Good week/Bad week

Who had a great week and who had a stinker? CRN finds out.

GOOD WEEK

Channel CFOs

It was three cherries all around on the channel fruit machine this week, as a quintet of big-name players posted upbeat numbers.

In vendorland, Cisco and Lenovo posted double-digit sales and profit growth, while Alcatel-Lucent finally posted an annual profit, six years after the Franco-American outfit was formed by the merger of two telecoms giants.

Distributor Ingram enjoyed a solid Q4 as its hefty stockpile of HDDs allowed it to command top dollar as the technology continues to suffer from supply chain issues.

Meanwhile, reseller giant Insight soared past the $5bn annual sales mark during a year in which its gross profit also leapt by 10 per cent.

HP cloud partners

The vendor is plotting ways that will enable it to give its channel a larger slice of its cloud computing pie. And for a pie worth about $143bn, the slice will be a considerable mouthful for the lucky partners.

This was one of the keynote announcements at HP's global partner conference in Las Vegas last week, with new initiatives such as collaboration tools and a cloud specialisation in the offing as well. Of course, as with all these kinds of promises, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, so we will wait with bated breath to see how tasty that pie really is.

Inflation

Apparently it is a good week for inflation as the rate actually fell to its lowest level in more than a year.

According to the Consumer Price Index, inflation in January stood at 3.6 per cent, down from 4.2 per cent in January, which should equate to an easing of the burden on the consumer pocket - and hopefully an increase in spend on non-essential items.

Of course, there are some things that seem immune to the drop in inflation - such as household bills, tax, travel costs, clothing, fuel and food. But apart from that, everyone is quids in already.

BAD WEEK

Sumlock Electronics

The Geordie reseller became the latest, and surely not the last, victim of the unyielding economic climate as it hit the wall this month.

The Lenovo and VMware partner, which had been in business for 36 years, had a creditors' meeting scheduled for Thursday. Since 2008 the company's assets have gradually declined as liabilities stacked up. A commenter on ChannelWeb paid tribute to the firm's integrity and lamented "a loss to the channel community".

We can only hope all the management, staff and creditors find the happiest resolution possible.

Apple

The technology giant had a bite (or two) taken out of it last week, as its Gallic partners' growing discontent prompted street protests in the usually gay Paris.

According to media reports, a dissident group of renegade staff from several resellers stormed the French capital to highlight the stock supply problems that are said to have blighted them in recent months.

This collective of disenfranchised gadget pushers is calling itself the Apple of Discord, a reference to an old tale of Greek mythology.

Sadly, the decidedly uncultured CRN newsdesk is not exactly sure what story it refers to, but it is probably safe to assume it doesn't end well.

Torfaen taxpayers

Fresh from having to stump up for thousands of laptops that sat gathering dust in a storeroom for a year, citizens of south Wales have been asked to dig deep once more in the name of IT.

A Torfaen County Borough Council-owned datacentre, which is at the centre of a local police probe over financial irregularities, has run up £400,000 in "unbudgeted" costs. A council boss explained that "some costs have been incurred through actions that may result in criminal charges".

At least voters in the area can get a behind-the-scenes look at their taxes being put to work.