Good times, bad times

Who has been living the dream and who has been having a nightmare over the last fortnight?

Good Times

Google and Facebook

The channel was divided recently by news that private tech firms such as Google and Facebook could be able to award their own degrees.

In a recent whitepaper, the government outlined plans to improve choice in higher education by allowing "challenger institutions" to dish out their own degrees, with various reports in the national press suggesting this could pave the way for private firms to turn their hands to academia. Some channel players said the move was just the sort of radical shake-up needed to bridge the skills gap, while others said the only beneficiaries would be the companies themselves.

We're sure there are a few people who have clocked up enough hours on the social network to qualify for a PhD in Facebook studies.

Softcat

The channel is no stranger to fundraising, with numerous execs taking on gruelling challenges and firms holding fun days and the like. Softcat is no exception and in the past four years, its annual May Ball event has racked up a whopping £1m in total, with all the cash going to the Dreams Come True children's charity.

The latest event was held at London's Grosvenor Hotel and was attended by Softcat staff and vendor partners who dug deep to buy a table. An auction and raffle on the night raised further funds for the charity.

With the average spend per person being a whopping £290, we just hope those raffle prizes were good!

UK PC market

UK PC resellers have a reason to be optimistic after analyst Context said that the local PC market is set for a boost at the end of the year thanks to Windows 10.

At the moment, the OS's market share in the UK business market is 58 per cent, when counting ‘pure' Windows 10 and the ‘downgradable' version, which allows customers to upgrade again further down the line.

Business customers are currently running test and development programmes for the OS, but once they are done and dusted, a PC refresh cycle should kick off, Context said. Yippee.

Bad times

Alternative Networks

It's rare that the lyrics of a Take That song accurately sum up the recent comings and goings of a reseller, but Alternative Networks proved it is possible.

The VAR recently lost its Citrix Platinum partner status after narrowly missing the top-tier revenue target, getting demoted to Gold level in the process. The firm said that demand from customers to buy things on an annuity basis meant it fell shy of the target, but claimed it is on a mission to get
back on top.

"I just want you back for good," crooned Alternative Networks execs down the line to Citrix. Possibly.

HP

HP got a taste of its own medicine after Michael Dell took a swipe at the firm's strategy to split in two during EMC World.

HPE recently ran an anti-Dell-EMC merger campaign, claiming that the $67bn deal will slow the duo down and force them to lose customer focus. So Michael Dell did not hold back when addressing EMC partners, claiming his strategy is better than HP's.

"Our competitors like HP are shrinking their way to success. Wait, you can't shrink your way to success. That's not even a real thing!" sassed Dell, clicking his fingers, flicking his hair and pouting.

‘Omnichannel'

Aside from being a silly word, a new survey has concluded that so-called "omnichannel" strategies are simply not working.

The idea of omnichannel is that consumers get a joined-up experience when contacting a company, giving them more choice about how they get in touch.
But research from Eckoh found that this isn't working, with 73 per cent of UK consumers questioned claiming that they have had to repeat the details of their customer service complaint in separate interactions with the same company.

The omnichannel concept is so rubbish that it was branded by Eckoh as "omni-flannel". We can't even begin to imagine the amount of back-slapping and high fives that went on during the meeting when that gem surfaced.