Category: News

Vendor job kill continues

Posted on January 23, 2023 by - News

Never mind any skills gap, Vendors are firing staff who they may never see again to make a short-term cut in costs.

Google handed six per cent of its global workforce pink slips apparently to refocus on its priorities, including AI.

CEO Sundar Pichai said: “We’ve decided to reduce our workforce by approximately 12,000 roles. We’ve already sent a separate email to employees in the US who are affected. In other countries, this process will take longer due to local laws and practices.”

Pichai said the company will be reviewing its current operations in order to make the most of its early investments in AI.

Consumer market hit by huge debt load

Posted on January 23, 2023 by - News

Retail sales fell by a per cent in December as shoppers cut back on spending as a result of increased prices and affordability concerns.

It’s evident that rising costs are taking their toll on UK consumers, as a recent report by NerdWallet discovered that almost half of Brits admit to currently being in debt, with the cost of the living crisis being the biggest concern for 44 per cent of consumers.

A further 39 per cent of consumers currently in debt are most concerned about paying for energy bills, and 26 per cent worried about their general financial situation.

Node4 appoints Former Accenture as MD

Posted on January 20, 2023 by - News

Cloudy outfit Node4 announced that Hannah Birch had joined the company as its new managing director of digital and group board member.

Her brief includes managing the MSP’s digital business and strengthening its strategic relationship with Microsoft, leveraging Node4’s recent investments.

Node4 founder and CEO, Andrew Gilbert said: ​​”Birch understands how to drive transformational growth strategies, creating deeper value-based relationships with clients. ”

Canon sets up more partner business centres

Posted on January 20, 2023 by - News

Canon is building up its network of Business Centres with its top partners to increase the support it can offer customers.

The latest Canon Business Centres (CBCs) have been set up with Platinum Partners SOS Systems in Crawley, West Sussex, and Cantec Group in Munster, Ireland.

Canon director of B2B indirect sales Stuart Miller said the company had long-standing relationships with the partners involved in the openings.

“Cantec and SOS are two trusted partners we have been working alongside for many years and share many of the same values, including an ambition to deliver the best customer service and innovation to our customers,” he said.

“By partnering together to create these two new CBCs, we hope to deliver even stronger support to local businesses, offering award-winning solutions which will help them to grow in these challenging times,” he added.

The Canon Business Centre concept combes the expertise of a local reseller with access to the vendor’s portfolio of products and services. The model has been used elsewhere across Europe, with a network of more than 130 in operation.

 

IT budgets will fall claims Gartner

Posted on January 19, 2023 by - News

Analyst outfit Gartner thinks 2023 global IT spending will be worse than expected as inflation continues to erode consumer purchasing power and shrink device budgets.

Big G expects $4.5 trillion to be spent this year, an increase of 2.4 per cent from 2022 but a dip from the previous quarter’s forecast of 5.1 per cent growth.

Software is projected to grow 9.3 per cent and IT services will grow 5.5 per cent in 2023, , according to Gartner.

The devices segment is expected to decline 5.1 per cent this year as consumers and enterprises lengthen device refresh cycles.

Midwich Group reports record results

Posted on January 19, 2023 by - News

Distributor Midwich Group has reported solid end to last year with record results in its latest trading update for the year ended 31 December 2022.

The outfit expects record revenues for FY22 of £1.2 billion, climbing 40 per cent over the previous year.

The board of the LSE-listed company now anticipates reporting adjusted profit before tax for the 2022 period “comfortably” ahead of market consensus.

Adjusted net debt at the end of the year was under £100m (representing approximately 1.7 times adjusted EBITDA), in line with the board’s expectations. Cash generation was between 50 per cent and 60 per cent, which was also in line with the board’s expectations given the group’s strong revenue growth.

ServiceNow throws money at partner programme

Posted on January 19, 2023 by - News

ServiceNow has made changes to its partner programme to support the $500 billion market opportunity for its Now Platform and associated partner services.

Among the changes is new Partner Development Fund, among other incentives and benefits.

