Tech Data has entered into a pan-European agreement with storage support specialist StorTrec to provide channel partners with access to a wide range of value-added services that can be offered alongside storage products.
StorTrec provides on-site service and support options for white-box servers and storage products from leading vendors, such as Intel, Synology and Supermicro. The new offering is part of a range of services that Tech Data offers to resellers to enable them to add more value to end-user customers, drive sales growth and profitability, and enhance customer satisfaction.
Beancounters at analyst outfit Context has added up some numbers and asking around and reached the conclusion that the European channel has been feeling a lot better about itself since late May.
When asked how the climate was last week, compared to the prior seven days, 59 percent indicated that things remained the same and 28 percent saw things improving. Only 13 percent saw the climate worsening.
An analysis of pipeline strength indicated that one-off deals when compared to the start of the year were down for many, but when compared to conditions on 1 April they were the same or improving for many resellers.
CityFibre is creating 10,000 new jobs to deliver full fibre broadband across Britain by 2025.
Broadband infrastructure provider CityFibre will create 10,000 new jobs as part of the push to deliver full-fibre broadband across Britain by 2025.
In a boost for regional economies, the company says it will invest £4bn over the next three years to recruit people from towns or cities where new fibre optic cables will be laid.
The Goldman Sachs-backed firm is competition against larger rivals such as BT’s Openreach and Liberty Global’s Virgin Media to build new networks in 100 towns and cities across the UK.
Teleste has been selected as a vendor of on-board video surveillance and public announcement systems to Stadler’s FLIRT trains for Wales & Borders in the UK.
The end-customer in the project is Transport for Wales Rail Services. Teleste’s deliveries to Stadler will take place in 2020–2023. The on-board video security and surveillance system will include internal, external and pantograph front facing cameras, video recoders and user interfaces.
Additionally, IP amplifiers, passenger intercommunication systems, and driver microphones will be delivered to the train sets as part of the public announcement system.
Jörn Grasse, Vice President of Rail Information Solutions at Teleste, said:“We are delighted to continue our cooperation with Stadler as a supplier on modern, state-of-the-art on-board systems to the FLIRT Electric Multiple Unit platform. Our solutions have been designed and tested for consistent high quality over the course of many years, and we are confident that they will provide Stadler with the right tools for building these innovative high-speed regional trains for safe and enjoyable travel.”
Tech Data wants more than 50 partners to take part in its fully funded Amazon Web Services (AWS) training and enablement programme.
The initiative will help partners rise up through the tiers of AWS’ partner programme,
Tom Ellis, senior manager for AWS at Tech Data UK, said the programmer was an value-add that it’s delivering for partners who want to take advantage of the growth his company is seeing with AWS cloud services.
The UK 5G market is at tipping point according to the latest IDTechEx report.
The report, with the catchy title “5G Technology, Market and Forecasts 2020-2030,” sees 5G is considered as one of the largest market opportunities in the coming years, with large scale roll-out of infrastructures and rapid adoption of 5G devices and services.
The increasing number of sophisticated cyber threats will lead to a rise in demand for Managed Detection and Response (MDR) solutions from small and medium businesses.
According to Frost & Sullivan’s recent analysis, Global Managed Detection and Response Market, Forecast to 2024, the market size is poised to grow at a CAGR of 16.4 percent between 2019 and 2024, with revenues expected to reach $1.9 billion.
Apparently the reason is evolving value chains, market innovations, and cutting-edge technology developments are pushing 3D printing into the mainstream market. This type of production has surged in recent years and a growing number of businesses use 3D printing solutions, allowing them speed and flexibility while reducing costs.
3D printing enables the production of complex shapes using less material than traditional manufacturing methods, which is why it is widely used for small production runs, prototyping, small business, and educational use.
In 2020, the global 3D printing industry is expected to be worth $16 billion, revealed Wohlers Associates Annual Report on the State of 3D Printing. In the next two years, the market revenue is forecast to touch $25.5 billion. Statistics indicate the strong upward trend is set to continue in the following years, with the market revenue growing by a compound annual growth rate of 26.4 percent between 2020 and 2024.
The State of 3D Printing Report by Sculpteo revealed that in 2020, the most popular use case of 3D printing was prototyping among 68 percent of those asked, a 34 per cent rise compared to 2017 figures. Another 59 per cent of companies and businesses used the technology for proof of concept purposes, 36 per cent more than three years ago.
