Commtech Eton by Arrow match

Posted on October 25, 2017 by - News

Harrow_cricket_team_of_1869_for_the_match_against_EtonAnglo-Irish distributor Commtech has confirmed that it has reached a definitive acquisition agreement to be bought by its rival Arrow.

Commtech founder and CEO Justin Owens said the deal was completed on Friday, remains subject to competition approval, and is set to close in Q4.

Owens said Arrow is a “natural fit” for Commtech, whose largest vendors are Dell-EMC and Pure Storage. It also works with the likes of Rubrik, SonicWall and DataCore.

He said that putting its business in with Arrow will allow it access to Arrow’s wide vendor portfolio, and also to the investments Arrow has made in platforms and cloud.

Founded by Owens in 1997 as a Cisco and Symatec consultancy, 40-employee outfit Commtech moved into trade-only distribution in 2002. It launched a UK office in 2012 and the UK now generates half of its circa €100 million sales.

The Commtech brand will probably be integrated into Arrow next year, Owens said.

Arrow has a heritage of snapping up local VADs and wrote a cheque for security specialist Computerlinks in 2013 and Sphinx in 2010.

 

InfoArmor partners with SiO4

Posted on October 24, 2017 by - News

sdfgdsfgsdfgsdfgInfoArmor, which provides of employee identity protection and cyber intelligence services, has signed a partnership with SiO4 which provides specialist cyber threat intelligence services.

SiO4 will be announcing its new mid-market cyber-security suite SAFE HOUSE – Total Threat Intelligence on October 19, 2017 at the Imperial War Museum in London, U.K.

SAFE HOUSE is a  modular cyber-security service focuse on delivering actionable and targeted threat intelligence.

The outfit claims it provides the ‘who, what, why, when and how’ to defend against present and future cyber-threats. Using the service will give businesses a pre-emptive warning of an imminent breach, meaning they can react before threat actors strike

SiO4 will also brand the SAFE HOUSE solution with “Powered by InfoArmor”.

SiO4 CTO and Founding Partner Andrew Speakmaster said: “Our new SAFE HOUSE – Total Threat Intelligence offering uses the operatively-sourced human intelligence of InfoArmor with our cyber-security services to deliver an industry-agnostic turnkey solution to the U.K. mid-market.

“We chose InfoArmor for their (sic) proven capabilities to deliver high-quality data from their elite team of Dark Web operatives and researchers. There is a huge vacuum globally in the mid-market for threat intelligence and we identified the market potential to fill this void in the UK”

‎ Mike Kirschner, Sr. Vice President of Sales of InfoArmor Advanced Threat Intelligence Unit added: “SiO4 and their SAFE HOUSE solution will allow U.K.-based mid-market companies to mitigate risk and help defend them against global cyber threats. In addition, SiO4 will deliver analysis to customers in assessing their current state of infrastructure in compliancy to ISO 27001 and EU GDPR.”

 

Ebuyer releases more corporate services

Posted on October 24, 2017 by - News

ebuyer-careersOnline retailer Ebuyer.com is releasing more services aimed squarely at the corporate customer.

Dubbed Ebuyer ProServices, it provides corporate customers with managed IT and cloud computing systems and online and telephone consultancy.

The move is part of a cunning plan to chart a growth in demand for business devices with an increasing number of previously well-known online consumer players while bolstering Ebuyer revenues by entering the B2B space.

As well as delivering a range of managed services the firm is also looking to help meet one of the main challenges from customers, around security. The service will deliver protection against malware, DDOS and other malicious attacks.

Ebuyer’s IT Director, Paul Lyons, said that the launch of the latest initiative should appeal to existing customers as well as give the firm the chance to strike some fresh relationships.

“We are excited to launch our new service.  Our team is looking forward to helping new and existing customers increase their organisations productivity and online security with our bespoke systems”, he said.

