Category: News

Microsoft abandons High Street

Posted on June 29, 2020 by - News

Microsoft is to shut its 80-plus retail stores, taking a hit $450 million in the process and abandoning the move to copy Apple in the consumer market.

The vendor said that only four stores globally – in London, New York City, Sydney and Redmond – will remain open as “experience centres”.

Microsoft corporate VP David Porter said: “Our sales have grown online as our product portfolio has evolved to largely digital offerings, and our talented team has proven success serving customers beyond any physical location. We are grateful to our Microsoft Store customers and we look forward to continuing to serve them online and with our retail sales team at Microsoft corporate locations.”

Datto sppoints new chief product officer  

Posted on June 26, 2020 by - News

Cloud based Datto has appointed Radhesh Menon has joined its executive management team as Chief Product Officer (CPO).

Working with Datto’s senior executive team and board of directors, Menon will oversee global product strategy to develop offerings that support MSPs and the small and medium businesses (SMBs).

Menon served as CMO at Robin.io. Before that, Menon served as general manager at Red Hat where he “bootstrapped” the OpenStack business and established it as the market leader in open cloud infrastructure. Prior to joining Red Hat, he was with Microsoft where he held various roles across Azure, Windows Server, Exchange Server, and Windows desktop products and technologies.

Mobile POS payments seeing world wide adoption

Posted on June 26, 2020 by - News

Data gathered by Buyshares.co.uk indicates that approximately 1.75 billion mobile users or 23.05 per cent of the global population will be using Point of Sale systems payments by 2024. According to the data, the adoption of POS will keep rising in popularity.

The 2024 users represent growth of 49.57 percent from the 2020 figure of 1.17 billion. By 2021, mobile POS payment users will be 1.36 billion and later grow by 11.76 percent to 1.52 billion in 2022. By 2023, the users will spike to 1.64 billion.

Container management to grow

Posted on June 26, 2020 by - News

Analysts at Gartner  have been shuffling their Tarot cards and reached the conclusion that  worldwide container management revenue will grow strongly.

At the moment things are quite small at just $465.8 million in 2020, but Big G thinks that the industry will reach $944 million by  2024.

LogicMonitor director of engineering  Göran Sandahl said that the  predicted growth is understandable, as containers enable greater velocity and efficiency when developing, deploying and scaling applications.

Half of organisations struggle with data management

Posted on June 25, 2020 by - News

Rubrik, the Cloud Data Management Company, today announced the results from an IDC White Paper study it commissioned to evaluate the magnitude of the data sprawl problem and how IT organisations are prepared to deal with it.

The white paper with the catchy title The Data-Forward Enterprise: How to Maximise Data Leverage for Better Business Outcomes said that more than 80 percent of IT leaders surveyed by IDC identify data sprawl as one of the most critical problems their organisations must address today. Given that the volume of data companies need to manage is expected to more than double every two years, IDC analysts predict that the challenge of managing data sprawl will only grow increasingly complicated.

GDPR worked but has a few kinks

Posted on June 25, 2020 by - News

The European Union (EU) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has been assessed as an overall success in terms of meeting expectations and objectives, but a two year progress report suggests that there are still a few kinks which need to be ironed out.

The European Commission (EC) said it would be premature to draw definite conclusions as to the application of the GDPR, and to provide for proposals for any revisions, but said it had identified a number of areas where improvements could eventually be made.

It said that the GDPR had made EU citizens feel more empowered and aware of their enforceable rights and protections – according to the EU Fundamental Rights Agency, 69 percent of those aged over 16 have heard of the GDPR, and 71 percent have heard about their national data protection agency. In general, it said, people feel they can play an active role in controlling their data.

Vonage scores Mindful Chef contract

Posted on June 25, 2020 by - News

Vonage has announced that healthy recipe box company, Mindful Chef, has chosen the Vonage Contact Center to better serve its customer-base following a 452 percent increase in customers.

With more than 123,000 customers, Mindful Chef delivers pre-portioned ingredients and fresh meat, fish and produce sustainably sourced from small British farms. Mindful Chef lets customers cook nutritious meals in under 30 minutes with a weekly recipe booklet, it is claimed.  The increase in customers since the end of March 2020 in the recipe box market saw unprecedented demand amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Following a market evaluation, the UK-based company selected the Vonage Contact Center to help manage its increase in enquiries and enhance engagement with customers, driving a better overall experience.

Cloud migrations to increase

Posted on June 24, 2020 by - News

A LogicMonitor study of 500 global IT decision makers examines the future of cloud workloads and the long-term impacts of COVID-19 on IT organisations in North America, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. Though the full picture is still evolving, the survey suggests that COVID-19 has become a powerful catalyst for rapid cloud migration.

