Category: News

ASL prints a cheque for ICA Digital

Posted on March 7, 2018 by - News

history-of-print-16th-century-printing-companyASL has acquired Surrey-based reseller ICA Digital in what is its ninth buy-out in as many years.

For those who came in late, ICA is a managed print services (MPS) reseller providing document management solutions to over 650 businesses in the south. It has been at it for 25 years.

ASL MD Mark Garius said  ICA was a strong business with a loyal customer base in the south of England and they it adds strength and depth to his outfit’s coverage in those areas.

“We have made this acquisition as part of our ongoing plans for growth and expansion, and we chose ICA carefully because of their fit with ASL – particularly their high standards and commitment to customer service.”

ICA’s Surrey office and staff will keep their jobs and its managing director, Simon Whapshott, will join the ASL board.

“ASL are looking at further acquisition opportunities as part of our plan to grow significantly over the coming years”, added Garius.

ASL claimed it now services 5,000 customers in East Anglia, the Midlands, London and the South of England.  It has offices in Cambridge, Great Yarmouth, Milton Keynes, Cannock, Bromsgrove, Central London, Basildon and Surrey.

Hypertec thinks things will get better after its buyout

Posted on March 7, 2018 by - News

JS63229212Distributor Hypertec has promised better reseller support after it was bought out by Exertis.

The firm employs more than 50 staff at its facility in Hungerford, Berkshire and generated sales of over £20 million during 2017.

Lianne Denness, managing director, Hypertec, said in a statement that Exertis’ resources and appetite for growth across a variety of technologies and geographies, meant the company had an opportunity to increase its business with existing and new customers, and to build relationships with new vendors.

“It also provides the chance to support Hypertec’s existing reseller partners on a more pan-European basis with a one-stop solution.”

Paul Bryan, Exertis UK managing director said that Hypertec had an excellent track record in the industry and had built strong relationships with its customer base and vendor partners.

Hypertec’s own brand product and technology portfolio was in increasing demand as users look to extend the life or improve the performance of computing devices, while resellers attach accessories to add margin to their sales, he said.

 

Government backtracks on G-Cloud delays

Posted on March 7, 2018 by - News

54538e33fa375a7530c9f15bde5be1d6--big-ben-tattoo-tattoo-meG-Cloud 10 will launch later this year as the government changed its mind on delaying the new framework until 2019.

In November Crown Commercial Service (CCS) extended G-Cloud 9 by up to a year, meaning the framework could have run for an unprecedented two-year period. This meant that suppliers would not have been able to add new services to their offering, or update pricing.

CCS has, however, today announced a U-turn, with G-Cloud 10 opening for  £600 million worth of bids in April.

Oliver Dowden, minister for implementation, said: “I’m pleased to confirm that we will re-let the G-Cloud framework, which provides opportunities to many small businesses in the digital sector.

“This will provide innovative online solutions to government, supporting the delivery of efficient, effective public services. Small businesses are the backbone of our economy, so it’s crucial that we listen to them when shaping policy, as we have done today.”

It appears that suppliers managed to lean on the government and get it to change its mind.

There does not appear to be any significant changes to G-Cloud for the tenth version, except for the possibility that the Cyber Security Services framework may be brought back into the G-Cloud.

The cost of not delaying the new programme was that the governing body is unlikely to have had a chance to make the sweeping changes after feedback from customers.

 

 

Ignition to bring security vendors, dealers and disties together

Posted on March 6, 2018 by - News

Screen Shot 2018-03-06 at 21.08.08An event on Thursday at the Shard in the City of London [pictured, left] will bring 160 resellers and their “favourite” distributor, Ignition Technology together with vendors to explore sales opportunities.

Ignition specialises in security. There’s a lot of money in security, especially considering the failures large corporations have suffered for a while.

The show will have McMafia star Misha Glenny, the author of a popular but a rather scary TV show – to kick off the event.

One of the vendors will be represented by JASK’s Greg Fitzgerald, a member of the firm’s advisory board who personally has a long history of security startups and for established companies too. He told ChannelEye today that the firm’s offering uses artificial intelligence (AI) – which he defined as a combination of mathematics and other algorithms – to pick up problems at medium to large corporations more or less immediately.

