Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to sip on for Wednesday, April 6, 2016.
Actually, there are 12 entries for VARs, managed services providers (MSPs), cloud services providers (CSPs) and independent software vendors (ISVs) to sip on.
12. Sales Lead Management Experts: Continuum Chief Marketing Officer Jeanne Hopkins has landed on the “20 Women to Watch in Sales Lead Management” list for the fifth year in a row. G2Crowd's Adrienne Weissman also landed on the list -- another key victory for G2Crowd's online software review platform...
11. More Ruckus Wireless Bidders?: Brocade's proposed $1.2 billion buyout Ruckus Wireless may not be a done deal. Some pundits speculate that Nokia or Ericsson could emerge from the shadows to place a higher bid for Ruckus. Ahem... Nokia already seems to have its hands full with layoffs and the $16 billion buyout of Alcatel-Lucent.
10. Big OpenStack Win: Volkswagen Group plans to standardize on Mirantis OpenStack for a major private cloud initiative. Mirantis beat out Red Hat for the deal. Some folks consider OpenStack a private cloud alternative to public clouds like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. AT&T, Ericsson,GAP and eBay also have deployed Mirantis OpenStack in their data centers.
9. Managed Azure Clouds: OneNeck IT Solutions is the latest well-known IT service provider to offer Managed Microsoft Azure to the company's hybrid cloud portfolio.
8. Google Security Strategy: Details about Google's security strategy -- known as BeyondCorp -- have surfaced in ;login: magazine. BeyondCorp initiative seeks to improve security based on a device, its state and the associated user. BeyondCorp's approach considers internal networks and external networks completely untrusted. Hmmm...
7. Corporate Reboot: Salary.com, which IBM acquired and then sold, has rebuilt its management team with a mix of returning- and first-time hires. The company has welcomed back former executives Carol Ferrari as VP, marketing and community, and Christopher Fusco as VP, compensation, while appointing Lyn Van Huben as VP, Human Resources. Mark Szypko, who remained with Salary.com following its acquisition by Kenexa and later IBM, and reacquisition by the founding team, will continue to serve as VP, compensation strategy. Those four appointments join Kent Plunkett, CEO and founder; Yong Zhang, COO, CTO and president of global operations; and Robert Merklinger, senior vice president of Sales, to round out Salary.com's leadership team.
6. HIPAA Audits: You know more HIPAA audits are on the way. So how can you prepare your customers for a potential audit? These five high-level tips may help.
5. Cloud Management M&A: ServiceNow is buying ITapp in an all-cash transaction expected to close this month. The deal will allow customers to further automate and manage public, private and hybrid cloud services, ServiceNow asserted. But what exactly is ServiceNow's cloud management and automation strategy? You can find some details here and here.
4. Wireless Backup: Global Capacity, a connectivity service company, has launched a wireless backup and managed failover service across its nationwide 4G LTE wireless footprint. Global Capacity's Wireless Backup service provides customers with redundant backup and managed failover for its Internet access services.
3. Big Data Consulting: KPMG continues to expand its Microsoft-focused business practices in such areas as data and analytics (D&A), cloud transformation and compliance (CTC), and customer relationship management (CRM). The move comes amid an M&A feeding frenzy involving Microsoft Dynamics CRM, ERP and cloud service providers.
2. IoT Partner Opportunities: In ChannelE2E Podcast 065, CompTIA CEO Todd Thibodeaux and I discuss Internet of Things opportunities and challenges with Ken Trombetta, VP of Cisco’s Worldwide Partner Organization. Tune into the conversation and you'll hear practical tips on where to start your IoT business practice.
1. May 2016 Partner Summits: April has just started, but our May travel calendar is already filling up with channel summits. For some clues about where we might be heading, checkout out the ChannelE2E Technology Event Calendar -- and submit your conferences for possible inclusion.
More: Read all of our daily 5 Channel Partner Updates. Plus: Subscribe to our daily enewsletter. Thanks to those who already have.
