CHANNEL ROUND-UP

VENDOR

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■ Acronis cited a 200 per cent YoY growth of its cloud business, reporting demand for its storage, backup and DR services is growing faster than expected. The firm also reported a YoY increase of more than 1,000 per cent in the number of protected Microsoft Office 265 email boxes.

■ Cloud backup vendor Asigra has released Cloud Backup Evolved, an offering it claims addresses the ‘growing challenges of modern data protection’. In its latest iteration of the software, the vendor “converges” data protection and cyber security as a means to tackle malware threats, including ransomware ‘Attack-Loops’.

■ AWS took the wraps off a new machine leaning competency for consulting partners in the Amazon Partner Network (APN). The giant said the competency allows its partners to offer solutions that enable machine learning and data science workflows for customers.

■ Barracuda unveiled a new cloud-delivered web application firewall (WAF) that it claimed will protect websites and web applications against advanced layer 7 attacks, OWASP Top 10, bots, DDoS and zero-day threats. The vendor said its Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service secures web applications by delivering enterprise-grade protection without the overhead of deploying and managing an appliance.

■ Cisco has announced its intent to buy artificial intelligence (AI) firm Accompany. The Los Altos,

CA-based firm sells an “AI-driven relationship intelligence platform” that is designed to find new prospects, navigate the selling process and strengthen relationships, Cisco said in its announcement.

Accompany CEO and founder Amy Chang is joining Cisco as SVP in charge of the vendor’s Collaboration Technology Group, a position being vacated by well-known Cisco staffer Rowan Trollope, who is leaving to head cloud startup Five9, according to CNBC. Chang’s team will join her in the move. The deal will see Cisco shell out $270m in cash and assumed equity awards and is set to close in Cisco’s Q4 of FY18, following customary closing conditions.

Separately the firm logged its second straight quarter of YoY growth in the third quarter ended 28 April 2018. Revenue rose to $12.5bn compared with the $11.9bn posted the previous year, with net profit growing seven per cent to $2.7bn. The Americas saw four per cent growth, with EMEA sales growing six per cent and APJC three per cent.

■ Operational technology network security specialist Claroty launched a new global channel partner program for integrated solution partners, MSPs and resellers in May. The firm said the Claroty Vision program has been designed to provide partners with tools and resources to accelerate their revenue in the fast-growing industrial cyber security market. Comprised of four tiers – Elite, Premier, Authorized and Referral – the programme offers

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benefits such as increased margin, deal registration, an online demo environment and co-marketing activities, depending on partner commitment and participation level.

■ Commvault has expanded its portfolio with further integrations into Microsoft Office 365 to improve data protection, migration, security, eDiscovery and compliance for its customers. According to the vendor, the expansion enables partners to expand their customer services portfolio to cover Office 365 migrations and protection.

■ CompTIA has created an online resource for women and girls seeking information on careers in technology. The trade association said in its announcement that the AWITTechGuide.com offers connections from around the globe and across the technology industry from organisations that are “committed to helping girls and women join the global tech workforce and grow in their careers as employees and entrepreneurs”.

■ Datto CEO Austin McChord said the European Union’s (EU’s) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will bring “more opportunity than headaches” for MSPs. As the law came into force this month, McChord said in a statement that it was “a first and important step towards making the

internet a more equitable environment”.

■ Dell EMC is set to roll out a new points program, replacing the current Partner Advantage and Sell & Earn programs. The new program – the Dell EMC MyRewards program – is an opt-in, points-based reward program

for partners’ sales reps and

systems engineers and, according to the vendor, is part of its efforts to simplify how it engages with the channel, as well as improve response times.

Dell EMC said the program offers “bigger and better promotions” and “simplified, express claiming globally”. The firm also revealed it is set to continue slashing distribution partners, after dropping 70 in less than a year. It plans to have about 150 distribution partners, meaning a further 50 are still for the chop.

Meanwhile, the firm revealed in a company filing that it was still mulling plans to merge with subsidiary VMware or float on the stock exchange. It ruled out the possibility of Dell or VMware being sold to a third party in the update filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

■ Fujitsu made a move away from its traditional hardware business this month, with the launch of a new MSP programme. The firm launched a pilot scheme with 10 partners to ‘co-create’ solutions on a one-to-one basis. You can read the full story here.

■ Google snapped up cloud migration start-up Velostrata, for an undisclosed sum. The Israeli firm claims its technology is aimed at simplifying and accelerating enterprise transition to public cloud. The firm had raised $31.5m in funding since it was founded in 2014, but all eyes were on Microsoft to acquire it, rather than Google. Read more here.

■ HP posted its sixth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth for its second quarter ended 30 April, with turnover up 13 per cent YoY to $14bn. Operating profit during the quarter also increased 15 per cent to $964m. EMEA was the highest performing region at 21 per cent growth, with APAC growing 13 per cent and the Americas growing seven per cent.

■ HPE has announced its latest offering in its Nimble Storage platform range. The vendor claimed the new platform is

designed to “take advantage of Storage Class Memory (SCM) and NVMe, protecting customer investments over the long term”. HPE also claimed that

the new offering allows for three times an improvement in price performance.

Separately the firm revealed its second quarter financials, showing

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two quarters of low double-digit growth. Revenues grew 10 per cent to $7.5bn in the quarter ended 30 April 2018, with growth across all business segments, the vendor said.

■ Intel has unveiled the Intel AI Builders Program, which it has designed for ISVs, SIs and OEMS in an effort to provide resources that will speed development and time-to-market of Intel-based AI platforms. The vendor said in its announcement that enterprise customers looking for solutions can also use the platform as an “AI marketplace”.

