MSP says it has up to £100 million to spend on M&A after securing the cash from a syndicate of banks.
The loan, which was raised through a syndicate of four banks, will give Redcentric £80m in committed funds as well as an additional £20m “should we need it”.
Bolt-on acquisitions for specific capabilities will continue to be sought, but Redcentric also said that it is looking for acquisitions to add scale to the business.
MSP SysGroup has snapped up Orchard Computers.
Bristol-based Orchard is a Microsoft, HP and Dell partner and was founded in 1990 by managing director Ian Terry. It flogs systems and infrastructure services, private cloud, backup and disaster recovery and communications services.
Just over a quarter of ransomware victims that paid off their attackers did so even though they did not need to, according to the latest annual State of Ransomware report from Sophos.
The study of more than 5,000 organisations found that the volume and impact of ransomware attacks continued on a relentless upward trajectory last year, with 66 percent of organisations hit by ransomware attacks in 2021, up from 37 percent in 2020.
Sophos found the average pay-out grew by nearly five times to $812,360 (£646,709), and the proportion of organisations paying over a million dollars to get their data back grew from four per cent in 2020 to 11 percent in 2021. Sophos said 46 percent of victims paid some kind of ransom and but 26 percent paid even if they had the means to restore encrypted data.
Computacenter said it will become carbon net-zero by 2040 if any of us are still alive to remember its pledge.
The Hatfield-based firm says that it now aims to be carbon neutral for Scope 1 and 2 emissions in 2022, five years ahead of its previous target.
Scope 1 and 2 emissions refer to direct emissions from facilities as well as indirect emissions such as electricity consumption.
Computacenter has also brought forward its carbon net zero commitment, which includes Scope 3 emissions, by 10 years to 2040. Scope 3 includes indirect emissions such as business travel and transport as well as emissions stemming from supply chains and the products from technology partners.
Beancounters at Forrester found that post-Brexit regulatory red tape prevents UK-based cities from being ranked as a top skill cluster in Europe.
The top 10 metropolitan areas with the best skills and talent clusters across Europe are Helsinki, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Berlin, Hamburg, Oslo, Munich, Vienna, Zurich, and Amsterdam.
Forrester said that these metropolitan areas are globally integrated, home to innovative businesses, and have a digitally advanced infrastructure to attract and accommodate the concentration of skills and talents of the future.
However, London, which is often known as Europe’s tech hub, was ranked 19th due to stringent immigration rules post-Brexit. Forrester noted that post-Brexit, the labour movement in the UK is restricted, resulting in London, Manchester, and Birmingham sliding in rankings.
Cloud software player Unit4 said that professional services specialists across Europe are experiencing lower growth due to a skills gap and dealing with legacy systems.
The Professional report services in Europe: a benchmark for 2022, commissioned by Unit4 and undertaken by PAC, examined a range of professional service markets, including those delivering IT support, and found optimism thanks to increased customer demand.
The report said that things could be even better if talent was easier to find and if dealing with legacy IT systems, often a consequence of consolidation, was not holding back more innovation.
That skills problem will only worsen, with the research revealing that 81 percent of professional services firms plan to increase their head counts to support growth.
AWS is launching a billion dollar investment programme to support partners in customer fulfilment, logistics, and the supply chain.
Dubbed the Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund (AIIF), the programme will invest in those that increase delivery speed and further improve employees’ experience working in the warehousing and logistics fields.
Initially, AWS will focus on wearable technology enhancing safety in fulfilment buildings and robotics designed to complement and coexist with people’s lives.
Outfits which look likely to collect are Modjoul, Vimaan, Agility Robotics, BionicHIVE and Mantis Robotics.
SAP has announced €7.077 billion in first-quarter revenue, up 11 percent from last year.
The outfit which makes management software which no one is quite sure what it does says its Cloud revenue was €2.820 billion, up 31 percent, and nearly 40 percent of the supplier’s overall sales.
The war in Ukraine has had a negative impact on the supplier’s revenue and could result in €300 million in losses during the year.
Its CEO, Christian Klein, put out a statement on 2 March, Standing in solidarity, which expressed support for western government economic sanctions against Russia and announced a battery of humanitarian aid efforts, including the opening up of SAP offices as a shelter for refugees. The statement also announced the stoppage of operations in Russia, and was updated, on 9 March, with an announcement of the suspension of sales in Russia and its ally Belarus.
