Category: News

Patil moves to Dell

Posted on October 23, 2019 by - Moving People, News

Azure founder Deepak Patil has been appointed to lead Dell Technologies’ cloud business to become senior vice president of Dell Technologies Cloud Platforms and Solutions Group.

Patil spent more than 15 years at Microsoft from 2000 to 2015 holding a variety of general manager roles for Microsoft Cloud Infrastructure, Windows Azure Engineering and Global Foundation Services. He was one of the founding members of Microsoft’s public cloud Azure platform, creating the first-ever application to run on Azure while leading the design and growth of Azure.

K3 warns of sliding profits

Posted on October 23, 2019 by - News

K3 has warned that its earnings will be “significantly” below market expectations after seeing major client deals fall through.

In a trading update, K3 said that its second half had “started confidently”, but a major new contract then failed to materialise and a “large customer” entered administration. Clients are buying software at a slower pace than anticipated.

Number of IT contractors falls

Posted on October 23, 2019 by - News

Off-payroll working reforms have caused the number of UK IT contractors to decline for the first time in a decade.

Accountancy firm Access Financial says that the number of IT contractors had increased nearly every year since 2008 but declined by 2.4 percent in 2018, from 125,012 to 121,989, according to government figures.

British businesses too slow to prevent cyber threats

Posted on October 22, 2019 by - News

British businesses should change drastically up their game when it comes to being prepared and able to effectively deal with cyberattacks, according to Cyber Security Connect UK (CSC UK), an industry forum for cybersecurity professionals.

The call to action comes during European Cyber Security Month, the EU’s annual awareness campaign that takes place each October across Europe and aims to raise awareness of cybersecurity threats, promote cybersecurity among citizens and organisations; and provide resources to educate and share good practices.

Europe’s outsourcing falling

Posted on October 22, 2019 by - News

The annual value of Europe’s managed services contracts dropped by more than ₤774.87  million in the third quarter amid recession fears.

Information Services Group’s EMEA ISG Index, which measures commercial outsourcing contracts with annual contract value (ACV) of ₤3.9 million or more, found the ACV of the region’s managed services contracts in the third quarter declined 31 per cent, or ₤792 million, quarter over quarter, to ₤1.8 billion. Compared with the 2018 third quarter, managed services ACV was down 17 percent.

IX Reach teams up with Evoque Data Centers Solutions

Posted on October 22, 2019 by - News

IX Reach and data centre operator Evoque Data Centers Solutions has announced a partnership enabling Evoque’s “tenants” to directly use IX Reach’s full portfolio of solutions, including its SDN platform, One Portal.

Evoque and its enterprise customers can now form what’s claimed are secure, reliable, and resilient connections to global destinations and to extend private network connections to cloud providers, SaaS services, and other enterprises from Evoque data centres in Amsterdam, London, Paris, and Hong Kong with more markets expected in the near future through the IX Reach network.

Security spending soars

Posted on October 21, 2019 by - News

Worldwide spending on security products and services will enjoy solid growth over the next five years according to beancounters at IDC.

According to the (IDC) Worldwide Semiannual Security Spending Guide, worldwide spending on security-related hardware, software, and services will be $106.6 billion in 2019, an increase of 10.7 percent over 2018. This amount will reach $151.2 billion in 2023 with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.4 percent  over the 2019-2023 forecast period.

London is the number two for tech upstarts

Posted on October 21, 2019 by - News

The Financial Times’ fDi Intelligence division said that London was beaten by Vilnius as having have attracted the most greenfield Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) projects of tech startups per capita during the years 2016-2018.

The outfit  announced the list of 30 cities with Vilnius ranked as the leading city and London, which came in second.

The Tech Start-up FDI Attraction Index 2019 measures at the city level the number of greenfield FDI projects made in the software and IT services sector per 100,000 inhabitants.

Foehn joins Network Services 2 framework

Posted on October 21, 2019 by - News

 

The Crown Commercial Services has confirmed that Foehn has been listed as an accredited supplier on the Network Services 2 (RM3808) procurement framework that authorises supply of telecommunications and network services to the whole of the UK Public Sector, associated bodies and agencies.

Foehn is listed in two categories, ‘IP Telephony Services’ and Contact Centre Services’.

Phoenix47 buys Guardian – no, not the newspaper

Posted on October 18, 2019 by - News

Phoenix47 has bought Guardian Technologies, a privately held company that specialises in a range of security services. The acquisition will complement Phoenix47’s ever-growing security consulting practice.

Providing security consultancy, Guardian Technologies delivers a range of security services which apparently are designed to strengthen business applications and protect IT infrastructure.

The buy is seen as part of Phoenix47’s cunning plan to invest in and create next-generation cybersecurity services to help protect clients’ “end to end” business. That’s from top to bottom, it seems.

Finance sector cyber incidents soared by 1000 percent

Posted on October 18, 2019 by - News

The finance industry needs to spruce up its security act, according to Joe Collinwood, CEO at CySure (pictured).

Collinwood cited the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) with incidents increasing from 69 in 2017 to 819 in 2018 – an increase of 1000 percent and said that in the technological age no business could afford to be underprepared when it comes to cybersecurity.

The finance sector regulator, the FCA, has recorded a ten-fold increase in cyber-crime incidents (i); however, across all sectors, more businesses are reporting being impacted by a cyber incident year-on-year. According to a recent report conducted by Hiscox (ii), there has been a sharp increase in the number of cyber-attacks this year, with more than 60 percent of firms have reported one or more attacks, up from 45 percent in 2018.

Zyxel introduces IP reputation filter

Posted on October 17, 2019 by - News

Zyxel released its cloud-based security service that, it claims, provides businesses with protection from an array of network threats.

Dubbed an IP Reputation Filter it comes with multiple layers of defence, user-friendly design, and access to an expanding database of malicious IPs from Webroot.

Nutanix makes changes to back-end rebates

Posted on October 17, 2019 by - News

Nutanix has overhauled how it issues back-end rebates and says its new system is more predictable and less complicated than before.

Nutanix EMEA channel and OEM lead Cyril VanAgt said: “The percentage of rebates we were offering our partners were not on par with what our competitors are doing. And some of our rebates were too complicated and unpredictable.”

Ransomware is a major MSP concern

Posted on October 17, 2019 by - News

A survey of more than 1,400 MSP decision-makers that manage the IT systems for small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMBs) found that ransomware remains the most common cyber threat to SMBs.

Datto announced the findings from its fourth annual Global State of the Channel Ransomware Report.

The report found that Ransomware attacks were pervasive. The number of ransomware attacks against SMBs is on the rise. More than  85 percent of MSPs reported attacks against SMBs over the last two years, compared to 79 percent of MSPs who reported the same in 2018. In the first half of 2019 alone, 56 percent of MSPs reported attacks against SMB clients.