Technology Reseller v32

01732 759725 18 NEWS : RESELLERS Six Degrees Group founder Alastair Mills, who led the IT firm from a start-up to a £100 million business with 500 employees in just five years, before selling the business for £200 million, has launched a new venture with Mike Ing, former COO at Six Degrees Group. Kerv, a ‘customer-first, cloud-first’ MSP is the product of a £30 million, LDC equity- backed merger of three existing cloud- based managed services businesses with double-digit growth rates. These are DoubleEdge Professional Services (UC, voice, data, mobility, compliance), Foehn (R&D, cloud UC, contact centre) and Metaphor IT (cloud services, digital workspaces, IT managed services). Kerv has combined revenues of £20 million, 500 customers and 100 staff based in central London, Richmond and Vigo, Spain, and is looking to expand further through organic growth and complementary acquisitions supported by follow-on funding from LDC, Lloyds Banking Group’s private equity arm. In his six years as CEO of Six Degrees, Mills completed 19 takeovers. Initially, Kerv will provide converged IT managed services, unified communications, contact centre, security and compliance applications, focusing on mid-market customers with annual IT spends of £50,000 to £100,000. Its senior leadership team consists of Alastair Mills, Executive Chairman; Mike Ing, Managing Director; Andrew Marshall, Group CFO; and the existing management teams of the three merged businesses. www.edge-edge.co.uk www.foehn.co.uk • www.metaphor-IT.com New venture for Six Degrees Group founder Alastair Mills Cognizant buying spree continues with New Signature acquisition Cognizant is continuing its buying spree with the acquisition of independent Microsoft public cloud transformation specialist New Signature. This is the professional services company’s fifth cloud-related acquisition this year, as it continues to strengthen its ability to help clients become fully digital, data-enabled, customer-centric businesses. New Signature is an award-winning Microsoft partner focused exclusively on Microsoft technologies, with an integrated offering across all three Microsoft business clouds – Azure, Microsoft 360 and Dynamics 365. With operations in the US, UK, Canada and South Africa, it was Microsoft U.S. Partner of the Year in 2014 and 2015; a Microsoft IMPACT Canada award winner in 2018; and Microsoft UK Partner of the Year in 2019. It is one of 70 certified Azure Expert Managed Service Providers worldwide and has 16 Gold Microsoft Competencies or specialisations. New Signature’s 500+ cloud experts will strengthen Cognizant’s hyperscale cloud advisory services and provide the basis of a new group within Cognizant specialising in Microsoft cloud solutions, the Microsoft Business Group. Cognizant was recently named a 2020 Microsoft Partner of the Year in three categories: SAP on Azure; Government; and U.S. Partner for Modern Workplace – Apps & Solutions for Microsoft Teams. IntraLAN targets SMEs with remote workers IntraLAN, the technology-as-a-service SME specialist, has launched an IT and connectivity service that gives home- based, remote or distributed workforces everything they need to work securely away from the office. The standard Work IN package, costing from £40 per month, includes a business- grade managed firewall and Wi-Fi router with plug-and-play portability, power-over- ethernet, remote monitoring and support, next working day replacements, and full user on-boarding. Options include a corporate-strength VPN, a managed broadband connection into the home for dedicated business use, 4G failover for additional redundancy, and full VPN portability so employees can login using their IntraLAN router at any location. IntraLAN CEO Andy Horn said: “IT and communication are the lifeblood of any successful business and those businesses that focus on delivering a seamless distributed working experience now will flourish in the months ahead.” IntraLAN also provides IT support and business continuity services, fixed line and mobile connectivity solutions and cyber security. www.intralan.co.uk Blue Prism award for Ultima Automation and infrastructure service provider Ultima has won an award for excellence in delivering Blue Prism’s connected-RPA offering. Ultima CEO Scott Dodds said: “We are delighted that our IA-Connect tool has been recognised globally by Blue Prism as a go-to tool to combat surface automation. We developed IA-Connect in response to our customers who had actively decided not to automate their business processes because they were nervous about using cloud-based RPA and the old process for automation over Citrix was so painful.” www.ultima.com COVID-safe desk booking app Birmingham-based Microsoft specialist IT consultancy Crimson is doing its bit to help people back to work with the launch of a bespoke app that enables users to check desk availability and self-manage desk bookings from a smartphone, tablet or computer. Mark Britton, Head of Marketing at Crimson, said: “Our new desk booking app enables employers to keep track of who is office-based at all times. If an employee inadvertently does arrive at the office with COVID-19 symptoms, we already have the information we need to understand who else in the business they may have been in contact with, so we can advise them to self-isolate.” Because the app has been built using no code/low code features, it is easy for employers to adapt to their individual needs. MDR on subscription Secon Cyber, a cyber security services and solutions company, has launched a new subscription service that enables organisations to outsource the monitoring of their digital estate for cyber threats. ConnectProtect Managed Detection and Response helps clients quickly identify and isolate threats that have evaded existing security technologies using the vendor-agnostic ConnectProtect platform and security expertise from Secon Cyber’s 24x7x365 security operations centre (SOC). Secon Cyber says that its service reduces the mean time to detect (MTTD) and mean time to respond (MTTR) and provides centralised visibility and security analytics in a single dashboard. www.seconcyber.com