5 Channel Partner Updates: 8 February 2017

Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Wednesday, February 8, 2017. Actually, there are 21 timely 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… 21. Startups vs. President Trump: More than 200 startups and investors have launched an open letter to President Donald Trump. The letter pushes back against Trump's "morally and economically misguided actions" on immigration. 20. End Outsourcing Act: Three Senate Democrats have introduced the "End Outsourcing Act," which seeks to support American workers by ending outsourcing. Um... We'll definitely share more thoughts on this really soon. 19. Hillary Clinton and Datto Backup: Hillary Clinton's personal email server continues to generate headlines from time to time. The latest: The FBI has recovered approximately 10,000 messages from a Datto backup device. The messages were turned over to the State Department to be processed and released at some point on its website, Liberty News Now reported. 18. Entrepreneurial Encore: Juniper founder Pradeep Sindhu and former Apple OS X engineer Bertrand Serlet have launched Fungible, which focuses on next-generation technologies for cloud data centers... 17. Talent - Automation: Puppet has hired HPE veteran Omri Gazitt as chief product officer and EMC veteran Sandra Hamilton as VP of customer success. Puppet develops automation tools for DevOps teams and IT service providers.

Darren Beck

16. Talent - SolarWinds: SolarWinds has named Darren Beck as CMO; Chris Benwell, senior vice president (SVP), North American commercial sales; and David Cronk, SVP, international sales. Those moves -- along with several others -- reinforce a talent grab to accelerate SolarWinds's corporate IT- and MSP-focused business initiatives. The name to know on the MSP front: John Pagliuca. 15. Cisco Clock Malfunction?: A Cisco equipment flaw will allegedly cost partners "millions to fix" according to CRN. Hmmm... 14. PSA Cloud Platform: Krow Software has launched the Industry Cloud for Professional Services, a "unified solution for professional services automation." The cloud platform allows MSPs, IT consultants and professional services firms to manage opportunities, services, projects, resource planning and staffing, time & expense, billing, project accounting, revenue recognition, communities, and analytics, in one unified solution. The offering includes Service CPQ (Configure Price Quote) and Recruiting -- to help recruit talent. Krow PSA is integrated with Salesforce.com, and competes most directly against FinancialForce. 13. IoT & Privacy Fine: Smart television manufacturer and retailer Vizio has agreed to pay $2.2 million to the FTC, according to New Jersey Law Journal. The payment settles charges of unfair tracking, deceptive omission and deceptive representation, the journal says. The FTC had alleged the company's smart television sets were illegally tracking viewer watching habits. The FTC has been cracking down on IoT device makers for alleged privacy issues and/or security holes that threaten consumers.

Kevin O'Brien

12. IoT Partner Program Expansion: PTC continues to expand its Internet of Things (IoT) partner ecosystem with new ThingWorx partners. True believers include HMS Industrial Networks, MultiTech, Sierra Monitor Corporation, ViziApps and BETSOL. Channel Chief Kevin O'Brien, an Oracle veteran, oversees PTC's IoT partner program. The company's overall IoT business hit $100 million in 2016. 11. Office 365 Backup: Acronis Backup 12 now supports Office 365 along with backup services for "all data, local and in the cloud."  The platform offers automatic backup of Microsoft Office 365 emails, including contacts, calendars, tasks, and attachments. Most of the major backup and disaster recovery (BDR) platforms now offer Office 365 and Google G Suite backup services. But wait. More content awaits you on page 2. Proceed to page two now and sip up the remaining items... Welcome to page two. Enjoy a second serving of channel content -- items 10 to 1 -- here. 10. Microsoft UK Cloud Backup: Microsoft’s UK Azure cloud customers are now able to back up and restore files from its UK-based data centres, while the company has also lowered prices, CBR Online reports. The company says its Azure Backup and Site Recovery features are now available across all its cloud regions within the UK, the report adds. Despite the recent Brexit (Britain Exit from the European Union) controversy, data center providers continue to invest heavily in the UK. 9. Microsoft Government Cloud Partner: CSRA Inc., a Microsoft Gold Partner, has signed a three-year Enterprise Agreement to move its own workloads into Microsoft Office 365 and Azure. CSRA is the the first government system integrator to migrate its own workload to the Azure Government cloud platform, CSRA claims. 8. AWS Cloud Price Cuts Coming: Amazon Web Services will cut prices soon in response to recent Microsoft Azure price cuts, Suntrust predicts. Actually, that's not a prediction. It's more like a guarantee. AWS price cuts are like Moore's law... Price-to-performance ratios are constantly improving. 7. E-commerce Managed Services: Tenzing is set to launch managed services for Oracle Commerce on AWS. The offering "allows Oracle Commerce users to focus on growing sales and delivering customer value, not managing servers, networks, databases and storage." 6. Managed Security Services: AlienVault has launched USM Anywhere. The SaaS-based monitoring service supports threat detection, compliance management and incident response capabilities that stretch across cloud, hybrid-cloud and in-house IT environments, AlienVault said.

Kris Hagerman

5. Sophos Acquires Invincea: Sophos this morning acquired Invincea, a provider of next-generation malware protection. Invincea’s endpoint security portfolio is designed to detect and prevent unknown malware and sophisticated attacks via its patented deep learning neural-network algorithms, Sophos says. The deal's price tag is $100 million in cash with a $20 million earn-out. We're checking to see if or how Invincea's technology will befit the Sophos MSP Connect Partner Program. Stay tuned for updates, potentially including thoughts from CEO Kris Hagerman. 4. Security Partner Program: VIPRE today launched a new tiered partner program for reseller partners that sell its endpoint security solution. 3. Earnings: CenturyLink, Cognizant Technology Solutions and Zendesk are expected to announce quarterly results today. We're watching each company for potential channel partner-related milestones. 2. Top Channel Partner Conferences, Part I: Multiple D&H Distributing conferences (scheduled for March, June, August and October 2017) are now listed on the ChannelE2E Technology Events Calendar. Are you partner summits and conferences listed on the calendar? If not, just scroll to the bottom of this page to submit your partner summits and conferences for consideration. 1. Top Channel Partner Conferences, Part II: More than 4,000 VARs, MSPs and IT service providers specifically visited the ChannelE2E Technology Event Calendar in January 2017. We'll say it one last time (at least for today): Shouldn't your partner summit or channel summit be listed on the world's most comprehensive calendar of partner summits? More: Read all of our daily 5 Channel Partner Updates. Plus: Subscribe to our daily enewsletter. Thanks to those who already have.