Good times, bad times
Who was a hero, and who was a zero, in the channel in the last fortnight?
Good Times
Moving on up
HPE's UK boss Andy Isherwood was promoted to EMEA managing director, Microsoft UK CEO Michel van der Bel became corporate vice president for EMEA, and NetApp's CEMA general manager Alexander Wallner was bumped to up senior vice president for EMEA. The trio are veterans at their respective companies.HR departments across the channel were busy in July, when a number of country bosses jumped up a rung on the ladder to EMEA level.
Microsoft had previously announced that former Vodafone boss Cindy Rose would take on the top job in the UK, but permanent replacements for the other two had not been announced at the time of writing. We're sure there are a number of HPE and NetApp execs on their best behaviour at the moment.
Bytes
Microsoft specialist Bytes was feeling flush recently after winning a ￡21m deal with the Ministry of Defence through the Technology Products framework. The three-year deal will see the firm provide the MoD with a range of Microsoft licences, and follows a string of "significant" wins through the framework.
"Since winning a place on the Technology Products framework two years ago, we have seen some phenomenal new business, which is testament to our expertise at driving cloud services to meet the changing needs of our customers," boasted Bytes' public sector director Chris Swani.
M&A
M&A is the new black in the tech industry, with seemingly every company and its dog rushing to snap up a fellow firm in a blockbuster deal.
In the last few weeks alone, Oracle snapped up NetSuite for $9.3bn, Verizon acquired Yahoo for $4.8bn, Avnet bought Raspberry Pi maker Premier Farnell for ￡691m, and Civica swallowed government digital specialist SFW for an undisclosed amount. Phew!
All of these come in the wake of Dell announcing plans to buy EMC, and Microsoft snapping up LinkedIn for $26bn.
At this rate, there will be no tech companies left.
Bad Times
Skyscape
After losing out in a High Court battle against Sky, government cloud provider Skyscape chose to rebrand itself as UKCloud last month.
Ironically, it was Skyscape which started legal proceedings against the giant, after becoming fed up with a wave of threatening letters coming through the door.
Skyscape set out in court to prove that its name did not infringe on Sky's brand, but the judge ruled that it failed in this aim, leaving it open to future lawsuits from Sky. To prevent any future legal beef, the firm chose to rebrand.
Despite the disappointing outcome, Skyscape/UKCloud's CEO Simon Hansford told CRN that although it is not something he would have chosen to do, he is quite pleased with the outcome.
"I think it's a better name," he explained. So there.
Windows 10
Microsoft's ambition to get Windows 10 on one billion devices by FY18 has fallen flat, with the vendor admitting it just won't happen.
Despite Microsoft saying the operating system got off to the "hottest start in history", it recently realised that it had set the bar too high and it would "take longer than FY18" to reach its lofty goal, blaming changes to its phone business.
The latest figures show Windows 10 is currently on 350 million devices globally, so just the 650 million to go...
Apple
Apple took a bruising in the PC market in the second quarter, losing its fourth spot in Gartner's global PC rankings to Asus.
The move happened after Apple saw a 4.9 per cent decline in shipments, according to the analyst, thanks to weak sales in the US. This was the worst result of all the major vendors, although Gartner's ‘others' category - encompassing everyone outside the top five - did fall by almost a fifth over the same period.
But aside from its PC disappointment, Apple did announce it had sold its billionth iPhone in July. Who cares about PCs anyway?