Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Tuesday, April 18, 2017.
Actually, there are eight updates for VARs, managed services providers (MSPs), cloud services providers (CSPs), independent software vendors (ISVs), telco master agents and telco agents to sip on.
8. Google vs. Office 365: Google G Suite is still a real threat to Microsoft, according to former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. He views Azure as having plenty of upside potential vs. Amazon Web Services, but Office 365 as facing downside marketshare risk vs. Google. Still, Ballmer sounded an overall upbeat tone when discussing Microsoft during a CNBC interview this morning.
7. USAFacts: Ballmer this week is unveiling USAFacts, a website that tracks U.S. government spending across a range of areas... Gotta admit: It's the first product from Ballmer that has interested me in quite some time...
6. MSP - Public Safety: Motorola Solutions is rolling out a mobility managed service to police in Victoria, Australia. The deal, worth A$50 million over five years, will push real-time information to 10,000 police officers equipped with iPads and iPhones, according to Benchmark Monitor. If the service performs well, the contract could extend to an 11-year engagement.
5. Facebook CEO Keynote: Mark Zuckerberg will address Facebook customers and partners today during Facebook's F8 conference in San Jose. The keynotes begin today (Tuesday) at 10 a.m. PT. You can find Zuckerberg's keynote streamed here.
4. IPO - Big Data Depression?: Cloudera is expected to go public with a $1.8 billion valuation this week -- which is dramatically lower than the company's $4.1 billion valuation during its 2014 financing round. Cloudera competes against Hortonworks (already public) and MapR (privately held) in the Hadoop and big data software markets, which became overheated roughly two to three years ago. But more recently, cooler heads have prevailed on the valuation front. The potential loser in all this: Intel, which invested in Cloudera at the height of the big data hype cycle.
3. Earnings Results: Adtran and IBM both are expected to announce quarterly earnings results today. Two Wall Street firms -- Barclays and Bernstein -- in recent days have been raising questions about IBM's strength. IBM stock is up about 40 percent since January 2016, Tech Trader Daily reports. But skeptics wonder if the shift from hardware to cloud services is going that well. We'll take a look at IBM's earnings this evening for more details...
2. AWS Summit: Amazon's latest AWS Summit kicks off today in San Francisco. We'll be watching to see if Amazon continues its expansion from IaaS toward SaaS solutions that compete with Microsoft, Google and Cisco.
1. Ingram Micro Cloud Summit 2017: The conference kicks off Wednesday in Phoenix. Among the early highlights: Ingram has unveiled cloud and managed services blueprints to help partners build recurring revenue business practices. Also, Ingram Micro has expanded its relationship with Symantec, and is now authorized to sell and support Symantec's entire cyber defense portfolio. Those moves come one day after Ingram and Cisco Spark confirmed a cloud relationship. Ingram SVP Renee Bergeron is set to keynote the event. We'll share more highlights as details emerge.
