Good year, bad year

Who has had a 2015 to remember, and who will be in a hurry to forget it?

Good year

Unicorns

The rationale behind naming privately owned start-ups valued at more than $1bn after the mythical beasts was that such companies are as rare as the creatures in question.

But this year unicorns have multiplied to such an extent that they might be considered vermin. There are now almost 150 of them worldwide and in 2015 their number has increased at a rate of more than one a week. Funding Circle, Shazam, and TransferWise are among the UK's growing bucket of unicorns (and, yes, that is the correct collective noun).

But some are concerned that this is simply another tech bubble - one that is easily burst, particularly if you have a massive spike sticking out of your face.

Public sector resellers

A the start of this year the general election loomed, striking fears of a slowdown in public sector business, and one of the government's landmark frameworks, Digital Services, was causing headaches.

But fast-forward 12 months and there has been quite a turnaround. The controversial Digital Services scheme was scrapped and a new, improved version is due to launch in February. The election slowdown failed to materialise for many and to top it off, G-Cloud sales continued to rocket, smashing the ￡800m barrier this year.

Political ambitions

This year saw several IT leaders declaring their intent to make it into high office, including former HP chief Carly Fiorina and enigmatic McAfee founder John McAfee, who each launched US presidential campaigns.

Meanwhile in the UK's own election, Computacenter boss Mike Norris did not run for parliament but did put his name to a letter signed by more than 100 business leaders supporting the Conservatives' campaign. Maybe snagging the crucial channel vote was what powered David Cameron into number 10?

Bad Year

Staying together

In 2015 the channel had to cope with not one, but two major vendors splitting up.

In the space of a few weeks this autumn both Symantec and HP divided in two. The former span out its Veritas arm into a separate business, while the latter has diverged into Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and HP Inc. HPE is clearly enjoying singledom, reporting a "confident" start. Possibly while HP Inc tearfully thumbs its photo albums and nurses a bottle of Sauvignon blanc.

Women in IT

Although the women in IT cause has taken a big step forward this year, certain "incidents" hit the headlines which may have seen it take three or four back.

In May cloud firm FortaCloud came under fire for tweeting info of a promotion next to a photo of a scantily clad female model posing provocatively.

IBM faced similar fury after launching its Hack a Hairdryer campaign, which aimed to get women and girls interested in tech through the medium of hair accessories.
Next year we wouldn't be surprised to see a vendor ad campaign fronted by Robin Thicke and Dapper Laughs.

Playing nicely

If 2015 were a classroom of children, it would have been constantly interrupted with squabbles and feuds.

Flash rivals Pure Storage and EMC launched numerous characteristically vociferous campaigns against each other, while Oracle earned the ire of the security researcher community when it published a swiftly deleted blog in which it unwisely told them it wanted to clamp down on their attempts to find vulnerabilities in its code.

In the UK Stone boss Simon Harbridge entered a war of words with former CEO James Bird over plans to liquidate Stone Bidco Limited.
Bird claimed the move would mean he and his colleagues would lose out "to the tune of ￡8.6m" and the case ended up being decided in the High Court, with Harbridge claiming victory.