Good week/Bad week
Who has had a stonker and who has had a stinker over the past week?
GOOD WEEK
Vendor handbags
Vendorland has seen its fair share of good old-fashioned brouhahas over the years and this week witnessed the latest salvoes in what is shaping up as a real heavyweight bout of handbags. Networking champ Cisco and Chinese contender Huawei have a bit of previous in this regard, the former having sued the latter for patent infringement in 2003. Meow! Last week Cisco chief John Chambers reopened old wounds by telling the Wall Street Journal that Huawei “doesn’t always play by the rules”. Ooh, get her! The channel’s favourite southern gent went on to make some meandering comments about “security” and “intellectual property”. The Asian outfit responded by calling Chambo’s remarks “unfortunate”. Sounds like an invitation to throwdown to us. Altogether now: fight, fight, fight, FIGHT! FIGHT!!!
Big Blue
IBM has claimed to have invented the wheel again – ushering in a “new era” of computing with the launch of its PureSystems portfolio. Apparently set to slash IT costs and eradicate complexity for the average customer, this new system is also great news for the channel, the vendor claimed, offering VARs a “leg-up” into the business value space and guaranteeing recurring revenue. What is there to lose? Although not quite so good was the fire alarm test going off in the middle of the launch, just as the CTO was in mid flow on all the system’s bells and whistles. Oops.
Fast-growing VARs
The IT industry showed the path to growth in the latest installment of the Hot 100 list of the UK’s fastest-growing privately owned mid-market firms. The rundown, compiled by Investec and Real Business, placed 16 IT, software and telecoms firms on the list, making the tech sphere the most well-represented industry, alongside financial services. Heading the merry band of technologists was Cornwall’s finest: Infoteam. The £40m turnover repairs and remanufacturing specialist placed 13th, having grown sales by an annualised rate of 58 per cent in the past four years. Also making the cut this year were VARs including ANS Group, Kelway and Onyx.
BAD WEEK
Sony
As bad weeks go, poor Sony is having a stinker. A report by Nikkei.com revealed that the vendor is set to axe 10,000 staff from its global workforce, and post a larger-than-expected loss of $6.4bn (£4bn) for its recently ended financial year. Taking the majority of the blame is its TV business which, along with those of several other major vendors, has taken a severe beating in the downturn. There are even reports that outgoing chief exec Howard Stringer and several other executive directors might have to return their bonuses. We hope super-yacht manufacturers give refunds.
Integralis
The UK and Europe’s largest pure-play security integrator swung to an eye-watering €21.8m (£18m) loss for its fiscal 2011. To make matters worse, Integralis admitted it wouldn’t be writing its results in black ink until at least 2013 as it continues to invest heavily in repositioning itself as a global service provider. Talking to CRN, Integralis chief operating officer Simon Church admitted the results “do not look fantastic on first viewing”, but said the firm was performing to the plan underwritten by majority shareholder NTT. In short, Integralis’ strategy can be likened to a chest wax – a lot of short-term pain for long-term gain.
Sophos
Cybercriminals may just have chosen the wrong firm to mess with as they attempted to upload two hacking tools on to the web server for Sophos’ partner portal. As a security company, Sophos knows a thing or two about data breaches and immediately launched a full-scale forensic investigation into the attack. As we went to press, the vendor had nearly completed its probe and was concluding that any data loss – including the theft of partner portal usernames and passwords – was very unlikely. You lose, hackers!