Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Tuesday, May 9, 2017.
Actually, there are 11 updates 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…
11. Office Supply Automation: Roughly 100 medium and large businesses later this month will test a artificial intelligence system from. Built atop IBM Watson, the Staples AI-powered Easy System will allow customers to order office supplies by voice and text, according to The Wall Street Journal.
10. OpenStack Cloud Management: Fujitsu and Mirantis are partnering to deliver private managed OpenStack clouds. On a somewhat related note, SUSE has unveiled OpenStack cloud monitoring and management tools for MSPs and customers. Also, Rackspace has partnered with Dell EMC to deliver infrastructure for Rackspace's OpenStack Private Cloud services. All of the announcements surfaced at the OpenStack Boston conference.
9. Cloud Management Console: IBM yesterday demonstrated a Cloud Management Console for IBM Power Systems, IT Jungle reported. Customers will be able to log into the console to view the state of their Power Systems servers, including some level of detail about their IBM i, Linux, and AIX partitions, according to the report. It's unclear if a multi-tenant version of the consult for MSPs is under development. A formal announcement about the console is expected today.
8. Bad Start: Micro Focus shares fell roughly 7.5 percent on Monday amid the company's buyout of some HP Enterprise software assets. Turns out revenue for those software assets fell 10 percent in the most recent quarter. Ouch. Meanwhile, HPE has been buying up flash storage and hyperconverged technologies to strengthen its data center footprint.
7. Venture Funding: Dell EMC's venture arm i spending about $100 million annually to fund startups, according to Bloomberg. Scott Darling, president of Dell Technologies' venture arm, is leading the charge.
6. Freshly Funded: Polyverse Corp., a cybersecurity startup, has raised an additional $2 million in funding. The Kirkland, Washington-based company didn't disclose the financial backer(s) name(s).
5. Dell As a Service: Dell is rolling out multiple "as a service" options for its hardware at Dell EMC World. The offerings include:
- Dell Financial Services Flex on Demand, which helps customers reduce costs associated with overprovisioning storage solutions, the company says.
- Dell Financial Services Cloud Flex for HCI provides customers with a cloud-like consumption model initially for Dell EMC's hyperconverged family of products.
- PC as a Service and Dell EMC VDI Complete Solutions also are in the spotlight.
- A new Dell Technologies Transformational License Agreement offers customized software contracts for flexible license and maintenance of software titles, the company says.
4. Public Cloud Debate: Michael Dell claims a "large" number of customers are shifting workloads from the public cloud back to on-premises infrastructure. Still, Dell didn't outright say customers are abandoning the public cloud during statements from Dell EMC World. My own opinion: I'm sure there are anecdotal examples of companies pulling back a bit from the cloud. But all the evidence -- cloud growth rates vs. on-premises infrastructure sales -- suggests cloud services hold the upper hand.
3a. Kaseya; Watch for Kaseya to potentially announce product, M&A and strategy updates today during the company's Kaseya Connect 2017 conference in Las Vegas. Ahead of the conference there was chatter about new Business Management Solutions (BMS) integrations on the PSA (professional services automation) front. There was also chatter about a new cloud cost management tool. CEO Fred Voccola told ChannelE2E yesterday that the company is back in growth mode and Kaseya is marching toward a potential IPO filing in the second half of 2018.
3b: Breaking: Kaseya acquires Unigma for Cloud Cost Management across AWS, Azure, Google Cloud and more.
2. ServiceNow: It's a huge week for ServiceNow and partners that run the company's cloud-based IT service management platform. Roughly 15,000 partners and customers are on hand this week for ServiceNow's Knowledge17 conference in Orlando. That include 3,000 professional developers who are at CreatorCon, the ISV portion of the conference. We'll share more details soon.
1. Two Weeks: Hmmm...
