Good times, bad times

We round up who's had a stonker and who's had a stinker in the IT industry in the last fortnight

Good times

Cloudera

Although Cloudera is perhaps an odd choice of name for a start-up specialising in big data - and not cloud - its management clearly know what they're doing after bagging the second-highest financing on record for a venture-backed firm.

Proving just how hot big data is right now, Cloudera has just swiped a whopping $900m round of funding. Intel ploughed in $740m of the total, valuing the firm at $4.1bn.

It's hard to picture what $900m looks like but for context that's close to the GDP of the Gambia and if denominated in dollar bills, would weigh about the same as two Boeing 747s. It's a lot, is all we're saying.

XP stragglers

Local councils were in serious danger of drowning in a sea of security issues until recently, as most authorities admitted to CRN in Freedom of Information requests that they planned to run Windows XP on at least some devices after support ends.

But not content with the prospect of local authorities being unable to connect to central government networks and facing a serious threat of data breach, the Crown Commercial Service (CCS) is throwing them a lifebuoy after thrashing out a deal with Microsoft for 12 extra months of support.

The deal, which CRN understands will permit all public sector bodies to buy discounted support, was confirmed just as we went to press. Reports that CCS and Microsoft execs celebrated by re-enacting their favourite Baywatch scenes remain unconfirmed.

3D printing
The 3D printing space is on a strong growth trajectory, with the market predicted to grow more than sixfold over five years.

Abacus aficionados at Canalys predict that, by 2018, global annual sales of devices, services and materials will have shot up to $16.2bn, up from the 2013 total of $2.5bn. This year the market is set to rise to $3.8bn, about a third of which will come from printer sales.

Canalys calculator caresser Joe Kempton said: "Expect to see major new entrants making an impact in the coming years, including giants such as HP."

Sounds like resellers in this market will have a licence to print money.

Bad times

BlackBerry

Losing billions of dollars and huge slices of market share over a period of years is something of a setback, but now it seems BlackBerry's situation is really grave, with rumours emerging that its most visible fanboy is considering ditching his device.

The WSJ reports that Barack Obama's tech bods are road-testing Android phones from LG and Samsung. The president once claimed "they'll have to pry [my BlackBerry] out of my hands", and his office has been quick to dampen any speculation of a smartphone switch-up, claiming that it "isn't participating in any pilot programmes affecting its handheld devices".

But the firm - which recently announced an annual net loss of $5.9bn - could do without the speculation.

In light of the NSA revelations, sources tell us Obama is also considering kitting out his team with two cups on the ends of a piece of string.

MS phone scammers

Rogue resellers engaging in a popular phone scam - which involves cold-calling consumers (posing as Microsoft engineers) and charging them for free anti-malware they don't need - have been warned the game is up following a successful prosecution of one of their number.

Mohammed Khalid Jamil, who ran SmartSupportGuys, was handed a four-month suspended prison sentence and ordered to pay £5,665 in compensation to 41 of his victims, as well as £13,929 in prosecution costs, after pleading guilty to unfair trading. Let's hope he finds a new vocation outside the IT sales industry.

HP

There's nothing as disheartening as revealing a big idea you put your heart and soul into, only for it to be shot down in flames. But not many find themselves $57m poorer for doing so, as HP did recently.

Back in 2011, the vendor's then-CEO Léo Apotheker (pictured) told shareholders he planned to take the company in a dramatic new direction by refocusing the firm on enterprise services, ditching webOS and spinning off its PC business.

The plans were a disaster and some shareholders were so distressed by the ideas that they sued the firm for changing its long-standing strategy.

A few years and a $57m settlement later, the shareholder group who sued HP claim they are finally "very happy", and we think we would be too.