Category: News

Legaltech firms on the increase

Posted on March 21, 2018 by - News

courtroom_1_lgLegalTech is one of the areas of the tech world which is “burgeoning” the British Legal Technology Forum was told.

Richard Susskind said: “A few years ago, there were around 200 legaltech companies. Now there are more than 2,000.”

This market expansion was being driven by the increased availability of private equity finance for this type of technology, coupled with the growing awareness of legal tech by in-house lawyers, Professor Susskind explained.

The combined effect of these two dynamics was that law firms could no longer pay “lip service” to their use of legaltech, he added.

One firm which has taken a proactive approach to legaltech investment is Mischon de Reya (MDR). The firm’s Managing Partner, Kevin Gold, confirmed that his practice had selected two new legaltech start-ups to join its MDR LAB programme. The identities of the successful candidates – chosen from a total of 120 applicants – would be revealed shortly, he said. The six previous MDR winners have spent ten weeks working alongside the firm’s lawyers, developing and trialling their legaltech products, Mr Gold added.

One legal technology that is currently enjoying a very high level of interest is legal artificial intelligence (AI). Indeed, so keen is the interest in legal AI that Professor Susskind observed that the term was rapidly becoming a verb – that is, “we can AI that”.

Unfortunately, Professor Susskind said, this phrase was often used by individuals “who would struggle to distinguish between a neural network and a custard cream”. People often randomly proposed the application of AI technology in meaningless ways, he added.

The perception that many law firms were not entirely sure how to deploy legal AI solutions was echoed in a presentation given by Katie Atkinson, Head of Computer Science at the University of Liverpool.

She said: “I get a lot of law firms coming to me and saying ‘we need to do something about AI. Can you tell me what to do?’”

Atkinson said that the key question that law firms should instead be asking themselves is: “What problem do you have, that you are trying to solve, that you think AI could help with?”

The answer to this question, she explained, would determine whether it was best for a firm to buy an off-the-shelf legal AI product, build a solution internally, or partner with an academic institution to develop their ideas.

Luminance CEO Emily Foges said that her outfit’s platform had expanded beyond its initial role in assisting with M&A due diligence, and could now be used to identify contracts that may not be GDPR compliant.

 

 

Softcat reveals Irish plans

Posted on March 21, 2018 by - News

431Softcat is to set up shop in Ireland within a year.

The news came as it announced its 50th consecutive quarter of revenue and profit growth.

The Marlow-based reseller saw revenues increase 25 percent year on year to £472.8 million in the six months ending 31 January 2018, with operating profits increasing 15 percent to £24.1 million.

The outfit has opened a south-coast office and expanded its Manchester premises during the period, and now the cunning plan is to set up in Dublin within the next 12 months.

This is a big step for the company as it would be its first time trying to operate overseas.

Softcat CEO Martin Hellawell dubbed 1H “another robust period of performance”.

The firm added 600 new customers during the period, with gross profits per customer growing by more than 15 percent, he said.

By revenue, software generated £240 million of the total, up 24 percent, with hardware growing 30 percent to £165 million. Services revenues rose by 16 percent to £68 million.

“We are benefiting from strong market demand for all our offerings and all our major customer segments and continue to relentlessly pursue our simple strategy of doing more business with our existing customers and winning new customers”, Hellawell said.

Hellawell will step into the non-executive chairman role on 3 April t and be replaced by Graeme Watt.

“It has been a great privilege to run Softcat for over twelve years. We have achieved a great deal, and it’s been a pleasure to be part of the company’s success in that period. I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to the employees of Softcat for making this possible and also thank our customers and partners for their invaluable support during my tenure”, he said.

Softcat’s market valuation has more than doubled since it went public in November 2015,

 

Ideal launches Managed SIEM

Posted on March 21, 2018 by - News

ideal-networksIdeal, the Brighton-based managed services, and IT infrastructure provider has launched its managed security information and event management (Managed SIEM) service.

SIEM is an intelligent set of technologies that combine security information management (SIM) and security event management (SEM). By providing real-time analysis of security alerts generated by applications and network hardware, the technology allows skilled cyber security experts to identify, diagnose and respond immediately,  to prevent and mitigate the impact of security breaches. Ideal’s service provides a turnkey solution combining the required technology and expertise as a fully managed service.

