Category: News

Job cuts do not mean that tech is in bovver

Posted on January 6, 2023 by - News

After all the job cuts announced in the last couple of weeks, one could be forgiven for thinking the industry is trouble, but cloudy DoiT International Chief People Officer Kristen Tronsky  (pictured) thinks there is still room for growth this year.

For those who came in late, after cutting around 20,000 jobs in 2022, this week Amazon announced further layoffs, set to affect over 18,000 more staff. Salesforce revealed upcoming plans to let go of up to 10 per cent of its workforce, after Meta, Twitter, Microsoft and several other big tech names have also announced job cuts.

Tronsky believes there is still potential and opportunity for tech employees, despite the string of big-tech layoff announcements recently. Many innovative tech businesses are still on a solid growth path.

Big tech traffic tax could create traffic jam

Posted on January 5, 2023 by - News

A European Community cunning plan which would make tech giants contribute to the cost of telecommunications infrastructure is finding a lot of opposition from internet exchange bodies and net neutrality advocates.

The European Union wants Big Tech firms to pay for telecom operators’ network costs. However, the European Internet Exchange Association (Euro-IX) claims the move could lead to systemic weakness in critical infrastructure and a “traffic jam”.

Euro-IX was established in June 2001 to grow, bolster and enhance the IXP community. It has 69 IXPs as members from different parts of the globe.

Europe’s digital chief Margrethe Vestager said in May that tech giants should be required to contribute to the cost of telecommunications infrastructure, something that telecoms operators have been lobbying for a long time.

TD SYNNEX gives partners anti-fraud detection

Posted on January 5, 2023 by - News

TD SYNNEX has launched a new pre-configured anti-fraud solution that enables cloud partners to detect, prevent and remediate against potential attacks, particularly Microsoft Azure small business customers.

Small businesses that do not have their own IT team or cybersecurity team can be especially vulnerable to crypto mining attacks, where criminals hijack cloud accounts to spin up servers that they then use to produce cryptocurrencies.

The TD SYNNEX SMB Fraud Defender has been developed to help businesses increase the security posture of their cloud environment and thus reduce the risk of them falling foul of this practice and other fraudulent activities.

TD SYNNEX UK Microsoft business unit manager Darren Dixon said: “Cybercrime is globally impacting organisations regardless of industry or company size, with spearfishing being one of the most common techniques being used to gain initial organisational access.

Nokia has new European head

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

The former rubber boot maker Nokia announced that Rolf Werner has joined the company as the Senior Vice President of its European region,

Werner joined Nokia from Cognizant Technology Solutions, where he was the CEO of Germany, with responsibility for the DACH region. DACH is a top three region for Cognizant Technology, and under his leadership, the company delivered double-digit growth for the region, including the acquisition of ESG Mobility.

During his career, Werner has held senior positions at Fujitsu, Global Logic, and T-Systems, where he led the turnaround of T-Systems’ French organisation across the whole organisational framework.

Heading Nokia’s Europe Region, Werner will help drive Nokia’s already significant growth and market share. The company hopes Werner will improve relationships with key European customers and support the company’s growth ambitions into new market segments.

ANS Group completes Preact acquistion

Posted on January 4, 2023 by - News

Cloudy ANS Group has completed its acquisition of Microsoft partner Preact.

Maidenhead-based, Preact enables SMBs and charities to grow more with Dynamics 365 and CRM solutions built on the Microsoft Power Platform.

Preact has more than 4,000 customers across public and private sectors and a team of more than 800 digital transformation staff.

ANS said adding the Microsoft Gold partner would make it the “best-resourced” provider in the Microsoft Business Applications community.

Atos has another offer for Evidian

Posted on January 4, 2023 by - News

Hacker typing on a laptop

IT services giant Atos share price shot up after there were rumours that Airbus was snuffling around looking to buy its cybersecurity unit.

The group is reportedly in preliminary talks with Airbus to take a minority take in its Evidian business.

For those who came in late, Evidian is Atos’ Identity and Access Management software suite.

Last year the group announced plans to split into two publicly listed companies by spinning off its cybersecurity business under Evidian.

Atos shares picked up seven per cent following the report.

Microsoft says NCE, NCE, baby but the channel is unimpressed

Posted on December 22, 2022 by - News

Software King of the World Microsoft will end partner incentives using its old method way of transacting licences and services from the vendor.

Incentives for these SKUs will end 31 December and Vole has told partners they can only earn incentives through the controversial New Commerce Experience (NCE).

NCE is as popular as the Boston Strangler with the channel because of the 20 percent premium put on month-to-month subscriptions, which are popular with customers of Microsoft services-led partners. This means that customers are incentivised to buy annual subscriptions which could put the channel on the hook for paying the subscription duration should a customer go out of business, get acquired or need fewer licences.

Europe investigates Broadcom’s VMware deal

Posted on December 22, 2022 by - News

The European Commission is concerned enough about Broadcom’s $61 billion purchase of VMware to investigate further.