LogicMonitor’s Cloud 2025 study  found that 87 percent of global IT decision makers agree that the COVID-19 pandemic will cause organisations to accelerate their migration to the cloud. Specifically, nearly three quarters (74 percent) of respondents believe that, within the next five years, 95 percent of all workloads will be in the cloud. Many IT decisions makers around the world are even more optimistic than that, with 37 percent of respondents in the APAC region saying 95 percent of workloads will reach the cloud by 2022, compared with 35 percent of US/Canada respondents and 30 per cent of UK respondents.

Threatscape gets Microsoft gold status

Posted on June 24, 2020 by - News

Cyber-security service provider Threatscape announced that it has been awarded the coveted Gold Security Partner designation by Microsoft.

Gold status  recognises  Volish partners who have demonstrated the skills and expertise to design, deploy and manage security solutions to protect enterprise-scale clients against sophisticated cyber threats.

The award acknowledges Threatscape’s continued investment in its Microsoft Security Practice, which has completed projects around the world using its team of consultants who have all been accredited to the highest level by Microsoft including M365 (MS 500) and Azure (AZ 500) security certifications.

Only half of business leaders are ready to face security threats

Posted on June 24, 2020 by - News

The UK’s vulnerability to cyber security attacks has again come under the spotlight, with only half of business leaders ready and prepared to counter digital threats they’re currently facing – or are likely to confront in the future, according to a new survey

A worrying key finding of the survey of over 750 business leaders conducted by online pioneer Esme Learning Solutions, who is collaborating with Saïd Business School in the development of the Oxford Cyber Futures programme, was that although businesses have woken up to the threat of poor cyber security practices, they are not yet walking the walk.

Lockdown measures that forced the majority of businesses worldwide to work remotely in response to COVID-19 have raised a number of cyber security concerns and issues. The number of attacks against organisations grew to reach a four-month high at the end April resulting in the NCSC and CISA issuing an advisory about cyber criminals exploiting COVID-19 on April 8th 2020.

Agilitas partners with ITEC

Posted on June 23, 2020 by - News

Global channel services provider, Agilitas IT Solutions, has partnered with ITEC so that it can offer its partners Agilitas’ expertise across IT inventory management, and ITEC’s wide range of IT services to its partners, alongside inventory management.

ITEC said that there was a growing demand in the number of partners looking for additional service offerings, mainly global inventory and logistics services. By collaborating with a specialist partner such as Agilitas, it meant that ITEC customers can take full advantage of this end-to-end service offering by using Agilitas’ expertise across complex IT inventory management.

ITEC and Agilitas decided to build a strategic alliance to expand both companies’ service offerings. This means that ITEC can offer its partners Agilitas’ Inventory-as-a-Service solution, and make use of its knowledge in complex international IT inventory management.

IT workplace diversity is still a challenge

Posted on June 23, 2020 by - News

A Kantar study for Global Workplace Providers Instant Offices shows more than a quarter of women (27 percent) across the world still report being made to feel like they do not belong in their workplace.

Employees who are part of an ethnic minority often face daily struggles, with 13 percent feeling excluded at work and 11 percent  saying they are treated differently in the workplace due to their ethnicity.

In the UK, tech employees are five times more stressed than the average UK worker, with 14 percent per cent of people saying their ethnicity has negatively impacted their career progression. In addition, 31 percent of Asian and South East Asian and 40 percent of Afro-Caribbean employees in tech have experienced discrimination because of their ethnicity. Within the UK tech industry, 78 percent of people are under 45 years old, 69 per cent are white and 88 percent are heterosexual.

Cisco says its channel strategy has accelerated “like hell’

Posted on June 23, 2020 by - News

Cisco claims that its channel strategy has “accelerated like hell” during the COVID-19 crisis.

Cisco’s Oliver Tuszik said that Cisco has not changed its messaging to the channel to transform their business even during a time of huge economic uncertainty for channel partners and their customers.

He added that Cisco’s has seen a huge acceleration among its partner community towards software and services selling over the last six months as a direct result of the COVID-19 crisis.

Cancom returns to form, but a little worried about the shut down

Posted on June 22, 2020 by - News

Cancom is reporting quarterly revenue growth above 20 percent, preliminary figures show.

The reseller’s first quarter numbers show revenues were up 27.3 percent year on year to €453 million, which means it is back in business.

It has often exceeded 20 percent growth in its quarterly financials, however, that rate slowed in its final quarter of 2019, when sales grew by 18.9 percent.

Rotherham NHS uses Microsoft Teams for speech therapy

Posted on June 22, 2020 by - News

Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust (FT) is using Microsoft Teams to deliver speech therapy sessions to people in their own homes, reducing the need to leave the house during the coronavirus pandemic.

Rebekah Davies, a Speech and Language Therapist and Health Informatics Digital Clinician at Rotherham NHS FT, said it was using Teams in a pilot project to deliver speech therapy sessions remotely. The pilot involved 17 patients and was so successful that the sessions continued.

“When COVID-19 emerged, we had already been using Teams, so we were in a really strong position to set this up and continue helping people,” Davies said.

Her patients say they feel much more comfortable taking part in speech therapy sessions from home, without the need to travel to and enter a clinical environment.