 

Eaton spruces up its channel programme

Posted on October 23, 2017 by - News

publicSchoolboys_e_2963348bPower protection outfit Eaton has been improving its channel partner programme to assist its new data centre strategy.

The power protection players are enjoying decent market conditions as more punters want reliability and local data centres need to be able to function all the time.

Eaton has established a Power Advantage Partner programme, including a fresh portal, online training and a new deal registration facility.

EMEA Eaton IT channel partner manager David Oddie said that in the era of digital; transformation, organisations weremore dependent than ever on their IT systems and infrastructure and the reliability and availability of power is major concern.

“They know that it’s vital to protect themselves from power surges and outages while also keeping their costs under control and reducing their impact on the environment”,  he said.

Eaton depends on partners to deliver our products and adapt them to suit the customer’s environment and needs, Oddie continued.

“This further investment is part of Eaton’s ongoing commitment to ensure partners get the very best support, enablement, guidance and, most importantly, quick and easy access to information and funding.”

Cyber security channel needs to rethink training

Posted on October 23, 2017 by - News

old schoolTraditional classroom based training is not going to solve the skills shortage, according to a former director of GCHQ.

Talking to the assembled throngs at the launch of the Digital Cyber Academy, Robert Hannigan said that the industry needs to rethink the way it trains people with traditional approaches failing to deliver the right results as well as turning off the next generation entering the workplace.

Classroom based sessions were  not helping to fill the thousands of empty cyber security posts.

“The best guesstimate is that by 2020 there are going to be one and a half million unfilled cyber skills jobs. That is going to get worse as the other half of the planet comes on line and the Internet of Things connects more and more devices spewing out more data”, he said.

“The enabling security that needs to underpin it is going to be even more challenged”, he added.

While the industry and the government knew that they had to “fix the pipeline” and get more people into training and more of those could come from a non-technical background, GCHQ had problems about the way training was offered, Hannigan said.

“A lot of the cyber security training is fairly old fashioned”, he added. “It is classroom based, it is quite static, and it can fairly often be out of date by the time it’s learnt. We must think differently, particularly for a new generation that learn differently,” he said. Gamification was one of the good ways of engaging with them.” Whatever gamifications means.

 

 

Avnet finishes Tech Data UK integration early

Posted on October 23, 2017 by - News

The BorgAvnet will have finished its Tech Data UK integration by the start of November.

For those who came in late, Tech Data closed its Avnet TS buyout in February this year, and thought that the scale of both businesses would mean that full integration could take up to 12 months.

However, Belgium, Iberia and Italy are already integrated and France and the UK should be completed by the beginning of November, the company said.

By the end of this calendar year, approximately two thirds of the business will be fully integrated.

That did not mean that the integration had not been complex, and Avnet is still checking with customers and vendors if things went ok.

The $2.6 billion deal gave the distributor a presence in the APAC region and boosted its employee count to 14,000 employees across 40 countries globally.

Tech Data will phase out its Azlan brand by the end of Q1 2018, citing the results of a brand study, which discovered that no one in Europe could recognise Azlan in a line-up.

“Awareness of Azlan’s reputation was only recognised in only a limited number of countries, mainly the UK and a bit in France. It was not consistent, so our study recommended putting Tech Data at the front as a master brand”,  the company said.

 

HPE shifts away from lower margins

Posted on October 20, 2017 by - News

HPEHPE has outlined its plans for its full year 2018, indicating that it will shift its focus away from lower margin business and focus more on high margin solutions and services.

HPE’s lower margin business – particularly its tier one server business – has been blamed for hampering growth.

HPE said it expects to record revenue growth of five percent, but this prediction takes the tier one business out of the equation.

For its full year 2018, HPE said it expects to report “modest” revenue growth, again discounting the troubled tier-one server business.

Speaking at an analysts meeting, HPE CEO Meg Whitman outlined the five-year turnaround plan HPE is in the middle off, insisting that splitting the company into HPE and HP Inc was the right decision.

