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5 Channel Partner Updates: 19 July 2016

Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to sip on for Tuesday, July 19, 2016. Actually, there are 20 entries for VARs, managed services providers (MSPs), cloud services providers (CSPs) and independent software vendors (ISVs) to sip on. Take a look…
Paul Chisholm
Paul Chisholm
20. Mr. MSP's Encore: Paul Chisholm, the former CEO of mindSHIFT, has joined Continuum's board of directors. Chisholm successfully led mindSHIFT's growth and sale to Best Buy in 2011 before retiring from the company. He once told me that building a managed services company was the most rewarding, most fun -- yet most challenging -- business journey he had ever taken. Chisholm is set to keynote Navigate 2016 -- Continuum's customer conference -- in September. 19. Dell vs EMC Vendor Payments: A heads up to vendors that work with EMC. It looks like new parent Dell pays bills far more slowly than EMC's own practices. Dell is one of the technology industry’s most aggressive companies at delaying payments to help finance its operations, the Wall Street Journal says. It took approximately 107 days to pay its bills in its most recent quarter, far more than the 42 average days in accounts payable at EMC, the paper noted.
joe-tucci-michael-dell-2 Joe Tucci & Michael Dell
18. EMC Delivers: EMC profits rose 19 percent in the storage company's most recent quarter. Revenue and net income results both beat Wall Street's expectations. Also, EMC's Pivotal business grew Q2 revenues 49 percent year over year. Pivotal continues to have success with its cloud and big data subscription software, EMC said. The company did not hold an earnings call yesterday, however, since it was likely EMC's final quarter as a standalone company. EMC shareholders are expected to vote today on Dell's $60 billion takeover. The result should be Dell and EMC combining to become Dell Technologies. Here are 10 moves to watch going forward. 17. Super Micro Misses: Super Micro Computer, which specializes in servers and storage, delivered weaker-than-expected profits and revenues in its latest quarterly results. The company blames weak demand from large customers -- a potential admission that workloads are moving to the cloud faster than customers are refreshing or expanding their on-premises equipment...
Ginni Rometty Ginni Rometty
16. IBM Shows Signs of Progress: Although top line revenues continue to fall, IBM's latest quarterly results exceeded Wall Street's expectations. In particular, revenue from cloud services grew 30 percent to $3.4 billion during the quarter. Many of IBM's latest partners are embracing Blue Mix, the company's cloud development tools. Still, IBM has to make up for lost ground. The company's stock is still down 17 percent since CEO Virginia Rometty tool over in January 2012, but the S&P 500 index is up 70 percent during the same period, The Wall Street Journal noted. 15. A Warning On Venture Capital, Incubators: ChannelE2E has heard from several IT startups that are experiencing "down rounds" -- basically, they're raising new rounds of venture capital at lower valuations than previous rounds. At the same time, there are signs that some incubators are seeing weakness and longer-than-expected losses in their startups. Pundits are particularly concerned about Rocket Internet SE, which has created 100 startups -- many of which remain unprofitable, the Journal notes. I'm not suggesting that we're nearing another dot-com bubble, but there's no doubt that startup valuations continue to fall and venture capitalists seem to be getting more selective... Oh, and this just in: Private equity and VC returns were down in 2015 vs. 2014 -- but still stronger than public markets. 14. Salesforce.com on Android -- Good News, Bad News: Saleforce.com, instead of trying to support all variants of Google Android, will zero in on two options. Starting with an update to its Salesforce1 app later this year, the company will only support Android users who run on certain Google Nexus or Samsung Galaxy devices, recode reported. That should help Salesforce to boost customer support on those two Android platforms. But it also means Saleforce users on other types of Android devices could be left out in the cold. 13. Sophos: The midmarket security company could be making some key product updates soon. Really soon. Stay tuned. 12. Security Disconnect: The global security software market grew 3.7 percent to $22 billion in 2015, according to Gartner. And yet, several major IT security businesses are either struggling (i.e., Symantec) or potentially up for sale (i.e., Intel's McAfee security business). Much of the challenge involves the growing need for cloud and mobile threat mitigation rather than traditional PC protection... 11. Midmarket Disaster Recovery Concerns: Midmarket businesses in all parts of the world view their exposures to natural catastrophes as increasing but some fall short when managing these risks effectively, according to a new survey of senior executives at more than 80 independent insurance brokers. In the survey, conducted by Assurex Global, fewer than 20 percent of midsize businesses in their regions now feel they are adequately prepared and insured for natural catastrophes. But Wait. There's More. Go to Page 2 for Items 10 to 1. We promise. No Slide Shows Await You... Welcome to page two of today's updates, featuring items 10 to 1. 10. Four Disaster Recovery Trends: Technavio has announced the top four trends in the global backup as a service market. Intrigued? Stay tuned. We'll share more thoughts later today. 9. One Painful Hack Per Month: Nearly 80 percent of IT security practitioners say their defensive infrastructure to identify and mitigate cyber threats are either non-existent, ad hoc or inconsistently applied throughout the enterprise, according to a Ponemon Institute survey. Surveyed companies suffered an average of one cyber attack per month and incurred annual costs of approximately $3.5 million because of these attacks, the research asserted. 8. Mass Notification Systems and Business Continuity: As you build business continuity plans for customers, don't overlook the Mass Notification System (MNS) opportunity. MNS platforms allow employers or organizations to send real-time alerts to multiple parties -- including employees, customers and partners. The MNS market will have an 18.4 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) through 2021, reaching $9.69 billion by that time, according to MarketsandMarkets. 7. Government Business Continuity: CenturyLink has won a contract to provide disaster recovery services to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), part of the U.S. Department of the Treasury. The one-year contract for managed disaster recovery services with dedicated hardware and storage has five one-year options and a contract ceiling of $29 million. 6. Backup to AWS: Sungard Availability Services, which recently landed in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for DRaaS, has launched Sungard AS Cloud-Based Recovery for Amazon Web Services (AWS) in the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and Western Europe, providing automated recovery of virtual workloads on the AWS Cloud, the company said. 5. Cloud Monitoring Partnership: Pax8, a value-added cloud distributor, has inked an exclusive agreement with DataMAPt to provide cloud-based monitoring services to the IT channel. 4. Box Dials RingCentral: Box is standardizing its unified communications systems on RingCentral. The SaaS platform delivers cloud PBX, voice, SMS, audio and video conferencing and more. It's a significant win for RingCentral, which potentially faces growing competition from Microsoft Cloud PBX (part of Office 365) and GoDaddy's recent FreedomVoice acquisition. 3. Twelve Reasons SMB Sales Don't Grow: Here they are, according to Craig Lowder, author of the new book Smooth Selling Forever. 2. Careful of Deferred Compensation: At first glance, deferring income so that it can be taxed at lower rates sounds good. But take a closer look and you'll see potential scenarios where it can backfire.
meg-whitman Meg Whitman
1. HP Enterprise Global Partner Conference 2016: It's set for September 2016. Is your company's partner conference or summit listed on ChannelE2E's Technology Events Calendar -- the most comprehensive calendar of its kind in the world? Why not? 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.