■ Iovation unveiled a new global channel programme, claiming it has been designed to help partners protect customers against escalating online threats. The programme offers three tiers of membership and benefits such as sales enablement, joint marketing and certification and technical services.

■ MSP software vendor Kaseya has unveiled the next release of its remote monitoring and management (RMM) software, VSA. Kaseya claimed it is the industry’s only RMM solution that natively unifies both endpoint and network management, embeds IT documentation and extends IT automation capabilities through crowdsourced automation.

The vendor also launched Kaseya One, a single pane of glass that provides a unified interface and entry point for the Kaseya IT Complete platform.

■ Kaspersky Lab revealed that it would be moving a ‘good part’ of its infrastructure out of Russia to Switzerland, as it looks to repair bridges after its spat with the US government. Processes set to move include customer data storage and software assembly.

Separately, the vendor claimed 1,000 MSP partners have signed up to its dedicated global partner programme less than a year after its launch. Despite a US government crackdown on the vendor, more than 400 partners have joined from the US, it claimed.

■ LivePerson launched a global partner program to help the channel target SMBs with its

conversational commerce solution. The vendor claimed partners can earn a 30 per cent-plus margin on sales

“while retaining full control of their customer relationships, including billing, bundling, pricing and packaging” through the programme. They can also charge for solution implementation, optimisation and ongoing support.

■ Microsoft revealed the Surface Hub 2 this month, which the vendor said in a blog post has been designed “from the ground up to be used by teams”. According to chief product officer Panos Panay, the new device is “sleeker, more agile and more affordable to fit any workspace or work style”.

In writing about generation 2, the exec said that the new unit’s 4K+ 50.5 inch multi-touch display offers Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Whiteboard, Office 365, Windows 10 and the intelligent cloud.

Separately, the software giant acquired Semantic Machines – an artificial intelligence (AI) specialist, for an undisclosed sum. The vendor’s CTO of research and AI, David Ku, said the acquisition will integrate conversational AI into Microsoft’s own AI services such as Cortana and Azure Bot Service.

■ Nokia has snapped up monitoring and analytics vendor SpaceTime Insight in what Reuters claimed is part of a strategy to build a software business that will deliver higher margins that its traditional communications hardware offerings. The handset vendor’s most recent purchase will see SpaceTime,

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which sells into the energy, logistics, transportation and utilities sectors, join Nokia’s Internet of Things product unit, the Reuters report said.

SpaceTime CEO Rob Schilling will also join the unit, bringing with him and his firm customers including FedEx, Union Pacific and NextEra Energy, according to the report.

■ Nutanix unveiled a new set of private cloud Platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offerings to streamline and automate database operations. Announced at its .NEXT Conference 2018 in New Orleans, the vendor claimed Nutanix Era extends the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud OS software stack beyond core Infrastructure-as-a-Service capabilities for private cloud environments to platform-layer services that bring “one-click simplicity” to database operations. Nutanix claims the initial release of Era will “address the increasing complexity and burdensome cost of managing multiple copies of databases across organisations”.

■ Polycom unveiled its unified cloud solutions strategy this month, including two new cloud services. The unified communications vendor claimed its Polycom Cloud Services and Polycom Device Management Services (PDMS) provide new capabilities for enterprise customers to manage and measure their telephony devices.

The firm plans to add support for enterprise customers to manage videoconference devices by year end and is planning more cloud releases in the coming months.

■ Rackspace is expanding its services portfolio with the acquisition of Salesforce platinum consulting partner RelationEdge. In a statement, Rackspace said the deal will help the firm manage a customer’s complete application portfolio, including SaaS applications.

The acquisition was for an undisclosed sum.

■ Red Hat and Juniper Networks have joined forces to offer a unified solution for enterprises designed to manage and run applications and services on any virtual machine, container and cloud environment and avoid vendor ‘lock-in’. The offering is a “more extensive” integration of Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform and Red Hat OpenStack Platform with Juniper Contrail Enterprise Multicloud, according to the two vendors.

■ SonicWall officially separated from Quest Software this month, with the security vendor revealing a 112 per cent YoY increase in partner deal registrations since its acquisition by Francisco Partners (from Dell) in June 2016.

■ StorMagic shared general availability of its direct connectivity to Citrix Cloud, as well as the first edge appliance designed specifically for Citrix Workspace Service. The vendor added that the solution has been tested and validated as Citrix Ready, as part of the Citrix Ready HCI Workspace Appliance Program.

■ Fast-growing vendor Tanium is rumoured to be worth $5bn, after securing $175m extra funding from existing investor TPG, according to reports. The firm manufactures a platform designed to connect all of the end-points within an organisation and improve network visibility and management.

■ Toshiba is poised to unload its memory business on 1 June after the sale was given approval by the Chinese government. The division is set to be acquired for $18bn by a consortium led by Bain Capital, which includes firms such as Apple, Dell, Kingston Technology and Seagate. A new company – K.K Pangea – has been formed to facilitate the deal.

■ Veritas Technologies has unveiled versions of its Veritas Data Protection and Governance solutions for both G Suite and Microsoft Office 365. The Office 365 offering includes Veritas SaaS Backup, a new cloud-to-cloud backup and recovery solution designed for Office 365 data protection and recovery, and Veritas Information Map and Veritas Enterprise Vault.cloud.