Mike Henson, Ideal MD, said: “Over 46 percent of companies in the UK suffered a breach last year and many could not quickly and effectively respond. In some cases, it took months even to detect the breach, and as the length of time increases between breach and remediation there’s an increased risk of data loss and consequent reputational risk.”

Gary Johnson, Operations Director, added: “Many businesses find it impossible to quickly and easily form and evidence a clear picture of security threats across the entire estate. Even if they can find the required cyber expertise, they are looking at high cost and effort to sift through the exponentially growing volume of logs generated by security nodes across their networks. We offer a compelling alternative – leverage the required security technology and cyber expertise via a managed service model at a fixed monthly cost.”

Ideal’s Managed SIEM provides the 360° visibility customers need of their complex infrastructure, as well as proactive, actionable guidance and recommendation, it’s claimed. From Day 1, Ideal helps customers separate ‘noise’ from legitimate threats and reduces the impact of security incidents and data breaches, it claims.

Mike Henson concluded: “The launch of our Managed SIEM Service is a key milestone in our growth – we have invested significantly in our security platforms, including AlienVault’s Unified Security Management (USM), as well as our people and their expertise. We believe we offer the best possible solution for companies wanting to take a proactive approach to enhancing and maintaining their security posture as well as giving them the ability to easily and quickly evidence compliance. We are confident that we are meeting a growing market need and early indications from customers and prospects bear this out.”

Profit warning for Micro Focus

Posted on March 20, 2018 by - News

3bb5d891de37a71b88697882b3918a60Micro Focus lost half of its valuation after posting a sales warning .

The Newbury-based vendor said in a trading update that the rate of revenue decline has been “greater than anticipated” since posting interim results in January, with the firm now set to miss its revised revenue guidelines in its current financial year, which ends in October.

The big issue was problems caused by buying Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s (HPE) software unit. These were problems implementing a new IT system, a greater-than-expected reduction in sales staff, disruption in global HPE customer accounts, and difficulties with sales in North America.

The vendor also announced the resignation of its CEO Chris Hsu, who will leave immediately to spend more time with his family and pursue another opportunity. COO Stephen Murdoch will take over.

Micro Focus saw its share price tank over 55 percent following the announcement.

Kevin Loosemore, executive chairman at Micro Focus said: “We remain confident in Micro Focus’ strategy while recognising that operational issues have led to a disappointing short-term performance and outlook.

“Chris was instrumental in achieving the carve-out of the HPE software business in order that it be merged with Micro Focus. He has led a repositioning of the HPE Software portfolio to the needs of today’s market and put in place a plan to increase our effective product investment as we integrate the companies.”

Micro Focus said it expects revenue to decline between six and nine per cent this year, in constant currency, compared with 2017. EBITDA will however remain flat as a result of cost cutting.

 

Sabio buys Bright UK

Posted on March 20, 2018 by - News

Finding-Nemo-Shark-Wallpaper-HDSabio has written a cheque for the analytics firm Bright UK.

Bright is a customer services data and analytics consultancy mostly for contact centres.

Sabio chief commerical officer  Russell Sheldon said that Bright said that customer service data analysis was the core of what they do and the outfit had a expertise in understanding what drives the voice of the customer and customer service, and they do that through consulting capability and software-as-a-service data solutions.

Bright will run as a business unit of Sabio, with managing director Mats Rennstam staying on to head up the operation.

Bright has 45 customers – including BNP Paribas, Lloyds and South West Water – and 15 members of staff. The Bright branding will remain in place.

For the 12 months ending 30 September 2016 Sabio’s turnover was £43.4 million.

 

IT SMEs have head hunting problems

Posted on March 20, 2018 by - News

Head-hunting-Pictish-warriorThe latest Aldermore Future Attitudes report reveals that four in five (80 percent) of SMEs in the IT sector find it difficult to hire qualified staff members or keep existing talent in the company.

The study, which surveyed over a thousand business decision-makers across the UK, found that the most common concern for SMEs in the IT sector is hiring talented people (40 percent), with crucial employee positions often difficult to fill (24 percent).

