Good week, bad week
Find out who has been a winner and who has been a loser over the last seven days
Good week
Being boring
Vim Vithaldas may be the closest thing the channel has to brilliant-but-dull snooker legend Steve Davis in that - to quote the Azzurri boss - "creating a boring business is my number one objective".
The Nugget bagged six World Championships in nine years by grinding down his opponents with his metronomic safety game. And safety first is also the motto of Vithaldas, who took the helm of the comms integrator at its lowest ebb following its takeover by the banks in a debt-for-equity swap.
Thirteen months on, and Azzurri has hit its financial goals for four straight quarters, while recurring revenue has soared to 75 per cent of sales. Let's hope the banks are suitablly impressed - presuming they managed to stay awake throughout the presentation.
HP
Sometimes it's only when something is snatched away from you that you realise how much you want it. That could be the case with HP, which is back on top of the pile in the PC market after narrowly losing its lead to Lenovo in Q3.
According to Gartner, HP outshipped its Chinese rival by 600,000 units in Q4 and may have even taken a margin hit in the process. Hardly the actions of a firm that - as some had suspected - no longer sees PCs as a core market. You show ‘em, girlfriend.
Channel insolvencies
If your new year's resolution was to adopt a more positive outlook - and if you haven't broken it yet - look away now; the following is not for you.
According to credit reference firm Graydon, 2012 saw the second-highest number of UK channel insolvencies since 2003, at 285.
But for those optimists who did not heed our advice and continued to read on, there was one glimmer of good news, as 2012's Q4 saw the lowest quarterly number of business failures since the beginning of 2008. Why don't we crack open the champers, eh?
Bad week
G-Cloud
Perhaps not so much a bad week for the much-vaunted framework as another one full of impressive rhetoric but little substance.
The government has seen fit to tender for the deal for the third time in a year, and it now has a list of 1.4 million accredited suppliers. Roughly.
The government may like to trumpet the fact that 60 per cent of spending so far has been through SMBs, but it is presumably less proud of the pretty paltry sum of £4m that has been spent so far.
The intention is to funnel £200m of spending through G-Cloud this year. Presumably after a further 600,000 suppliers have been added to the roster at fortnightly intervals.
HMV's chief executive
You have to feel sorry for the chief executive of HMV. He left a promising career at Jessops last year (oops) to take over the reins of the long-standing music and electricals retailer and the firm has now gone into administration, leaving more than 4,000 jobs at risk.
Although potential buyers are sniffing around HMV and the firm is still trading, that has to hurt in the CV department. But still, spare a thought for all those poor HMV voucher holders as well, who stand to get nothing on what was a gift from a loving relative or in the case of some people, a loving employer.
Danwood
It emerged last week that the UK's biggest print VAR has commenced a consultation process with all sales and support staff (thought to number somewhere over 300), with sources claiming it's likely that about one in four of these may be made redundant.
The reseller subsequently confirmed the move, stressing that it will make any necessary headcount reductions "fairly and quickly".The action follows a senior management overhaul and a full structural review of the firm. The new leadership, headed by CEO Steve Francis, is intent that the flurry of changes will mark "the birth of new Danwood".
Wherever the company goes from here, it is never nice to report news of job losses, and we wish those staff affected all the best.