■ Xerox has closed the door on plans to be sold to Japan’s Fujifilm after reaching a deal with activist investors Carl Icahn and Darwin Deason. The pair, who own 15 per cent of the company, opposed the $6.1bn deal, as they said it undervalued the firm. Icahn, who described the deal as “ill-advised”, reportedly welcomed the outcome. However, the BBC claimed that Fujifilm disputes Xerox’s “unilateral decision”, adding it doesn’t believe Xerox “has a legal right to terminate [the] agreement”.

CEO Jason Jacobs was ousted from the board for the second time in May as a result.

DISTRIBUTOR

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■ Central and eastern European distributor ABC Data posted a double-digit increase in EBITDA for its Q1 2018 financials, which it attributes to its growing cloud and mobile business. ABC Data posted Q1 sales of PLN 1.05bn (€243m) – up five per cent YoY. EBITDA increased by 13.9 per cent to PLN 7.9 million, with the Polish-based distributor citing its focus on both the mobile sector and cloud solutions as “the cornerstone” of its “competitive advantage”. Read the full story here.

■ Spanish IT distributor Adveo suffered a shocking start to the year with a 51.3 per cent drop in EBITDA to €2.8m for its first quarter 2018. Revenues were down 17.8 per cent to €107.2m, which the firm attributed to a lack of ‘stock availability’.

Separately, the firm offloaded some of its management responsibilities and contractors to Belgian VAR Econocom, as it looked to cut costs and move to an e-commerce model. Full story here.

The firm also secured victory in a legal battle with form subsidiary Unipapel, gaining control of three Spanish warehouses in Tres Cantos, Logroño and Aduna – which it will put up for sale as part of its 2017-2020 strategic plan.

■ German distribution giant ALSO has launched its own financing arm – ALSO Financial Services – as it looks to help its partner network win bigger projects and close deals faster. The division will focus on IT, infrastructure, software, device and managed Print-as-a-Service. It plans to roll out the division into other countries in the near future.

■ CMS Distribution is eyeing expansion into the US after hitting €500m revenues in 2017. Founder and CEO of CMS Frank Salmon told CRN the company is currently “scoping” the US market with plans to open an office and

build organically. The mainland European market currently contributes 15 per cent to CMS’s revenue, with the UK and Ireland continuing to “make up the lion’s share of the business”, contributing 80 per cent to the distie’s revenue.

■ Exertis saw sales grow 15 per cent for the year ended 31 March 2018 to £3.08bn, after securing market share in the audiovisual, gaming and components spaces. Operating profit grew 16.3 per cent to £47.8m. Parent company DCC, which operates in a number of sectors including oil and healthcare, saw revenues grow 16.3 per cent YoY to £14.3bn. Full story here.

Despite the positive results, the firm’s French consumer business delivered disappointing results, leading to plans to ‘significantly reduce costs’ in that arm of the business. But UK managing director Gerry O’Keeffe revealed the firm would grow into Europe both through its Hammer business – which has offices across Europe – and potential future acquisitions.

■ Rumours re-emerged over the sale of Ingram Micro, less than two years after it was

acquired by Chinese firm HNA for $6bn. The distribution giant was one of

many snapped up in HNA’s $50bn spending spree, but according to

reports, the firm is exploring the possibility of a sale to reduce its debt. Ingram’s most recent

financials showed 13 per cent revenue growth to $11.8bn, with operating profit more than doubling to $86.7m.

■ Westcoast saw sales and profits soar in 2017, with turnover growing 12 per cent to £1.84bn for UK arm Westcoast Limited, and the wider parent

group – Westcoast Holdings (which includes XMA and 3D

print business ArtSystems) seeing 17 per cent sales growth to £2.23bn. Operating profit for Westcoast Limited and Holdings grew by 23 per cent and 22 per cent to hit £18.6m and £24.4m,

respectively.

RESELLER

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■ AWS partner Arcus Global secured a £3m equity injection from YFM Equity Partners in exchange for an undisclosed stake in the business. The Cambridge-based SaaS specialist boasts more than 100 staff and is expected to hit £13m revenues for its current financial year.

■ Nordic player Atea has secured a €50m five-year loan from the European Investment Bank to fuel its cloud computing strategy, plus to invest in its new IT logistics centre and recycling centre over the coming three years. The firm posted its Q1 results too, hitting revenues of NOK 8.3bn (up 13.3 per cent) with EBIT up 16.3 per cent to NOK 123m.

■ The UK’s largest pure-play audiovisual integrator, AVMI, made its first acquisition in six years, in the form of £10m-revenue rival Focus 21 for an undisclosed sum. The firm claims the addition will boost its capabilities to design, deliver and support a ‘broad range’ of AV, collaboration and digital media solutions.

■ Bechtle started 2018 with a bang, posting €955.4m Q1 sales, up 19 per cent YoY. BIT grew 12.2 per cent to €35.8m. E-commerce was hailed

as one of its top growth drivers, up 23 per cent to almost €300m with profit up 29 per cent to €11.6m. Separately the firm acquired analytics specialist Evolusys for an undisclosed sum. The firm was set up in 2006 and is a Microsoft Gold-level partner in data analytics and cloud productivity.

■ Bytes saw revenue smash through the £350m mark after a significant growth in its cloud business. For the year ended 28 February, Bytes saw sales increase 49 per cent to £354m, with operating profit growing 31 per cent to £11.3m. Services, which grew 30 per cent, now account for five per cent of the firm’s overall revenue, and the firm has added two new offices in Reading and Watford, with a headcount of about 400.

■ CAE Technology Services reshuffled its senior leadership team in May as it prepares to break though the £100m revenue barrier. The Watford-based reseller has revamped its executive team to a “C-suite style”, with managing director Justin Harling taking on the role of CEO.

