Category: News

Apple still the king of tablets

Posted on September 16, 2019 by - News

While it is having a miserable time at the moment, the fruity cargo-cult Apple retained its leadership in the EMEA tablet market, according to beancounters at IDC

The fruity cargo cult took a quarter of the total market share in second-quarter thanks to its detachables and the rebirth of the iPad mini.

Rival Samsung took second place, but saw a 13.4 per cent year-on-year decline, with third-place Huawei declining nearly 20 per cent, which the analyst attributed to falling consumer confidence due to its ban in the US.

The EMEA tablet market is predicted to decline by nearly 10 per cent overall in 2019, with the detachables and commercial segment expected to offset the decline in consumer tablets partially.

“The second half of 2019 will remain inhibited as slates continue to decline across regions,” said Nikolin Jurisic, product manager at IDC CEMA.

US firms are at the centre of cybersecurity buy out blitz

Posted on September 12, 2019 by - News

Beancounters at GlobalData have added up some numbers and concluded that American companies remained the most active investors in the cybersecurity technology space.

Of the top five acquirers in terms of the number of acquisitions, the top three were headquartered in the US, with the UK-based Sophos and Canadian firm Blackberry also featuring among the top five.

The three American companies, Symantec, Palo Alto Networks and Proofpoint, undertook seven acquisitions each in the cybersecurity space during 2014–2018, while Sophos acquired six companies and Blackberry acquired five companies during the period.

ECSC grows on managed services

Posted on September 12, 2019 by - News

Cybersecurity outfit ECSC has indicated that its focus on managed services is delivering as it saw significant growth.

ECSC  CEO of Ian Mann said that there was a drop off in its consulting business by 23 per cent to £1.19 million, which offset the 63 percent climb in managed services, producing flat year on year revenues of £2.63 million in the firm’s interim first-half numbers. The firm trimmed its losses to £0.19 million, down from £0.49 million at the same point last year, and indicated that the consulting business was better in the second half. The firm enjoyed a record July, with revenues up by 42 million to £0.62 million on last year.

“We are pleased that from the start of H2 the previously reported reduced level of consulting services demand has now been reversed, with consulting growth recovering strongly to match the continued growth in managed services recurring revenue and cyber incident response service”, Mann said.

Symantec has so many wooers

Posted on September 12, 2019 by - News

Security outfit Symantec might be bought out by a pair of private equity (PE) firms seeking to acquire its consumer business for $16.4 billion

London-based Permira Holdings has teamed up with US-based Advent International to offer a deal that would value the company at between $26 and $27 a share – valuing the organisation at $16.4 billion.

The deal would include its Norton antivirus software and VPN service along with its LifeLock identity theft protection services.

Cyxtera wants more channel partners

Posted on September 11, 2019 by - News

Data centre and security outfit Cyxtera wants to sign more channel partners as it develops its indirect model.

The company started selling direct but it is increasingly moving indirect and has taken steps to ensure that the channel is bought into its direct sales.

Midwich does well on the back of Euro acquistions

Posted on September 11, 2019 by - News

The print and AV disti Midwich has posted a strong first half of the year thanks to the European acquisitions it made earlier in the year.

Overall revenue climbed 19 percent year on year to £314.8 million for its six months ending 30 June 2019.

Earlier in the year the outfit snapped up Italian Prase and Swiss MobilePro in January, followed by Oslo-based AV Partner in May. It was all part of a cunning plan to enter new markets.

Immotion outlines partner model and plans

Posted on September 11, 2019 by - News

UK-based immersive ‘Out of Home’ entertainment group Immotion Group has rolled out a new partnership model and VR campaign.

The company is now focused on the roll-out of its partnership model into high footfall locations.  Trading in the current partner sites has been encouraging over the summer months, with aquariums continuing to perform particularly strongly and overall there remains keen interest from potential new partners as well as further developments with current partners in this sector.

Rate of change challenges security

Posted on September 10, 2019 by - News

Security experts have identified the rate of change as one of the biggest current threats to cyber security in the UK.

The sort of change they are talking about is not just the ability of hackers to come up with new viruses, but also changes to the legal landscape.

The challenges were identified by leading industry experts discussing the current status of UK cyber security in the run up to Cyber Security Connect UK, (CSCUK), the leading conference and industry forum for CISOs.

Appian scores Anglian Water contract

Posted on September 10, 2019 by - News

Anglian Water has selected Appian’s low-code platform to accelerate the development of new digital business applications.

