Category: News

Kaspsersky’s global revenue grows

US government spy stories have not been enough to scare off Kaspersky’s global customers.

Cybersecurity vendor Kaspersky reported annual revenue of $726 million for 2018, despite a downturn in sales in the North American market.

The figure represents four percent year-on-year global growth for the company, with all regions – apart from the North American market – reporting increased sales.

Security keeps businesses awake at night

Security outfit KnowBe4 released the results of its “What Keeps You Up at Night – The 2019 Report” which looks at more than 350 organisations globally and reveals the security weaknesses and concerns within organisations. On average, 81 per cent of organisations had some degree of anxiety around security issues.

Most were worried about data breaches, with credential compromise coming in as a close second. These

Extreme Networks boosts partner support

Extreme Networks is sprucing up its partner programme and increasing the rewards for its top tier Diamond Black partners and providing more self-assessment tools for resellers.

John Morrison, vice president of sales and services at Extreme Networks, said that the enhancements were designed to make life simpler.

“We have a solution that takes you from the application right to the user device, managed under a single pane of glass with visibility and policy that allows you to build that solution with a view to delivering the customer experience. We want to talk about the solution we now have and what our portfolio now allows us to deliver and that is an overall message to both customers and partners. The other message to partners is that we are focusing on our partner programmes and taking feedback on the programme as it was.”

Exclusive Networks pushes into Israel

Exclusive Networks has entered the Israeli market by writing a cheque for  SecureWave, an independent cybersecurity VAD based in Tel Aviv.

SecureWave distributes to around 250 resellers, SIs and service providers. Its major vendors are Fortinet, Nutanix and Infoblox, which Exclusive Group said are all “strategic to Exclusive’s cyber and cloud transformation portfolios”.

Its CEO Olivier Breittmayer said Exclusive Group’s partners would benefit immediately from the shared vendor investment the acquisition brings.

Cambridgeshire continues to attract tech

Bidwells’latest analysis indicates Cambridgeshire remains a magnet for technology companies that are looking beyond the current Brexit uncertainty. Its analysis of the Cambridge office and laboratory market finds that 0.6 million sq ft of new space will be complete during the first half of 2019.

This is the highest level of new supply in over a decade. This perhaps sounds alarm bells given the apparent slowdown in demand for labs and offices combined to 1.154 million sq ft at the end of 2018.

GT Software advances into the UK market

GT Software is getting its foot in the door of the UK market using an exclusive partnership with Advanced.

Biggish Blue mainframe specialist Advanced has signed a deal with US player GT Software to add more options to those customers using Big Blue’s technology.

GT has developed the Ivory Suite, which allows a no-code drag and drop offering that gives those with IBM mainframes the chance to add API integrations.

Chinese smartphones conquering Europe

Despite the US crackdown, Chinese devices are doing really well in Europe, according to Canalys beancounters.

According to Canalys, preventing the likes of Huawei and Xiaomi from operating in the States means they are investing in Europe to make up for their lost US business and have experienced significant sales gains.

Although Samsung still ranks number one in the continent and Apple remains a number two, Huawei’s market share now stands at 23.6 percent, compared to a market share of 14.8 percent last year.  Xiaomi’s grew from 3.6 to  six percent, the fourth position.

Beta Distribution’s Dutch arm crashes

Beta Distribution’s Dutch arm which survived all its parent company’s problems has declared bankruptcy owing more than €2 million.

A Dutch-language report posted on bankruptcy website Faillissementsdossier, the subsidiary declared bankruptcy on 21 December 2018, with a debt pile of nearly €2m (£1.7m).

The Dutch arm saw turnover of €40 million in its financial 2017-2018. At the time of the administration, it had €730,000 of book stock, and trade receivables debt of nearly €2 million. A third party has since bought the Maastricht-based subsidiary for a prepaid purchase price, as well as the book stock.

Cognizant fined $25 million in bribery case

Cognizant agreed to pay a $25 million fine to settle charges of bribery, while two former top executives who allegedly arranged the deal were indicted today on federal criminal charges of conspiracy to violate anti-bribery laws.

According to the SEC complaint, in 2014 senior Indian government officials demanded a $2 million bribe from the construction company building Cognizant’s corporate campus in Chennai, India. At the time, two-thirds of the company’s employees worked in India.

Red Reply wins Oracle “Partner of the Year: Autonomous” award

Red Reply, which specialises in the Oracle Cloud IaaS and PaaS platform, has been named as Oracle “Partner of the Year: Autonomous” for its work as an Oracle Cloud Managed Service Provider Partner in developing projects using the Oracle Autonomous Database technology.

Red Reply had launched a project aimed at re-engineering the Policy Enterprise DataWarehouse of Verti Assicurazioni, company operating in the online insurance sector, using the Oracle Cloud Autonomous data warehouse service. The Autonomous DataWarehouse is a cloud-based database that uses machine learning to eliminate manual labour in operations such as tuning, security, backups, updates and other routine activities.

Sinerix deals with Grey Matter on cloudy electronic signatures

Cloud technology outfit Sinerix has signed a deal with Devon-based channel partner – Grey Matter – to provide customers with electronic signature and biometric ID authentication software.

Developed by Sinerix, the SecureSign platform provides an electronic signature and document exchange platform with built-in authentication and ID verification technology. This allows clients to securely manage all kinds of document signing and onboarding processes in just a few minutes, the company claimed.

UK companies do not really know how to talk to people

The UK lags behind the rest of the world when it comes to customer communication according to a report by Avaya Holdings and Davies Hickman Partners.

Three-quarters of UK consumers have expressed frustration at how difficult it is, when interacting with an organisation, to switch from one means of communication to another without having to start the process over again.

Ignition starts distribution deal with Okta

Ignition has struck a value-added distribution agreement with enterprise identity management outfit Okta for the UK and Nordics regions.

Signing Okta is part of a cunning plan for Ignition’s overall channel strategy and complements its existing portfolio and identity reference architecture.

The agreement provides resellers with something to flog to  enterprise customers looking to securely connect and manage people and technology within a complete ecosystem.

Mobile operators want access networks and edge cloud

Over 70 percent of mobile operators believe that ownership of access networks and edge cloud infrastructure will give them a competitive advantage over public cloud providers in the 5G era.

According to a survey conducted by Heavy Reading, for Accedian, found that more than half of mobile operators expect to introduce network slicing within two years of commercial 5G launch, and over a longer timeframe.

Another 61 percent will have “extensively deployed” network slicing. By harnessing access and mobile edge ownership, and new networking slicing capabilities, operators can guarantee and monetize new levels of customer experience.

IBM sees results from its new partner programme

Biggish Blue told its PartnerWorld Think 2019 conference in San Francisco that it was seeing the results of its revamped partner programme.

IBM Partner Ecosystem in North America VP Dorothy Copeland said that IBM had got its mojo back after bringing in the new cunning plan two years ago.

IBM’s ecosystem strategy focuses on business model variety. The idea was to simplify the programme, making it easier for IBM partners to embed new technology into their business while welcoming new cutting-edge partners into the programme.