Corporations, he said, were picking up the pieces after security alerts and those alerts demanded many human beings to decide which were real threats that needed acting on now rather than later. JASK’s answer, he said was to pick up threats in real time, picking up and doing menial tasks, leaving it to “SWAT” squads to concentrate on the deeper aspects of a case.

Fitzgerald said that just as soon corporations recruited and trained humans to pick up the problems, the demand for security advisors was so great in government, in health and in other sectors that problems piled up. Storage is a problem too.

Corporations and security specialists within those firms were suffering from “alert fatigue” because there is an overload of such alerts from data sources, multiple devices, users, and networks.

[Image of the Shard courtesy of Colin on Wikipedia Commons.]

Small traders unready for General Data Protection Regulation

Posted on March 6, 2018 by - News

61K2eJ2l1TL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) research shows that over a third of small businesses have not yet started preparing for the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) while a further third are only in the early stages of preparations.

Only eight percent of small businesses have completed their preparations. In light of the findings, FSB is launching a GDPR awareness-raising campaign, dubbed ‘BeDataReady’ in the run-up to the 25 May deadline.

A sector breakdown shows that hospitality and arts & entertainment firms are the least prepared. Over half of respondents in these industries have not yet started preparing for the changes. Small businesses in the financial services sector are the most prepared with 82 percent of respondents had started or completed their GDPR preparations.

Mike Cherry, FSB National Chairman, said: “FSB is in a unique position to reach small businesses and so we’re going to step up efforts to help and support them get data ready while continuing to make sure the Government implements the regulation in the fairest way for small firms.

“The GDPR is the biggest shake-up in data protection to date, and many small businesses will be concerned that the changes will be too much to handle. It’s clear that a large part of the small business community is still unaware of the steps that they need to take to comply and may be left playing catch-up.”

The FSB campaign is being welcomed by UK Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham, who said: “Research suggests the SME sector is less prepared than others for the changes. We know that many small businesses are keen to get it right, but with so much misinformation out there it’s difficult for them to know what’s right and what’s not. It is therefore very welcome that FSB is running this campaign.”

Alcuin Capital Partners snags Apple reseller

Posted on March 6, 2018 by - News

800px_COLOURBOX2478178Apple reseller Jigsaw24 has been sold to private equity outfit Alcuin Capital Partners

The deal for the Nottingham-based firm, which generated revenue of £95.2 million in its last reported financial year, means that CEO Martin Balaam will leave the building with his belongings in an old photocopy box.  Gone also will be Jigsaw24’s previous private equity backers NorthEdge Capital, who invested in 2013.

Balaam said he has had no regrets and it has been an incredible five years and he sees big things coming from Apple’s creative technology as  ‘mobile first’ was now reality and businesses have digital transformation at the top of its strategies.

NorthEdge is not too fussed either.  It said it saw a three times return on its investment in Jigsaw24.

Jigsaw24 founder, and current managing director, Roger Whittle will step into Balaam’s shoes as CEO.

Whittle said: “With John Hughes as COO alongside myself, and some significant additions to our revitalised management team, we are excited about implementing our ambitious investment plans, as we work together in close partnership with Alcuin Capital, taking Jigsaw24 onto the next level together.

“Our close collaboration with Apple in the exciting and growing areas of enterprise, education and digital transformation allied to our strong momentum within the media and entertainment sector backed by an expanding services proposition give us great confidence in the future.”

 

Gelsinger keeps stumm about Dell takeover

Posted on March 6, 2018 by - News

Pat-Gelsinger-300x199For a bloke who might be set to take over Dell, VMware boss “Kicking” Pat Gelsinger is in no mood to talk about it.

When chatting on an earnings call, Gelsinger said he would not comment on “rumours” that VMware could acquire Dell in a reverse merger, after Dell confirmed in February that it was exploring various options.

However, analysts think the reverse merger idea is rather a good one, and the rumours are somewhat more than that.  Gelsinger is not exactly forthcoming and no one wants to get on the wrong side of his mighty boot.

