Chinese smartphones conquering Europe

Posted on February 19, 2019 by - News

Despite the US crackdown, Chinese devices are doing really well in Europe, according to Canalys beancounters.

According to Canalys, preventing the likes of Huawei and Xiaomi from operating in the States means they are investing in Europe to make up for their lost US business and have experienced significant sales gains.

Although Samsung still ranks number one in the continent and Apple remains a number two, Huawei’s market share now stands at 23.6 percent, compared to a market share of 14.8 percent last year.  Xiaomi’s grew from 3.6 to  six percent, the fourth position.

Beta Distribution’s Dutch arm crashes

Posted on February 19, 2019 by - News

Beta Distribution’s Dutch arm which survived all its parent company’s problems has declared bankruptcy owing more than €2 million.

A Dutch-language report posted on bankruptcy website Faillissementsdossier, the subsidiary declared bankruptcy on 21 December 2018, with a debt pile of nearly €2m (£1.7m).

The Dutch arm saw turnover of €40 million in its financial 2017-2018. At the time of the administration, it had €730,000 of book stock, and trade receivables debt of nearly €2 million. A third party has since bought the Maastricht-based subsidiary for a prepaid purchase price, as well as the book stock.

Cognizant fined $25 million in bribery case

Posted on February 18, 2019 by - News

Cognizant agreed to pay a $25 million fine to settle charges of bribery, while two former top executives who allegedly arranged the deal were indicted today on federal criminal charges of conspiracy to violate anti-bribery laws.

According to the SEC complaint, in 2014 senior Indian government officials demanded a $2 million bribe from the construction company building Cognizant’s corporate campus in Chennai, India. At the time, two-thirds of the company’s employees worked in India.

Red Reply wins Oracle “Partner of the Year: Autonomous” award

Posted on February 18, 2019 by - News

Red Reply, which specialises in the Oracle Cloud IaaS and PaaS platform, has been named as Oracle “Partner of the Year: Autonomous” for its work as an Oracle Cloud Managed Service Provider Partner in developing projects using the Oracle Autonomous Database technology.

Red Reply had launched a project aimed at re-engineering the Policy Enterprise DataWarehouse of Verti Assicurazioni, company operating in the online insurance sector, using the Oracle Cloud Autonomous data warehouse service. The Autonomous DataWarehouse is a cloud-based database that uses machine learning to eliminate manual labour in operations such as tuning, security, backups, updates and other routine activities.

Sinerix deals with Grey Matter on cloudy electronic signatures

Posted on February 18, 2019 by - News

Cloud technology outfit Sinerix has signed a deal with Devon-based channel partner – Grey Matter – to provide customers with electronic signature and biometric ID authentication software.

Developed by Sinerix, the SecureSign platform provides an electronic signature and document exchange platform with built-in authentication and ID verification technology. This allows clients to securely manage all kinds of document signing and onboarding processes in just a few minutes, the company claimed.

UK companies do not really know how to talk to people

Posted on February 15, 2019 by - News

The UK lags behind the rest of the world when it comes to customer communication according to a report by Avaya Holdings and Davies Hickman Partners.

Three-quarters of UK consumers have expressed frustration at how difficult it is, when interacting with an organisation, to switch from one means of communication to another without having to start the process over again.

Ignition starts distribution deal with Okta

Posted on February 15, 2019 by - News

Ignition has struck a value-added distribution agreement with enterprise identity management outfit Okta for the UK and Nordics regions.

Signing Okta is part of a cunning plan for Ignition’s overall channel strategy and complements its existing portfolio and identity reference architecture.

The agreement provides resellers with something to flog to  enterprise customers looking to securely connect and manage people and technology within a complete ecosystem.

Mobile operators want access networks and edge cloud

Posted on February 15, 2019 by - News

Over 70 percent of mobile operators believe that ownership of access networks and edge cloud infrastructure will give them a competitive advantage over public cloud providers in the 5G era.

According to a survey conducted by Heavy Reading, for Accedian, found that more than half of mobile operators expect to introduce network slicing within two years of commercial 5G launch, and over a longer timeframe.

Another 61 percent will have “extensively deployed” network slicing. By harnessing access and mobile edge ownership, and new networking slicing capabilities, operators can guarantee and monetize new levels of customer experience.

IBM sees results from its new partner programme

Posted on February 14, 2019 by - News

Biggish Blue told its PartnerWorld Think 2019 conference in San Francisco that it was seeing the results of its revamped partner programme.

IBM Partner Ecosystem in North America VP Dorothy Copeland said that IBM had got its mojo back after bringing in the new cunning plan two years ago.

IBM’s ecosystem strategy focuses on business model variety. The idea was to simplify the programme, making it easier for IBM partners to embed new technology into their business while welcoming new cutting-edge partners into the programme.

Channel needs to educate on SD-WAN

Posted on February 14, 2019 by - News

SD-WAN is supposed to be a big disruption for businesses, but the technology will hit the rocks unless the channel educates  users about it.

Research from Cogeco Peer-1 has indicated that 72 percent of customers do not fully understand SD-WAN and a third worry it will disrupt their business and not far off half concerned about the security issues.

Director of product at Cogeco Peer 1 Tom Adams said that those who have gone down the software defined route have seen OPEX, cost and efficiency savings and the channel will need to get more customers over the hurdle of hesitation to the adoption stage.

Cloud migration is a priority for most companies

Posted on February 14, 2019 by - News

Cloud migration will be a priority investment for 70 percent of business leaders over the next year.

Beancounters at research outfit KCOM have added up some numbers and asked 250 C-level decision makers across several industries, including healthcare, government, and retail what they were thinking about.

About half of respondents said that their top priority in the next year will be digital transformation.

Big Blue announces a wave of channel changes

Posted on February 13, 2019 by - News

A not so mobile X86 PCIBM has been talking through its channel changes with the assorted throngs at Partnerworld.

IBM announced a raft of new storage incentives in April last year, which enabled partner sellers and systems engineers to earn up to $100,000 in stackable rebates. The incentives covered all-flash arrays, Spectrum software and IBM systems deals.

Humans are responsible for printer based hacks

Posted on February 13, 2019 by - News

More than 60 percent of businesses were breached last year as a result of security flaws in printers.

Analyst outfit Quocirca has been adding up some numbers and thinks that the majority of breaches are triggered by an organisation’s employees, despite 70 percent of businesses believing malware to be the biggest threat to them.

TIBCO forms partnership with IHS Markit

Posted on February 13, 2019 by - News

TIBCO Software has entered into an agreement with IHS Markit, a provider of critical information, analytics and solutions for the major industries and markets.

Using TIBCO Spotfire and related technologies, this partnership will deliver analytics capabilities that provide accelerated and meaningful insights, by making vast amounts of energy data more readily available, as well as speeding up the exploration of data.

Firstcom Europe snaps up Telesis

Posted on February 12, 2019 by - News

Cloud comms outfit Firstcom Europe has written a cheque for the  Bolton-based comms company Telesis.

The move is part of a cunning plan to strengthen its UK position and will take Firstcom’s European revenues to the €35 million mark and gives the Luxembourg-based outfit a foot in the door of the UK market.

It wants to use acquisition as a means of increasing the turnover with the sights set on reaching the €60 million by the end of this year.