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5 Channel Partner Updates: Thursday 16 August 2018

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Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Thursday, August 16, 2018. Actually, there are 20 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: 20. Lenovo Returns to Growth: Lenovo swung to a profit and beat estimates in the first quarter on Thursday, helped by a sharp jump in revenue, Reuters notes. Profitability approved across all business groups, though the company warned that it may need to raise prices if the US-China trade war continues. Lenovo is expected to discuss additional business milestones during a New York gathering in September. 19. IBM Watson Response: After reports from The Wall Street Journal, IEEE, Stat News and others questioned IBM Watson's track record in the healthcare market, the technology giant is firing back. In a blog post, IBM strives to set the record straight about Watson Health. 18. Industrial IoT Platforms: The Top 15 Industrial IoT platforms, care of Forrester, are listed here. 17. Partnerships - Unified Communications: Nitel and Nextiva are partnering to promote wide area network and unified communication solutions. Also, IT managed services provider LIVE Consulting and Nextiva are delivering a business cloud-based phone system to customers across Colorado. 16. Partnership - Midmarket: SUSE has been working with more than 500 SAP channel partners, promoting SUSE Linux Enterprise Server running SAP Business One on the SAP Hana platform. 15. Talent: F5 Networks has named Lisa Citron VP of North American Channels. Moreover, F5’s former SVP of Worldwide Partners and Cloud Sales, David Helfer, shifts to SVP of Sales for Europe, Middle East and Africa. 14. Enterprise Switching: Dell EMC has launched the Z-series 100GbE fabric switch, the Z9264F-ON. The switch doubles capacity and delivers a set of open solutions for enterprise and service provider data centers, Dell EMC asserts. 13. Vertical Markets: Microsoft Azure Stack is now available to order for Azure Government customers. Government agencies gain a hybrid cloud approach across identity, subscription, registration, billing, backup and disaster recovery solutions, and the Azure Marketplace, according to Microsoft. 12. VMware Business Continuity: Hybrid cloud infrastructure specialist Datrium has launched CloudShift, a SaaS-based DR orchestration service for VMware. The offering  combines "radically simple operation, low recovery point objectives (RPO), low AWS cloud cost, and end-to-end readiness assurance," the company asserts. 11. Integration: LogiGear's flagship test automation solution, TestArchitect now integrates and provides native support for Oracle E-Business Suite applications and Oracle’s JD Edwards. LogiGear is an Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) Silver Level Member.

Proceed to page two of two for today's Top 10 portion of the list.

Welcome to page two of two. Here are today's Top 10 items...

10. Workspace as a Service: CloudJumper has launched a channel promotion that provides IT service providers with an unlimited number of free NFR licenses of Cloud Workspace Management Suite (CWMS) software within a single tenant Azure deployment. CloudJumper has been gaining adoption with MSPs in recent months, according to multiple milestone statements from the company. 9. IoT Monitoring Momentum: Acorn Energy's Q2 revenues rose 18 percent to $1.2 million. Demand for the company's remote monitoring and control systems for generators, pipelines and other industrial assets continues to grow, and Acorn remains in acquisition mode within the IoT space, CEO Jan Loeb says. 8. MSPs & Hardware Leasing: Whether it's leasing or true hardware as a service, MSPs often struggle to navigate the financial challenges of OpEx-oriented hardware deals. Amid that reality, ConnectBooster is offering this hardware leasing guidance to MSPs.
Meet Verne Harnish: Have lunch with him at IT Glue GlueCon 2018....
7. GlueCon - Have Lunch With Verne Harnish: If you're heading to IT Glue's GlueCon 2018 conference in September, limited seating is available for a personal lunch with Verne Harnish. Details are here. 6. Funding: Private equity firm Level Equity has invested $15 million in Instaclustr, a provider of managed solutions for scalable open source technologies. Instaclustr has roughly 100 customers so far. 5. SugarCRM Acquired, Seeks M&A Targets: Accel-KKR has acquired SugarCRM, and the CRM software company is now seeking to acquire marketing and sales companies that have subscription models... Financial terms of the Accel-KKR deal were not disclosed. 4. M&A - E-commerce IT Consultants: Omnicom Precision Marketing Group (OPMG) has acquired Credera, a provider of management and technology consulting services in the marTech (marketing technology) and ecommerce sectors. Credera, founded in1999, serves numerous Fortune 500 companies. Headquartered in Dallas, Credera has 300 consulting professionals with offices in Denver and Houston. 3. M&A - Salesforce Partner Expert: Tequity has emerged as a leading M&A advisor to Salesforce partners. The company has advised on five Salesforce partner transactions, including Figur8's sales to AllCloud. Tequity provides exit, merger, and carve-out advisory services exclusively to mid-market software, IT services, and information technology companies... 2. M&A Advisor - Office Equipment Deals: Mike Dudek and Rich Wisniewski of Zygoquest Group advised ALPS Altus, (known as A Laser Printer Service) and its owner Nathan Mohasesi on the sale of assets to LaserCycle USA. Financial terms were not disclosed. Dudek, Wisniewski and Zygoquest typically surface on our radar about once per month. They're constantly assisting office equipment companies with M&A deals... 1. Benchmark Your MSP: How is your business performing compared to the overall MSP and IT services market? Join our next ChannelE2E webcast to find out.
Joe Panettieri

Joe Panettieri is co-founder & editorial director of MSSP Alert and ChannelE2E, the two leading news & analysis sites for managed service providers in the cybersecurity market.