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By Ben Sullivan
Welcome to Cross Channel, a weekly roundup of the most pertinent stories from TechWeekEurope’s sister site ChannelBiz, where you can find out all the latest developments, views and strategies from the world of the channel.
Brexit is positive says acquired cloud data center owner
France’s InfraVia Capital Partners has taken a majority stake in U.K. data center operator Next Generation Data (NGD), which owns Europe’s biggest data center.
NGD founder Simon Taylor claims: “We believe that Brexit will possibly increase the on-shoring of data which we see as positive for NGD going forward.”
Brexit fails to dampen cloud spending says analyst IDC
Spending on public cloud IT infrastructure will grow by 18.8 percent in 2016, according to the latest figures from analyst IDC, which predicts it will reach $23.2 billion (£18bn).
Despite Brexit, not one geographical region will experience a decline in cloud spending, said IDC, with investments in public cloud growing at a faster rate than investments in private cloud infrastructure.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise boosts partner sales offering
Hewlett Packard Enterprise has launched an enhanced Enterprise Group deal registration and price protection program that is being rolled out to HPE partners across EMEA.
The new HPE Deal Registration Program protects and rewards the time investment of partner sales and pre-sales when “additional effort” is required to find and secure a new customer deal.
Avast buys AVG for £1bn to widen services
Avast has bought fellow Czech security firm AVG for $1.3 billion (£1bn) as it seeks to provide protection beyond PCs to smartphones and Internet of Things (IoT) devices.
AVG is now based in Amsterdam, but was formed in the Czech Republic in 1991, while Prague-based Avast was founded in 1988. Avast recently opened its new headquarters in Prague, hoping to stimulate the rest of the Czech technology industry, although it has offices housing more than 500 employees around the world.