■ CDW reported 10.8 per cent first quarter growth, hitting $3.6bn turnover for the period ended 31

March. Gross profit increased nine per cent to $603.9m. Growth was fuelled by demand for hardware, particularly datacentre and devices, with emerging technologies such as hyper converged, growing 70 per cent in the quarter.

■ Certus Solutions has been snapped up by Accenture, as the IT services giant looks to boost is public sector performance. Guildford-based Certus is an Oracle Platinum partner with experience of selling into the government and healthcare sectors. The deal was for an undisclosed sum.

■ Acquisitive player Chess added £7m to its top line revenues after making a double acquisition

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in May. The comms specialist grabbed Frontier Voice and Data and StoneHouse Logic, both for undisclosed sums. The deals added more than 2,200 customers to its books.

■ SoftwareONE and Russian VAR Softline acquired minority stakes in rival Norwegian player Crayon Group. In a disclosure on the Oslo Stock Exchange Oslo Børs last week, Crayon confirmed that SoftwareONE has acquired 3,020,082 shares, more than doubling its stake in the Norway-based company to 8.9 per cent. Meanwhile, €810m-turnover Softline bought a 10 per cent stake in Crayon’s shares last week, according to Crayon CEO Rune Syversen. Crayon competitors now hold an 18.9 per cent stake in the Oslo-based firm.

■ Daisy is set to acquire TalkTalk’s direct B2B business for £175m, as the floundering telco sees revenue drop four per cent YoY. Its operating profit sank to £91m from £224m. Under the deal, Daisy will take on about 80,000 corporate customers using the TalkTalk network, with TalkTalk holding onto its wholesale and indirect B2B business.

■ Econocom announced plans to open an office on the Spanish island of Majorca, just a month after the Belgium-based reseller grabbed a majority stake in €9m-turnover player Altabox. The new office will be located near the island’s capital, Palma, and signals its commitment to serving the Balearic market according to Spanish country manager Ángel Benguigui.

■ GCI has snagged a £60m acquisition ‘war chest’, after securing investment from private equity house Mayfair, which has become a majority stakeholder. CEO Adrian Thirkill said the money will fund future expansion, but he said the firm is in ‘no rush’ to make more acquisitions.

■ Cloud networking provider GTT Communications’ revenues reached $260.7m in the first quarter, up 40.2 per cent over Q1 17 and up 4.6 per cent over Q4 17. It incurred a net loss of $7m, compared with $13.1m in Q1 17 and $49.5m in Q4

17. The firm attributed the loss to $7.8 million in exit, transaction and integration costs related to its Custom Connect, Accelerated Connections and Interoute acquisitions, plus $17.2m expense related to a foreign currency hedge entered into in anticipation of the Interoute acquisition. Its adjusted EBITDA of $62.7m grew 23.4 per cent over Q1 17 and grew 3.1 per cent over Q4 17. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 24.1, down from 27.3 per cent.

■ Insight saw turnover grow 19 per cent for its first quarter financials ended 31 March, to $1.76bn, with gross profit rocketing 15 per cent to $240m. The firm has seen particular growth in hardware, particularly notebooks, servers and storage.

■ JTRS (part of Econocom) became the first Microsoft partner to launch a HoloLens subscription service. The programme will see customers of the education-focused partner lease the mixed-reality headset for £260 per month, for up to two years.

■ Misco’s unsecured creditors are set to receive just £600,000 towards the £21.8m they are owed by

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the fallen reseller. According to an administrator’s report made available on Companies House, Misco only has funds available to pay unsecured creditors by way of a prescribed part, which has been worked out at £600,000.

The firm went under in October 2017, owing millions to creditors. The firm’s Wellingborough-based office has been sold for £6.21m, and administrators are ‘liaising’ over the sale of its Scottish office in Greenock.

■ NCC Group sold its software testing business for £3.6m after concluding the unit had ‘little strategic overlap’ with the rest of its business. The business was acquired by QualiTest, which professes to be the world’s largest independent software tester. Two months ago, NCC flogged its web performance business for £7.5m.

■ RedstoneConnect is set to sell its managed services and system integration divisions for £21.6m to focus solely on its software development arm. In a notice to the London Stock Exchange, RedstoneConnect said it will offload two of its three divisions, leaving it with just its software unit.

■ Softcat’s shares leapt more than eight per cent after the reseller revealed it expects to beat financial expectations this year. In a trading update the Marlow-based firm said it had ‘continued to trade well across all segments’ during Q3, with its FY coming to a close at the end of July.

■ French IT services behemoth Sopra Steria made its second acquisition in Germany this year, snapping up IT consultancy it-economics – an AWS and Pivotal partner. The firm has nine offices across Germany and specialises in digital transformation, machine learning and cloud products and services.

■ Total Computers saw revenue grow 25.7 per cent for its financial year ended 31 December 2017, hitting £65.5m in sales, thanks to a growing number of ‘big ticket’ deals. The Kettering-based firm saw operating profit grow from £1.22m to £1.77m for the year. Read the full story.

■ Union Solutions has become the latest target of acquisition-hungry services player Claranet. The firm paid an undisclosed sum to acquire Surry and Kent-based Azure specialist Union, which has 30 staff and turnover of about £10m.

RESEARCH

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■ The tablet and PC market is entering a new “era of stability”, according to market watcher Canalys. The channel analyst revealed worldwide shipments of tablets and PCs will fall by 2.1 per cent to 398 million units in 2018, representing the smallest decline of the past four years. Canalys said Windows 10 migration remains a driver for hardware refresh in the commercial space, with businesses forced to move from Intel Skylake generation microarchitectures to newer processor technologies.

