5 things

5 Channel Partner Updates: 20 September 2016

Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Tuesday, September 20, 2016.

Actually, there are 17 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…

Aptean’s Chief Revenue Officer Bob Kocis
Bob Kocis

17. Continuum Hires Chief Revenue Officer: Continuum has named Robert Kocis to the newly created executive position of Chief Revenue Officer (CRO). He'll officially join the company in October. Kocis most recently was VP of worldwide sales and customer excellence at ANSYS. The announcement comes one week before Continuum hosts Navigate 2016, a major conference for MSPs that run the company's RMM (remote monitoring and management), NOC (network operations center) and BDR (backup and disaster recovery) platforms. A growing number of MSP-centric software companies have named CROs in recent months.

16. Infoblox Acquired: Vista Equity Partners has acquired Infoblox for $1.6 billion. The security-oriented company specializes in DNS, DHCP, and IP address management -- a category known as  DDI. Vista, a private equity firm, owns numerous channel-oriented IT companies -- including Autotask.

15. ViaWest Data Center: The company has opened its Plano, Texas, data center. This latest ViaWest location features 148,000 square-feet of raised floor at full build.

14. Server Revenues Still Falling: Server market revenues fell for the second straight quarter -- reinforcing the need for MSPs to more aggressively expand their focus on cloud workload management rather than SMB server management...

13. Nutanix IPO: Nutanix, the hyperconverged data center specialist, seems poised to launch its IPO. The company is seeking to raise up to $209 million. Key partners include Lenovo's server division.

12. MSP Buyout: TelePacific Communications has completed its buyout of DSCI, an MSP in Waltham, Mass. The deal first surfaced in March 2016 (March 3, 2016, item 14).

11. Performance Monitoring: Virtual Instruments has launched new infrastructure performance monitoring tools. The offerings include VirtualWisdom5 and VirtualWisdom Network Attached Storage (NAS) Performance Probe. VirtualWisdom5 is a cross-domain infrastructure performance monitoring and analytics solution for both SAN and NAS environments. In contrast, the VirtualWisdom NAS Performance Probe is a line-rate NFS monitoring device for the real-time analysis of wire data and correlation across compute, network and storage.

10. Database Monitoring: Blue Medora has unveiled SelectStar, an IT operational analytics (ITOA) platform that combines database and cloud infrastructure monitoring.

9. Managed Services: Konica Minolta's IT Services division, All Covered, has launched the Workplace of the Future portfolio. The suite includes All Covered Workspaces (Desktop as a Service); collaboration tools and more.

8. BI & IT Services Sales: ConnectWise has upgraded Quosal with business intelligence features to help IT service providers speed their sales processes. The Quosal BI features leverage Microsoft Power BI.

7. Security Partner Program, Part I: EiQ Networks has scored four new channel partners: Horsetail Technologies, Solutions4Networks (S4Nets), Technical Support International (TSI) and United Technology Group. Those companies and dozens of additional resellers promote EiQ's hybrid security as a service offerings into midmarket businesses.

6. Security Partner Program, Part II: Safetica Technologies, which specializes in data loss prevention (DLP), has extended beyond its European roots to launch its business in North America. The effort includes a channel partner program that helps partners to target SMB customers.

5. Small Business Security Legislation: The House of Representatives is slated to vote Wednesday on a bill that would extend cybersecurity to small businesses. It's called the Small Business Cyber Security Act.

Vault America’s Zak Karsan

4. Disaster Recovery Partner Program, Part I: Jenne Inc. has selected Vault America as its cloud backup and recovery vendor of choice. Jenne focuses exclusively on selling to value-added resellers, and will promote Vault America's white label solutions to its partners, according to Vault America founder Zak Karsan.

3. Disaster Recovery Partner Program, Part II: Zerto has bolstered its Zerto Alliance Partner (ZAP) Programfor resellers, CSPs and systems integrators. The company says the partner network has generated 50 percent year-over-year (YoY) growth, and 112 percent YoY growth in partner certification.

Mike Grossman

2. Disaster Recovery Partner Program, Part III: Zetta, which specializes in business continuity solutions, has launched Zetta Disaster Recovery. The cloud-based offering supports "sub-five minute failover with the push of a button." Zetta CEO Mike Grossman explained the overall company strategy to ChannelE2E. We'll share more details in a podcast (stay tuned for Episode 075) later today...

1. Undisclosed Hacks: Companies are getting hacked more frequently but aren’t disclosing the incidents in their regulatory filings, a trend that worries investors, The Wall Street Journal says. Just 95 of the nation’s roughly 9,000 publicly listed companies have informed the SEC of a data breach since January 2010, the paper says. Is that cause for concern?

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.