5 things

5 Channel Partner Updates: 18 October 2016

Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Tuesday, October 18, 2016.

Actually, there are 13 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…

13. Partner Program, Part I: Qstream, which makes a SaaS-based sales management platform, continues to expand its partner program. The latest adopter is VALIDITY Group of Melbourne, Australia.

12. Partner Program, Part II: Rancher Labs, which develops container management software, has launched the Rancher Partner Network, a partner program designed to expand the company’s global reach, increase enterprise adoption, and provide partners and customers with tools for success, the company asserts.

11. Partner Program, Part III: KeyData, Novacoast and Sila Solutions Group have joined the BeyondTrust Partner Program. The program offers identity and access management (IAM) and privileged access management (PAM) solutions. BeyondTrust also recently announced a Managed Service Provider Program

10. IBM Cloud Services: IBM's latest quarterly results, announced yesterday, were stronger than Wall Street had expected. Still, the company's stock actually dropped last evening during after-hours trading. Some pundits want IBM's cloud revenues to grow even faster than the current pacing. We'll be back with more analysis for partners today.

9. AWS Valuation: The Amazon Web Services business is worth $200 billion, according to Credit Suisse. Um... Let's all be careful here. How many money-losing startups run their IT infrastructure in AWS? And what happens to AWS's valuation if there's a correction that kills some of those startups? Hmmm... For some clues rewind to the dot-com implosion from about 2000 -- which ultimately killed major hosting providers like Exodus Communications. I'm not saying the same fate awaits AWS. But be wary of all the market hype...

8. Intel Quarterly Earnings: They're set to arrive later today. The company recently hinted that the PC market is rebounding, but a new round of HP Inc. layoffs raises questions about that recovery. We'll share some earnings analysis after Intel's numbers surface late today.

7. Nonsense: Gartner says CIOs are still confused about the definition of cloud computing. Seriously? If it's off-premises, OpEx, owned by someone else and elastic (i.e., scales on demand) to meet your needs then it's truly cloud. If you own it and pretend it's elastic, then it's not cloud.

6. HIPAA Risk Assessment Tool: The government has made updates and you'll find a revised HIPAA Risk Assessment Tool here.

5. Legal Cloud Services: CloudLex, which develops a cloud platform for legal firms and attorneys, has raised $3.7 million in Series A funding. PS: For a look at the top MSPs serving the legal industry and verticals, check out the Top 100 Vertical Market MSPs.

4. Data Center Subsidies: Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple and Facebook last year reported nearly $120 billion in pre-tax profits, and yet they told states and localities they needed financial help to build new data centers. A new report, called Money Lost to the Cloud, takes a closer look at the numbers...

3. VMware Multi-Cloud Management: The VMware Multi-Cloud Management strategy moved forward today during VMworld Europe. The company announced a range of cross-cloud architecture enhancements at the show. The announcements surfaced one week after VMware named Amazon Web Services as the company's preferred public cloud partner.

2. Dell Global Partner Summit: Dell and EMC are rallying channel partners today during the Dell EMC World conference in Austin, Texas. We'll be back with updates soon.

1. Top 50 Cloud Management Tools: You've already mastered PC and server management. But what if you want to manage cloud services for your customers -- especially workloads in Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud and more? Glad you asked. Here are 50 cloud monitoring and management tools we've been tracking.

More: Read all of our daily 5 Channel Partner UpdatesPlusSubscribe to our daily enewsletter. Thanks to those who already have.

Joe Panettieri

Joe Panettieri is co-founder & editorial director of MSSP Alert and ChannelE2E, the two leading news & analysis sites for managed service providers in the cybersecurity market.