VMware is doing quite well. For the three months ending 2 February, VMware saw revenue jump 14 percent year on year to $2.31 billion. GAAP losses were $440 million (compared with a GAAP profit of $441 million in 2016) as a result of a one-off $970 million tax bill.

Hybrid cloud and software-as-a-service accounted for eight per cent of VMware’s total revenue.

“We are very pleased with customer enthusiasm for our cloud strategy. We believe we have the world’s most complete and capable hybrid cloud architecture, uniquely offering customers freedom and control in their infrastructure decisions.

“We are also pleased with the traction the VMware Cloud Provider Programme continues to gain. The VMware Cloud Provider Programme achieved an annual revenue growth rate of over 30 per cent in the fiscal year 2018.

“We are also experiencing great global customer momentum with our VMware Cloud for IBM with customers such as Amdocs, Ricoh and Vodafone.”

Gelsinger also highlighted the future importance of VMware’s partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS), which recently launched in the US. The CEO said the service is set to launch in Europe next week.

“The VMware Cloud on AWS continues to get great resonance from our customers, and customers see this idea of the best of public and the best of private coming together as a very powerful force”, he said.

“In many cases, it’s this unique way for them to accelerate their move to the cloud without disrupting their applications – being able to do this in a seamless hybrid way to move into the public and back to the private cloud.

“From the business, as we said, it’s not material this year, and it’s starting to build up. We also see that, given it’s a subscription business, that will also delay the direct fiscal impact.”

Craig Booth moves to Acer

Posted on March 5, 2018 by - News

acer-aspire-switch-10Acer has appointed Craig Booth as its new UK boss taking over from Preben Fjeld aspired to switch to Lenovo.

Booth joined Acer UK in February last year as director of product marketing, having previously been Lenovo’s consumer head of business management.

An Acer spokesperson said: “Craig has contributed considerably to the stability of Acer business in the UK.

“We are all very pleased that he will now head up the company for 2018 and beyond.”

Acer said that in his new role, Booth will be responsible for “maintaining business momentum and growth across the whole of the UK and Ireland”.

 

Big clouds swamp smaller players

Posted on March 5, 2018 by - News

Every silver has a cloudy liningAmazon, Microsoft, IBM and Google are doing well as spending on cloud infrastructure services increases, but it looks like lesser players are not having such a good time.

According to figures from Synergy Research, spending on cloud infrastructure services in Q4 2017 jumped 46 percent from the final quarter of 2016, beating the growth rates achieved in the previous three quarters.

But all this was due to aggressive growth from Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Alibaba efficiently shutting out smaller cloud providers.

AWS is ranked first, followed by Microsoft, IBM, Google and then Alibaba. The next ten providers have a combined market share of less than 20 percent.

John Dinsdale, chief analyst and research director at Synergy Research Group, said as demand for cloud services blossoms, the leading cloud providers all had things to be pleased about and they are setting a fierce pace that most chasing companies cannot match.

“Smaller companies can still do well by focusing on specific applications, industry verticals or geographies, but overall this is a game that can only be played by companies with big ambitions, big wallets and a determined corporate focus”, he said.

Server market sales jump

Posted on March 5, 2018 by - News

David-Lee-Roth-JumpBeancounters at IDC have added up some numbers and divided them by their shoe size and worked out that the worldwide server market jumped 26.4 percent year over year to $20.7 billion during the fourth quarter of 2017.

Sanjay Medvitz, senior research analyst at IDC for servers and storage, wrote in the report that the top five market leaders in the market all saw double-digit revenue growth in the quarter compared with the same quarter in 2016.

“Hyper-scalers remained a central driver of volume demand in the fourth quarter with leaders such as Amazon, Facebook, and Google continuing their data center expansions and updates”, he said

Hewlett Packard Enterprise is the market leader with a share of  18.4 percent after shipping 480,000 units. It made $3.8 billion in sales, up 10 percent year over year. HPE saw its market share dip from 21.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2016 to 18.4 percent. HPE shipped the second-most number of total server units during the quarter with 480,000. HPE’s share and growth rate includes revenue from the New H3C Group joint venture in China, which began in May 2016.

