Good times, bad times
Who was walking on sunshine - and who crying in the rain - in the channel last week?
GOOD TIMES
Graduates
As final-year students hurtle through their last term at university, the dreaded ‘J' word begins to rear its ugly head, striking panic in their hearts, (no, not ‘Jaegerbomb') - ‘jobs'.
But reseller Bytes has come to the rescue, declaring its search for the next top software sales stars well and truly on. The VAR claims it was so taken by Softcat's success with university leavers that it fancied a piece of the action itself, prompting it to launch its Bytes Academy.
As Bytes announced the news, a sigh of relief was reportedly audible across the UK and viewing figures for This Morning rocketed, CRN understands.
Looking on the bright side
Outsourcery was in an upbeat mood after publishing its 2013 results, despite another year of losses that far outstripped top-line revenue. Admittedly operational loss fell 12 per cent from the £10m figure of 2012 as losses per share narrowed from 57.7p to 34.1p.
But the £8.8m the company lost in pursuit of existing for another 12 months is some way beyond the £5.2m that customers spent with it, despite turnover hiking 44 per cent. But CEO - and TV Dragon - Piers Linney was still in fine fettle, claiming his firm is stretching a "clear and significant lead" over rivals and continues to enjoy "significant first-mover advantage".
If it's true that you have to spend money to make money, the cloud player has surely executed the first part of that strategy to perfection and must be set to make serious moolah.
Internet savviness
We've all emailed a friend or relative to alert them to an interesting link, only for them to dismiss it as spam (even when you compose a second email confirming it is actually you, they still won't believe you).
And it seems Microsoft is the latest to fall victim to the increased savviness it has helped fuel among internet users. The vendor recently sent all XP users an on-screen pop-up warning to alert them to the dangers of remaining on the 13-year-old OS, but - according to our reseller source - many mistook it for spam or spyware
Microsoft may be annoyed at the lack of Windows 8 action but at least it can rest easy in the knowledge that we're no nation of gullible fools.
BAD TIMES
Spies
Secret agents hoping to catch a glimpse of millions of IBM users' data were in for a disappointment recently after Big Blue categorically denied it had passed any info to government agencies.
IBM has been accused - along with a handful of other tech giants - of allowing the US National Security Agency to access user data, but has denied the claims from the off.
"IBM has not provided client data to the NSA or any other government agency under the programme known as PRISM," said IBM's general counsel Bob Weber in an open letter.
If Big Blue were to be handed a US government national security order compelling it to hand over a client's data without telling them, it would "take appropriate steps to challenge" it, said Weber, in an email to his wife.
The UK server market
There was more wearying news from the core hardware market this week, with the UK emerging as one of the worst performers in a declining server market
IDC figures revealed that this sceptred isle was one of western Europe's laggards in Q4, joining the market's economically volatile remedial class of romance language-speaking countries. Oh, and the Dutch and the Irish.
Despite western Europe enjoying a 5.7 per cent annual revenue rise (thanks, Scandinavia!), the EMEA market shrank 5.2 per cent to $3.86bn (£2.3bn) in Q4. Full-year revenue dropped 5.3 per cent $13.1bn.
Transatlantic relations
With signs that the special relationship is waning, what better way to re-kindle Anglo-US relations than a nice transatlantic reseller merger? But hopes of a cross-oceanic channel love match were cruelly dashed last week when talks between Daisy and a US suitor reportedly broke down over price.
Virgin Media owner Liberty Group apparently walked away from a possible deal after balking at Daisy's valuation, which the Times heard was up to £600m. Reports that Daisy was also worried about being Liberty's lapdog were unconfirmed as CRN went to press.