Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Friday, August 12, 2016.
Actually, there are 12 entries for VARs, managed services providers (MSPs), cloud services providers (CSPs) and independent software vendors (ISVs) and telco master agents and telco agents to sip on. Take a look…
12. Tech Coding Camps: "The Flatiron School’s 12-week technology coding course costs $15,000, but earns students no degree and no certificate," notes The Wall Street Journal. "What it does get them, at an overwhelming rate, is a well-paying job. Nearly everyone graduates, and more than nine in 10 land a job within six months at places like Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Kickstarter. Average starting salary: $74,447." Sounds awesome. But is it -- especially when CompTIA CEO Todd Thibodeaux is warning that the IT ecosystem needs far more than coders? We'll share more thoughts soon.
11. SAP Abandons Employee Performance Reviews: The German software company says employee "rating" systems do more harm than good. Instead, SAP is testing a new process involving "regular check ins" with about 10 percent of its employees this year. Ironically, news about SAP's HR strategy comes one day after we published an article about employee performance review strategies.
10. North of the Border: Ulistic, which offers marketing services to MSPs, is expanding into Quebec, an area that's often overlooked by traditional marketers because of language and cultural barriers, according to CEO Stuart Crawford. Ulistic is now a fully bilingual organization for MSPs across Canada, he adds.
9. Flash Forward: Nimble Storage has unveiled the AF1000, a "full-featured all-flash array" that allows customers to start small and scale non-disruptively up to 8PB at a substantially lower cost, the company asserts. While the traditional on-premises IT storage market continues to contract, the flash storage sector continues to enjoy double-digit growth.
8. Office 365 License Management: Cirrity, a channel-only secure cloud solutions provider, is now a provider for the Shared Computer Activation (SCA) Office 365 ProPlus Program. The program enables Cirrity's cloud customers to use their existing Office 365 licenses with Cirrity’s cloud-based servers and virtual desktops, saving hundreds of dollars per license, the company asserts. We're checking to see if or how this potentially competes with Office 365 services from AppRiver and other CSP-focused players.
7. Azure Managed Cloud Security Service: Rackspace has unveiled an early access preview of Managed Security for Microsoft Azure. Rackspace now offers the managed security service across Azure, AWS, Rackspace Dedicated Hosting and Rackspace Managed VMware Cloud.
6. Encryption Keys in the Cloud: Amazon has unveiled AWS Key Management Service (KMS), which gives IT services providers and customers centralized control over their encryption keys. KMS automatically handles all of the availability, scalability, physical security, and hardware maintenance for the underlying Key Management Infrastructure (KMI), Amazon asserts. It also centralizes key management, with one dashboard that offers creation, rotation, and lifecycle management functions. The service starts at $1 per Customer Master Key (CMK) per month.
5. Encryption, Part II: Mailprotector, an email security specialist that works closely with MSPs, is planning some encryption surprises. Stay tuned.
4. Box Expansion: Box says its Box Zones offering will support regional data storage in Australia and Canada later this year. By the way, the services will run on AWS. The company also disclosed enhancements to its Box Accelerator technology, which delivers two to six times faster upload times. Plus, Box announced ISO 27018 compliance. The moves come amid fierce competition in the file sync and sharing market. Dropbox has been expanding its partner program, while pure channel offerings like Autotask Workplace, Datto Drive and eFolder Anchor continue to march forward.
3. Asset Management & Managed Services: Interloc Solutions has unveiled managed services for Maximo -- IBM's asset management platform.
2. Public Cloud vs. On-Premises Security: Perceptions about cloud security are changing rapidly, with many IT managers stating that public cloud platforms are now more secure than on-premises networks and data systems, according to a SADA Systems survey. The findings reinforce Continuum CEO Michael George's longstanding belief that public clouds are far more secure than on-premises IT because individual businesses can't afford to match the security focus of public cloud providers. We'll share more thoughts soon.
1. Webroot MSP Momentum: More than 6,000 MSPs now leverage Webroot's IT security solutions -- up from about 4,000 at this time last year. Webroot's close working relationships with a range of PSA and RMM providers unlocked quite a few of those growth opportunities. Overall, Webroot generated double-digit year-over-year bookings growth for its fiscal year ending June 30, 2016. The company's business segment bookings grew at 36 percent for the year, and the consumer segment at 11 percent, Webroot says.
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