Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to sip on for Tuesday, May 10, 2016.
Actually, there are 14 entries for VARs, managed services providers (MSPs), cloud services providers (CSPs) and independent software vendors (ISVs) to sip on. Take a look…
14. Lenovo, Intel and MSPs: Listen closely and you'll hear MSP chatter at this week's Lenovo Accelerate 2016 partner conference in Orlando, Fla. Here's what we heard...
13. Sophos Shows MSP Know-How: Sophos, which acquired MSP-centric email security provider Reflexion Networks in 2015, is ramping up its MSP offerings. Indeed, the company just launched the Sophos MSP Connect Partner Program, which offers aggregate licensing and synchronized security benefits to MSPs. Plus, the Sophos Central dashboard offers a "unified view" to MSPs. Scott Barlow, VP of Global MSP at Sophos, previously led sales at Reflexion and now drives these new partner efforts. Sophos previewed the program at a partner summit last week in Las Vegas.We nearly crashed the event but decided not to force our way into the closed-door gathering.
12. Rackspace Concerns: The managed cloud services provider says Q1 revenues grew 7.9 percent and EBITDA grew 11.7 percent. The company now supports more than 400 customers across multiple clouds -- including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Rackspace's own OpenStack private cloud offerings. Still, the company's revenue forecast disappointed investors and shares fell about 7.5 percent in after hours trading last night.
11. Telecom Slump?: Nokia's telecom equipment sales fell more than expected in the first quarter and the Finnish company warned earnings in its mainstay business would decline this year due to weakening demand for mobile gear in key markets, Reuters reported. The news comes only a few weeks after Juniper Networks (Nasdaq: JNPR) announced weaker-than-expected sales into the large service provider market. Hmmm... Is there a telecom IT spending slump? Or are only certain vendors slumping in the sector? We'll likely get clearer answers when Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) announces Q3FY16 results on May 18.
10. Network Operations Centers: INOC, a 24×7 Network Operations Center (NOC) and global provider of technology infrastructure monitoring, has launched a NOC focused on optical network infrastructure.
9. SMB Disaster Recovery: Roughly 80% of small to midsized companies still rely on tape or disk-based technology as part of their disaster recovery strategy, according to an Infrascale survey. Moreover, 54 percent of SMB customers can't restore mission critical applications within one hour of failure.
8. Cloud M&A: Private equity investment firm Cloud Equity Group has acquired CloudAccess.net, a cloud-based hosting and support platform for Joomla and WordPress. Financial terms were not disclosed but it sounds like a relatively small deal, considering Cloud Equity's managing partner and CloudAccess's CEO were listed as contacts on the press materials...
7. Online Lending Red Flag: LendingClub has fired founder and CEO Renaud Laplanche. The board says it found problems with the company's lending practices. Plus, Laplanche disclose details about a personal investment, according to The Wall Street Journal. Shares in LendingClub (NYSE: LC) tumbled roughly 35 percent on the news. U.S. regulators have been taking a closer look at the online lending industry, trying to determine if new safeguards are required to protect businesses and consumers from unscrupulous practices.
6. EMC Retains Pivotal Control: When Ford Motor and Microsoft recently invested in Pivotal, the move apparently didn't dilute EMC's ownership in the company. Instead, EMC apparently pumped more money in Pivotal, one of the faster-growing properties that EMC owns.
5. Unity Name Battle: Nexsan is suing EMC over the Unity brand, The Register reports. EMC launched its Unity line of midmarket storage solutions on May 2. However, Nexsan says its Unity trademark was filed on March 22, with EMC's corresponding trademark application arriving more than 30 days later...
4. Fresh Funding for Channel Business: Relayware, which develops a partner relationship management (PRM) platform, has raised $11 million in fresh funding from Amadeus Capital Partners and Albion Ventures. The investment will help drive growth in the U.S., the company said.
3. Fresh Funding for Container Management: Rancher Labs, which develops a container management platform for Kubernetes and Docker Swarm, has raise $20 million in Series B funding. GRC SinoGreen, a Chinese private equity and venture capital fund, led the round.
2. Partner Programs:
- Broadview Networks, which offers cloud-based unified communications and information technology services, has bolstered its OfficeSuite White Label service with new calling plans and features. The platform now supports more than 250,000 end users, Broadview claimed.
- Extreme Networks is doubling down on channel partners amid the company's midmarket software defined networking push, according to eWeek.
- When Huawei unveiled a Cloud Managed Network solution for MSPs, we asked the company for more info. The response: MSPs can participate in a sneak preview of CMN by sending an email to [email protected]. The solution will be generally available in September 2016, a spokesperson for the company said.
- OneLogin, an identity management provider, hired Steven Chung as chief revenue officer. He reports to CEO and Co-founder Thomas Pedersen. Previously, Chung oversaw worldwide sales for Demandware, where he led the company’s growth after its IPO. Earlier, he held Ssenior leadership roles at Symantec, MicroStrategy and PwC.
- ZeroStack has launched a partner program that allows participants to deliver OpenStack “cloud-in-a-box” to their customers.
1. Live Lenovo Blog: We'll be blogging live from Lenovo Accelerate 2016 this morning in Orlando, Fla. So far, much of the chatter at the conference involves hyperconverged data centers and vertical market initiatives.
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