Category: News

Apple finally purges Intel from its Mac Pro

Posted on June 6, 2023 by - News

Fruity cargo cult Apple has purged Intel chips from its Mac Pro PC and has the whole lot running on its homemade silicon.

Apple began replacing Intel CPUs in its Mac lineup in 2020 with custom Arm-based chips designed in-house. Three years later, the company’s entire lineup of Macs is powered by homegrown M-series chips, including its MacBook Pros, MacBook Airs, iMacs and Mac Minis.

With its higher spec and “cheese grater” design, the flagship Mac Pro could not use Apple silicon and had to stick to more traditional Intel hardware.

At its WWDC 2023 event client device giant said it had come up with the M2 Ultra, which combines two M2 Max chips on a single die to deliver double-digit performance boosts over the M1 Ultra.

Iomart swallows Extrinsica

Posted on June 6, 2023 by - News

Cloudy vendor Iomart Group is acquiring Microsoft Azure cloud solutions provider Extrinsica for £4 million.

This move will give the Glasgow-based Iomart a team of 33 based in the UK, customer references, and UK growth plan.

Extrinsica CEO Simon Smith will continue to lead the business as CEO.

“Joining Iomart marks an exciting phase for our highly skilled, experienced and ambitious team, providing us with a strengthened platform for growth. It allows us to use joint capabilities, capitalise on our understanding of the markets we operate in and build upon our significant achievements.

Dell takes a hit in its PC unit and the infrastructure business

Posted on June 6, 2023 by - News

Michael DellDell Technologies’ revenues took a 20 per cent hit due to poor performance in its commercial PC unit and the infrastructure business.

The grey box shifter said that its first quarter 2024 revenue came in at $20.9 billion which is $700 million more than the $20.2 billion Wall Street expected – but $5.19 billion off the same timeframe last year.

Dell’s co-COO Chuck Whitten told investors that demand remained challenged, and customers are staying cautious and deliberate across their IT spending.

“We continue to see softness across our major lines of business, all regions, all customer sizes, and most verticals,” he said.

The vendor’s commercial business was down 23 per cent, which Whitten said is now the fifth quarter of soft demand in the PC market.

Amazon Web Services loses Chris Vonderhaar

Posted on June 5, 2023 by - Moving People, News

Amazon Web Services has lost its top cloudy executive Chris Vonderhaar who was the bloke who planned, designed and constructed AWS’ data centres.

For those who came in late, AWS datacentres power the $85bn cloud company’s infrastructure and cloud services.

Vonderhaar had been with the company for nearly 13 years in top cloud infrastructure roles and it is unclear why he has left. In 2021, it was thought that Vonderhaar would be a successor to former AWS CEO Andy Jassy, recently promoted to CEO of Amazon.

In addition to leading the Amazon subsidiary’s datacentre global strategy, Vonderhaar was responsible for business development and procurement of utility connections, the AWS renewable energy portfolio, and AWS sustainability teams and business, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Salesforce revenue increases 11 per cent

Posted on June 5, 2023 by - News

Salesforce logoSalesforce revenue increased 11 per cent at the end of the first fiscal quarter of 2024, reaching $8.25 billion.

Subscription and support revenues made up $7.64 billion — up 11 per cent year on year. Professional services and other revenues were $0.61 billion, an increase of nine per cent yearly.

Results also reported a first-quarter GAAP operating margin of five per cent and a non-GAAP operating margin of 27.6 per cent.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said Salesforce significantly exceeded its non-GAAP margin target for the quarter – up 1,000 basis points year-over-year, and we are raising our FY24 non-GAAP operating margin guidance to a 550 basis point increase year-over-year.

Unified threat management spend grows says Juniper

Posted on June 5, 2023 by - News

A new study from Juniper Research has found that enterprises’ spending on unified threat management will increase by 98 per cent between 2023 and 2028 globally, from $7.5 billion in 2023.

The report said that growing enterprise cloud adoption, IoT devices and AI were making life more complex making threat management necessary for enterprises to stay secure.

The report said that means that there will be increasing levels of investment by enterprises as they acknowledge the expanding threat landscape.

Unified threat management is an approach to information security where a single hardware or software installation provides multiple security functions. This contrasts with the traditional method of having point solutions for each security function and simplifies protection.

Crowdstrike thanks AI for good results

Posted on June 2, 2023 by - News

CrowdStrike has been thanking artificial intelligence for its improved security outcomes in its first quarter fiscal year 2024 financial results, which ended April 30, 2023.

Total revenues reached $692.6 million, a 42 per cent spike, compared to $487.8 million in the first quarter of fiscal 2023. Subscription revenue increased by 42 per cent to $651.2 million.

Professional services revenue reached $41.4 million, setting a new record for the 11th consecutive quarter and representing 48 per cent year-over-year growth.

During the quarter, CrowdStrike also saw strength in Europe, the Middle East, and Japan, with international revenue growing 53 per cent yearly.

Arrow Electronics signs UK distribution agreement with TBSC

Posted on June 2, 2023 by - News

Arrow Electronics signs UK agreement with The Business Software Centre for Microsoft 365 optimisation to deliver its Smarter SaaS for Microsoft 365 application via the ArrowSphere platform.