■ New research by data security company Clearswift shows that 45 per cent of employees have mistakenly shared emails containing key data with unintended recipients. This includes email featuring personal information (15 per cent), bank details (nine per cent), attachments (13 per cent) and other

confidential text (eight per cent). The research questioned 600 senior business decision makers and 1,200 employees across the US, UK, Germany and Australia.

■ Growth tops the list of CEOs’ top business priorities in 2018 and 2019, according to Gartner’s latest 2018 CEO survey: CIOs Should Guide Business Leaders Toward Deep-Discipline Digital Business. However, it claimed that “as simple, implemental growth becomes harder to achieve, CEOs are concentrating on changing and upgrading the structure of their companies, including a deeper understanding of digital business”. Gartner cites a “significant fall” in simple mentions of it this year, from 58 per cent in 2017 to just 40 per cent in 2018.

■ Only one per cent of CIOs have said there is any kind of blockchain adoption within their organisations, according to Gartner research published today. Furthermore, Gartner’s 2018 CIO Survey reports that only eight per cent of CIOs “were in short-term planning or active experimentation with blockchain”. In addition, 77 per cent of CIOs surveyed said their organisation has no interest in the technology and/or no action planned to investigate or develop it.

David Furlonger, VP and Gartner fellow, in a statement described blockchain adoption and deployment as “massively hyped”.

■ Artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics top the wish lists of enterprises investing in digital transformation technologies, according to a customer survey conducted by MetTel. Sixty-four per cent of respondents say they are most interested in AI, followed by 55 per cent looking at networking and hyper-connectivity solutions such as SD-WAN. Despite the potential cost and efficiency benefits of digital transformation, 43 per cent of customers surveyed still struggle to see the business case for implementing these technologies.

■ New figures from 451 Research show operational technology (OT) and information technology (IT) stakeholders “are at odds” with one another over IoT deployments. The firm’s Voice of the Enterprise (VotE) Internet of Things Survey points to “a clear disconnect between IT and OT on IoT

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projects”. According to the survey, only a third of OT respondents (34 per cent) said they “cooperate closely with IT” on IoT projects from conception to operations. It added that “while a relatively small group” of respondents said they are in “active conflict” with IT over IoT, OT professionals are four times more likely to characterise their relationship with IT that way.

■ Almost three-quarters of channel firms’ clients have suffered a breach in the past 12 months, according to a report from security firm Thycotic. Moreover, 55 per cent did not act to fully remediate the cause of the breach and nearly one in five clients (18 per cent) “did not seek any remediation to prevent a breach from recurring”, according to the privileged account management vendor’s 2018 Global Channel Partner Survey Report. Additionally, 62 per cent of respondents said that cyber attacks were “specifically targeting” their clients’ privileged accounts and seeking to exploit credential vulnerabilities. ■ Channel firms are facing “new and complex” operational challenges that affect their bottom line, according to industry body CompTIA. The firm surveyed 400 US IT players in its report Operational Efficiency in the Channel, and found that nearly half (45 per cent) feel that operating their business has become more complex than it was two years ago, accompanying the shift in focus from hardware to service-led sales. Fifty-three

per cent of executives surveyed claimed they have more streams of data to manage and analyse. Other reasons for additional complexity include the introduction of new business lines and models, adding emerging technologies into their portfolios, and customer engagement “that’s become more challenging and complicated”.

■ Digital services and solutions firm Avionos has claimed more B2B customers are shopping online than a year ago. In fact, almost nine out of 10 procurement officers told the firm that they make more purchases online today compared with 12 months ago, it claimed in its 2018 Procurement Officer Report.

More than half (54 per cent) of businesses feel more confident in their online purchases if the supplier offers detailed product content; however, 43 per cent cite “a lack of accurate content” as the biggest pain point of their online buying experience.

Self service offerings are critical in the selection of B2B suppliers, the report claims, with nearly all procurement officers questioned (97 per cent) considering a supplier’s online customer portal offerings “a critical factor” when selecting a supplier.

■ Telcos will lose revenue share of the total Internet of Things (IoT) market if they can’t find ways to increase their role within the space, GlobalData

has warned. In a report entitled IoT Monetization, the data and

analytics company claimed the development of new applications

along with stakeholders positioning the connectivity as an embedded component within IoT solution means connectivity revenue will decline. As a result, “telcos need to capture a large proportion of the revenue

potential associated with IoT deployments”, GlobalData said.

■ Government agencies worldwide are embracing the cloud with 94 per cent currently storing sensitive data in the cloud,

according to the 2018 Netwrix Cloud Security: In-Depth Report for Government. A

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further 40 per cent have vowed to put their entire infrastructure into the cloud within the next five years, with 53 per cent ready to broaden their cloud adoption today.

Unauthorised access topped the list of the agencies’ top cloud security concerns, followed by malware infiltrations. Thirty-three per cent of respondents said they were most worried by external attackers, while 27 per cent pointed to employees.

■ Just 14 per cent of organisations believed they were fully ready to meet the requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), ahead of its introduction on 25 May, according to a study of security professionals.

The survey by HyTrust revealed 40 per cent of respondents reported “varying degrees of not being prepared” and 26 per cent said they were unsure whether they were prepared.

■ The explosion of personal and Internet of Things (IoT) devices is introducing immense security risks to enterprise networks, according to Infoblox research. The report, entitled What’s lurking on your network: Exposing the threat of shadow

devices, claims that more than a third of companies in the US, UK and Germany (35 per cent) have more than 5,000 personal devices connecting to their networks each day. The most common devices

found on enterprise networks included fitness trackers, digital assistants, smart UVs, smart

kitchen devices and games consoles.

