Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to sip on for Monday, March 28, 2016.
Actually, there are nine entries for VARs, managed services providers (MSPs), cloud services providers (CSPs) and independent software vendors (ISVs) to sip on.
9. Dell Sells Perot Systems: After weeks of rumors, NTT Data has finally agreed to buy Dell's IT services business (formerly Perot Systems) for $3.055 billion. The deal is about $600 million less than most pundits had expected. Next up: Some reports suggest Dell is now looking to sell its Quest Software and SonicWall businesses as well. Dell is looking to strengthen its balance sheet ahead of the $67 billion buyout of EMC, which is expected to close between May and October 2016.
8. Lean and Mean (Well, Maybe Just Lean): Congrats to channel pundit Ryan Morris of Morris Management Partners. The IPED veteran has dropped at least 20 pounds in recent weeks, and remains on the IT channel speaker circuit for a range of educational sessions.
7. Google's Enterprise Cloud Strategy: Network World nicely recaps the recent Google Next conference with a list of key milestones from the search giant. ChannelE2E is paying particularly close attention to Google Stackdriver, a cross-cloud management tool for Google Cloud Platform and Amazon Web Services.
6. Big Data Conference: As the Strata + Hadoop World conference kicks off today (Monday, March 28), Blue Hill Research offers up these five trends to track at the event.
5. Cloud M&A: 6fusion, which helps cloud and IT customers to measure their total cost of consumption (TCC), has quietly raised $6.6 billion in new funding, according to a recent SEC filing. The company, which originally focused on MSPs but then went broader, has also acquired MarkITX, an IT marketplace, Bizjournals reported. N-able veteran Rob Bissett is chief product strategy officer at 6fusion.
4. Company Reviews for Women: You likely know about Glassdoor, a company review site driven by current and former employees. Next up is FairyGodBoss, a company reviews site by women for women. The site includes career topics, maternity leave resources, compensation data and plenty more...
3. Entrepreneurs Through Acquisition: Looking for somebody to buy your IT services business? Maybe you should check in with an MBA student. Indeed, MBA grads should buy more small businesses rather than pursuing traditional career paths, a recent Harvard Business Review article suggests. At first glance, that's a somewhat limited pool of buyers. But take a closer look and learn about so-called Search Funds -- which is a pool of capital raised to help entrepreneurs locate and acquire privately held companies.
2. Office 365 Security: Barracuda Essentials for Office 365 Email Security Edition, an anti-phishing and advanced threat detection system, has officially launched. Watch for potential synergies with Intronis MSP Solutions by Barracuda, which recently launched a data protection appliance. Also, keep an eye on how Barracuda protects Box, Dropbox and other SaaS applications -- thanks to the Sookasa acquisition, first reported by ChannelE2E.
1. Register Now: Our webcast this Thursday (March 31) focuses on MSP Mergers, Acquisitions and Valuations: Secrets to Sustainable Success. We'll also unveil the ChannelE2E 100 -- the top entrepreneurs, startups and exits in the IT channel -- during the event. Join us for the live discussion or listen to the archived event. Either way you need to register now to leverage the content.
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