Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to sip on for Wednesday, March 2, 2016.
Actually, there are 14 items for VARs, managed services providers (MSPs), cloud services providers (CSPs) and independent software vendors (ISVs) to sip on…
14. More Acquisitions: Presidio sources say the large Cisco channel partner is looking to make more acquisitions -- but finding the right targets is the key goal...
13. MSP Acquisition: DeepTech, a full-service technology consulting and support company, has acquired Something Digital's Managed Services division. With this acquisition, DeepTech has "expanded it methodologies and services they offer to include the same level of support for Windows as they have always provided to their Apple customers." Hmmm... We're poking around to learn more.
12. OpenDNS Surprises?: I sort of expect some OpenDNS surprises and milestones here at Cisco Partner Summit 2016. During keynotes yesterday, Cisco CFO Kelly Kramer described how OpenDNS and several other acquisitions have helped Cisco and its channel partners to successfully grow their monthly recurring revenues. But I suspect there's more news to come for OpenDNS. Hmmm...
11. Channel Leadership: Extreme Networks has hired Gordon Mackintosh as senior director of worldwide partner program and sales business development. Mackintosh, a Cisco veteran, reports to Bob Gault, executive vice president of worldwide sales, services and channels at Extreme.
10. Cisco Buying Chip Company?: Cisco Systems is acquiring Israel's Leaba Semiconductor for $380 million, Reuters and Ynet reported on Wednesday. Leaba designs communications chips. Details may surface today at Cisco Partner Summit 2016.
9. Dell-EMC Post Merger Leadership Team: Here's a look at who reports to whom once Dell completes its buyout of EMC later this year. We'll share some more perspectives on this later today.
8. Zetta'$ Next Move$?: Zetta, which has repositioned its cloud business continuity platform several times in recent years, has named Peter Chantel as the company's Chief Financial Officer. He will focus on numerous priorities to "to build revenue strength and raise capital." Hmmm....
7. HIPAA Audit Confusion: Fully 60 percent of small medical practices are still unaware of pending HIPAA audits, and 30 percent of the practices have yet to create a plan to address HIPAA, according to a recent survey by NueMD. Still, the figures are better than responses in 2014, when 39 percent of practices lacked a HIPAA plan.
6. HIPAA Compliance Monitoring: Aternity, which focuses on End User Experience Management (EUEM), has introduced a HIPAA monitoring service to ensure customers achieve and maintain meaningful use goals...
5. Microsoft Cloud Profits: Microsoft's Azure cloud will generate profits this year, Goldman Sachs predicted. We'll take a look at the math and some of the implications for channel partners later today.
4. IT Service Management vs. DevOps: Some organizations are dropping ITSM in favor of DevOps. Others find that IT service management lends some needed control to DevOps initiatives, according to Enterprise Apps Today. Hmmm... I'm not sure if the IT Service Management and DevOps discussion is really a "this or that" debate. Can't they live in harmony?
3. What's Going On?: Timeless Marvin Gaye song is playing right now at Starbucks here in San Diego.
2. Hadoop, Big Data and Open Source: Hortonworks announced a range of business moves yesterday, which are designed to make Hadoop, Spark and other big data technologies far more effective for customers. The moves also included a Hewlett Packard Enterprise partnership. Long-term Open Source watcher Matt Asay says Hortonworks is finally pushing beyond open source talk to really focus on a commercial software strategy. Asay's key statement: There's no money in open source. Instead, the best companies simply use open source as pieces to a larger commercial software puzzle. Asay's views are right on the mark. Recent moves by Hortonworks and rivals such as MapR and Cloudera suggest the big data IT channel is starting to emerge.
1. Cisco Makes IBM Watson Smarter: Cisco Systems has been building out a range of analytics software that make the network edge more intelligent. Basically, edge analytics help to decide which data gates saved, what gets dumped, and what gets sent into a central system like IBM Watson. And of course, Cisco's analytics strategy involves far more than feeding data to Watson. I just used that as a shameless example to get eyeballs into this section of the blog. But stay tuned. We've got more details about Cisco's big data and analytics strategy -- particularly as it pertains to IoT. We'll share more details soon.
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