■ Worldwide revenues for IT and business services totalled $502bn in the second half of 2017, up 3.6 per cent year-on-year, according to IDC’s Worldwide Semi-

annual Services Tracker. Overall in 2017, worldwide services revenues were just less

than $1tn although the analyst expects 2018 revenues to beat this figure. Year-on-year growth was around four per cent,

slightly outpacing the worldwide GDP growth rate, which

IDC attributes to a brighter economic

outlook, a shared sense of urgency for large-scale digital transformation, and

new digital services beginning to offset the commoditisation

of traditional services. Outsourcing revenues grew by only 3.3 per cent YoY to $238m in H2 2017, while hosting infrastructure services revenue grew by 4.9 per cent, positively impacted by cloud adoption, the analyst said.

■ Competition is hotting up in the smart speaker space, with Google beating Amazon to the top spot for the first time, shipping 3.2 million of its Google Home and Home Mini devices to grab 36 per cent of the market, compared with 2.5 million Echo devices shipped by Amazon, which held 27.7 per cent market share. This is according to Canalys, which labelled smart speakers as the world’s fastest growing consumer technology segment with YoY growth in Q1 2018 of 210 per cent to nine million units, up from 2.9 million in Q1 2017.

■ Spiceworks figures revealed Microsoft OneDrive adoption is outpacing Dropbox, as Office 2007 nears its end-of-life. According to a survey of 544 North American and European businesses by the market observer, OneDrive is the most commonly used cloud storage and file sharing service, adopted by 51 per cent of organisations. The Microsoft

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offering is followed by a tie between Google Drive and Dropbox (34 per cent of respondents each), then Apple iCloud (13 per cent), Box (six per cent), Citrix ShareFile (six per cent) and, finally, Amazon Drive (three per cent).

■ Global semiconductor revenue is expected to grow for the third consecutive year in 2018 to $450bn up 7.7 per cent over 2017, largely thanks to demand from the memory market. The latest Semiconductor Applications Forecaster (SAF) from IDC also forecasts that semiconductor revenues will log a CAGR of 2.9 per cent from 2017 to 2022, reaching $482bn in 2022. The DRAM and NAND memory markets grew to $73bn and $49bn respectively, reflecting YoY growth rates of 77 per cent and 52 per cent for 2017.

■ Networked multi-function printers (MFPs) are vulnerable endpoints in the Internet of Things era, according to analyst firm Quocirca’s Print 2025 Spotlight Report. The research shows that while 64 per cent of organisations expect to remain reliant on printing in the workplace, “the inherent risks

of poor print security cannot be ignored”. It claims today’s advanced MFPs are increasingly a target for external hackers using them as a foothold to access corporate networks.

■ The average cost of a data breach has soared since 2017, with breaches now amounting to $1.23m on average for enterprises – up 24 per cent from $992,000 in 2017 – and $120,000 for SMBs – up 36 percent from $88,000 in 2017 – according to Kaspersky’s report, On the Money: Growing IT Security Budgets to Protect Digital Transformation Initiatives.

The report claimed North America is the most expensive place for SMBs to suffer a data breach globally.

■ The smartphone market returned to growth in Q1 2018 with a 1.3 per cent increase in global sales compared with the same period in 2017, according to Gartner. Nearly 384 million smartphones were sold in Q1, representing 84 per cent of total mobile phones sold, with entry-level and low mid-tier smartphones showing the best performance.

MISCELLANEOUS

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■ Twitter urged its 330 million users to change their passwords in May after an internal glitch exposed some. In a blog post Twitter said it had recently identified a bug that stored passwords unmasked in an internal log. The social media platform says it masks passwords through a process called hashing using a function known as bcrypt, which allows it to validate users’ account credentials without revealing their password. The bug meant passwords were written to an internal log before completing the hashing process. It said it has now fixed the bug, but out of “an abundance of caution” users should still consider changing their password.

■ Many businesses are failing to communicate properly with millennials, affecting morale and productivity, according to research from software company TechSmith. The survey shows 44 per cent of millennials believe their company’s communications are outdated. It claimed millennials are twice as likely to want to use more visual communications methods, such as screenshots, screencasts, images, GIFs and short videos, at work compared with baby boomers. They are also twice as likely as baby boomers to use images and video to communicate both at home and in work.

■ Less than half (40 per cent) of employees who use a personal device for work are regulated by their employer, according to a survey from B2B research firm Clutch. Among those surveyed who use a personal device for work, 86 per cent check their email and 67 per cent access shared company documents.

Most respondents use passwords as their primary form of IT security, with 76 per cent practicing some form of password protection. The research revealed that 82 per cent of employees are likely to rely on updating their passwords regularly rather than using complex password protection methods.

■ Apple is reportedly investigating the idea of opening a campus for 20,000 employees in Northern Virginia. Citing “officials and real estate executives familiar with the discussions”, a report

in The Washington Post said Apple representatives approached officials working for Virginia Governor Ralph Northam (D) about securing four million square feet of office space to accommodate 20,000 jobs. The sources remain anonymous as “Apple asked people not to talk publicly about the search”.

■ Speaking at an event aimed at start-ups in Paris, IBM CEO Ginni Rometty said artificial intelligence will provide the world with a third moment of ‘exponential impact’ to rival Moore’s Law and Metcalfe’s Law. Rometty came on stage at the VivaTech Event in France after President Emmanuel Macron had delivered a keynote. The day before, Rometty had pledged to create 1,800 new jobs in France around AI, blockchain, cloud and IoT over the next two years. For a rundown of the event, click here.