Retaining good members of staff once they have been found is a concern for over a quarter of business leaders in the IT sector, with just under a third admitting to currently having a problem with a high workforce turnover. A quarter of companies in the IT sector find it hard to adequately develop employees who demonstrate great potential, and younger employees can be particularly difficult to keep on board (17 percent). A fifth says they have experienced an increase in staff leaving their business compared to a year ago.

Bosses in the IT sector say the most common motive is for a pay increase (22 percent), followed by a change in career (20 percent) and retirement (20 percent). Regarding where they then go, a third of their employees move to a larger company in a different industry, over a quarter (28 percent) land a job at a large organisation in the same sector and one in ten go to another SME in a similar industry.

Carl D’Ammassa, Group Managing Director, Business Finance at Aldermore, said: “It’s a job seeker’s market out there and this trend looks set to continue over the coming years. Talented workers within the SME industry can find new employment quite easily, with many individuals moving on when they feel they can get a better deal or could progress further and quicker in a different environment. Competition for the best industry talent has always been fierce, and business leaders need to put measures in place to ensure their companies are attractive places to work for ambitious employees.

“The best people can have a significant, positive impact on how that business performs, so therefore it is heartening to see that the majority of SMEs acknowledge that it is important to make an effort to keep talented people by offering a good work-life balance, flexible working, and valuable training. This is to be applauded, and many larger employers could learn much from their smaller peers about maintaining staff satisfaction.”

 

Bechtle sees UK revenues up by 30 percent

Posted on March 19, 2018 by - News

unternehmenGerman VAR Bechtle has just posted a 15 percent hike in revenues, with its UK division growing by 30 percent. Bechtle as it closed its 2017 financial year with an increase in revenues to £3.3 billion.

Bechtle CEO Thomas Olemotz claimed the launch of the firm’s e-commerce platform as its crucial achievement this year.

Following its half-year financial results, Bechtle claimed that it had already made €33 million-worth of strategic investments in 2017, “to ensure future competitiveness”; almost as much as the firm spent for the entirety of 2016 when investments reached €39.6 million.

Accounts reveal that Bechtle continued spending in the second half of the year, bringing total investments for the year to €67.2 million.

Key achievements include the launch of the cloud’ platform, the complete relocation of the Bechtle datacentre to Europe’s largest data centre campus in Frankfurt, and the go-live of the new bechtle.com as the digital marketplace for the broad Bechtle offering.”

The lion’s share of Bechtle’s revenues was still generated by IT system house and managed services, with €1.01bn revenues generated by e-commerce.

Its positive results take Bechtle towards its mid-term goal of becoming a €5 billion powerhouse by 2020. The VAR first broke through the €3 billion sales mark in 2016.

Some €2.51 billion or two-thirds of revenues, were derived from Bechtle’s German market and the UK market only made up ten percent of the sales.  The UK side of the outfit grew 30 percent ent across the board, with over 78 percent growth in the services business and 50 percent growth in the software and cloud business.

Bechtle’s UK business has made a strategic shift from being transactional business into a “complete solutions and services business”, with a  transactional engine to back it up.

Google polishes the Chrome

Posted on March 19, 2018 by - News

google-ICSearch engine outfit Google has expanded the number of enterprise mobility management platforms IT managers can use to control Chrome OS devices.

Google announced it is integrating its Chrome OS Enterprise device management suite with four mobility management vendors to offer unified end-point management (UEM) capabilities.

Last year, Google introduced its Chrome Enterprise suite and offered integration with VMware Workspace ONE’s UEM cloud portal, allowing IT shops to manage Chrome OS devices using both native Chrome Enterprise and VMware tools from a single console.

Google charges $50 per device annually for the Chrome Enterprise management service.

The Search engine Google said it has partnered with Cisco Meraki, IBM MaaS360, Citrix XenMobile and Zoho to further integrate management tools for Chrome OS with the popular EMM vendors.

“With these partnerships in place, enterprises can pick the solution that fits their business best”, Google said.

Google also announced greater capabilities for IT to manage of its Chrome browser by adding enforced existing user sign-on into Chrome.

Google eventually plans to add enterprise reporting capabilities to the browser to give IT admins access to local machine logs so they can better understand each device under their control.

The announcement is part of the company’s cunning plan to give IT administrators a single pane through which they can manage Chrome OS devices.