Statistics show that 49 percent of companies used 3D printing in production, a 27 percent rise on 2017. Research and education and creation of mechanical and spare parts follow with 42 percent and 40 percent of respondents, respectively.
Xpedition and K3|pebblestone [What sort of name is that? Ed.] have announced their partnership. Xpedition will become a value added reseller for K3|pebblestone solutions in the Fashion and Apparel sector, and also provide support for users of the K3|pebblestone system.
K3|pebblestone supports Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Cloud with product extensions built for the industry covering the entire lifecycle from design to sale. K3 will provide solutions and subject matter expertise in the fashion market to complement Xpedition’s expertise in this area.
Frank Deans, Enterprise Business Development Manager at K3|pebblestone said: “K3 are thrilled to announce their partnership with Xpedition. In this strategic cooperation Xpedition will provide ongoing support to existing K3|pebblestone customers and strengthen our go-to-market proposition in the UK. We look forward to working with Xpedition to help businesses in Fashion and Apparel gain competitive edge and delight their customers.”
Avaya Holdings is planning to accelerate its global cloud strategy in Ireland following the appointment of Aidan Furlong as Country General Manager of Ireland.
The company said that Furlong will help to champion the evolution of new and existing customers and partners to cloud-centric communications and build momentum in the adoption of Avaya solutions as businesses across the island of Ireland increase their digital transformation.
Previously Client Director at Avaya Ireland for over two years and Channel Manager for over six years prior to that, Furlong has extensive experience in working with the Avaya Partner community to drive growth and mutual success in meeting customer needs.
AWS and Slack have united in a project to take on Microsoft Teams.
The multi-year deal will see Slack migrate all of its audio and video call capabilities to Amazon’s Chime platform, which competes with the likes of WebEx and Zoom. Slack already used AWS as its “preferred cloud partner”.
Under the deal Slack will pay AWS at least $425 million for hosting between now and May 2025
AWS will adopt Slack internally as part of the deal, and encourage developers to manage their AWS environments on Slack’s messaging platform.
Value-add distributor Exertis Hammer announced an EMEA-wide distribution agreement with big data storage supplier DDN.
The vendor designs, develops, deploys, and optimises systems, software and storage solutions that enable enterprises, service providers, universities, and government agencies to generate more value and accelerate time to insight from their data, on premise and in the cloud.
Exertis Hammer General Manager Adam Blackwell said: “New and existing customers will hugely benefit from DDN’s focus on artificial intelligence, big data and high performance computing (HPC) that this partnership will bring to our offering.”
Increasing in private investment might be putting the channel at risk, according to analyst outfit Canalys.
The IT industry has seen a surge in private equity (PE) investment of late. Traditionally a source of funding for start-ups, larger vendors such as LogMeIn, McAfee, Sophos, Veeam and Veritas have all benefited from PE funding over the last year.
But Canalys thinks this is a bad thing saying that the continued investment by private equity firms in technology vendors is a lit fuse which is designed to ignite value (and return) for shareholders, but which often ignores the long-term value brought by the channel.
Kodak Alaris has recognised partners from the Europe, Africa and Middle East region (EMEA) in its annual Partner of the Year awards.
Spigraph, Benelux was named Top Value Added Distributor; the company has collaborated closely with the Kodak Alaris sales team and continued to drive high market share in the region.
Spigraph Vice President Sales, Northern Europe Koen Beeuwsaert said: “To be awarded as Top Value Added Distributor of the year is a great recognition of all our joint efforts to drive profitable growth through the region.
VMware is to buy network detection and response vendor Lastline.
The agreement is set to close by 31 July and VMware will run Lastline’s malware analysis as a “critical feed” for its Carbon Black EDR platform.
VMware’s Networking and Security Business Unit, general manager Tom Gillis, VMware said: “This is an important step forward for VMware’s vision of Intrinsic Security, as it will allow us to further take advantage of the intrinsic attributes of our virtualisation platform to yield innovative security capabilities.
Tech Data has entered into a pan-European agreement with storage support specialist StorTrec to provide channel partners with access to a wide range of value-added services that can be offered alongside storage products.
