Good times, bad times
Who has had a hoot and who has had a howler in the past two weeks?
GOOD TIMES
UK cloud customers
I dunno, you wait all year for a global public cloud provider to announce it is launching a UK datacentre, and then two come along at once. AWS was first out the gate as CTO Werner Vogels revealed in a blog the firm is to begin offering cloudy services on UK soil from early 2017.
In an apparent act of one-upmanship, just four days later Microsoft wheeled out its top dog, CEO Satya Nadella, to announce the UK would get a Microsoft datacentre by - wait for it…"late 2016".
Reports that Google has persuaded Barack Obama and Justin Bieber to jointly announce it will have built a cloud hub in Blighty by Tuesday afternoon remained made up as we went to press.
Grovelling
Saying sorry doesn't come easy to some - especially in the business world when companies have to publicly admit to making mistakes. But that is not the case for Veritas, which made something of a big deal of apologising to partners at its recent partner summit.
As the company operationally split from Symantec last month, a number of technical hitches happened, causing chaos for many of its channel partners.
So before it got its Monaco partner conference under way, it decided to shoo the elephant from the room straight away and pour its heart out in the form of a grovelling apology (see p14 for more).
Emma de Sousa
After almost 10 years at Insight, UK managing director Emma de Sousa is heading for the exit. From 1 April next year, she will join AIM-listed Outsourcery in the same role.
She will be charged with boosting sales and marketing efforts in her new job, at the company headed up by former Dragons' Den investor Piers Linney.
Rumours she handed in her notice at Insight by bullishly declaring "I'm out!" exist purely in our imagination.
BAD TIMES
K2 IT Ltd
With its fireworks, bonfires and organised moustache-growing japery, November is generally a month of mirth that sticks in the memory.
But it proved one to forget for K2 IT Ltd after Cisco went public on a trademark infringement dispute it settled with the Stockport-based broker. K2 acknowledged its trading activities outside Cisco's approved channels led it to transact a number of counterfeit items.
It has consequently paid the vendor a "substantial sum" and has agreed to exit the independent market. Damning K2 with faint praise, Cisco said it was "grateful for (K2's) constructive approach".
Currys PC World
You have to feel sorry for poor old Currys PC World. Apart from having a bolted-together name, it just spent ￡10m on five Christmas adverts - its first ever - featuring Hollywood superstar Jeff Goldblum.
The aim of said adverts is not to sell anything (of course) but to ‘help' people have a better Christmas by learning how to accept crap presents with good grace and appear grateful for what they have.
The idea would have been a good one, if two other retailers (Harvey Nichols and Lidl) hadn't had exactly the same idea for their festive campaigns. Awkward!
Cyberattacks
As if security wasn't high enough on the agenda, GCHQ added fuel to the fire by revealing that serious cyberattacks which threaten national security have doubled over the past year.
Luckily our government is onto it, with a new ￡6.5m scheme called CyberInvest, which will protect the UK in cyberspace.
It's always a relief when digital economy minister Ed Vaizey is on hand to reassure us we're safe.