Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Thursday, August 4, 2016.
Actually, there are 10 entries for VARs, managed services providers (MSPs), cloud services providers (CSPs) and independent software vendors (ISVs) to sip on. Take a look…
10. GoDaddy and FreedomVoice Buyout Update: GoDaddy still has not completed the FreedomVoice buyout, which was announced in May. The reason: Voice-oriented acquisitions face bigger regulatory hurdles and more scrutiny than traditional IT acquisitions, GoDaddy executives said during an earnings call yesterday. Still, the deal is expected to be finalized later this year. And FreedomVoice CEO Eric Thomas is working to ensure the company's channel strategy continues to perform well, Thomas told ChannelE2E in June.
9. Smart Watches Burn Intel: The chip giant has recalled all Basis Peak smartwatches because they can overheat and burn customers. Intel is offering a refund on the unit price, sales tax and shipping cost. Intel attempted to fix the problem with a software update but the fix ultimately failed, according to The Wall Street Journal.
8. Rackspace Pushes AWS Compliance: Rackspace has introduced Fanatical Support for AWS customers running PCI and HIPAA compliance workloads on AWS.
7. Microsoft Gold Partner Acquired: BCM One is buying "certain assets" from CloudStrategies Group Inc., a Microsoft Gold Partner and cloud computing professional services company. The combined businesses will expand their focus on Microsoft's suite of cloud services including Office 365, Skype for Business and Azure.
6. PassPortal Funding, Part II: We told you yesterday (item 14) that PassPortal, the password management platform for MSPs, has raised an undisclosed sum of seed funding. So what will the fast-growing company do with the money? CEO Colin Knox and President Dan Wensley say new hires have already arrived -- ahead of the funding. For instance, the 22-person company has built out a dedicated support team -- which is now separate from the dev team. And new product enhancements now offer "one-click ticket resolution" for MSPs as they manage password resets for customers. PassPortal expects to grow revenues roughly 300 percent in 2016 vs. 2015. An all-partner meeting is set for August 11...
5. Career Move: Jeff Dryall, well-known in MSP circles, has joined ITGlue as a channel development executive. ITGlue has serious momentum promoting its documentation platform to MSPs.
4. Application Performance Management: We've been telling MSPs to extend their focus from server management to application performance management (APM). Now, SolarWinds is banging a similar drum. The company has launched "enterprise-grade application performance optimization" (APO) tools for customers and service providers. The APO effort is somewhat separate from the SolarWinds MSP business unit -- which contains LogicNow and N-able. But it's a safe bet SolarWinds MSP will introduce APM and APO solutions to its MSP base over the next few quarters, ChannelE2E believes.
3. Can Male CEOs Keep Up?: Here's a rather interesting stat: Fifty-four percent of female entrepreneurs expect their revenue to increase over the next 12 months, compared to 48 percent of male small business owners. In addition, 60 percent of women business owners expect to grow their business over the next five years (vs. 52 percent of men). Year over year, women small business owners’ confidence has largely remained steady as their male counterparts’ confidence has declined, according to a Bank of America study. Side Note: Our own CEO is a woman, we're pretty darn optimistic about our own business, and we have 50-50 representation among women and men in our board room.
2. Alarmist or Realist?: ChannelEyes CEO Jay McBain has penned an open letter that closely examines the growing IT talent shortage and the potential implications for channel partners. The numbers he shares aren't pretty, and the open letter is gaining plenty of eyeballs across the web. We'll share more thoughts soon.
1. Compensation: How are you evolving your sales team compensation plans for managed and cloud services? Participate in this ChannelE2E survey. We'll keep individual submissions confidential. But we'll reveal overall market trends based on the survey in September.
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