Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Monday, January 29, 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. Mystery Resignation: Equinix CEO Steve Smith's mystery resignation on January 25 actually became a bit more mysterious because his departure actually occurred on January 19, an SEC filing shows...
11. HP Settlement: A judge has approved HP Inc.'s plan to pay customers a combined $6.5 million in refunds to address concerns that the PC giant sold laptops with defective screens, Law360 says.
10. Distribution - Avaya: Jenne has unveiled Lightning License Delivery for Avaya partners. Now, Avaya Partners ordering IP Office PLDS licensing have 24-hour availability to receive licenses with turnaround times significantly shorter than similar systems, the company says. The licenses are automatically delivered to the person who placed the order via email.
9. Distribution - Zoom: Ingram Micro has agreed to distribute Zoom Video Communications in Europe.
8. Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP): Roughly 200 Paytm employees are now millionaires because they participated in the company's ESOP (employee stock ownership plan), Business Standard reports.
7. Partner Milestone: C&W Business has attained the Cisco Cloud and Managed Services Partner (CMSP) Master certification for the Caribbean and Latin American region. C&W Business is a hosted solutions and IT service provider, with Tier III/IV facilities located in Bogota, Panama, Miami, Cayman, and Curacao, all inter-connected via a subsea fiber network that reaches over 40 markets, the company says.
6. Commvault Earnings: Commvault's latest quarterly earnings were slightly below Wall Street's expectations, according to SeekingAlpha. We're not surprised, considering Commvault changed its channel leadership roughly one week before the backup and storage company's earnings announcement. We suspected the leadership change had something to do with earnings or revenue headwinds, especially vs. fast-growth rivals like Datto, Druva, Rubrik, Veeam and StorageCraft, among others.
5. Managed Cloud Services: Comport Consulting Corporation, a provider of IT solutions and services for healthcare and commercial organizations, has added three services to its ComportSecure Managed Services portfolio. New to the portfolio are expanded Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offerings that include On-Premise and Off-Premise Private and Public Cloud Hosting and Tier I and Tier II End User Support Services; all are available immediately. These services complement ComportSecure’s existing Backup as a Service (BaaS) and Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS), the company says.
4. Microsoft Azure Price Cuts: Microsoft has cut the price for Azure Standard support to $100 per month, down from a previous price of $300 per month.
3. M&A - Telecom Services: Novacap TMT, a private equity firm, is acquiring Horizon Telecom, a fiber optic network provider in in Ohio. Upon completion of the acquisition and the finalization of new fiber builds, Horizon will operate 550,000 strand miles of fiber and 4,500 route miles of fiber in six states. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
2. M&A - IT Services: InfoSystems Inc. has acquired a 50 percent stake in APSU Inc., a cloud services provider. We'll potentially share more information soon.
1. Negotiating an Earnout: You're selling your business. The buyer wants to include earnout components in the deal. Here are key earnout factors to consider.