“I can tell you without a doubt separating the company in two was absolutely the right thing to do for our customers, our partners, our employees and of course our investors. We’ve seen that in the financial markets reactions.

“In 2012 we embarked on a five-year journey to turn this company around and create better value for shareholders, customers and partners.

“The first step was to diagnose the problems and build a solid foundation for a turnaround. 2013 was all about fixing and rebuilding the business. We improved operations, drove better cash flow and repaired our balance sheet

“In FY14 we focused on recover and expansion. We stabilised our revenue trajectory, we reignited innovation across HP and further strengthened our leadership in key areas. Fy15 was about accelerating that progress. We continued to target investments in higher-margin areas and saw the opportunity to accelerate our business in key acquisitions like Aruba.”

Whitman said that HPE is in the process of strengthening through four key factors: Organic investment, in areas such as HPE Synergy; investment in partnerships; acquisitions of the likes of Nimble and SimpliVity; and portfolio optimisation, which saw its services and software business spun out into separate organisations.

“Our partner ecosystem is the best in the industry and absolutely critical to our future. Partnerships our going to be critical and that’s why we launched Pathfinder, our venture investment and partnership programme. We use our expertise to identify the best emerging start-ups and then we curate their innovation within our innovation which helps us deliver cutting-edge solutions to our customers with results they cannot find anywhere else.”

Misco in shock collapse

Posted on October 20, 2017 by - News

il_570xN.386643874_phvgMisco’s shock collapse after nearly 30 years has left the industry shocked.

A few years ago Misco had revenues north of £300 million operating profits of over £10 million and over 600 staff. It was still growing when it opened new offices in Weybridge in 2013.

However, four years later, the Misco UK name abruptly vanished from view and a last-minute rescue attempt to keep the business afloat in a reduced form fell through.

Its collapse comes seven months after a new management team, backed by Hilco Capital, bought the UK and European business from long-time parent Systemax.

But the rot had set in before the new team led by Alan Cantwell arrived and it was probably too late to fix what appears to have been management problems.  Especially as its rivals such as Computacenter appear to be doing well.

Its rivals appear to be thinking that the spiralling death of  Misco was an isolated case for the channel.

Misco UK’s operating losses widened to over £8 million in the year before the change in ownership. Systemax simply gave up and sold it. The feeling is that broadline, commodity distribution was dying, no one is making money from it and Misco was tried to reform too late.

Credit insurers began cutting their exposure to Misco and distributors became unwilling to deal with the reseller, with just a few supporting the business until recently.

Misco also received a winding-up petition from HMRC over unpaid VAT, leaving it with no “viable option other than to seek the protection of administration”.

Channel needs greater diversity

Posted on October 20, 2017 by - News

503d5de7afed581e01a0538d79270f5f

The IT channel needs to do more to attract women and ethnic minorities.

Industry group CompTIA has been a strong advocate of increasing diversity in the IT industry, having identified a ‘confidence gap’ that has prevented some people from entering the industry and is determined to overcome those problems.

CompTIA CEO Todd Thibodeaux said: “There are lots of people who don’t realise they can work in the industry because they think they need to have a college degree or be maths and science whizzes but it is a different job to the one they think it is. We have to get them over this confidence gap.”

People need to realise that anybody can be trained and acquire the skills to work in the industry but they need to believe they can do it.

He said everyone wanted to speed up the movement towards greater diversity but it was “not something that can be fixed overnight”.

“It will be interesting to see every year from now because that is when we are supposed to see the mass retirement of the early baby boomers that are going to come out of the industry. That is where there will be lots of opportunity”, he said.

Research showed that more diverse companies developed better products faster, service customers better and had happier employees, Thibodeaux said.

As well as getting a more diverse workforce the other lesson that the industry can learn is around being open minded about what fresh talent can bring to the business.

