Technology Reseller v27

01732 759725 NEWS : VENDORS 16 BookingLive is planning to more than double its turnover in 2020 after securing £1.31 million in new investment from Blackfinch Ventures and the Development Bank of Wales. Founded by CEO Vinnie Morgan in 2014, BookingLive provides online booking, reservation and customer interaction software to more than 700 private and public sector customers, including Microsoft, BMW, Universal Music Group, the BBC, CAPITA and The City of Westminster. Its SaaS solutions include Enterprise, a full service option for public sector and larger private sector companies, and Connect, a ‘freemium’ booking system for SMEs and start-ups, now used in 47 countries. The new funding will enable BookingLive to support the rapid increase in customer numbers since the launch of Connect and help it to expand its operations in the US, where it recently opened a satellite office in Charlotte, North Carolina. The company expects its Enterprise product, which has been embraced by local councils across the UK, to prove equally popular with America’s 100,000 public sector agencies. As part of its growth plan, BookingLive has announced that it will be relocating its company headquarters to Cardiff during 2020. www.bookinglive.com New funding to fuel growth for BookingLive Shape Security acquired by F5 F5 is almost doubling its addressable market in security to $8 billion with the acquisition of Shape Security, a leader in fraud and abuse prevention. By bringing together F5’s expertise in protecting applications across multi-cloud environments and Shape’s protection against automated attacks, botnets and targeted fraud, the acquisition gives organisations comprehensive, end-to-end application security. Shape’s advanced platform utilises artificial intelligence and machine learning, supported by powerful cloud- based analytics, to protect banks, airlines, retailers and government agencies against attacks that bypass other security and fraud controls, including credential stuffing attacks, where cybercriminals use stolen passwords from third party data breaches to take over other online accounts. Derek Smith, co-founder and CEO of Shape, said: “Since Shape’s inception, we have observed a consistent pattern in customer after customer: the use of F5 technology to deliver and enable their applications. We look forward to the opportunity to deeply integrate into F5’s platform for application delivery and security. F5 provides the optimum traffic flow insertion point for Shape’s industry- leading online fraud and abuse prevention solutions. This, combined with F5’s global go-to-market scale, means we can jointly protect significantly more customers’ applications and users from sophisticated attacks and malicious traffic.” f5.com • www.shapesecurity.com. Vinnie Morgan Innovate opens data centres in Australia Innovate, a UK-based provider of public and private cloud solutions, is extending its reach to Australia, with the opening of two data centres in Sydney and Perth to go with those it already has in Manchester, Newbury, Slough and Frankfurt, Germany. Innovate’s expansion into Australia coincides with the launch of its new cloud- based business services brand Continuous (www.continuous.co.uk ), which provides modular IT services from the cloud. Director David Pape said: “The opportunity to expand into the Asia Pacific market arose from a combination of growing demands from our expanding customer base for global service delivery, as well as our own desire to improve our end user experiences across APAC and to ensure that we have the infrastructure to deliver excellent cloud services across the globe, now and in the future.” He added: “We took the decision a few years back to move from traditional IT services into the cloud services market and have not looked back since. This is most definitely an industry for the future and we are already seeing the benefits of our investment as our customer base grows strongly and we move into new sectors and regions.” Next, Innovate plans to open new data centres in the U.S.. Record results for Axcient A simplification of its technology, billing and pricing helped Axcient, a provider of business availability and cloud security solutions for MSPs, achieve record results in 2019. The company benefitted from strong demand for products within its Axcient 360 platform, including year-on-year growth of 200% for both Axcient Office 365 Protection and Axcient Business Continuity. www.axcient.com ITS investment to fuel full fibre roll-out Gigabit network operator ITS is fast- tracking its full fibre roll-out plans after securing £45 million of investment from Aviva Investors, the global asset management business of Aviva plc. The partnership will enable ITS to build several new full fibre networks across the UK, potentially reaching an additional 200,000 premises, and build-out its existing network to reach more business and residential premises within its current footprint. ITS currently operates gigabit-capable networks in Bristol, East Midlands, Greater Manchester, North Wales, the North East and South East, including London, reusing public and private infrastructure to accelerate network rollout. Access to the networks is offered on a wholesale basis to a range of partners, including internet service providers (ISPs), network and mobile network operators and IT resellers. ITS CEO Daren Baythorpe said: “We are really excited to be working in partnership with an investor of Aviva’s calibre. It gives us considerable financial backing to further flex our reuse muscles and continue to take advantage of the opportunities ahead. This approach allows us to connect more customers to full fibre far quicker than the industry norm.” www.itstechnologygroup.com