG) gets G-Cloud 12 supplier status

Posted on October 21, 2020 by - News

Training outfit A Cloud Guru (ACG) has been awarded G-Cloud 12 supplier status. Now, any UK public sector organisation can license ACG’s platform of cloud learning courses and hands-on labs via the Government’s Digital Marketplace.

The G-Cloud Framework, an agreement between the UK government and suppliers of cloud-services, provides public sector bodies with a digital marketplace for the research and procurement of these services without running a full tender. Any UK-based public sector organisation can now licence ACG’s market-leading tech skills development platform with confidence that ACG has met the government’s rigorous framework standards.

SPI teams up with Smartsheet

Posted on October 21, 2020 by - News

UK-based Specialist Project Integration (SPI) has joined the Smartsheet Aligned Partner Programme as a Platinum Partner.

Mike Arntz, Chief Revenue Officer at Smartsheet said: “SPI’s expertise as a former customer is invaluable; they provide an unmatched level of understanding into the benefits and efficiencies that can be achieved with Smartsheet. Through this partnership, companies of all sizes can implement a powerful solution that provides the visibility, flexibility, and scalability to increase the number of projects they can take on and execute.”

SPI MD  Simon Wray said Smartsheet’s capabilities have saved clients hundreds of hours a week by eliminating the wasted time and effort of managing hundreds of trackers and by unlocking productivity through automation and the integration of disparate systems to create “a single source of truth”.

Channel should look at AI in medical diagnostics

Posted on October 21, 2020 by - News

The impending technological developments of AI in medical diagnostics over the next decade could be a real money spinner for the channel, according to an IDTechEx report.

The report claims that image recognition AI has the potential to revolutionise medical diagnostics. In addition to enabling early disease detection and even the possibility of prevention, it can enhance the workflow of radiologists by accelerating reading time and automatically prioritizing urgent cases.

The report with the title “AI in Medical Diagnostics 2020-2030: Image Recognition, Players, Clinical Applications, Forecasts” said that to enable efficient analysis of patient scans, image recognition AI software should be able to combine and interpret data from different imaging sources to gain a better perspective of the patient’s pathology. This could generate deeper insights into disease severity and progression, thereby providing radiologists with a higher level of understanding of the condition of patients.

Dell partner Solutionize Global is set to make £100 million

Posted on October 20, 2020 by - News

Yorkshire MSP Solutionize Global is set to make £100 million in revenue.

The Dell partner saw its turnover rocket from £6.5 million last year to £41.9 million for its year ending 31 March 2020 and now anticipates that figure will double in its current year.

The Wakefield-based firm has now launched a graduate academy in order to tackle the skills gap and have a “go-to” pipeline of talent.

The SG Academy is a 12 to 18 month accredited programme and will accommodate internal and external candidates and provide on-the-job training from its Wakefield HQ as well as home-based training.

Channel salespeople find virtual sales’challenging’

Posted on October 20, 2020 by - News

Over 60 percent of channel salespeople find virtual selling a challenge in securing wins, according to new research.

Next Gen Sales Academy surveyed VARs, resellers and MSPs across the UK to investigate how the pandemic and virtual selling has affected salespeople, with 60 percent responding that they have found it a challenge to win opportunities through virtual selling.

Some respondents described the process as “awkward”, others said it was harder to keep customers engaged or work out what they were thinking through a screen. The remaining 40 percent of respondents replied that they saw no difference in wins through virtual selling since the pandemic arose.

Sophos expands MSP connect

Posted on October 20, 2020 by - News

Security outfit Sophos  is seeing significant worldwide growth of MSP Connect, its programme for managed service providers (MSPs).

Sophos VP Scott Barlow said: “MSPs are also increasingly finding themselves under attack through remote monitoring and management (RMM) and professional service automation (PSA) tools, misconfigured firewalls and endpoints, and targeted phishing scams. “Channel partners have a tremendous opportunity to secure organisations from complex ransomware, like the recent Maze, WastedLocker and Dharma attacks, and other threats – including this year’s surge in attack campaigns preying on mounting Coronavirus fears.”

Cloud security is more important than ever

Posted on October 19, 2020 by - News

Persuading organisations to move to the cloud is like pushing against an open door, but there is a need for the Channel to step in and sort out security, warns Clearvision CEO, Gerry Tombs.

Tombs said that the business case for cloud was clear –  cloud technology makes scaling faster, smarter, and more affordable than on-premise servers.

“Operating in the cloud undoubtedly delivers significant advantages and likewise security improvements for most organisations, but with the increasing number of data breaches and cyber attacks, organisations do need to be more cognisant of what cloud security they have put in place”, Tombs said.

Sharp UK integrates Complete IT

Posted on October 19, 2020 by - News

Sharp UK has announced the release of its combined workplace technology-IT service with Complete IT (CIT) after a year-long integration process.

It claims the combined offering will now deliver a more sophisticated suite of integrated workplace products with enhanced IT support services and CIT expertise.

Customers will have access to Managed Print Services, visual solutions, IT support, Dynabook business laptops, telephony, and furniture solutions.

For those who came in late, Sharp’s acquired IT support services firm Complete I.T.  in August 2019, with the cunning plan to “help customers create their own workplace of the future” and support channel partners’ growth.

Data migration is important for no deal Brexit

Posted on October 19, 2020 by - News

Veritas privacy boss Mark Keddie has warned that with Boris Johnson today saying that the UK must be prepared for a no trade deal with the EU, the question of data migration becomes urgent again for businesses everywhere.

Both the EU and the UK government have suggested, however, that a deal could still be done. But with the outcome of the UK-EU Brexit trade negotiations is still uncertain, and two-and-a-half years after the GDPR came into force, businesses must now return to the challenge of understanding their data flow.

Keddie said that action was going to be especially important for organisations that might have taken their feet off the pedal over the last 30 months, thinking that their work was done.

“Some watchdogs, such as the ICO in the UK have issued only limited fines and even pledged leniency during the COIVD pandemic, which could have lulled organisations into a false sense of security.  It’s important for those businesses to recognise that action will soon lie in the hands of international watchdogs, many of which have been more willing to bare their teeth”, he said.

NHS England wants help on cloud plans

Posted on October 16, 2020 by - News

Every silver has a cloudy liningNHS England (NHSE) has called for tenders to help move and integrate its enterprise resource planning  systems to the cloud.

The tenders are for advice regarding the project’s feasibility and he organisation said the ‘Discovery Project’ will build on the work being performed within the Electronic Staff Record [ESR] and Integrated Single Finance Environment [ISFE] programmes.

The NHSE warned that the tenders are “not linked to a contracting opportunity”  but to identify the pros and cons of choosing an integrated ERP versus separate finance and ESR systems.