Tag: COVID-19

Demand for cybersecurity is increasing exponentially

Posted on May 29, 2020 by - News

A report from MSP Barracuda shows that cyber-criminals have been taking advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to Barracuda Vice President,  Brian Babineau, channel partners currently on their MSP journey, now is the time to really think about adding security to their services portfolio.

The report shows that  88 percent of partners questioned, believed demand for security services was set to increase over the next 12 months.

“It also is no surprise that  91 percent of the global MSP partners we surveyed are planning to increase the number of services they offer in the coming year, particularly around security”, he said.

Managed services are set to be the top revenue generator for the vast majority of respondents.

A total of 69 percent of respondents picked managed services as the biggest opportunity for increasing  sales this year. This is significantly up on 2019 where 54 percent saw managed services as their biggest opportunity, he said. 

HPE to lay off staff and cut salaries

Posted on May 25, 2020 by - News

HPE  is to lay off an undisclosed number of staff to save its bottom line as the coronavirus pandemic makes it a bit unwell.

In in an earnings call for its second quarter ending 30 April 2020, HPE chief exec Antonio Neri said customer uncertainty has had a “significant impact” on revenues, with total turnover declining 15 percent year-on-year to $6 billion.

“We have taken a deliberate set of actions to protect our financial foundation, become a more agile organisation and align our sources to critical core businesses in areas of growth that accelerate our edge-to-cloud platform-as-a-service strategy. We have taken some immediate steps to reduce operating expenses that will protect our financial profile”, he told analysts.

These measures include cut salaries for all staff, effective from 1 July to 31 October. Neri and his executive team will take a pay cut of between 20 to 25 percent to their base salary with the amount of reduction to salaries then varying by level, he added.

Top five telco results show B2C market strong despite coronavirus

Posted on May 21, 2020 by - News

Beancounters looking at the numbers of the top five European telco first quarter results say that they show early crisis stage resilience in the B2C market.

GlobalData had a look at the results for  Vodafone, Telefonica, Deutsche Telekom, Orange and BT and said they showed an encouraging degree of business resilience in the European telecommunications industry at large, with few surprises in the B2C market.

While all five telcos flagged losses in roaming revenues due to lockdown measures implemented in the final weeks of the quarter, several confirmed a positive or stable mobile contract churn development for the quarter overall – with little to no disruption impact on ongoing business restructuring projects, or 5G strategies. More importantly, all were able demonstrate, to some extent, the way the COVID-19 crisis is accelerating ongoing digital customer experience initiatives. Others were able to point to a small but encouraging growth in service revenues.

Nutanix UK and European staff will be hit by coronavirus cutbacks

Posted on May 11, 2020 by - News

Nutanix has confirmed it has asked non-US staff to take two weeks’ voluntary unpaid leave as part of wider actions to minimise the fallout from COVID-19.

In the US the outfit has ‘furloughed’ more than 1,400 US staff – which is a quarter of its workforce.

Nutanix said that it has asked staff outside the US to take a total of two weeks of voluntary unpaid leave during the same time period.

Nutanix’s share price crashed in late February as CEO Dheeraj Pandey attributed underwhelming second quarter results to the “murky” environment caused by the pandemic, reasoning it doubled down on when explaining its current actions.

Outages hit companies hard

Posted on May 8, 2020 by - News

IT business needs to look for a new way of working after COVID-19 according to  Comms365. IoT boss. Nick Sacke (pictured).

Sacke said that there were a number of factors organisations should consider when adopting a new way of working following the COVID-19 crisis and organisations need to prepare now to not only adapt to the new way of working, but also “future proof” their businesses for life post-lockdown .

“The COVID-19 crisis initiated a dramatic change to the working world almost overnight. With offices closed and employees advised to work from home, businesses were forced into adopting mass remote working without warning. Moreover, with many organisations in many industries forced to furlough employees and close, they have had to rapidly transform business models in order to maintain operational continuity and cash flow, be that through moving to online models or changing their business offerings completely”, Sacke said.

Salesforce wants to help firms reopen

Posted on May 5, 2020 by - News

Salesforce logoSalesforce  has announced its Work.com site which it says will provide new technology solutions and resources to help business and community leaders around the world reopen safely, re-skill employees and respond efficiently on the heels of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Work.com includes new solutions to accelerate private and public sector response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including employee wellness assessment; shift management; contact tracing; emergency response management; and grants and volunteer management. The Work.com Command Center brings all data streams together so that businesses and communities can make more informed decisions.

Pandemic shows the important of mobile voice

Posted on April 30, 2020 by - News

The COVID-19 pandemic has proven that mobile voice is still a vitally important communication channel, one that becomes even more important in a crisis, according to analysts GlobalData.