In general, UEM allows IT, managers, to remotely provision, control and secure everything from mobile phones to tablets, laptops, desktops and now, Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

Among other things, Google’s integration with EMM vendors will let IT managers perform some tasks such as locking or disabling Chrome OS devices, whitelisting users to sign onto corporate networks via the devices, and manage other user settings.

Google has its management tools for Chrome, but few companies want to deploy stand-alone device management when they’ve already turned to enterprise mobility management (EMM) and UEM solutions from the likes of AirWatch, IBM, Citrix and others for Windows, Android or iOS.

 

Dell talks up on-premise clouds

Posted on March 19, 2018 by - News

michael-dell-2Grey box shifter CEO Michael Dell said that software-defined data centre on-premises solutions are more cost effective compared to the public cloud.

He said that when you automate and modernise the infrastructure, software-define everything, and move up to the platform level on predictable workloads, an on-premises solution is much more cost-effective.

Public cloud vendors have built software-defined/automated IT services creating an attractive interface for developers; those great technological advances are “not unique to the public cloud.

The idea of automating and software-defining everything, and autonomous infrastructure operations of is occurring all across the computing spectrum. It’s happening in the private clouds; it’s happening at the edge, arriving at the distributed core, public clouds, Software-as-a-Service, managed services – everybody’s going in that direction, Dell said.

Dell said the issue of the public vs private cloud is a workload-dependent discussion. He pointed to Dell Technologies’ massive deferred revenue growth as evidence of the rise of on-premises private cloud/hybrid cloud momentum.

Solution providers said they could typically deliver on-premises private cloud/software-defined data centre solutions for enterprises that are at minimum 40 percent cheaper than public cloud.

 

Samsung power outside could create NAND shortage

Posted on March 16, 2018 by - News

nand-chipsA power outage in one of Samsung’s South Korean factories has reportedly damaged 11 percent of the vendor’s monthly NAND output.

With NAND supply already tight,  the loss has sparked fears that memory prices could be hiked. To put this in perspective s Samsung’s fabrication plant is responsible for so much of the world’s NAND flash production, the number of damaged wafers in the incident accounts for 3.5 percent of the global supply for March.

It could mean that the global supply chain could be affected over the coming weeks. Despite the power reportedly being restored after half an hour, it is thought that up to 60,000 NAND wafers were destroyed.

Samsung does have a stockpile of NAND flash chips which could offset the wafer losses, while the company and its rivals are increasing global production to make up for the shortfall. However, sources say the power outage could still influence supply and pricing in the coming weeks, but it shouldn’t take long for the market to return to normal.

Electrical networks need more protection

Posted on March 16, 2018 by - News

2011-09-26-pink-floyd-pig-at-battersea-power-station-06The UK needs to build better levels of resilience and reliability into its electricity networks, including protection against hackers, to support the country’s increasingly digital infrastructure, according to a new report.

The report, penned by Institution of Mechanical Engineers, with the catchy title The Smart Cities: Technology Friend or Foe? outlines how in our increasingly or Foe?digital age, any power cuts could significant hacks of power, communications, transport, security surveillance, heating, cooling, lighting, water, food supplies and, in an increasingly cashless world, trading.

Energy companies globally experience about 66 million cyber security events annually, which is 25 percent more than typical in other industries, and about 90 percent of published vulnerabilities are medium to high risk.

The Institution is calling on UK Government to urgently look at the demand and reliability of power infrastructure and the requirements of digitally integrated cities.

Dr. Colin Brown, Director of the Institution of Mechanical of Engineers, said: “As we become more reliant on digital infrastructure, we are becoming more dependent on our electricity network. This means it has never been more critical to ensure we have secure and reliable electricity supplies, robust enough to withstand threats from potential hackers and resilient to our changing climate.

“We had already seen major hacks of power plants and electricity networks in the USA in 2003, when hackers disabled a nuclear power plant in Ohio, and more recently in 2015 in the Ukraine where a cyber-attack caused a grid outage which affected 225,000 people. On a grand scale hacks on our electricity networks could lead to chaos and looting of the sort we saw from natural causes in Texas and Florida in the aftermath of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma.