Geographically, Anglian is the largest water and water recycling company in England and Wales, supplying 1.2 billion litres of water to 4.3 million customers, and collecting used water from over six million people every day.

UK firms need to invest more in software shock

Posted on September 10, 2019 by - News

Software outfit Progrex is warning that businesses aren’t investing enough in systems, which is an issue that is contributing to the UK productivity crisis.

The average British worker produces more than 16 percent less than most of the G7, the group of seven leading economies and experts believe some of this weak productivity can be put down to poor workflow and inefficient systems.

Crowdstrike’s channel boosts subscription sales

Posted on September 9, 2019 by - News

Crowdstrike has seen its subscription sales improve in its second fiscal quarter thanks mostly to the Channel

Crowdstrike focused on developing a single-tier approach with its Elevate Partner Programme, which was revamped at the start of this year.

CEO George Kurtz said that subscription rates for the outfit’s Falcon platform grew with half of its customers now taking four or more cloud modules from the vendor, with 730 new customers in the quarter, ended 31 July.

HP EMEA president exit

Posted on September 9, 2019 by - News

HP’s EMEA president Nick Lazaridis has exited the company after the outfit has started a significant international restructuring.

In a statement HP said: “Nick Lazaridis will be leaving HP immediately. Nick has been an important leader in EMEA, and we are grateful for his support and contributions. Replacing Nick is Helena Herrero, MD for Iberia, who will serve as interim president of EMEA while the company makes longer-term decisions.”

The vendor also announced a global reorganisation, ditching its current three-region structure in favour of one global commercial business.

The move is the culmination of a year-long review of the business which HP said has “done nothing but feed our optimism about the future”.

The commercial arm will be led by Christoph Schell, in the new role of the chief commercial officer, from 1 November.

The managing directors from 10 geographic regions will report to Schell, who has been at HP for 20 years.

One partner CRN spoke to speculated that HP Inc would remove the EMEA level of management, similar to the strategy taken by Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

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Global server market contracts for the first time in nine years

Posted on September 9, 2019 by - News

Beancounters at IDC have added up some numbers and concluded that vendor revenue in the global server market contracted for the first time after nine quarters.

Apparently, the second quarter of 2019 saw revenue decline by 11.6 percent year on year to just over $20 billion, which is the first time anything has fallen since the first quarter of 2016.

A slowdown in demand from cloud providers and hyperscale customers were the main reasons for the decline

All classes of the server were affected, with high-end systems revenue experiencing the most significant blow, contracting 20.8 per cent to $1.3 billion. Volume server revenue was down 11.7 per cent to $16.3 billion and mid-range server turnover was down 4.6 per cent to $2.4 billion.

Sebastian Lagana, research manager of infrastructure platforms and technologies at IDC said that things are rather different from a year ago when the server market realised unprecedented growth.

Users clueless on digital

Posted on September 6, 2019 by - News

The Business Barometer findings from The Open University, which have been analyised by TheKnowledgeAcademy.com claim that users are pretty clueless when it comes to digital and are good targets for the channel to fill them in.

Research showed that cloud based infrastructure and cyber security were the digital skills that business leaders felt that their organisations were lacking and a third accepted that they could not get to grips with new technologies because of a lack of expertise.

It was felt that most senior managers did not have the digital proficiency to adapt and adopt the latest technologies and new entrants, graduates and apprentices did have a firmer grip on the expertise needed.

The Open University found that the country’s skills gap is costing businesses more than £2 billion a year in higher salaries, recruitment costs and temporary staffing.

Steve Hill, external engagement director at the Open University, said that the landscape was making getting hold of skilled staff more of an issue.

Microsoft buys cloud start-up Movere

Posted on September 6, 2019 by - News

Software King of the World Microsoft has written a cheque for the cloudy start-up Movere in a bid to boost its cloud migration capabilities.

For those who came in late,  Movere is a software-as-a-service platform vendor that was founded in 2008. It is supposed to provide discovery and assessment services to make cloud migrations easier.

Writing in his bog , Microsoft’s Azure Management partner director, Jeremy Winter, said that the deal highlighted the firm’s commitment to Azure.

“We’re committed to providing our customers with a comprehensive experience for migrating existing applications and infrastructure to Azure, which include the right tools, processes, and programmes. As part of that ongoing investment, we’re excited to welcome the leadership, talent, technology, and deep expertise Movere has built-in enabling customers’ journey to the cloud over the last 11 years,” he said.

The deal marks Microsoft’s 11th acquisition of 2019 so far, with its last M&A move coming last month for jClarity – a Java performance tuning tool.