Welcome to Cross Channel, a weekly round up of the most pertinent stories from our sister site ChannelBiz, where you can find out all the latest developments, views and strategies from the world of the channel.
IT consultant banned for eight years after not paying tax
An IT consultant will not be allowed to be a company director for eight years after overpaying himself and his family from the income of his liquidated company.
His company was found to have not paid taxes from January 2011, which resulted in a liability to HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) of £191,136 at the date of liquidation. In that period Hodges paid £3,100 to HMRC and at least £423,024 to himself and his family. The total deficiency to creditors at the date of liquidation was £223,424.
Arrow joins Red Hat cloud and service provider programme
Arrow has joined the Red Hat Certified Cloud and Service Provider programme as a distributor, opening up Red Hat’s hybrid cloud services to its UK channel customers.
Arrow touted it can now give its customers and independent software vendors (ISVs) the support of a partner ecosystem when building their next-generation IT projects using Red Hat offerings. The distributor plans to offer cloud hosting firms, system integrators and managed service providers the ability to resell certified Red Hat products and services on-demand, through multi-tenant, dedicated and managed models.
Exertis acquires storage distribution specialist Hammer
DCC Technology, trading as Exertis, is in the process of acquiring server and storage distribution specialist Hammer for around £38 million.
Based in Basingstoke, Hampshire and employing 165 people, Hammer distributes server and storage products for a broad range of suppliers, including Dell, Intel, NetApp, Seagate and Western Digital, and has a business model that has been championed as complimentary to that of Exertis’ existing server and storage business. The acquisition is expected to be completed by the end of December 2016.
Barracuda looks for new partners after hiring IBM man
Barracuda Networks has appointed security and channel veteran Paul Lyden as its vice president sales for Northern Europe. Based in the UK, Lyden will be responsible for leading Barracuda’s sales strategy across the UK, Ireland, Benelux and the Nordics.
Lyden said: “My goal is to scale our operations and drive continued momentum by strengthening relationships with current partners and recruiting new ones. We are committed to this region, having recently doubled the size of our UK&I sales team and having signed CMS as a new distributor [last year].”