Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Wednesday, January 18, 2017.
Actually, there are 10 timely entries 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…
10. Cisco Channel Momentum?: Momentum within Cisco's channel ecosystem appears be stronger than expected this month -- leading a Wall Street firm to think the networking giant is performing well... Still, so-called "channel checks" to predict a company's business performance can be tricky -- especially since Cisco has such a diverse product line.
9. Continuum In Australia: Continuum, as expected, has opened a headquarters in Sydney, Australia. The MSP-focused technology company has also expanded its European footprint in recent months. Chief Revenue Officer Bob Kocis is deeply involved in the global expansion. The overall Continuum strategy involves RMM (remote monitoring and management), NOC (network operations center), help desk and BDR (backup and disaster recovery services) for MSPs. Continuum also is standing up a help desk in the Philippine islands as part of a longer-term help desk roadmap.
8. Gigamon Short Circuits: Shares of Gigamon, the network monitoring equipment maker, fell about 20 percent yesterday amid a revenue and profit warning.
7. Cloud Security Services: Consolidated Communications (CNSL), a business and broadband communications provider, has launched Cloud Secure -- a security service for businesses across 11 U.S. states. It features threat prevention, URL filtering, network security and more.
6. Dell Distributor Relationships: Dell Technologies, parent of Dell EMC, in December 2016 confirmed plans to consolidate some of its distributor relationships across the globe. But the official distributor lineup and associated plan weren't expected until sometime in early 2017. Could this be the week? Hmmm...
5. Intel IoT Platform: Intel has unveiled the Responsive Retail Platform (Intel RRP) to help retailers master the Internet of Things (IoT) opportunities. The platform "fosters the creation of highly flexible, scalable and innovative solutions, by bringing together retail hardware, software, APIs and sensors in a standardized way," the company asserts. Ahem... Intel plans to invest more than $100 million over the next five years in the retail industry, though the company didn't say if that figure is higher than previous annual retail investments...
4. MSPs and Amazon AWS: Amazon says its AWS MSP Partner Program is "raising the bar" for partners that want to monetize cloud services. Take a closer look and you'll discover that many of the AWS opportunities (involving DevOps or Amazon DynamoDB) don't quite resemble today's SMB managed services. And that's exactly the point...
3. Veeam Growth: Veeam says it experienced 28 percent year-over-year growth growth in 2016 and $607.4 million in total revenue bookings, fueled by accelerated enterprise and cloud revenues, the company asserts. But can Veeam balance its enterprise growth with SMB channel partners that need continued attention? We'll share more thoughts soon.
2. Small Business Acquisitions: A record number of small business owners sold their companies in 2016, according to BizBuySell. Roughly 7,842 small businesses were sold in 2016, up 8.6 percent from 2015. We'll share more analysis of the numbers soon...
1. How Much Is Your Business Worth?: Find out. Register now and join ChannelE2E's next webcast on Thursday, January 26, 2016. Service Leadership CEO Paul Dippell will share IT service provider valuation metrics. He'll also describe the steps you'll need to take to boost your company's valuation. Moreover, ChannelE2E will unveil the Top 100 Mergers and Acquisitions involving VARs, MSPs and CSPs over the past year.
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