Good times/Bad times

We round up who's on top of the world and who's in a world of pain in the IT industry this week

Good times

Decluttering
As part of its journey to become a devices and services company, Microsoft unveiled an overhaul of its UK distribution line-up last week, cutting its distie ranks from seven to five. The reduction in OEM distributor partners - cut in half from six to just three - was particularly astringent.
Avnet and VIP Computers were the two incumbents to lose out completely, while others saw their rights limited. Onlookers have indicated the cuts to a fairly crowded market were inevitable.
We'd like to invite Microsoft to feng shui the piles of chocolate bar wrappers, cigarette papers and scrunched-up Post-it notes where the desks of some members of Team CRN used to be.

Tech professionals
Working in technology is the best - it's official. According to recent research at least, the industry boasts the best job-creation rate.
A KPMG and Markit study shows the tech space outperformed the rest of the UK private sector in terms of employment growth over the past 10 years. On top of which, IT firms are the most confident on the outlook for their business too. Happy days!
We in the media industry are not quite so lucky in the employment stakes - but we think we could hack it if we switched to the technology world. Turn it off and on again, right?

Naysaying
Famous rivalries are not difficult to come by in the tech world, particularly in vendorland. But last week it was analysts getting in on the mud slinging, when Gartner poured water on IDC's claim that the death of Microsoft's XP will boost the PC market as customers migrate to newer software.
Gartner also took the opportunity to express its general underwhelmedness at the prospects of the hotly tipped wearble tech sector, which will "be a ‘nice to have', rather than a must have'," they claimed.
Fair enough. In an unrelated development, if any readers know someone who might fancy getting their hands on two gross of smartwatches at an unbelievable price, get in touch. We're asking for a friend.

Bad times

Phoenix
It was a stinker of a week for Phoenix IT Group as it admitted the loss of a contract with an unnamed supplier could lop £2m off its annual profits.
The news immediately wiped more than a tenth off the infrastructure services firm's share price as it confirmed it is putting in place alternative arrangements to minimise customer fallout.
But in a spin-doctoring masterclass that would make Alastair Campbell envious, Phoenix claimed that, in the long term, the change will "enable it to offer a broader range of services and products to the market". Top marks for looking on the bright side.

Familiar names
Corporate rebrands seem to be more in vogue than twerking right now as distributor Micro-P and security VAR Integralis become the latest big names to change identities.
Micro-P, alongside sister distributor Gem, has rebranded under the Exertis banner, while the Integralis name has vanished after it officially took the name of its parent, NTT Com. This follows the retirement of the C2000 brand by parent Tech Data, while the Computerlinks moniker may also be in jeopardy following the closure of its acquisition by Arrow.
Anyone returning from a six-month sabbatical might have to brush up on their geography of the channel skyline.

CISOs
As if a global recession, political unrest around the world and rising sea levels weren't enough to contend with, businesses were warned that "cybercrime is the greatest threat to organsations' survival today".
The unlikely prophet of doom on this occasion was Ken Allan, global information security leader at EY (the artist formerly known as Ernst & Young), who pointed to research from his firm revealing that current IT security services are insufficient for 83 per cent of firms. Seven in 10 outfits now assign responsibility for information security to top-level boardroom execs, as almost one in three firms report an increase in security incidents of five per cent or more in the past year.
And worse could be in store: "How will they protect themselves against technologies that are just around the corner?," wailed Allan.