“We are making people conform to the norms in a company when they come in and not allow them to be comfortable and be themselves and bring what they bring to the culture. We are forcing people to come and are forcing them to assimilate to the existing culture, rather than making them feel they can add to the culture.” He added that the drop-out rate can be high.

Progress becomes a hamburger

Posted on October 19, 2017 by - News

photo4Security outfit Progress has launched a company in Germany, kickstarted with a Hamburg office and a new German country manager.

Progress was launched last year by John Quinn and is now taking heading into central Europe.

Progress has taken on a dedicated Spanish region manager, based in Madrid, as the firm looks to build its presence in Iberia.

The company said that its European arms will largely be built up of vendors that have a relationship with Progress in the UK, which are looking to move quickly into other European territories.

The normal process for Vendors is to start in the UK, move to the Nordics and the central Europe but Progress is going straight to Central Europe from the UK .

This was mostly because most of the company’s vendors wanted to be in central Europe and a couple of them were already there.

After establishing the Hamburg office Progress will head into Munich, as well as into neighbouring Austria and Switzerland.

As-a-service sourcing contracts grow

Posted on October 19, 2017 by - News

Forwarders-set-to-see-growthThe value of as-a-service sourcing contracts have reached an all-time high in EMEA, but a drop in traditional sourcing resulted in a weak quarter overall.

Beancounters at Information Services Group (ISG) have added up some numbers and decided that the 3Q17 EMEA ISG Index shows commercial sector outsourcing contracts with an annual contract value (ACV) of £3.5 million.

The index shows that the as-a-service sector continued its upward trajectory, soaring 48 percent, to £892 million as companies continue to seek cloud and digital solutions to improve operating efficiency and develop new growth opportunities.

This boost countered the significant shortfall in traditional sourcing, which slumped 43 per cent, to £1.1 billion which is its lowest point in a decade.

The falloff in traditional sourcing, upon which EMEA depends more than other regions, caused combined ACV to drop 23 percent, to £2 billion due in part to a lack of large contracts in the quarter.

Barry Matthews, partner at ISG, said that despite a disappointing third quarter, the EMEA market year to date is showing modest growth, with record as-a-service contracting not quite able to counter the drop in traditional sourcing activity.

“Macroeconomic events in EMEA – the recent German election and continued uncertainty surrounding Brexit – continue to slow buying decisions. As-a-service spending will continue to grow significantly through next year, as the imperative on businesses to find agile solutions to boost productivity and reduce costs continues,” he said.

The UK, despite a weak third quarter, posted its strongest year-to-date performance in five years. UK ACV, at£2.2 billion was up 15 percent year over year, while the number of contracts rose 13 percent for the same period.

IBM calls in Watson for the IoT

Posted on October 19, 2017 by - News

Sherlock-Holmes-and-WatsonThe ever shrinking Biggish Blue wants to use advanced analytics  and its Watson platform to help partners and customers stand out in the crowded Internet of Things market.

Talking to the assembled throngs at IoTConnex, IBM’s business development leader IoT for Manufacturing and Industrial Products Raghbir Kern said that analytics and cognitive computing capabilities will be an essential part of IoT as industrial companies continue to connect their manufacturing floors.

“You may have heard of Industries 4.0 … this is a concept that focuses on the digitization of the modern manufacturing plant, which means you are connecting all your equipment, data, sensors. … We are taking that and adding on one more layer, cognitive computing, and really delivering on a vision of cognitive manufacturing that our customers have,” said Kern.

Customers were collecting data from multiple sources and are making that data transparent so they can see patterns and trends in the data and deliver better insight.

Kern said that companies will come to rely on tools like analytics. “In order to get to these later stages of cognitive manufacturing … you really have to take advantage of advanced analytics and cognitive technologies,” she said.

Partners have access to advanced analytics through IBM’s Watson Internet of Things platform, which incorporates both rule-based analytics, enabling customers to see what happens when one event occurs, or model-based analytics, which allows customers to predict future events.

