Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter and plenty more to start your day for Friday, December 18, 2015.
Actually, here are 11 updates for VARs, managed services providers (MSPs), cloud services providers (CSPs) and independent software vendors (ISVs) to sip on...
11. Not Surprised: PACE Technical Services, one of the top MSPs in the Toronto area, has earned the CompTIA Managed Services Trustmark... That designation, along with PACE's ISO9001:2008 certification, "further demonstrates PACE's unrelenting commitment to process, structure and Industry Best Practices" says CEO Shael D. Risman.
10. Dell's SecureWorks IPO: Dell, as expected, confirmed plans to take its SecureWorks business public. The news came in an SEC regulatory filing. That particular business lost $57.5 million for the nine months ended Oct. 30, but revenue jumped 27 percent to $262.1 million for the fiscal year ended January 30, 2015, according to The Wall Street Journal. Dell acquired SecureWorks for $612 million in 2011, and the IPO could be worth about $2 billion, the Journal estimated. Dell is seeking to strengthen its balance sheet ahead of the pending $67 billion buyout of EMC and VMware. The company also is looking to sell its Perot Systems, SonicWall and Quest Software businesses, published reports have suggested.
9. Kaspersky Channel Leaders on the Move: John Murdock, formerly VP of SMB and channel sales at Kaspersky Lab, has joined Centage as VP of sales -- where he'll drive both direct and indirect channel sales. Meanwhile, former Kaspersky Lab Managing Director of North America Christopher Doggett is now senior VP of global sales at Carbonite.
8. Seeking MSPs: Verismic Software says the company's cloud management suite is the "ultimate MSP tool." Ahem... That's a pretty lofty claim in a world filled with cloud monitoring and management tools that are now built for MSPs... ChannelE2E will take a closer look at Verismic soon...
7, PSA Upgrade: Upland Software has upgraded Tenrox, a cloud-based professional services automation (PSA) platform. The upgrade sounds like it's packed with mobile enhancements, and designed for larger services organizations...
6. Docker Management and Monitoring -- What's Missing?: Meros is beta testing a total management and monitoring platform for Docker containers. The SaaS-based Meros platform supports container monitoring and alerts; log aggregation and analysis; container security; Docker image management and more. It integrates with HipChat, Librato, Zapier, Amazon SNS, PageDuty, BMC TrueSite, Slack, CampFire, StatHat, GeckoBoard, WebHooks and SMTP. Hmmm... That's a lengthy list of integrations. But does anybody see MSP-focused RMM (remote monitoring and management) tools on that list? Surely, somebody will close that integration gap... right?
5. Cloud Telco Buyout: X5 Solutions is buying CornerStone Telephone Co., a communications solutions provider in Troy, N.Y. X5 is backed by NewSpring Capital. CornerStone specializes in phone service, broadband, VoIP, cloud and data center services in the northeastern United States. X5 also purchased NovaTel and Switching Concepts earlier this year.
4. Gartner Magic Quadrant Under Fire: The feud between NetScout and Gartner Magic Quadrant continues in court, where NetScout is claiming a key victory in the overall battle against the research company. NetScout alleges that Gartner Magic Quadrant ratings are "corrupted by favoritism shown to Gartner's major customers." Hmmm...
3. Application Monitoring: Roughly one-third of businesses first learn about application performance issues from their users, and 28 percent find most of their performance issues by running ad hoc scripts, according to a ManageEngine survey. Read between the lines, and ManageEngine wants IT service providers to consume better application performance management platforms -- to proactively address app issues before users start calling the help desk...
2. Channel Partner Programs Database: More than 120 different channel partner programs are now listed in the ChannelE2E Partner Programs Database. Is your company's partner program listed? Why not?
1. About that Movie...: Spoiler free fan review here...
More: Read all of our daily 5 Channel Partner Updates. Plus: Subscribe to our daily enewsletter. Thanks to those who already have.