ServiceNow’s partner ecosystem is critical to helping joint customers realise the value of the Now Platform. ServiceNow invests in new initiatives to facilitate and expand partners’ expertise, differentiate their skills, and maximise their unique contributions.

Company senior vice president Erica Volini said that ServiceNow partners should be treated as co-creators of value, and as co-pilots on our journey to becoming the platform for digital business.

ANS snaps up covid blighted Preact

Posted on January 18, 2023 by - News

ANS has acquired the Covid damaged Microsoft partner Preact, according to a Statement of Proposals filed this week on Companies House.

Preact called in insolvency practitioner FTS Recovery on 1 December, the long-established Microsoft Gold partner employed around 60 staff in the UK and India.  The company had been doing well until Covid hit.

HMRC had threatened to wind up the Maidenhead-based outfit when it could not meet a  £300,000 tax bill on 30 November.

Businesses think their website is costing them business

Posted on January 18, 2023 by - News

A quarter of companies believe that their website might be costing them business, according to a new report conducted by Danebury Research.

The report, which Umbraco paid for, found more than half of survey participants said they need to extend website functionality by connecting to new technologies that enable analytics, personalisation and transactions. Almost a third report that their companies are paying for CMS features that will never be used.

SMBs are much more aware of cyber threats

Posted on January 18, 2023 by - News

A report from security outfit Datto shows that SMBs are aware of increasing cyber threats, allocating resources, and investing in network and cloud security.

Datto’s  2022 State of Ransomware report surveyed nearly 3,000 IT professionals in small to medium-sized businesses across eight countries (the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore).

The report said that about a fifth of the IT budget is dedicated to security, and many are seeing increased budgets, with 47 per cent of SMBs planning to invest in network security in the next year.

Great resignation causes channel problems

Posted on January 18, 2023 by - News

The channel is finding it challenging to keep new staff and find new talent during the ‘The Great Resignation,’ according to a new report from global channel services provider Agilitas IT Solutions.

For those who came in late, the great resignation is caused by workers suddenly deciding there is more to life than a long commute to attend long and dull meetings with management about moving cheese, kicking the ball running or working out how Atilla the Hun would have flogged computer services.

Two ex-Softcats looking for channel partners for Arco Cyber

Posted on January 17, 2023 by - News

Two former Softcat executives are scouting for channel partners for a new cybersecurity company, Arco Cyber.

Matthew Helling and Adam Louca left Softcat at the end of last year with the idea of setting up a company which plugged a hole in the security market.

Arco Cyber helps companies understand security risks as punters often could not quantify the risk to their organisation and how they were going to mitigate against it.

This meant that organisations were confused about directions they should investing their capital and how to get the most from the money they’re putting into the platforms that they’re buying.

Arco built a data-led insights platform for organisation which takes feeds from a wide range of customers. Then it takes data and information from existing controls in organisations to understand the efficiency of those control sets.

TD SYNNEX slashes out helping partners sell HCI

Posted on January 17, 2023 by - News

TD SYNNEX has announced a series of investments to help partners flogging Nutanix DX hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) solutions.

TD SYNNEX Matt Child said that HCI market will grow at a CAGR of 24.9 per cent and will reach $32.19 billion by 2028.

“HCI can massively escalate the productivity, efficiency and cost benefits of digital transformation. It is one of our big bets for 2023 and a huge opportunity for partners to add value for their enterprise customers by optimising and orchestrating all their resources across the public and private cloud and on-premises,” he said.

Channel marketers starting to team up

Posted on January 16, 2023 by - News

Channel marketers are forming more partnerships and knowledge sharing according to a report from Coterie Community.

Apparently collaboration and knowledge sharing are seen as some of the best ways to help share best practice and help those responsible for marketing have confidence that they are taking the right approach, the report said.

Coterie Community asked its marketers from various channel organisations to reveal the stand-out areas for 2023. It found that, along with building resilience into ecosystems, sustainability and everything as a service (XaaS) were other areas causing concern.