Good week/Bad week

Whose head is held high and who is having a facepalm moment?

GOOD WEEK

Patience

Pan-European distributor Infinigate's quest to find a love match in the UK has been a long and drawn-out affair.

The Swiss-based security specialist has sent a succession of suitors packing since it decided to expand into the UK three years ago. But the picky distributor has finally found a paramour worthy of its devotion in the form of Vigil Software.

Together, the two companies have set themselves the lofty goal of becoming Europe's largest specialist security distributor.

Well, they say that love conquers all.

Cisco brass

After 18 years at the top, Cisco main man John Chambers (pictured) has indicated that he may finally be thinking about taking his leave of the networking industry to work on his golf handicap and take the missus on a Winnebago trip around the Norfolk broads. (Probably).

The 63-year-old good ol' boy hinted to Bloomberg that he may vacate the CEO chair in two to four years' time, although he hopes to remain chairman. He namechecked a number of possible internal successors, including former EMEA boss Edzard Overbeek.

But it's worth remembering, John, that sometimes the best candidates bring a fresh perspective, having come from other industries such as finance, law, retail... or UK IT channel journalism.

SMBs

SMBs all across the UK will be breathing a sigh of relief after business secretary Vince Cable announced the government would be creating a £1bn business bank to get money flowing through the economy again. This is basically because the nasty, greedy banks won't lend any money to anyone and SMBs have been the hardest hit.

Of course, in typical government fashion there have been no details as to when this money will be made available and where it is actually coming from. But who needs those little details right now?

BAD WEEK

Good Technology

It seems Good Technology has a long way to go before its channel strategy is held in the same high esteem as its whizzy mobile device management (MDM) wares.

Several top-level partners broke rank last week, albeit anonymously, to shop the vendor for not playing its deal registration scheme with a straight bat and being stingy with leads. Good may be the daddy of MDM, but the lack of love it dishes out to partners may drive some into the arms of smaller rivals, they warned.

Great expectations

Being touted as the next big thing brings with it the pressure of expectation, and great white hopes all too often burn out disappointingly quickly. Just ask Steve Brookstein, Francis Jeffers or the Crazy Frog.

While it's not yet been reduced to singing in a cruise liner dining room, the much-touted videoconferencing market has shown signs of fallibility this year. Following a record quarter in Q4 2011, the market's worth dropped 17 per cent in 2012's opening quarter, and another six per cent decline was endured in Q2. This left global sales at $644m (£398m).

Matthias Machowinski at Infonetics Research said: "We view the revenue slowdown as temporary, rather than a fundamental decline in demand."

Though we're not sure if he was talking about telepresence or the 2004 X Factor winner.

Sophos

Red faces all around for the tech bods at Sophos after the security vendor's software classified one of its own updates as a virus and blocked it, causing customer systems to go into overdrive.

Resellers were flooded with calls from confused customers after the blunder came to light, with many people spending the entire day trying to get their systems running.

We could understand if a rival software update were treated with caution, but Sophos' own? Major facepalm moment, guys.