5 Channel Partner Updates: 9 February 2017

Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Thursday, February 9, 2017. Actually, there are 19 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…

19. Talent - Apple: John Solomon, Apple's VP of enterprise and government sales has exited the company. Solomon helped Apple to build stronger enterprise relationships with IBM, Cisco and others. His current title and employer: tbd at tbd, according to Solomon's LinkedIn profile... 18. More Executive Order Pushback: Public interest legal groups on Wednesday sued the Trump administration, alleging a January executive order mandating that executive agencies eliminate two regulations for every new one is “irrational” and puts public safety at risk by not considering any beneficial effects of new rules, Law360 reported. President Trump says the executive oder will reduce expenses and boost productivity for businesses of all sizes. 17. IBM, Oracle Silence Is Deafening to Employees: Roughly 200 tech companies have publicly pushed back against President Trump's immigration policies. Noticeably absent from the pushback: IBM and Oracle, both of which are largely mum on the issue. Some IBM employees continue to lobby CEO Ginni Rometty to push back against some of Trump's policies.

Michelle Peluso

16. IBM Marketing Bans Telecommuting?: IBM Chief Marketing Officer Michelle Peluso apparently told her US marketing troops they must work at "a smaller set of locations" if they want to continue with the company. Staffers have 30 days to decide whether to stay or go, according to The Register. Ahem... a similar ban on telecommuting backfired at Yahoo... 15. Union Questions CSC Layoffs: The UK’s largest trades union has warned that CSC job cuts threaten NHS service delivery even as the US services giant expands on its healthcare ambitions, according to Diginomica. CSC and HP Enterprise's IT services business are set to finalize their merger on April 3, 2017. 14. CenturyLink Under Pressure: CenturyLink delivered weaker-than-expected quarterly results yesterday -- and the weakness stretched beyond the telecom company's legacy businesses. CenturyLink conceded that the company's strategic growth businesses aren't expanding as quickly as expected. The company in the weeks ahead intends to finalize the Level 3 buyout along with a major data center asset sale. Those moves will allow CenturyLink to double down on next-generation network services, the company claims. 13. Distribution, Part I: Pax8, a value-added cloud distributor, has launched Marketing on Demand as part of its Cloud Wingman partner program. Marketing on Demand enables SMB service providers to build and scale their company’s marketing efforts, Pax8 asserts. 12. Distribution, Part II: Watch for multiple distributors to announce their Dell EMC relationships today. Dell spent recent months reviewing which distributors to embrace -- and which to cut -- as part of the EMC buyout. The official survivor list is rolling out now...

Frank Slootman

11. Automation vs. IT Careers: How's this for ironic... We all keep hearing about the shortage of qualified IT professionals. Yet, IT automation may flip that shortage equation on its head. An example: ServiceNow CEO Frank Slootman says automation will trigger an epic disruption vs. traditional IT careers. 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. Hybrid Cloud Security: Trend Micro has unveiled Deep Security 10. The hybrid cloud platform protects physical, virtual and cloud servers across VMware, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure, and more. 9. Multi-Cloud Security Management: ManageEngine has launched Cloud Security Plus, a log analysis and auditing solution for multi-cloud environments. The platform collects, monitors and analyzes log information from both the Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS) environments, and presents that information in a single console. 8. Ganging Up Against Avaya: Mitel has launched a web marketing campaign to pursing Avaya customers. Similarly, ShoreTel has targeted Avaya customers. The moves come as Avaya seeks to navigate and eventually emerge from chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Still, Avaya announced reasonable quarterly results yesterday, and distributors like ScanSource say they remain loyal to Avaya. Next up: A major Avaya partner and customer conference next week in Las Vegas. 7. Google Cloud Search: Google has launched Cloud Search, which allows business users to search across their company’s content in G Suite. The search platform supports Gmail, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Calendar, and more.

Andy Jassy

6. Amazon Got Lucky with AWS: Yes indeed, AWS CEO Andy Jassy says a fair amount of the company's cloud success was luck. But that's not all. Jassy revealed these key views on Amazon's cloud success during an appearance at University of Washington. 5. M&A Telecom Software: Nokia is buying Comptel for $370 million. Comptel develops software-based data communications systems for mobile carriers. 4. M&A MSP: Cloud Direct, a cloud solutions provider (CSP), has acquired Connect Support Services, the companies confirmed this morning. This is Cloud Direct’s fifth acquisition since June 2015, and second of 2017. We'll share more details shortly. 3. Earnings: Carbonite, CoreSite and Hortonworks (among others) are expected to announce quarterly earnings results today. We'll potentially share channel-centric thoughts once the earnings are announced. 2. ConnectWise & Managed PBX Services: White Label Communications' Atlas Software now integrates with ConnectWise Manage (formerly ConnectWise PSA). The result: IT service providers can sell, manage, provision, invoice and deliver private label Hosted PBX and SIP Trunking services without leaving the ConnectWise interface, the companies say. 1. Managed Services FAQ: Check the ChannelE2E FAQ for guidance on MSP pricing, IT service provider valuations, overall business management and plenty more. Or, submit your own question and we'll track down an answer. More: Read all of our daily 5 Channel Partner Updates. Plus: Subscribe to our daily enewsletter. Thanks to those who already have.