Apparently, the commission is concerned that Broadcom will have such monopoly power after the deal it could turn off rivals’ access to virtualisation.

Margrethe Vestager, European Commission executive vice president in charge of competition policy said that after the merger, Broadcom could prevent its hardware rivals to interoperate with VMware’s server virtualisation software.

“This would lead to higher prices, lower quality and less innovation for customers and consumers.”

In a statement issued through a spokesperson, Broadcom said it was confident that regulators will conclude the deal will “accelerate innovation and expand choice.”

The company said it expects the deal to close before Nov. 1, 2023.

 

Microsoft rolls out new data boundary plan

Posted on December 21, 2022 by - News

Software King of the World Microsoft will begin rolling out the first phase of its European Union data boundary plan on January 1, 2023.

The company said the plan will allow customers to store and process their customer data within the EU. The move comes two days after the EU commission said it had officially begun approving the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.

The changes mean that companies that use Microsoft products and services can store and process their customer data within the EU. Microsoft has included Azure, Power BI, Dynamics 365 and Office 365 under the first phase.

Global cybersecurity market grows

Posted on December 21, 2022 by - News

The global cybersecurity market grew 15.9 percent during the third quarter of 2022 despite the economy being rubbish.

Research from channel analyst Canalys found the industry earned $17.8 billion with Palo Alto Networks was the number one vendor in the quarter. The vendor grew by 24.9 percent year on year and increased its market share to 8.4 percent, up from 7.8 percent in Q3 2021.

Cisco closely followed with growth of 16.7 percent and a flat market share of 6.9 percent.

Fortinet placed third, climbing 29.9 percent to reach a 6.7 percent market share, up from six percent a year ago. 

Retail media advert channel exploding

Posted on December 20, 2022 by - News

Retail media ad spending will hit €25 billion in Europe by 2026, according to IAB Europe forecasts.

According to its report, in collaboration with Xandr, retail media can no longer be described as “an emerging channel” given the Covid-19 pandemic “fundamentally changed” consumer shopping habits. For example, now three-quarters of shoppers in Europe go online.

This forecast and study come as Channel 4 and ITV have inked deals with Sainsbury’s Nectar 360 and Tesco’s Dunnhumby respectively to match broadcaster viewing data with first-party retail media datasets.

Wavemaker global ecommerce lead Mudit Jaju described the retail media market worldwide as going through a “massive explosion in every way” with the number and variety of offerings in retail media “exploding”, with ensuing high volatility, inflation and opportunity in The Media Leader Podcast.

Luton goes full fibre

Posted on December 20, 2022 by - News

CityFibre has put the finishing touches to its plans to network in Luton and Dunstable investing more than £45 million to make them two of the world’s best digitally connected communities.

This latest milestone sees thousands of homes in Luton, where the network rollout started, gain access to the best available digital connectivity. This includes premises in Stopsley, Wigmore, Round Green and Crawley, where residents can access broadband services from UK launch partner Vodafone, on selected Vodafone Pro Broadband, as well as a wide range of other internet service providers including Giganet, Air Broadband, Zybre, Yazi, No-one, IDNet, A&A, Octaplus, Link Broadband and Facto.

French Atos carves up UK defence contract

Posted on December 19, 2022 by - News

French services giant Atos has won a new contract with the Ministry of Defence (MoD).

The outfit will provide support for the MoD  CORTISONE programme which focuses on the transformation of Defence Medical Services delivery within the UK’s Defence services.

It aims to improve patient outcomes while maximising resource efficiency and the number of service personnel fit for the role.

Atos said it is working in partnership with the MoD to transform healthcare information systems to support evidence-based patient-centric healthcare for the UK armed forces.

Zero Trust is getting on a bit

Posted on December 19, 2022 by - News

Cyber security vendor Illumio says that 2022 was the year that zero trust “matured”. Whatever that means.

According to Illumio, channel partners and customers have embraced the concept and the levels of activity around tools and solutions in that category have increased over 2022.

Illumio senior director, channel and alliances EMEA Scott Walker said there had been a huge uptick in a number of key areas of both an understanding of what zero trust really means and, more importantly, how that translates into the problems it solves for businesses.

Rubrik appoints Microsoft top cat to board

Posted on December 19, 2022 by - Moving People, News

Insecurity experts Rubrik have  appointed former Microsoft chairman and Symantec CEO John Thompson as its lead independent director.

Thompson brings more than 40 years of leadership experience in the technology industry. His claim to fame is that he succeeded Sir William Gates III as chairman of Microsoft’s board and now serves as its lead independent director.

Previously, Thompson was the chairman and CEO of Symantec and currently serves as the chairman of Illumina’s board.

Rubrik co-founder and CEO, Bipul Sinha said that his outfit had built an elite leadership team of cybersecurity experts across public and private sectors to better equip our customers in the ongoing battle against data threats such as ransomware.

“Thompson is a cybersecurity pioneer. His proven leadership and experience building iconic companies will help us continue to deliver data security innovations and define the future of cybersecurity.”