■ US President Donald Trump said he would proceed with tariffs on $50 billion in Chinese imports and introduce new limits on Chinese investment in US tech, according to an article in The Washington Post this month. The announcement is part of his crackdown on Chinese firms acquiring US technology.

EVENTS■ Barracuda EMEA Summit – Monte Carlo – attendees heard how the firm is performing better since it was taken over by private equity firm Thoma Bravo and discussed its plans to reach $1bn revenue by 2023. Read full story here.

■ Citrix Synergy – Anaheim, CA – The vendor opened fire on VMWare’s lack of hybrid cloud friendliness. During his keynote address, Steve Wilson, VP of product, cloud and IoT at Citrix, said that moving to the cloud with VMware was less smooth than with Citrix because of the Dell-owned vendor’s business model. To read more click here.

■ CRN Fight Night, The Brewery, London – CRN’s annual white-collar boxing event took place this month with 18 fighters battling it out in the ring in the name of charity. For a full rundown of the night’s action, click here.

■ Channel chief Cheryl Cook told delegates at this week’s Dell Technologies World in Las Vegas, NV that the new platform “aims to give you simple, express claiming, save you time, [and] earn points faster”. She also said the offering will make it easier to pay incentives to sales reps across Dell’s lines of business, according to Dell’s announcement.

■ Ingram Micro Cloud Summit – Boca Raton, Florida and London, England – May is the month when distribution giant Ingram holds its Cloud Summit in both the US and the UK. For a rundown on the US event, check out CRN’s sister title’s coverage here.

The UK event took place at the Institution of Engineering in London and covered a wealth of topics including the intelligent future of cloud, big data, IoT and digital transformation.

■ Lenovo Accelerate – Las Vegas – The firm hosted its annual partner conference where it said much of the focus will be around rebuilding partner trust after a number of president turnovers and a stumble in ease of doing business. In an interview with Channelnomics during the partner event, Matt Zielinski, president, North America and SVP of PCs and smart devices (PCSD), who was appointed in February, pointed to a need for the vendor to highlight stability to partners, noting leadership

has been a “revolving door” with Zielinski being the vendor’s sixth North American president in six years. He admitted this demonstrates “a bit of volatility”. To read more on the event, click here.

■ Nutanix .NEXT Conference 2018 – New Orleans – The event – aimed at executives, IT infrastructure and operations leaders, architects and DevOps practitioners – covered everything from hyperconverged infrastructure and hybrid clouds, through to app development and cloud automation.

■ Pure (Storage) Global Partner Forum – San Francisco – The vendor revealed an overhaul to its partner programme and a new pricing model for its all-flash storage portfolio. Full story, click here.

■ RSA Conference – San Francisco – The theme of the conference was not snazzy new technology, but how technology can help security professionals bowing under the weight of all the threats they face. For a rundown of the event, click here.

■ SolarWinds Empower MSP – Amsterdam – During the conference, aimed at European customers, the firm hit out at competitors’ sales tactics, claiming they are spreading fake news about the company. John Pagluica, general manager of SolarWinds MSP, told CRN’s sister title that rivals were falsely telling customers that the MSP software vendor cannot afford to supports its two RMM platforms. Read the full story here.

■ VMware Partner Leadership Summit – The vendor unveiled four new master competencies for service providers at its event: Cloud Management and Automation, Datacenter Virtualisation, Network Virtualisation and Desktop and Mobility. Each competency is earned by gaining a specific number of VMware certifications, plus three customer references, according to the vendor.

■ ZertoCon – Boston, Massachusetts – Channel partners in attendance were told about the increased demand for tighter SLAs as customers’ expectations change by the firm’s CEO. See here for full story. It also claimed that backup vendors were failing to meet customer expectations. Click here to read more.

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ANALYSIS

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May has been a bumper month for activity on all fronts, and has definitely had the ‘feel-good factor’ thrown into the mix with plenty of sunny weather and a certain Windsor wedding for the millions of us who enjoy celebrating a Royal union.

About two billion people were believed to have watched Harry and Meghan tie the knot. That is a considerable guest list.

It was also positive news for women in the Republic of Ireland as a referendum voted 66.4 per cent to 33.6 per cent to repeal the unpopular Eighth Amendment. However Northern Ireland is still subject to the strict rules.

And staying with the positive theme, the IT industry seems to be going from strength to strength as technology becomes more intertwined with everyday life.

May was also the month that the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into play after what seems like many years of warnings.

Despite this, the general consensus seems to be one of confusion over GDPR, particularly among smaller firms, and there is a distinct lack of guidelines as to how far companies must take the

new legislation. When the first victim is announced,

only then will it become clearer, many fear. Starting with the vendor sphere – it was a fairly

quiet month for vendors, with a few product launches, minimal M&A activity and the odd handbag moment.

One stand-out story is the reignition of the battle between Dell and Carl Icahn that first emerged in 2013 when he took his company private. Speculation is mounting over what Icahn will be doing to scupper Michael Dell’s plans as he considers a reorganisation of the group’s structure. Icahn revealed this month that he owns ‘hundreds of millions of dollars’ of VMware shares – so it could prove more problematic than Dell expected to merge the two firms.

In a similarly tense vein, Xerox is battling it out with Fujifilm after scrapping plans for it to be acquired by the Japanese giant. Fujifilm is fighting back, claiming Xerox does not have the right to terminate the agreement. Plus, Xerox’s CEO was ousted for the second time. Turbulent times for all those connected with the company at the moment.

