Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to sip on for Wednesday, March 16, 2016.
Actually, there are 14 entries for VARs, managed services providers (MSPs), cloud services providers (CSPs) and independent software vendors (ISVs) to sip on.
14. Intronis: Updated brand, new appliances. This isn't your father's cloud storage company. Stay tuned for more updates involving Intronis later today. Er, make that "Intronis MSP Solutions by Barracuda."
13. Dell, EMC Asset Sales?: The rumors are getting louder. In an SEC filing, Dell and EMC hinted that they plan to sell off some assets. Dell's $67 billion buyout of EMC is expected to be completed between May and October 2016, but rumors involving asset sales have been swirling for months. It sounds like Dell's IT services business (the former Perot Systems) is nearly sold to NTT Data. And some folks are wondering about the future of Dell's software and EMC's security business...
12. Midmarket Managed Services: Watch for some key moves involving EY and EMC... along with the EMC Federation of companies. We'll go deeper on that sometime today.
11. Midmarket M&A Deal Makers: So, you're pushing your business into the midmarket. And perhaps you'd like to test the merger and acquisition waters. Check out these midmarket M&A experts, as honored by TheMiddleMarket.com.
10. Cloud Monitoring: Unigma has launched a unified cloud monitoring platform for strategic IT service providers. It's designed to "help service providers such as MSPs, CSPs, and VARs extend and deepen their offerings into public IaaS clouds." The platform already works with Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Compute Engine -- monitoring cloud health and costs from a single pane of glass, the company says. It sounds promising, but Unigma enters a very crowded market for cloud monitoring-type tools.
9. Breaking the Amazon Addiction: DropBox built its cloud-based file sharing service atop Amazon Web Services. Now, DropBox is trying to wean itself off of AWS, using some of its own infrastructure along the way. Hmmm... Is there really a benefit to building out IaaS -- even for a massive SaaS company? I'd love to see the financial plan that called for the move.
8. SaaSMAX Times Two: More than a one-trick pony, SaaSMAX has introduced some new reseller perks while also building out a data-driven business. Stay tuned for the info later today.
7. Partner Program Updates:
- BridgeWave Communications, a wireless backhaul specualist, has launched a North America channel partner program called Connections. It's designed for VARs specializing in wireless network infrastructure and delivering solutions to meet end customer demand for multi-gigabit backhaul capacity.
- Chelsio Communications, Inc., a provider of high performance Ethernet adapters for storage networking, virtualized enterprise data centers, cloud service installations, and cluster computing environments, has launched the Chelsio Accelerate Partner Program (APP).
- Equinix Inc., a global interconnection and data center company, has bolstered its channel partner program with new training and certification programs. The efforts are meant to bolster partner revenue opportunities along with "trusted advisor" status within the enterprise.
6. HIPAA Breach Disclosure: The Laborers' Health & Welfare Trust Fund of Northern California has disclosed a recent "HIPAA security incident." The data breach included full names of participants and dependents, social security numbers and health plan coverage information. The Office for Civil Rights (OCR), meanwhile, is stepping up HIPAA audits this year -- which should trigger plenty of proactive conversations between IT service providers and customers that handle healthcare records.
5. HPE Hyperconverged: Hewlett Packard Enterprise, as expected, launched a hpyerconverged system for midmarket data centers. It's aptly named the Hyper Converged 380 (HC 380). The new data center solution arrives one week after Juniper and Lenovo unveiled a hyperconverged partnership, and two weeks after Cisco Systems announced its HyperFlex offering. What's behind the flurry of activity? Here's a clue: The hyperconverged integrated systems market will grow from $371.5 million in 2014, to nearly $5 billion by 2019, Gartner predicts.
4. Oracle Cloud Revenues: SaaS and PaaS are up dramatically, but Oracle's IaaS revenues actually fell in the most recent quarter. Overall, Wall Street was happy with Oracle's latest quarterly results -- which the company released yesterday.
3. Cat Fight: After Okta agreed to sponsor Microsoft's Ignite conference, Microsoft reversed course and blocked the company from the event for competitive reasons. Now, Microsoft is reversing course again -- and re-inviting Okta to the event. So far, it sounds like Okta is on the fence about accepting the tainted invite...
2. Welcome Home: ChannelE2E CEO Amy Katz (aka, my business partner) is back from a recent road trip to... actually, informed sources already know the round-trip details.
1. Top MSPs: If you've built a successful MSP that works within a specific vertical market... then earn some free publicity. Participate in our ChannelE2E Top Vertical Market MSP Survey. Results and honorees will surface in Q2 2016.
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