5 things

5 Channel Partner Updates: 6 June 2016

Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to sip on for Monday, June 6, 2016.

Actually, there are 16 entries for VARs, managed services providers (MSPs), cloud services providers (CSPs) and independent software vendors (ISVs) to sip on. Take a look…

16. IT Staffing Shrinkage: U.S. employers shed 96,000 IT jobs in May, knocking total IT employment down by 2.1% to 4.452 million, according to an analysis by CompTIA, The Wall Street Journal noted. The slide follows similar declines in April, The Wall Street Journal said. No doubt, some of the job losses involve workloads shifting to managed services providers and cloud services providers. Indeed, IT service providers have hired nearly 87,000 people this year, CompTIA said.

15. Small Business Recession?: Former McDonald's CEO Ed Rensi suggests that the U.S. is in a small business recession. While I don't completely agree, his words are worth investigating. We'll share more thoughts soon.

14. Amazon Cloud Outage: Amazon Web Services (AWS) suffered disruptions on Sunday, knocking out websites for some customers in Australia, ITnews reported. The root cause involved severe storms that caused a six-hour power failure.

13. Chromebook Momentum Accelerates: As overall PC sales continue to shrink, Chromebook sales continue to accelerate. Even mainstream media pundits from The Wall Street Journal are starting to adopt Chrome OS, the Google operating system that powers Web-centric notebooks and some desktops. Five years into the journey, Chrome OS device sales have overtaking Apple Mac sales in the U.S.

12. Big Data's Next Wave: We told you last week that Hadoop companies would increasingly embrace Spark -- another open source storage technology for big data applications. The latest evidence arrives this morning: MapR Technologies today at Spark Summit unveiled a new enterprise-grade Apache Spark distribution. The goal: Help businesses deploy applications that deliver real-time data insights.

11. New HIPAA Guidelines: As HIPAA audits accelerate, many MSPs and their healthcare clientele are seeking the most up to date HIPAA guidelines. You can find a summary of the latest Department of Health and Human Services (HSS) HIPAA Guidelines here.

10. Enterprise Storage Spending:  Total worldwide enterprise storage systems factory revenue declined 7.0% year over year to $8.2 billion in Q1 2016, according to IDC. Revenue growth declined within the group of original design manufacturers (ODMs) that sell directly to hyperscale datacenters. This portion of the market was down 39.9% year over year to $681 million. Sales of server-based storage were up 2.0% during the quarter and accounted for $2.1 billion in revenue. External storage systems remained the largest market segment, but the $5.4 billion in sales represented a 3.7% year-over-year decline...

9. Next Tech IPO?: Blue Coat, an IT security company that's private equity owned, has filed to pursue an Initial Public Offering (IPO). Bain Capital acquired Blue Coat in May 2015, which means this potential IPO could be an extremely rapid "flip" for the PE firm.

Michael Stoeger Michael Stoeger

8. Managed Security Services: Mitsui & Co. has agreed to promote Alert Logic’s Security-as-a-Service solutions to start-ups, SMBs and enterprises across Japan. Alert Logic VP of Global Channels Michael Stoeger described the company's partner program to ChannelE2E in April 2016.

7. SMB PBXes: Yeastar has launched a new S-Series VoIP PBX for Small and Medium Enterprises. The PBX features mo maintenance fees; built-in failover, and field-upgradable capabilities. Find Yeastar channel partner program information here, and service provider information here.

Matt Sanders

6. Channel Chiefs: DSM Technology Consultants has hired Matt Sanders as national director of channel and wholesale. Sanders will focus on launching DSM Alliance, which will focus on IT cloud distribution partners like master agents, traditional IT distribution, and OEM vendors. The effort will promote  business continuity and disaster recovery solutions to enterprise and mid-market businesses.

5. Partner Programs: New Relic, the fast-growing provider of APM (application performance management) tools, continues to ramp up its global partner program. Established and aspiring partners can get details from the company's latest quarterly partner call, which is available on demand. You'll also find details about the New Relic Partner Program here.

4. Partner Relationship Management (PRM): Impartner, which promotes a SaaS-based PRM platform, has expanded its worldwide channel partner program to include Gorilla Corp. Recent Impartner hire Mark Rogers, senior VP of sales and strategic alliances Mark Rogers, is driving the relationship.

Bob Penland, CTO, TruMetods
Gary Pica, CEO, TruMethods

3. Later This Week: We'll be blogging live from TruMethods Schnizzfest 2016, an MSP-centric gathering, later this week. Tune in for the latest sales strategies from TruMethods CEO Gary Pica and CTO Bob Penland.

2. And Later Today: We land in Las Vegas at HP Enterprise Discover 2016, where we expect a range of updates on HPE's hyberconverged data center strategy. Stay tuned for live coverage -- including CEO Meg Whitman's keynote -- throughout the week.

1. Don't Forget: To register for our Top 100 Vertical Market MSPs webcast, which is set for Thursday, June 16 at 2:00 p.m. ET/11:00 a.m. PT.

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.