Smarter SaaS for M365 is designed to make using  Microsoft licenses more efficient for large organisations with many users.

The pay-as-you-go solution is an automated, cloud-based Software Asset Management solution that enables businesses to recognise and manage key factors for optimisation.

SMEs will invest in technology whatever the cost

Posted on June 1, 2023 by - News

New research commissioned by Sharp claims, SMEs will continue to invest in technology, despite serious concerns over rising costs.

The research surveyed 5,770 SMEs across Europe, including 502 in the UK, the most significant area of investment focused on IT security, hardware upgrades and server updates for the next 12 months.

Looking at investment levels, more than half UK SMEs plan to invest over £20,000 in IT this year, with five per cent expecting to invest north of £100,000.

Businesses said they intended to invest in new hardware (33 per cent) and server upgrades (28 per cent) throughout 2023. This is in addition to security and business continuity (34 per cent) which were also highlighted as key areas for investment, Sharp said.

Cloud migration was a lower priority for UK businesses with only 21 per cent interested.  In Europe a third of firms planned to embark on cloud migration projects as they continue to deal with the challenges of hybrid working.

Barracuda’s email system exploited for seven months

Posted on June 1, 2023 by - News

Barracuda Networks has disclosed that a zero-day vulnerability in its Email Security Gateway (ESG) appliances had been exploited for at least seven months.

According to Barracuda’s investigators, the vulnerability CVE-2023-2868 was first exploited in October 2022 to introduce backdoors into some ESG appliances, allowing attackers to gain continued access to the devices. Barracuda’s investigations discovered that information had been stolen from some of the compromised appliances.

The security flaw was not spotted until 19 May, when suspicious traffic emanated from some ESG appliances. Cybersecurity firm Mandiant helped find the vulnerability and all ESG appliances were patched on 20th May, with attackers’ access to the compromised devices blocked on 21 May.

NHS shared information with Facebook

Posted on May 31, 2023 by - News

Up to 20 NHS trusts have shared patients’ private medical information with Facebook through a hidden tracking tool on their websites.

The Observer found that data was collected from individuals who accessed NHS webpages related to HIV, gender identity services, self-harm, sexual health, children’s treatment, cancer and more.

The websites of 20 NHS trusts were found to be using the Meta Pixel tracking tool, which gathered browsing information and shared it with the social networking site.

That is despite the trusts promising not to collect that information without obtaining proper consent from the individuals involved.

Bankers headed towards a fight with Big Tech

Posted on May 31, 2023 by - News

Bankers and financial institutions are headed towards a fight with an increasingly powerful Big Tech, according to global thought leader Emmanuel Daniel.

Daniel says the technological surge towards artificial intelligence, machine learning, neural networks, chip technology, and quantum computing is reshaping the understanding of centralised control.  The change gives Big Tech quasi-governmental powers.

“Another factor driving the rise of personalisation and the pushback against platforms is the pushback against technology companies becoming ‘governments’ in their own right. Platform owners regulate who has access to their platforms and what they can say or do on them – and, to some extent, wield powers that even governments do not have. As a result, users are migrating to models which favour direct, peer-to-peer action over centralised control.”

If Daniel’s new book, “The Great Transition: The Personalisation of Finance is Here” is correct, then the concept of governments controlling the finance industry might be a thing of the past, although we don’t expect anyone to go down without a fight.

Customers looking for a phone upgrade

Posted on May 30, 2023 by - News

BT Wholesale says its customers want to upgrade their telephony systems, and many are happy to work with their existing channel partners to make it happen.

The company said that the end of the public switched telephone network (PSTN) happening in December 2025, companies are questioning their telephony strategy.

In a report, BT Wholesale wanted to find out what that meant for channel partners and went out to ask customers how they were feeling. It found that 70 percent of businesses are looking to invest in mobile connectivity this year – and many are also likely to do that with their existing partner relationships, with 88 per cent of those quizzed satisfied with their technology provider.

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Nvidia gets enthused about AI

Posted on May 30, 2023 by - News

Nvidia supreme leader Jensen Huang unveiled a raft of new AI-related products and claimed the world was at a tipping point for this sort of thing.

The US outfit, which has been making a fortune out of the artificial intelligence boom, saw its value surge to nearly $1 trillion last week, after the company announced better-than-expected results.

Nvidia chips are a central ingredient to the generative AI revolution, capable of delivering the computing heft needed to churn out complex content in just seconds from data centres worldwide.

Sectigo appoints Aura’s Bray as VP

Posted on May 29, 2023 by - News

Certificate management outfit Sectigo has named Christopher Bray as its new senior vice president of partner and eCommerce sales.

Bray will be responsible for market strategy, sales and marketing operations, and sales execution for the vendor’s partner and eCommerce businesses.

He brings nearly two decades of experience in the security software space and B2B, B2C, and B2B2C channel and SaaS security software businesses.

Bray joins from security vendor Aura where he has spent the last three years as its chief revenue officer.