Dell is the number two with a market share of 17.5 percent and 582,000 units shipped. This was 102,000 more than HPE, but the margins were not so good. Dell generated $3.6 billion in worldwide server sales during the quarter, up 40 percent year over year, compared with $2.58 billion in fourth-quarter 2016. IDC’s Medvitz said Dell is continuing its “robust growth” by capitalising on expanded opportunities from its $67 billion acquisition of EMC in 2016.

IBM is continuing to improve. With a market Share of 13 percent, it shipped 150,000 units. Total sales were $2.7 billion which was up 50 percent year over year. The outfits share increased from 11 percent in fourth quarter 2016 to 13 percent due to the $900,000 spike in server revenue year over year. However, IBM did not rank in IDC’s top six vendor list regarding the number of total server units shipped because it shipped less than 150,000 servers.

 

 

PCM’s sales and marketing director leaving

Posted on March 2, 2018 by - Moving People, News

extPCM’s sales and marketing director Lee Dutton is planning to clean out his desk and exit the building with his belongings in an old photocopy box.

He had only been in the company since October after he was poached from Misco.  He hired his old sales team  following Misco’s collapse into administration in November.

PCM has confirmed that Dutton is leaving, “but not immediately” and no one is saying why.

PCM is relocating its legacy Scottish office, which was on a temporary lease, following its acquisition last month of Scottish Cisco Gold partner Provista, whose Glasgow HQ is situated just 20 miles away.

It has been suggested that the outfit is cutting back despite it only launching in the UK last May. However this was denied by PCM’s UK boss Donavan Hutchinson.

“We’re constantly reviewing, as obviously we took on a tonne of sales staff [from Misco] all at once who were more product-focused and not solutions-focused, so have found it quite difficult. But everyone is doing well, and we are growing significantly, which will be shown in our financials when PCM in the US releases its financials”, he said.

PCM recently took on experienced industry head Jim Mooney to head up its solutions and services sales, and Hutchinson said he is in no hurry to appoint a replacement for Dutton. He will be running the sales division for the moment.

 

F-Secure’s EDR service goes channel only

Posted on March 2, 2018 by - News

525040-f-secure-safe-2017-androidF-Secure has made its managed endpoint detection and response (EDR) service only available through its partners.

The service was developed to combat the growing threat of so-called fileless cyber attacks that are often designed to evade traditional endpoint protection technologies.

This threat, which sees hackers target vulnerabilities in operating systems or legitimate applications, rather than installing malware on a target computer, is only going to get more severe, according to Ponemon, which has predicted 35% of attacks in 2018 will be fileless, up six percent compared to 2017.

-Secure partner BWG Informationssysteme MD Thomas Zeller said that companies were demanding managed services and advanced threat protection, requiring more human participation and expertise than is offered by standard security products.

“F-Secure offers us new managed service opportunities, and we have access to their threat analysts in case needed.”

F-Secure’s EDR service will allow partners to better protect their customer’s assets from a range of attacks, such as privilege escalation, admin credential theft, Powershell script attacks, lateral movement, phishing and ransomware, he said.

“Today’s stealthy, sophisticated attacks demand sophisticated approaches because mere endpoint protection is not enough anymore,” said Jyrki Tulokas, executive VP of cybersecurity products and services at F-Secure.

“At the same time, the critical shortage of skilled cybersecurity specialists puts midmarket companies at a disadvantage when it comes to hiring. The answer is to use cutting-edge artificial intelligence trained by F-Secure’s world-class threat analysts to detect advanced threats that have penetrated the network, and guide our partners on how to respond.”

Splunk swallows Phantom

Posted on March 2, 2018 by - News

Woodridge, IL, USA --- Great White Shark Opening Mouth --- Image by © Denis Scott/Corbis

Woodridge, IL, USA — Great White Shark Opening Mouth — Image by © Denis Scott/Corbis

Big Data outfit Splunk has bought cybersecurity specialist Phantom as part of its move to become an “analytics-driven security company”.

Splunk wrote a £254 million cheque for  Phantom, which focuses on security orchestration, automation and response (SOAR).

Its founder and CEO Oliver Friedrichs will stay on and report to Haiyan Song, Splunk’s general manager of security markets.

Friedrichs said that he and Sourabh Satish founded Phantom to give Security Operations Center analysts the edge over their adversaries, a way to automatically and quickly resolve threats.

