Good times, bad times
Who was hip - and who just hapless - in the channel last week?
GOOD TIMES
HP's new UK boss
When a fresh-faced Andy Isherwood rocked up at HP as a graduate trainee in 1988, the IT channel was in its infancy, Enya and Bros topped the charts and double denim was the height of fashion.
And while HP has gone through more changes than the Sugababes line-up in the intervening 25 years, Isherwood has stuck with the PC giant through thick and thin.
That loyalty was rewarded this month when Isherwood was announced as HP's next UK MD - we can only imagine to the strains of Take That's Never Forget. "We've come so far..."
Hindsight
"Hindsight is always 20-20," observed the film maker Billy Wilder. And some of the former leaders of gently imploding phone maker BlackBerry certainly appear to be seeing things as clear as day now the vendor has finally waved the white flag and agreed a sale. Some in-depth reportage by the Toronto Globe and Mail finds that former co-CEO Jim Balsillie claims he cut all links with the firm in March 2012 after it backtracked on his plan to turn BBM into a cross-platform service, replacing the ubiquitous SMS on all makes of handset.
His fellow co-CEO Michael Lazaridis also had misgivings about the firm's direction, in particular the move to make a generic smartphone in the shape of the Z10, says the paper. CRN also has it on good authority that the duo has some hot tips for the 2010 Grand National and the winner of the first X-Factor.
Looking after no.1
The days of mutual back scratching and ententes cordiales between vendors are over, according to analyst Canalys.
Speaking at the market watcher's annual EMEA Channels Forum event, CEO Steve Brazier told delegates that vendors are increasingly stepping on each other's toes as they enter new markets and come into competition with former allies.
"We are seeing dramatic tension increase inside the industry and the IT world is restructuring," he purred.
It's not just happening with tech vendors, Steve - CRN was shocked recently to see our old friends at Arable Farming Digest launch an IT channel news service. This means war, cropboys!
BAD TIMES
Bay Area undies sellers
As "one of the hottest adult playgrounds" in San Francisco, we imagine the New Century Theater is a key customer for merchants of saucy undergarments in the city.
So spare a thought for the panty peddlers of Frisco, as a court filing revealed that the gentlemen's establishment is reportedly $33,540 in the hole due to an unpaid bill run up on Oracle's dime. The strip joint is suing the software house over claims that Jose Manuel Gomez Sanchez spent two evenings there and paid on a corporate AmEx card
issued in Oracle's name.
The software vendor has allegedly thus far failed to cough up, and New Century is suing for the full amount, plus interest. Oops.
Family Christmases
With just 144 days to run on the government's flagship IT framework - the £6bn Commoditised IT Hardware and Software contract - suppliers are getting a bit anxious at the lack of news of its replacement.
The bidding process that saw CITHS awarded four years ago lasted 224 days and, on that occasion, there was also the safety net of an overlap with the outgoing framework.
Some sources remain hopeful that the process can be wrapped up in time, while others are fretting at the prospect of government IT chiefs having a wad of cash but no framework through which to spend it come 1 March.
But they all agree that bid writers are likely to spend the festive season wrapped up in tenders and Ts & Cs, rather than toys and turkey. Bah, humbug!
BYOD
BYOD is a pretty clumsy term. It's not an acronym, so every letter has to be voiced individually - thus defeating the point of abbreviating it in the first place.
Fortunately, BYOD may not be a term we all have to wrap our mouths around for much longer, if it is as unpopular with UK end users as research from Azzurri suggests.
But unfortunately, for fans of brevity at least, the route many firms are pursuing involves not bringing but choosing their own devices, or CYOD for short (try it, it takes even longer to say than BYOD), according to the VAR's poll. Some 31 per cent now run a company-wide CYOD policy, compared with just 17.2 per cent for BYOD, Azzurri reckons. So we're right back where we started.