Good week/Bad week

Who has had a corker and who will be hitting the bottle? Find out here

GOOD WEEK

Northamber

Northamber is now the proud owner of - its own building! The distributor shelled out more than £6m to buy the Surrey-based premises that it has occupied since 1999, as it looked to make use of some of the vast cash pile it is sitting on. The move will save it a whopping £601,000 a year in rent - wow, and we thought that rental prices were high in London. Northamber's "acquisition" statement was a little sheepish, though - in its haste to get the sale of the building secured before a nasty developer got his mitts on the five-acre site, it neglected to confer with its shareholders before handing over the wad. Naughty, naughty.

Cloud suppliers

More than 90 per cent of software titan CA's UK partners expect to be delivering cloudy services to their customers by the end of the year. According to research from the vendor, some 69 per cent of its UK resellers are currently selling cloud to their client base, with a further 24 per cent expecting to do so by 2012's close. The vendor added that 77 per cent of VARs are expecting an increase in cloud spending. Which does rather gloss over the fact that about one in four is presumably expecting spending on this cloud nonsense to decrease. But there are always naysayers, aren't there? Remember all those numpties who said the netbook was all hype and would never take off?

Oracle

You have to feel a bit sorry for Axel Bierbach, the man in charge of the administration of German pre-owned software reseller UsedSoft. Bierbach has found himself on the receiving end of a potentially landmark EU Court of Justice case brought by Oracle, which is seeking to stop him reselling downloaded Oracle software. Although the case is ongoing, Oracle's vice president for public policy Karl Cox, for one, is convinced the court will find in the vendor's favour, according to Bloomberg. This story raises more questions than answers, not least of all, why is Lancashire's foremost superstar DJ acting as Oracle's official legal spokesman?

BAD WEEK

Disloyal HP partners

HP cast itself in the role of jealous lover last week as it warned that allocation of its MDF budget would reflect the fidelity of its partners. According to the word on the street, many resellers who went to HP for a nice wad of MDF last quarter returned empty-handed. HP assured us the overall pot has not shrunk, but warned resellers who are hopping into bed with its rivals - as well as those who can't demonstrate ROI - they may go without as it looks to back its most loyal partners.

CSC employees

Workers at the services giant will be looking over their shoulders for the next three months as the firm revealed it is planning to axe 640 employees at the end of a 90-day consultation period. This follows news two months ago that the US-headquartered monolith was culling 500 staff in this country. The firm has faced some heat in the past year for its role in the botched rollout of the NHS National Programme for IT. It now faces criticism for reportedly favouring off-shore employees over those based in Blighty. "CSC remains fully committed to the UK," said the under-fire integrator, reassuringly. "We just think we might both benefit from taking some time and maybe seeing other people," it added. Probably.

Mid-market IT suppliers

The channel's ability to adapt to the fast-changing tech world was called into question this week as research revealed many mid-market firms are considering giving their existing IT supplier the heave-ho. Market watcher K2 Advisory quizzed a smorgasbord of firms with between 200 and 500 employees and found that one in five harbours concerns about the channel's ability to handle shifts such as BYOD and cloud. Many mid-market IT chiefs revealed they are pondering changing their supplier, while also calling on IT vendors to help their partners evolve by providing better training and support.