“Combining SOAR with the industry’s leading big-data platform is a revolutionary advance for security and IT teams and will further cut down the time it takes them to eliminate threats and keep the business running. We are thrilled to empower Splunk customers to solve these important challenges.”

Splunk’s CEO Doug Merritt said: “Phantom’s employees and technology significantly expand and strengthen Splunk’s vision for the security nerve centre and business revolution through IT. Splunk is committed to continue pushing the limits of technology to help our customers get the answers they need from their data.”

Splunk has been building up its channel profile and pushed its “partner-first” policy.

Resellers flooded with optimism

Posted on March 1, 2018 by - News

3016188605_b86c94f3f2_bResellers are seeing their glasses half full and are expecting a year of growth according to a new Citrix report into the doings of Northern Europe suppliers.

According to Canalys CEO  Steve Brazier, things started to improve last October, and Citrix and Canalys decided to find more evidence that things were getting better.

Apparently, 59 percent of those respondents Canalys asked were expecting double-digit growth this year.

That growth was going to come from a selection of areas including security, cloud applications and infrastructure as a service. Slightly over a third of those quizzed in the survey revealed they had taken on extra staff to support the sale of subscription-based services.

Three quarters said that managed services would be ‘critical’ to their revenue this year with most recognising that the way to do it is by working with a public cloud provider or third-party data centre, rather than trying to do that themselves.

Citrix Northern Europe partner director Justin Sutton-Parker said businesses were embracing significant change to remain competitive. There were new, disruptive players entering markets, armed with best-of-breed cloud software and the incoming GDPR legislation, some factors are forcing significant numbers of organisations to evaluate their IT infrastructure and business models.

“These industry changes appear to be encouraging increased dependence on the channel, with end-user customers relying on partners’ knowledge and expertise – especially about cloud deployments. Alongside this, new technologies – such as analytics and artificial intelligence – are also set to play a more significant role for channel partners this year, as organisations seek to improve operational efficiencies and take their end-user customer experience to the next level,” he said.

Alastair Edwards, chief analyst at Canalys, picked up on that complexity theme and said that customers were looking for support from resellers.

“As end-users adopt these complex technologies, the need for a highly-skilled, consultancy-led channel becomes even more critical. The challenge facing the channel is a shortage of critical skills, both from a technology and a business advisory point of view. Vendors that succeed will be those that enable their partners with the resources and support to capitalise on these massive emerging opportunities”, he said.

Exertis lets its Cat phones out of bag

Posted on March 1, 2018 by - News

$_3Mobile and retail B2B outfit Exertis has announced a distribution agreement with Bullitt for the CAT phones range of rugged smart and mobile phones.

The CAT brand provides robust equipment often deployed in harsh environments, and these features are equally applicable to their mobile devices.

Rik Hubbard, Exertis mobile commercial and services director, said: “By their very nature, certain vertical markets such as the military, blue light services, manufacturing and construction require more durability and reliability for their mobile devices. Phones, with their smaller form factor, are more suitable for some workers operating in hazardous areas. The CAT brand is associated with resilience and robustness, and these devices offer a great solution at affordable prices for our resellers that sell into industrial and public-sector markets.”

Exertis will be supplying the Cat S31, Cat S41, Cat S30 and Cat S60 smartphones and the Cat B25 and Cat B30 mobile phones.

Cat phones are drop tested onto concrete from up to 6ft to prove their rugged credentials, can function in extreme temperatures (from -25C up to 55C) and have reliable battery power. Some models are waterproof, dustproof and shockproof to IP68 certification with MIL-STD-810G compliancy. The Cat S60 is the first smartphone offering integrated thermal imaging technology. The firm didn’t say how they would fare in a large vodka and tonic.

Ross Jeffries, Sales Director at Bullitt Group, global mobile device licensee for Caterpillar, said “Exertis has been educating resellers in the opportunities in the rugged market which continues to grow. Their pedigree in providing mobile solutions in the B2B sector make them an ideal choice to distribute our range of devices and broaden our breadth of customers. We look forward to working together and meeting with customers at their Plug into Exertis event in April.”