With these tools, IBM Watson delivers three core cognitive manufacturing applications: using IoT to sense and diagnose issues so companies can optimise the performance of intelligent assets and equipment; using cognitive processes to bring more certainty to businesses through analysing a variety of information from workflows; and using insight to optimise resources.

HP is making inroads into 3D printing

Posted on October 19, 2017 by - News

o-OFFICE-3D-PRINTER-facebookA while back HP promised that it would take the lead in 3D printing and it is starting to look like it is making good on that promise.

Vendor snuck into fifth place in industrial 3D printer market in Q2, four years after Meg Whitman declared that HP intended to lead the market. To be fair though HP has only had products in the 3D printer market for a year and to get to the top five from no-where is some feat.

With its Jet Fusion line up, HP sold $13.5 million of industrial 3D printer hardware in the second quarter of 2017.

According to beancounters at Context HP took a four percent share of the industrial segment of the market in Q2, behind names that will be less familiar to the channel, namely market leader Stratasys, EOS, GE Additive and 3D Systems.

HP began “pushing strongly” into the channel in the first half of the year, “setting itself up for further growth later this year and beyond”, Context said.

The industrial sub-segment Jet Fusion plays in has experienced mixed fortunes since then, with unit shipments declining in both 2015 and 2016.

Context predicts that the industrial sector will return to growth in 2017, partly thanks to the fresh blood that has entered the market.

Polymer machines continued to dominate the market in Q2, accounting for 90 per cent of the unit volume sales and 61 percent of the printer revenues, Context said.

While HP’s machines are initially focused on polymers, GE Additive – which is another new entrant to the top five – focuses on metal 3D printing.

Context vice president of global analysis Chris Connery said that there was a four per cent decline in the number of industrial/professional 3D printers shipped in the second quarter of this year compared to the earlier year, but the average selling price of these machines continued to climb.

“It now seems that both these trends will change in the second half of 2017. Average selling prices are set to drop with the shipment of new category of lower priced metal-printing machines helping to promote new growth.

“For polymer 3D printing, growth is expected from select technologies as this side of the market continues to penetrate into the manufacturing market and away from just prototyping.”

 

 

Softcat makes £800 million

Posted on October 19, 2017 by - News

cat-at-laptop-275Even while it hunts for a new CEO Softcat is making piles of dosh.

Softcat’s shares were up in early trading this morning as it announced that sales were up by nearly a quarter in its first full year of trading as a public company.

Revenues for the 12 months ended 31 July 2017 rose by 24 percent to £832.5 million, which the Marlow-based reseller thanks to winning 800 new customers and selling more to

Adjusted operating profit grew by 10.1 percent to hit £51.5 million.

Softcat CEO Martin Hellawell announced this summer that he is to step back into the non-executive chairman role, and in this morning’s stock exchange announcement, the firm said its hunt for a new CEO “is progressing”.

Chess aims to take another acquisition piece

Posted on October 19, 2017 by - News

315801_a5e44c0e6f53654feec6d94e671b9cf8_largeVAR outfit Chess is take another cybersecurity piece after acquiring Foursys a few months ago.

Foursys, which will become Chess Cybersecurity, put Chess into the cybersecurity game – most of its acquisitions have been outside that area such as Lanway, Parachute IT and Compwise Systems.

Now the word on the street is that Chess is looking to make another acquisition in the security space. Most of this was due to the Foursys deal paying off so well.

It is not clear who Chess is looking at, or when the deal will be announced, but the plan seems to be to broaden Chess’ cybersecurity space offering.

Apparently there are plenty of companies for sale and because of the increased  interest in cybersecurity there have been a number coming to the market.

Chess, COO Steve Cox is leaving the VAR to take on the role of VP of customer success at insurance software firm Vertafore, a switch which will see him move to Denver. Cox joined Chess last year and was instrumental in setting up the firms ICT division.