“To keep critical infrastructure, transport, communications, security surveillance and working, we need an electricity system which in the future will continue to be reliable 24 hours, 365 days a year. In the coming years, even relatively short interruptions to supply will potentially lead to substantial economic and social problems.”

The report said the UK Government needs to include the electricity system requirements of digitally integrated smart cities, in both demand and reliability, in the planning of pathways to the nation’s future power infrastructure. City authorities need to focus more on collaborative working and sharing smart city learning across networks of cities, and engage with people’s concerns regarding equality of access. The education profession needs to acknowledge the new skill sets required for living and working in a digitally-enabled urbanised society, and radically reconfigures education and training to be fit for purpose in a 21st-century smart city future

Channel firms dominante 2017 infrastructure shipments

Posted on March 16, 2018 by - News

Beancounters at Canalys have added up some numbers and divided them by the flight ration of a swallow carrying a coconut and reached the conclusion that channel firms dominated 2017 infrastructure Columbus-flagship-Santa-Maria-discoveredsments worldwide and boosted the market to a record year.

The analyst outfit said that the market was worth $142 billion this year which is a seven percent increase on 2016.  Servers grew 12.2 percent to $66 billion; networking grew 4.3 percent to $50 billion and storage 1.6 percent to $26 billion. .

Canalys principal analyst Matthew Ball said the channel continued to dominate infrastructure shipments, collectively representing 74 percent of the worldwide total.

Server growth was partially due to hyperscale cloud service providers’ “ongoing” datacentre expansion, Canalys’ announcement said. It noted: “The start of a new enterprise refresh cycle following the launch of the next generation of Intel and AMD processors increased server shipment value.”

The growth of Chinese and Taiwanese ODM server vendors selling large volumes to cloud service providers meant that direct sales grew faster than channel sales in the overall infrastructure market. Ball said that 34 percent of server shipments were direct sales (compared to 19 percent of storage and 20 percent of networking shipments).

“The massive CapEx planned by the data centre cloud service providers in upgrading and expanding existing data centres, as well as increasing their geographic presence, will maintain this trend in 2018”, Ball said.

Storage, meanwhile, saw a return to growth following “a period of disruption” from all-flash and software-defined, which Canalys says offset traditional HDD storage arrays’ drop.

Canalys highlighted the strength of datacenter switching and 11ac Wave 2 wireless LANs (WLANs) for campus and branch environments. It says ethernet switching grew seven percent and WLANs nine percent. Service provider routing stayed positive at one percent, while enterprise routing fell nine percent.

Cisco, Dell EMC and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) represented 50 percent of infrastructure shipments Cisco maintained a 20 percent lead thanks to its networking strength. Dell EMC grew its infrastructure shipments market share to 15 percent and “was one of the fastest-growing vendors through the channel”, Ball said. HPE controlled 14 percent market share.

 

Zoom gets a rush from Big Blue’s Watson

Posted on March 15, 2018 by - News, Products

Sherlock-Holmes-and-WatsonZoom Video Communications has announced that IBM has embedded Zoom video meetings into IBM Watson Workspace Plus.

Zoom has worked with IBM to develop the ability for any Workspace Plus user to escalate their chats to Zoom video meetings with a single click to the Workspace interface. IBM will embed and sell Zoom’s video communications service as the video component of Watson Workspace.

The first collaboration solution of its kind built with Artificial Intelligence at its core, Watson Workspace Plus is designed to reduce the noise around communication through natural language processing and machine learning.

This collaboration platform is enhanced by Zoom’s video meetings. By using Zoom with IBM Watson Workspace Plus, enterprise knowledge workers gain:

  • HD video conferencing and screen sharing with integrated audio1:
  • 1 to up to 200 video participants (several meeting capacity options available)
  • Cross-platform collaboration across mobile, desktop, and conference room devices via Zoom
  • Collaboration features such as co-annotation, whiteboarding, and remote control
  • Watson Workspace Plus, featuring the Zoom SDK integration, will soon be available to IBM customers.

Zoom product manager head  Oded Gal said that  Zoom is focused on creating smarter, frictionless meetings for its customers.

“We’ve found a kindred spirit in IBM, with their focus on intelligent collaboration. The combination of our two services allows users to chat, meet, and collaborate with their teams faster and more effectively than ever before.”

