5 Channel Partner Updates: 26 October 2016

Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Wednesday, October 26, 2016. Actually, there are 24 (oh my) entries for VARs, managed services providers (MSPs), cloud services providers (CSPs), independent software vendors (ISVs), telco master agents and telco agents to sip on. Take a look… 24. New Microsoft Surface PCs: Watch for the all-in-one alternative to Apple iMac to potentially launch today. Microsoft is hosting a Surface-centric gathering today in Manhattan. The question: Will the rumored Microsoft all-in-one PCs be available as a service (i.e., hardware as a rental or hardware as a service)?

23. New Ericsson CEO: Ericsson has named Borje Ekholm as its next CEO. The telecom giant, which employs roughly 113,000 people, is struggling amid networking, mobile and cloud market shifts. He's a 10-year veteran of the company's board. 22. IBM Watson Meets Chatbots, Cars: IBM and Slack are partnering to build smarter Chatbots. Yup, IBM Watson will ultimate focus its artificial intelligence on collaboration software and IT service desk systems. Separately, GM is putting IBM Watson in cars with the new OnStar Go platform, TechCrunch reported. 21. Microsoft Slack Alternative: It's called Microsoft Teams. And an official launch could surface next week during an Office event in New York... 20. Application Performance Monitoring: Dynatrace has launched a monitoring platform for OpenStack. The offering allows enterprises and service providers to manage and control the performance of applications running atop OpenStack. Dynatrace competes in the rapidly growing Application Performance Monitoring (APM) market, where rivals like AppDynamics, Datadog and New Relic are preparing multiple surprises for November.

Tim Meehan

Erich Sanchack

19. Federal & Managed Services Sales: CenturyLink has made two shifts involving its federal and managed services sales strategies. The company has hired Erich Sanchack as senior VP of federal sales, effective Nov. 1. He succeeds Tim Meehan, who becomes CenturyLink's VP of managed services sales and support. Sanchack and Meehan will report to Dean Douglas, CenturyLink's president of sales and marketing. The company also is striving to sell its data center assets sometime this quarter. 18. Uncle Sam Vs. Hackers: The Pentagon said Monday that all its cyber mission teams have now reached initial operating capability, seven years after U.S. Cyber Command was launched amid an increasing U.S. Department of Defense emphasis on defending against cyberattacks, according to Law360. Gee... Where were all those experts during the DDoS attacks on Friday? 17. Security Acquisition: FireMon, which specializes in Network Security Policy Management (NSPM), has acquired FortyCloud, a cloud infrastructure security broker. I don't believe financial terms were disclosed.

John Thompson

16. Symantec Changes Its Channel. Again: Only a couple weeks after Symantec's partner summit, Channel Chief John Thompson is leaving the company. He'll depart in December and the channel organization will shift to multiple leaders. Hey, we get it. Changes happen. But two weeks after a partner summit? 15. Earnings Day: Watch for quarterly earnings from 8x8, ServiceNow and VMware later today. We'll be sure to give them a look, and we'll report back if we spot any interesting channel trends... 14. Partner Program: DH2i Company, which specializes in Windows Server application portability and management solutions, has launched its DxAdvantage Partner Program. The new channel partner program serves VARs, system integrators (SIs), consultants and OEMs that want to specialize in SQL Server and container management software. 13. ERP Vertical Market Partnership: Elton Technologies has agreed to resell licenses of Panaya’s CloudQuality Suite. Elton serves the Oil, Gas and Minerals sector, with local partner presence in the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Countries) Saudi Arabia, Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and UAE. The company also works closely with SAP and Oracle.

Rami Rahim

12. Juniper Gains Momentum: Juniper Networks delivered surprisingly strong quarterly results yesterday. Among the reasons: CEO Rami Rahim says the company has mastered Layer 3 networking like nobody else can. Hmmm... I'll ask a certain rival for their perspective during Cisco Partner Summit next week in San Francisco. 11. Barracuda & Ring Central: Under terms of a partnership, Barracuda Networks phone system resellers can transition their existing customers to cloud-based telephony communications from RingCentral. The move comes among multiple shifts in the cloud PBX market. Microsoft is expanding its Office 365 Cloud PBX; GoDaddy acquired FreedomVoice for a cloud VoIP push; and ShoreTel is up for sale amid the shift from hardware and software revenues to cloud sales. That's all for page one of this up. Jump to page two now for items 10 to 1. We promise: No slideshows await you. Welcome to page two of today's update. Here are items 10 to 1. 10. IBM Kills Softlayer: IBM will stop promoting the SoftLayer cloud brand, and will instead lead with BlueMix. All of the SoftLayer cloud technologies and services can now be found in the BlueMix portfolio. The branding shift comes three years after IBM acquired SoftLayer for $2 billion. 9. Kaseya Directly Embraces Colleges: Kaseya has partnered with TeamDynamix, a cloud-based work management offering, to promote endpoint management and security services into colleges. Kaseya has a longstanding track record serving universities and colleges directly. But that also means Kaseya MSPs occasionally run into education departments that are already familiar with the software companies pricing models. 8. Kaseya Traverse Regains Momentum: Over the past 18 months, the Kaseya Traverse customer base has doubled, according to a new 451 Research report. I don't know if Kaseya sponsored the study, but anecdotal evidence suggests Traverse is catching on with midmarket customers and MSPs that want infrastructure and cloud monitoring. 7. IoT Service Management: Aptilo Networks has added Internet of Things (IoT) support to the company's Aptilo Service Management Platform. More than 100 telecommunications operators in more than 70 countries have deployed the platform, though we don't know their IoT plans. 6. Azure Government MSP: ViON Corp. is now a Microsoft Azure Government Managed Service Provider (MSP). This allows ViON to provide compliant hybrid cloud solutions along with monitoring and managed services specifically designed to support IT management within government organizations, the MSP claims. 5. Cloud PBX, Virtual Desktops & Disaster Recovery (Oh My): Cloud Computing Concepts (C3) will install its cloud services infrastructure in SecureData 365’s SSAE 16 audited facilities. The result? C3’s Hosted PBX and Virtual Desktop technologies will interconnect with SecureData 365's co-location, cloud, disaster recovery and network connectivity solutions. 4. Tata Shakeup: Anybody else notice the major coup at Tata? 3. IoT Security Standards: Yes please. PS: Can't the wizards at IEEE figure out something for all of us?

Wendy Bahr

2. Cisco Channel Chief: I wonder what Cisco Channel Chief Wendy Bahr has in store for next week's major partner summit in San Francisco? Hmmm... Maybe I'll just ask her. Stay tuned for more details before the close of this week... 1. Top Channel Events: The ChannelE2E Technology Event Calendar lists all of the leading partner summits and conferences -- including their dates, locations, links to agendas and more. Visit the calendar to see top events for Q4 2016, 2017 and beyond. Or submit your own conference for potential listing on the calendar. More: Read all of our daily 5 Channel Partner Updates. Plus: Subscribe to our daily enewsletter. Thanks to those who already have.