Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to sip on for Friday, July 15, 2016.
Actually, there are 10 entries for VARs, managed services providers (MSPs), cloud services providers (CSPs) and independent software vendors (ISVs) to sip on. Take a look…
10. Hearing Loss: Plantronics, the headset maker, faces a $3 million fine for intentionally deleting thousands of emails that were relevant to an antitrust case.
9. ChannelChangers: Who are the IT channel's future leaders? CompTIA's 2016 ChannelChangers honorees certainly are in the running. This year's honorees include Dana Bullister, 26, program manager, strategic data initiatives, LOGICnow; Taylor H. Conklin, 29, director of marketing communications, AT&T Partner Exchange; and Katie Hightower, 29, channel marketing, Intel Security.
8. Legacy IoT Concerns: What happens to IoT devices once vendors abandon them? The FTC is raising that very question, expressing concerns that vendors will ultimately orphan their legacy IoT devices -- leaving them wide open to hackers and security holes...
7. AWS Acquisition: Amazon has acquired Cloud9 to add more development tools to the AWS cloud services stack.
6. AWS 'Penny' Migrations: Racemi's DynaCenter enterprise migration software now costs one cent per migration to Amazon Web Services -- though the usual AWS usage fees apply.
5. Azure Billing Management: Microsoft has launched the Azure Usage and Billing Portal and open sourced the project, which is now available on GitHub. The big question: Can MSPs leverage the portal in a multi-tenant way that tracks expenses for multiple customers? Hmmm...
4. Earnings Season: Amazon, EMC, IBM, Microsoft and VMware each are set to announce quarterly earnings results the week of July 18. The stakes are high for each company as Amazon strives to continues AWS momentum; Microsoft works to overcome cloud margin concerns; IBM seeks to escape its client-server past; EMC works to maintain momentum just as Dell finalizes the company takeover; and VMware seeks to continue its VSAN and NSX momentum.
3. Dell-EMC Deal - Finalized?: Dell's $67 billion buyout of EMC is expected to be finalized later this month. The deal could even happen the week of July 18 -- perhaps shortly after EMC announces earnings on Monday. Dell and EMC have already named John Byrne as channel chief for the combined company, to be called Dell Technologies. Dell has not disclosed if or how the roles of current Dell and EMC channel leaders will change. Stay tuned for more on that.
2. MSPs vs Ransomware: Register now to join our July 28 webcast, which will feature MSPs and MSSPs discussing ransomware mitigation tactics. We'll take your questions throughout the live conference.
1. ChannelCon 2016: Yes, we're set to attend ChannelCon 2016 (Aug. 1-3, Hollywood, Fla.). If you'd like to potentially meet at the conference please email me ([email protected]).
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