Good week/Bad week

We examine who's set fair and who's had a mare during the last seven days in the channel

Good week

C-level execs
Welcome news this week for any hard-up executives who've had to forego the leather interior on their beamer and cut the kids' tennis tuition to two hours a week.
Figures from Barclays reveal that 63 per cent of tech firms are planning to create new roles this year, ahead of the UK-wide figure of 56 per cent. Some 57 per cent of roles in the IT sector will be senior positions, way up from last year's figure of 15 per cent and ahead of the 23 per cent pan-industry figure.
A whopping 97 per cent of tech firms will be staffing middle management or skilled roles, but just 37 per cent will create entry-level posts.
So it's a good job the vast majority of the UK's 2.5 million unemployed have years of senior management experience and a proven track of record of delivering results for multinationals.

Viglen
Viglen management and Lord Sugar were doing victory jigs last week when former The Apprentice winner Stella English's tribunal case against them for constructive dismissal was thrown out by a judge. English, who landed a £100,000 job at Viglen for a year after winning series 10, lodged a series of complaints, including allegations that she was treated as an "overpaid lackey".
Viglen boss Bordan Tkachuk told CRN they had to fight the case and clear Viglen's name because "when someone throws mud unfairly, sometimes it sticks". We're sure someone will snap up English very soon... Anyone?

Software-defined storage
IDC has put us out of our misery and finally explained what software-defined storage (SDS) really means.
It seems that the emerging buzzphrase has been confusing customers and suppliers alike, leading to constrained growth in the market. Offering a helping hand to those fed up of winging it, IDC let us all in on the secret.
So, are you ready? SDS is any storage software stack that can be installed on commodity resources such as x86 hardware, hypervisors, or cloud, and/or off-the-shelf computing hardware. Thanks, IDC. Clear as mud.

Bad week

On-premise security VARs
"Oi! On-premise security resellers! Bone up on the cloud, or you're out."
While these weren't Gartner research director Eric Ahlm's exact words, he is convinced that 10 per cent of all enterprise security products will be cloud-based in two years and that suppliers who don't adapt will be left up a creek sans paddling device.
He listed a lack of staff and skills and a desire to cut costs and comply with regulations quickly as key motivations for switching from hardware or software-based solutions.
We're not sure how many resellers will actually sit up and take notice given the market's relative immaturity, but as former IBM boss Lou Gerstner once said: "Watch the turtle. He only moves forward by sticking his neck out".

Microsoft Pinpoint
Microsoft's VAR listing site could be consigned to the technology dustbin if new-kid-on-the-block PartnerPulse has its way.
The new venture promises to lure customers and resellers alike by integrating social media features, videos and interactive content on its partner locator site.
The site's founder branded Pinpoint as unnavigable and basic, and reckons his site's social focus sets it apart from Microsoft's offering.

ScanSource
It's tough out there in distribution land and ScanSource Communications has become the latest to reshape its cloth to fit the size of the market. The Avaya and ShoreTel di stributor wouldn't say how many staff it has axed but the cost-cutting drive is designed to save it $3.1m (£2m) annually across Europe.
"ScanSource is still committed to comms in Europe just as we are to the barcode business, it's just we needed to make some changes, as unpleasant as they were," Buck Baker, chief executive of parent ScanSource's European business told us. We understand that Germany, rather than the UK, bore the brunt of the redundancies but wish any local staff affected well.