Technology To Go (TTG) has partnered with Datagate to offer fully supported one-stop telecoms services that integrate with Xero, ConnectWise, Datto Autotask PSA system and other software popular with Managed Service Providers (MSPs).
For those not in the know, Datagate is a new ‘telecoms in a box’ service that enables MSPs to start selling telecoms services quickly and easily.
The partnership aims to remove the barriers faced by MSPs in the UK and Ireland who want to sell telecommunications services.
David Tulip, Managing Director, Technology To Go said: “Telecoms in a box’ is a complete solution designed to remove the barriers that MSPs in the UK typically face when selling telecommunications services. Billing is automatic and MSPs no longer need any special knowledge to get started. We manage the implementation for them and provide full ongoing support.”
Asda has chosen Workday for its internal people management and will keep an eye on its 140,000 global employees.
The software company was chosen as part of the supermarket’s ongoing digital transformation, as it works to separate its systems from Walmart’s after being bought by the Issa brothers in 2020.
The Workday systems used by Asda will include Workday Human Capital Management, Workday Absence Management, Workday Benefits, Workday Compensation, Workday Learning, Workday Prism Analytics and Workday Recruiting.
Asda chief people officer Hayley Tatum said: “Workday will provide employees with the tools to learn and develop new skills relevant to their roles while helping us to sharpen team and business performance. Workday’s agile technology architecture means that we’ll be able to take on tomorrow’s challenges, helping to ensure that our colleagues have the support they need.”
It’s M&A time yet again! Equity outfit Partners Group has announced it will acquire IT services and solutions provider Version 1.
Version 1 is currently owned by Volpi Capital and by management – the transaction by Partners Group is expected to be complete by mid-2022.
Headquartered in Dublin, Version 1 works with private and public sector clients on digital transformation programs.
It employs over 2,100 staff and has offices in Ireland, the UK, India and Spain.
Juniper Research has added up some numbers and reached the conclusion that companies are spending fortunes on tech compliance software.
Juniper said integrating tech with banking-as-a-service (BaaS) models will see spending increase significantly. Already non-banking businesses such as retailers, e-commerce companies and distributors are offering their customers financial products and are taking up BaaS offerings.
Juniper said BaaS models include outsourcing regtech services such as digital onboarding, and it found that 26 percent of digital onboarding processes in the banking market will use artificial intelligence (AI) systems by 2026, compared with just eight percent in 2022.
Juniper research author Harshada Thok said: “While the current benefits of AI are clear to regtech vendors, the immediate focus must be on ensuring the algorithms are fed the most relevant data to maximise their efficiency in verifying digital identities and future use cases. In turn, this will provide a differentiation point for regtech vendors in an increasingly competitive market.”
Cloudy service provider Civo has made a permanent move to a four-day working week, following a successful trial across the business.
The trial, beginning in late 2021, was a great success, it said, with staff embracing the scheme and all the possibilities on offer from flexible ways of working.
Civo employees work 34 hours – reduced from 36 hours. This shift will mean Civo teams will now be able to work 8.5 hour days across the four-day workweek. Staff will also be able to work these hours across a five-day week, should that approach work best for them.
The company’s adoption of the four-day week comes at a time of growing evidence on the benefits of the scheme, within both professional and academic circles. In the UK, a total of 3000 employees at 60 different companies will soon embark on the largest four-day week trail from June to December 2022.
Microsoft is planning to release a new tool to automate the patch management process, all but eliminating Patch Tuesdays for many companies.
Windows Autopatch will keep business computers continuously updated as part of a new feature included with the Windows Enterprise E3 subscription service.
Organisations running systems with a Windows 10 or Windows 11 Enterprise E3 license will be eligible for the new patch service, which is expected to be generally available in July.
Lior Bela, senior product marketing manager at Microsoft, wrote in a blog post. “This service will keep Windows and Office software on enrolled endpoints up-to-date automatically, at no additional cost. IT admins can gain time and resources to drive value. The second Tuesday of every month will be just another Tuesday.”
Cisco Systems’ Global Partner Organization has assumed responsibility for the company’s small-business customer segment.
Cisco’s vice president of global distribution sales Andrew Sage said the reorganisation combines the small-business customer responsibility with Cisco’s largest route to market, the Global Partner Organisation.
Cisco’s small-business customer segment is a 100 percent partner business, especially as these customers gravitate toward managed services and Everything as a Service, Sage said.
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