Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Thursday, May 10, 2018.
Actually, there are nine 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…
9. Xerox Ownership Drama: Xerox's board said on Wednesday it intended to resume merger discussions with Fujifilm Holdings, seeking a superior deal to terms announced at the end of January that have spurred a proxy fight over the company, Reuters notes.
8. Partnership: Rackspace has launched Couchbase Managed Cloud, a managed database service that allows IT teams to solve cloud and database infrastructure challenges and reallocate resources toward business objects that drive growth, the company claims. The move comes as Rackspace shows signs of progress across its managed cloud strategy, and ramps up for a potential IPO.
7. Earnings: Global IT services provider ConvergeOne's first quarter revenues were $306.3 million, up nearly 70 percent from the corresponding quarter last year. Still, the big growth figure is a bit misleading since it includes an M&A boost in the current quarter results. But give ConvergeOne some credit. The revenue figure was about $9 million more than Wall Street was expecting, according to SeekingAlpha.
6. Layoffs: BT is cutting 13,000 jobs -- including managerial and back-office positions -- in the latest attempt by Britain’s biggest telecom group to rebuild from an accounting scandal and multiple pressures on its business, Reuters says.
5. Government Contract - Office 365: General Dynamics Information Technology has won a $9 million sole-source contract for Cloud Hosted Enterprise Services (CHES) by the U.S. Air Force. The CHES environment will start with Office 365. Additional services like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Oracle and SAP may surface in the deal.
4. ServiceNow Chatbots: ServiceNow has launched Virtual Agent, a chatbot building technology that allows customers and service providers to automating common support requests.
3. Amazon and ISVs: More than 1,400 Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) reply on the AWS marketplace to reach 70,000 enterprise buyers, the cloud giant says. It sounds impressive, but how much money are those ISVs driving through the marketplace, and how many customers are actually involved?
2. ServiceNow and AWS: Re-read items three and four above. Then consider where ServiceNow and Amazon may be heading -- together -- and the implications for IT service desks and software subscriptions. It's potentially a killer combo. We'll share deeper details today.
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