Andy Hicks, Principal Analyst at GlobalData, said: “A third of the world’s population is stuck at home, yet mobile phone calling has increased during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Classic text messaging has also increased – even with competing with free voice and message channels.”

Security professionals find their jobs have changed

Posted on April 29, 2020 by - News

Certified cybersecurity professionals association (ISC) has released a survey of 256 cybersecurity professionals which shows many of them have found their jobs have changed during the pandemic with 90 percent of them indicating they are now working remotely full-time.

Wesley Simpson, COO of (ISC), said: “While this was certainly not an in-depth study of the situation, it does provide a current snapshot of the issues and challenges our members may be facing during this unprecedented time. Sharing this information helps our members and other professionals in the field understand the challenges their peers are facing, and hopefully realise they are not alone, even if many of them are feeling isolated as they adjust to working from home.”

SCC provides help to Cambridge University Hospitals

Posted on April 21, 2020 by - News

SCC has partnered with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to help Cambridge University Hospitals (CUH) launch a free national PPE training website amid the on-going COVID-19 outbreak.

CUH needed to quickly provide critical training on how to correctly put on and remove Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) to protect them from contracting and spreading the virus. A new website was built prior to lockdown measures being implemented in the UK, hosted locally.

The website is a resource for the whole of the NHS on the practical aspects of PPE, developed in collaboration with experts in infectious diseases at CUH. To launch the website as quickly as possible, CUH asked SCC for support in architecting and deploying the infrastructure required to host this website in AWS.

Consumer electronics could suffer supply chain issues for a long time

Posted on April 16, 2020 by - News

Consumer electronics could suffer from supply chain problems for a long time due to the rapid shut down of China’s manufacturing during the Corona Virus outbreak.

GlobalData’s report, COVID-19 Impact on Consumer Electronics – Thematic Research, notes when COVID-19 broke out in China, the country was quick to slow down its production, eventually ceasing all manufacturing as the country went into lockdown. This had a drastic effect on supply chains across the world, as many industries, including the consumer electronic sector, are heavily reliant on components that are manufactured in China and could no longer access these resources, says GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

Intel announces medicine to relieve partners coronavirus pain

Posted on April 15, 2020 by - News

Intel has announced new measures to help its channel partner network during the coronavirus pandemic.

The tech giant said the relief package will provide partners with ways to lower business costs, deal with supply chain issues, as well as maintain their tier in the Intel Technology Provider programme.

Chipzilla has already committed $50 million in pandemic response efforts, focused on accelerating access to tech, speeding scientific research and ensuring access to online learning for students.

COVID-19 outbreak will kill a third of Midlands and Northern businesses

Posted on April 14, 2020 by - News

One third of firms in the Midlands and Northern England could go bust because of the COVID-19 epidemic, according to Durham University Business School.

The institution said many businesses are not set up to see their supply chains decimated.

The university said that it assessed over 1.7 million companies in 99 sectors, across 29 geographic regions, finding that 29 percent are at “high risk” of collapse.

Professor Kiran Fernandes said: “Most companies in our region had never experienced such an external shock and were not prepared with mitigation strategies for their complex global supply chains.

Channel stocks hammered by homework demands

Posted on April 6, 2020 by - News

The channel is racing to find stock due to a sudden spike in home working products.

While these sales levels look good on the balance sheet they are not so good for channel inventory levels.

Context, which gets its numbers directly from distributors across Western Europe, has set up a Covid-19 weekly report tracking the performance of some key product lines.

Softcat cancels dividend after COVID-19 warning

Posted on April 2, 2020 by - News

Softcat has cancelled its interim dividend to shareholders after the government’s COVID-19 warning.

The reseller said that, while trading has been as expected since it published its H1 results last month, it has scrapped the payment due to “changes in government guidance” related to COVID-19.

The dividend was expected to be paid in May.

COVID-19 will cause long-term pain for IT services sector

Posted on March 24, 2020 by - News

The impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) on the IT services sector will be deep, immediate, and long-lasting. While there is a potential upside in most sectors, there is little optimism for IT services, according to analyst outfit GlobalData.

GlobalData published a fully revised report, ‘Tech, Media & Telecom Trends 2020’, to reflect the impact of COVID-19 on 17 separate TMT sectors.

Stuart Ravens, Chief Analyst Thematic Research at GlobalData, said: “The coronavirus will put incredible strain on the world economy, which will be effectively halted for three months or more. Many companies will not survive this initial phase. For IT services companies asking where new business will come from in 2020, the answer is painfully bleak: there will be none.”