Good times, bad times
Who has been on top of the world and who has been down in the dumps over the last fortnight?
Good Times
Augmented humanity
Eager channel sales bods with an eye on the future will have been thrilled earlier this month when IDC unveiled what it thinks will be the next big thing in decades to come.
Simply wearing the latest gadgets will be deemed "so 2016" in years to come, when having the technology embedded into your actual body - or injected into it - will be all the rage.
"Effectively, we - me and you - become the fourth platform," crowed IDC's European chief bean counter Phil Carter.
Robotic exoskeletons to help paralysed people walk again, and augmented biostructures
for nerve regeneration are just some of the things on the horizon. Makes our Fitbits look a bit crap.
IBM partners
New year, new me - that's the mantra IBM will be living by from 2017, when it has promised to do more for its channel partners.
"Our doors have been wide open for years, but I am not sure the signposts have been quite where they should have been. And when people get there, sometimes it has been confusing as to how you unlock them," said IBM UK vice president Paul Brown, who told CRN that the channel is his top priority in 2017.
From next year, Big Blue wants to grow its channel business at twice the rate of its direct business, and promises to be simpler and clearer for partners, whom he admitted have been confused in the past by the vendor's size and complexity.
Mannequin challenge
Social media's latest viral craze ‘the mannequin challenge' - mimicked by the likes of Bill Gates, Robert De Niro and Hillary Clinton (until she blinked) - has made its first foray in the channel with hosting firms UKFast and UKCloud, and VAR Servium, sharing their best Madame Tussauds impressions.
Dubbed "2016's ice bucket challenge", the mannequin challenge sees people attempting to pose completely still to give the impression of a freeze frame while a camera moves around the room. So while the world of technology never stands still, the people in it do.
Bad Times
Industry demographics
Millennials are the generation of the moment, with their smartphones, cereal cafés and Snapchat. But while the industry is doing all it can to attract youngsters into the business, they ought to perhaps be paying more attention to what's going on at the other end of the spectrum.
Concerns have been raised recently about what impact the vast number of retiring business founders will have on the channel. CompTIA claims that in the next eight years, "millions" of IT workers will retire, creating a 15 per cent deficit.
So if you're among that number, before you shuffle off to the golf course or the garden, spare a thought for those left in the office.
Servers
Virtual machines continued to dent server sales as end users look to add VMs to existing boxes rather than buy new ones, according to Gartner.
The analyst claimed that global server revenue sank 5.8 per cent in Q3, with server giant HPE taking the biggest hit at 11.8 per cent; and Dell seeing a drop of 7.9 per cent.
Despite only entering the market in 2010 Cisco continues to buck the trend with its revenue growing five per cent, making it the world's fourth-largest server manufacturer. Yay.
Oracle
Just as Christopher Biggins digs out his wicked stepmother outfit in preparation for panto season, Oracle has assumed the role of pantomime villain in the IT industry after being dubbed the "big bad wolf of audits".
The Campaign for Clear Licensing has hit out at the "anti-competitive" tactics of software vendors after its research found that licensing audits take an average of nearly 200 work-hours to resolve.
The pressure group's survey of 170 global ITAM, SAM and software licensing professionals also found Big Red to be the most aggressive of all the major vendors.
"This is anti-competitive because for all the time these customers spend talking with the big vendors about audits, they are not looking at alternatives," moaned CCL founder Martin Thompson, as a heavily rouged-up Oracle snuck up behind him.