Good times, bad times
Who was on the up and who was on a downbound train in the channel this week?
Good Times
Tech festivals
From Dr Dre's success in building a headphones empire, to Justin Timberlake's investment in MySpace, the route from pop star to tech entrepreneur is well trodden.
Aiming to do the polar opposite is ANS chairman Scott Fletcher, who has invested in Business Rocks, a tech festival "brought to life with music".
The event, held in Manchester this week, offered "two days and a night of learning, networking, partying and innovating" and featured keynotes from the likes of Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. Rock on!
Asus
HP, Lenovo and Dell may have thought they were in a three-horse race for EMEA PC glory, but a challenger has snuck down the rails without their noticing.
Asus is now the region's third-largest player by volume, after overtaking Dell in Q1, according to Gartner.
The Taiwanese vendor pocketed 10.9 per cent of the market last quarter and was the only major player to grow in an overall market that shrank 10 per cent, reflecting the fact that businesses held off major deployments.
Despite remaining out in front on 22.4 and 18.8 points respectively, HP and Lenovo will now be wary of the sound of Asus' hooves approaching as they move into the home straight.
IT security
New rules that could see firms fined up to four per cent of global turnover for data breaches were voted through by the EU this month, putting yet more pressure on end users to bolster their security defences.
But some resellers are worried that the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) may be abused by vendors looking to make a quick buck.
"GDPR is more than just a product issue; it's about policies, procedures, and people and we have seen a little bit of vendors trying to jump on the back of it," said Rob Swainson, managing director of security VAR Blue Cube. Softly, softly, catchee monkey, in other words.
Bad Times
Ross County FC
They may be flying high in the Scottish Premiership, but Ross County was reportedly among the victims of a catastrophic blunder made by its web hosting provider, 123-reg.
Fans of the Scottish League Cup holders were unable to buy tickets for its crunch game against Celtic at the weekend after its website was wiped out.
As we went to press, 123-reg said it is in the process of restoring service to the "majority of customers affected".
"All companies need to ask themselves if they are at risk of putting too much trust in their service providers and how they would recover if a catastrophe occurred," warned security blogger Graham Cluley.
CEO fraud
The FBI has cautioned businesses to be vigilant for "CEO fraud", claiming the number of cases has skyrocketed by 270 per cent since January 2015.
"The schemers go to great lengths to spoof company email or use social engineering to assume the identity of the CEO, a company attorney, or trusted vendor," the FBI alert read.
It came as Marcin Kleczynski, CEO of anti-malware vendor Malwarebytes, told CRN he'd been targeted by such a scam.
"My CFO got an email from ‘me' that said ‘please upload this wire of $52,000'. He uploaded it, but luckily we have a two-step process and it was caught." It's enough to make you want to shun modern society and live off berries in the woods.
Intel
Intel employees will be looking nervously over their shoulders as the chip giant prepares to make the biggest round of layoffs in its history.
Some 12,000 staff will be shed as the firm continues to transition its business towards new areas such as datacentres and the Internet of Things.
"We're seen as a PC company," said Intel CEO Brian Krzanich. "It's time to make a transition to push the company all the way over to our new strategy." With strict new rules coming in for plastic surgeons, it's fair to say the silicon(e) industry is going through some tough times.