Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Monday, July 31, 2017.
Actually, there are 11 timely 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. Cloud Distribution: Pax8 has agreed to distribute Datto's backup and disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) offerings, managed networking solutions, and cloud-to-cloud (C2C) backup services, the companies announced this morning. I believe this is Datto's first relationship with a distributor. Pax8 attended DattoCon 2017 back in June, so it's a safe bet the two companies have been negotiating the relationship since about that time.
10. M&A - Internet of Things: General Electric is buying an Israeli-Japanese startup called IQP Corp. for an estimated $30 million to $40 million, though the parties have not released the amounts involved, according to Haaretz. IQP makes a development environment for IoT apps. The twist: The environment does not require writing computer code, the report said.
9. Samsung overtakes Intel: Samsung has leapfrogged Intel as the world's largest chip supplier, according to The Wall Street Journal. Although Intel last week announced stronger-than-expected quarterly results, Samsung's dominance in the mobile device world remains impressive...
8. BMC & CA - No Deal: BMC Software has abandoned its plan to acquire CA Technologies because CA required too long much time to close the deal, according to The New York Times. The rumors about BMC negotiating to buy CA have circulated off and on for more than a year.
7. Oracle Monetization: Oracle has launched Monetization Cloud, which helps businesses to launch digital and subscription-based products that manage customer on-boarding, offer creation, rating and discounting, billing, invoicing and reporting.
6. Outsourcing Pushback?: A California union bill seeks to ban the outsourcing of public services, but the bill could drive up struggling counties' costs of providing such services, according to Reason.com.
5. IT as a Service: Maintech, which specializes in enterprise-level IT infrastructure support, has expanded the company's IT as a Service (ITaaS) offering to include Maintech Cloud, according to Kirk Panitz, Director of ITaaS business development. The offering features secure cloud storage, backup and disaster recovery (BDR), colocation, and IaaS (infrastructure as a service).
4. Managed Services Win: Nexogy, which recently launched managed firewall services with Sophos, has won a three-year, $320,000 cloud communication and managed services contract with a leading Health Care Center in South Florida, the MSP says. Nexogy did not disclose the health care provider's name.
3. Geek Squad Layoffs?: Well, sort of. Best Buy is shaking up certain Geek Squad positions in the company. We'll share more details soon.
4. Talent - Veeam: NetApp veteran Brian Bakstram has joined Veeam as VP and head of Americas marketing. The move comes as Veeam strives to generate more than $1.5 billion in annual revenues by 2020 -- up from an expected $1 billion in the 2018 timeframe.
1. Greetings From ChannelCon: ChannelE2E is attending this week's CompTIA ChannelCon conference through Wednesday. Check our homepage multiple times daily for updates from the conference, which typically attracts VARs and MSPs from across the SMB IT market.
