Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Monday, August 13, 2018.
Actually, there are 12 timely updates designed 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:
12. Dell Still Facing Questions: The latest Dell Technologies disclosure behind its plan to become a publicly held company is raising questions from the media and investors, according to Bloomberg.
11. Oracle Cloud Lawsuit: Oracle faces a class action lawsuit alleging the technology giant has made misleading statements about customer commitments to Oracle Cloud.
10. Open Data Centers: New Continuum Data Centers has joined The Open19 Foundation. The foundation was established to build a community for a new generation of open data centers and edge solutions. New Continuum Data Centers is not to be confused with Continuum Managed Services, which offers RMM, BDR, help desk, NOC and security services to MSPs.
9. IBM Cloud Executive Exit?: WPP has interviewed David Kenny, senior VP of IBM's Watson and Cloud Platform, for the CEO position, Sky News reports.
8. IBM Watson Is Losing the Battle vs. Cancer: That's the conclusion of an in-depth Wall Street Journal report, which essentially states: After six years and billions of dollars of investments, the diagnosis for Watson vs. Cancer is gloomy. Countering the WSJ journal, IBM Senior VP John Kelly told the newspaper that Watson is "making a difference. The data says and is validating that we’re on the right track."
7. Data Management Partnership: Collibra, Inc. has agreed to resell Silwood’s Safyr self-service metadata discovery software. The partnership enables enterprises to incorporate metadata information from their SAP, Oracle, Salesforce and Microsoft ERP and CRM packages into Collibra's Data Governance and Catalog solution, the companies say.
6. EY's $1 Billion Bet: EY is spending an extra $1 billion on new technology, including artificial intelligence and shifting platforms to the cloud, the IT consulting and global systems integrator has revealed.
5. Azure Cloud Migration Services: Quisitive, a digital technology consulting firm focused on Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Internet of Things (IoT) and Blockchain, is promoting a Microsoft Azure Accelerator Program. The effort spans core infrastructure services; storage; application modernization; disaster recovery; data and emerging technologies such as blockchain and artificial intelligence. The migration process involves three core steps:
- Step 1: Quisitive conducts a thorough inventory and usage scan of existing server, data, and application assets.
- Step 2: Quisitive assesses usage patterns to map existing workloads to Azure in the most cost-effective manner.
- Step 3: After gathering and analyzing data, the Quisitive Azure Accelerator team uses proprietary tools to perform a comprehensive financial analysis to determine both optimized consumption costs within Azure, and the projected return-on-investment (ROI) over a three-year period.
4. StorageCraft MSP Moves: The latest updates are here.
3. ePlus Financial Results: Sales at IT solutions provider ePlus fell 4.5 percent to $356.5 million in Q1 2019 vs. the corresponding quarter last year -- though net earnings rose 13.8 percent to $15.3 million. CEO Mark Marron points to momentum in cloud, security and digital infrastructure for midmarket customers.
2. M&A - MSPs: ICS has acquired J.B. Kane, uniting two IT consulting firms with managed services expertise in the upstate New York area. We'll share more details soon.
1. M&A - Technology Solutions Providers: Trace3 and Data Strategy are merging to create a nationwide provider of cloud, data intelligence, security, DevOps and enterprise IT solutions. The deal is backed by H.I.G. Capital, a private equity firm that owns Trace3. We'll share more details soon.