IBM Collaboration Solutions general manager Bob Schultz said that to create a full digital workplace for users: “IBM and Zoom are joining efforts to simplify collaboration around the world. From having a quick text chat to engaging in a video conversation, Watson Workspace Plus capabilities allow everyday tasks to be consolidated into one platform so employees can focus on business priorities.”

 

Hewlett Packard Enterprise updates Cloud28+

Posted on March 15, 2018 by - News

HPE-office-logoHewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has updated its Cloud28+ catalogue and will allow partners to  show potential customers what they have to offer.

The Cloud28+ member spotlight pages, were revealed at the CloudFest conference in Germany and will be available from April. For the first time  allow channel companies to publish their own news and updates, as well as search options and services, on the catalogue. HPE said that this will offer partners the opportunity to increase sales and revenue, as they will be able to build a “strong visual identity” on the platform.

More than 750 HPE partners are already part of the Cloud28+ community, HPE claimed, a catalogue of 26,000 cloud and hybrid IT services launched by the company in 2015.

HPE VP of service providers and Cloud28+ worldwide Xavier Poisson: “HPE is a partnership-first business. The new Cloud28+ spotlight pages demonstrate this, by offering partners new routes to market and increased visibility.

“Cloud28+ has always been focused on creating a rich and collaborative ecosystem, and now we’re further extending that benefit to partners by giving them a chance to do the same with customers under their own banners.”

Alongside the announcement of member spotlight pages, HPE also teased further upcoming enhancements to the Cloud28+ platform. These will include better management tools, social media integrations and individualised analytics. It will feature compatibility for multi-vendor and multi-component solutions, with IoT cited as a particular scenario where this would be desirable.

IT Decision Makers losing sleep over HCI

Posted on March 15, 2018 by - News

sleeplessData security outfit WinMagic has been asking around 1,000 IT Decision Makers and found that a lot of them are worried about the complexity of setting up hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI).

While lost of them liked the concept the survey highlighted concerns around expanding their use of HCI, with complexity leading at 45 percent and security a close second (43 percent).

Currently, only 15 percent of respondents’ report having any HCI technology in their infrastructure. The HCI market is expected to expand, with Gartner stating that “By 2021, Hyper-Converged integrated systems (HCIS) will represent 54 percent of total converged infrastructure shipments by revenue, with HCIS reaching $10.8 billion.”

The survey found that deployed with the correct controls HCI can be one of the best ways to simplify data centre infrastructure. However, its dynamic nature and reliance on virtual machines create challenges such as how to unify security and control data sprawl as IT departments struggle to maintain control as workloads expand.

Decision makers highlighted four areas making them reluctant to include HCI as part of their future infrastructure plans:

o    Increased complexity of IT infrastructure (45 percent)

o    Maintaining security across HCI environments (43 percent

o    Maintaining management control as HCI scales across the business (39 percent)

o    The lack of an ability to manage virtual machines in hybrid environments (34 percent)

A quarter of respondents admitted to not limiting access to the control planes of their Hyper-Converged Infrastructure. Rather than encrypting individual workloads, many are merely encrypting the whole platform, ignoring the need for encryption and access controls to specific sensitive datasets. The result is that unfettered access may be given to workloads that should be geo- or time restricted, leaving a company at risk of breaking its governance, regulatory and compliance obligations.

Also, there were other areas of concern relating to security when using HCIs, such as:

o    Having a security solution that scales with needs (29 percent)

o    Ensuring compatibility with any hypervisor technology (23 percent)

o    Maintaining identity access management and authentication (22 percent)

Winmagic chief operating officer Mark Hickman said that hyper-Converged Infrastructure offers a wide range of benefits for IT departments and they want to embrace the technology, but often the security and management concerns make it feel like a risky investment.

“The truth is the benefits can be easily realised by IT teams, if a unified approach is taken to security and management, through a single tool where they are dependent, not separate tasks.  In reality, this approach should extend beyond the hyperconverged hardware to the whole infrastructure whether on-premises or in the cloud.  WinMagic SecureDoc Enterprise offers 100% encryption of endpoints, data centre and cloud workloads with a single platform, meaning data is protected across the enterprise while IT leaders are free to deliver the enormous benefits of hyperconvergence.”