Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Tuesday, August 21, 2018.
Actually, there are 13 timely updates designed 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:
13. Earnings: Pure Storage is expected to announce quarterly financial results today (Tuesday). Alibaba, HP Inc., Splunk and VMware are expected to unveil quarterly financial results on Thursday, according to Yahoo Finance.
12. Cisco Partnership: NTT Group has earned the Cisco Webex Service Provider (SP) certification. Only seven other partners have obtained this accreditation globally, NTT asserts.
11. Cloud Distribution: ABC Data has agree to distribute Alibaba Cloud in Central and Eastern Europe.
10. Cloud-based Financial Management Software: Sage Intacct Release 3 has surfaced with spend management, Salesforce CRM integration, contract subscription billing and revenue management enhancements.
9. Healthcare IT Partner Program: Zebra Technologies Corporation has launched a vertical market specialization for healthcare technology providers in North America, Latin America and parts of Asia-Pacific.
8. Partner Program - Business Continuity: Arcserve has unveiled a new channel partner program called Accelerate. It's designed for MSPs, VARs, large-account resellers (LARS) and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in North America. The backup, disaster recovery and business continuity company has roughly 7,500 partners worldwide, and is owned by Marlin Equity Partners.
7. Talent - Vertical Market MSP: Hilltop Consultants, a Top 100 Vertical Market MSP, has hired Matt Bares as VP of consulting services. He previously was director of engineering at Keno Kozie Associates. Hilltop specializes in the legal vertical.
6. IT Service Management Part One: Citrix IT Service Management Connector is now available in the ServiceNow Store. The Citrix ITSM Connector allows partners to more rapidly manage application and desktop provisioning, the companies say.
5. IT Service Management Part Two: FixStream and Cherwell Software have integrated their software to help find, predict and resolve ITSM (information technology service management) issues.
4. PSA Software and MSP Marketing Tools: Zift Solutions has added a partner configurable connector to Datto’s Autotask Professional Services Automation (PSA) platform. The integration allows MSPs, channel partners and distributors to access and utilize customer and prospecting data already in Autotask for syndicated marketing and outreach, without uploading or transferring contacts from one system to another, the companies say.
3. RMM Software & Data Center Management as a Service: Schneider Electric has unveiled EcoStruxure IT for Partners, a cloud-based, multi-tenant platform. It's designed for IT solutions providers to remotely manage and monitor data centers. In some ways, Schneider appears poised to compete with more traditional RMM (remote monitoring and management) software designed for MSPs to support SMB customer infrastructure. The first EcoStruxure IT application is called EcoStruxure IT Expert -- a remote monitoring service that reduces meantime to repair and improves system availability, the company asserts.
2. MSP & PSA Software Reviews: Taylor Business Group, the MSP-centric peer group organization, has launched a research group. The group's first research report evaluates PSA software platforms from ConnectWise, Datto (Autotask PSA) and Kaseya. Details are expected to surface publicly today. The PSA software reviews will be a living, ongoing research effort -- generally updated each time one of the PSA providers delivers a software upgrade, Taylor COO Michael France tells ChannelE2E.
Future research may expand to include additional PSA platforms, and additional MSP-oriented automation tools like RMM (remote monitoring and management) software. More details may also surface at Taylor Business Group's BigBig conference in September. The conference is open to Taylor Business Group members and non-members. Members in the peer group-focused organization, mainly MSPs, represent roughly $400 million in combined annual revenues.
1. Benchmark Your MSP: How is your business performing compared to the overall MSP and IT services market? Join the next ChannelE2E webcast this Thursday to find out.
