eSP - IT Solution Providers in Europe

Cloud service provider Fusion pays $71.5 million for MegaPath-- acquiring cloud services including Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS), cloud computing, security, SD-WAN and cloud connectivity.

MegaPath also brings around 8000 SMB and large enterprise customers, as well as 45 sales representatives. Fusion says the deal provides with a stable of cloud services professionals, together with a "robust" back office platform.

“This transaction is further evidence that Fusion is rapidly building a cloud services industry leader around our unique and compelling single-source strategy," Fusion says. "MegaPath is an ideal fit with our strategic objectives as it adds a diverse, high-value business customer base, a team of cloud services experts, and incremental financial scale, with a high percentage of MRR, high ARPU and low churn relative to industry averages. Given the similarities between our businesses, we expect the MegaPath acquisition to facilitate the customer, operational and financial integration of Birch, enabling us to drive Fusion’s strategy more efficiently across the entire organisation.”

The long-delayed Apple datacentre in Galway County, Ireland, is no more, Reuters reports-- the iPhone maker says it was "forced to make other plans" by seemingly interminable legal proceedings.

The €850 million facility was announced back in February 2015. Built in 500-acre site around 3 miles from the rural town of Athenry, it was designed to take advantage of green energy sources. However a series of planning appeals delayed approval. The Irish High Court did approve plans for the datacentre in October, but two residents took the matter to the Supreme Court.

“Despite our best efforts, delays in the approval process have forced us to make other plans and we will not be able to move forward with the data centre,” Apple states. "While disappointing, this setback will not dampen our enthusiasm for future projects in Ireland as our business continues to grow.”

by Paul Balkwell, Vice President of International Sales, Continuum

Global ransomware damage costs are skyrocketing, reported to exceed £10 billion by 2019. But, it may surprise organisations to learn that ransom payouts could be the least of all damage cost contributors. The real financial injury is in the post-attack disruption to a business’ operations and productivity.

With a comprehensive business continuity plan in place, an organisation has a better chance of significantly reducing downtime from a ransomware attack. Unfortunately, while organisations may think they have a proper plan in place for when disaster strikes and data needs to be recovered, many actually have gaping holes in their BDR and security strategies that they don’t even know exist. This is especially true in the SMB sector, as key decision makers are typically focused on core business issues such as serving clients and optimising growth, and don’t consider backups a top priority.

In its debut at the UC EXPO in London, QSC will offer attendees an opportunity experience the QSC Conference Room solution as part of the Q-SYS Platform, a scalable, software-based audio, video, and control (AV&C) platform designed on mainstream, standards-based IT technology.

Leveraging the power of Intel™ processing, the reliability of a Linux™ realtime operating system, and the interoperability of IEEE networking standards, the Q-SYS Platform goes beyond the status quo of proprietary AV hardware-based solutions, to deliver an integrated AV&C software / hardware ecosystem that the IT end user can deploy within their environment.