On a more positive note, HP and HPE both posted strong second quarter financial

results – HP has now clocked up six consecutive quarters of growth,

and after a shaky start since the split, HPE celebrated

its second consecutive quarter of growth.

Kaspersky Lab revealed it was moving parts of the company to Switzerland as it tries to shake off rumours about its unsavoury links to Russian intelligence

agencies, but the vendor also claimed it had seen more than 1,000 MSPs sign up to its partner programme in a year.

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➔

Distribution was a far more active space this month after winning the dullard of the month label two months in a row.

Westcoast posted strong growth of 12 per cent and rival Exertis saw 15 per cent growth, revealing that it is now looking to acquire across Europe through its Hammer subsidiary.

Ingram Micro found itself as the unfortunate subject of the unwanted rumour mill, with speculation escalating that its Chinese owner HNA would be flogging it again less than two years after buying it for $6bn. Many wonder why it actually bought Ingram in the first place, seeing as it had no IT distribution history. Unsurprisingly, Ingram refused to comment on that particular speculation.

CMS enjoyed a positive 2017 after smashing through the €500m barrier and revealed that it is looking at the US market as a place to build organically and open an office in the future.

Our European distribution friends saw a mixed month – with ABC Data posting double digit growth, but Spanish player Adveo continuing with its ‘annus horribilis’, posting a 31.3 per cent drop in EBITDA for its first quarter financials. It also looked to cut costs by offloading some functionality to Belgian VAR Econocom. Germany player ALSO launched a finance arm to help its partners win bigger deals, faster, and hinted of more developments to come.

Turning to the reseller space, May was definitely a manic month for VARs.

It was a month of very strong financial results: Bechtle’s Q1 turnover soared 19 per cent and it made an acquisition of analytics specialist Evolusys; Bytes saw a massive 49 per cent increase in sales for its financial year; CAE revealed it was confident of breaking through the C$100m barrier with an exec reshuffle to a ‘C-suite’ style of management; CDW saw Q1 growth of nearly 11 per cent, and Chess added two more names to its acquisition tally, bringing in more than 2,200 customers.

Continuing on the stellar growth theme, Insight saw Q1 growth of 19 per cent, GTT Communications posted Q1 growth of more than 40 per cent; Total Computers saw growth of more than 25 per cent for its FY ended 31 December, and Softcat shares soared on the news that it expects to beat financial expectations for its financial year.

May also witnessed a rush of investment in channel firms with GCI securing a £60m war chest from PE firm Mayfair to fund future expansion. Arcus Global secured £3m from YFM Equity Partners for future growth, and Nordic player Atea grabbed a €50m loan from the European Investment Bank to fuel its cloud strategy and open a new logistics and recycling centre.

M&A activity was also rife in the reseller space with Softwareone and Russian player Softline both

acquiring a minority stake in Norwegian player Crayon – meaning its competitors now hold nearly a 19 per cent stake in the Oslo firm. An interesting model, but one that

paves the way for collaboration and skills sharing.

Daisy was also in acquisition mode – set to acquire struggling

TalkTalk’s B2B business for £175m – an interesting move.

French player Sopra Steria

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made its second German acquisition and Claranet snapped up Union Solutions.

Two firms notably flogged bits of their business in May, with RedstoneConnect hiving off its managed services and systems integrator divisions, and NCC offloading its software testing business.

It was less positive news for Misco’s shareholders, who are set to receive just £600,000 of the £21.8m they are owed, it was revealed. The firm went bust in October last year – administrators have sold its Wellingborough office for more than £6m, and are set to sell its Greenock office too.

The research world didn’t really throw up anything new in May, although the positive news continued.

According to Canalys, the tablet and PC market is set to enter a new period of stability as the Windows 10 refresh continues to drive demand for new hardware.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics are the top requirements for firms investing in digital transformation, according to a survey by MetTel with 64 per cent of respondents picking it as their top choice. This was further backed by IBM CEO Ginni Rometty, who was spseaking at a Paris conference hosted by President Emmanuel Macron, claiming in her keynote that AI will provide the world with a third moment of ‘exponential impact’ to rival Moore’s Law and Metcalfe’s Law. Cisco’s $270m investment in AI and intelligence specialist Accompany showed the networking giant’s commitment to the technology trend.

Security is still the number one concern, as the explosion of connected devices via the Internet of Things brings more threats, according to Infoblox research. It was also revealed that the cost of a data breach was up in 2017 – amounting to $1.23m on average for enterprises (a 24 per cent spike), and costing $120,000 for SMBs (up 36 per cent on the previous year).

Clearswift reminded us how dangerous staff can be to a company, revealing in research that 45 per cent of employees have mistakenly shared emails containing key data.

Staying with the security theme, Twitter encouraged its 330 million users to change their passwords in May after an internal glitch exposed some password details. Lucky for Twitter it happened before GDPR came into play.

Finally, May’s research roundup revealed it is a good time to be in IT services, according to IDC, with the market watcher revealing services revenue was up 3.6 per cent in 2016 to just under $1trn.

May was a busy month for industry events, with Dell, Ingram Micro, Lenovo, Nutanix, Citrix, Barracuda, VMware and Pure Storage among those holding events somewhere around the globe.

All in all, May has been an excellent month with just a couple of exceptions; the vibe is one of overwhelming positivity and more importantly stability which is something much needed as geo-political instability continues, along with the uncertainty over Brexit.

It really feels like the majority of channel firms (with the odd exception) are playing to their strengths, and are making wise investments, learning lessons from the past.

Long may the positive vibe rule, and we definitely want more of the same in June.

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