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5 Channel Partner Updates: Thursday 18 April 2019

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Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Thursday, April 18, 2019.

Actually, there are 16 timely updates designed for managed services providers (MSPs), cloud services providers (CSPs), IT consulting firms, systems integrators, VARs, independent software vendors (ISVs), and telco agents to sip on.

16. Talent - SAP: The technology giant's SAP North America unit named Greg Petraetis as head of Mid-Market and Partner Ecosystem in North America. He previously was COO of the Mid-Market business segment.

15. Talent: Broadvoice, a provider of hosted voice, unified communications (UC) and SIP Trunking services for businesses, has named Marisa Freeden as VP of Brand and Experience.

14. Artificial Intelligence and Diversity Concerns: The artificial intelligence (AI) market is facing a bias crisis because white men are creating biased bots, according to the New York University and the AI Now Institute.

13. Artificial Intelligence - Salesforce Einstein: The cloud CRM company says its AI technology, known as Einstein, has new services that enable admins and developers to build custom artificial intelligence applications — all with just a few clicks or a single line of code.

12. Amazon Alexa and Smart Watches: Yup, Alexa is now wearable...

11. Partnership - Data Protection Part One: ExaGrid has partnered with Zerto to offer an integrated disaster recovery, long-term retention backup storage, and data backup solution.

10. Partnership - Data Protection Part Two: Neuways has been recognized as one of the Top 5 percent of global partners by Datto, according to this UK media report.

9. Data Protection - Veeam Momentum: The data protection company announced a 16 percent increase in total bookings year-over-year (YoY) in Q1 2019 vs. Q1 2018. Veeam credited its latest availability suite release for the momentum, though actual revenues and income figures were not disclosed. Related Conference: The VeeamOn 2019 conference is scheduled for May in Miami, Florida.

8. Venture Capital - Enterprise Software Bubble?: Perhaps so, according to a warning from Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu.

7. ITSM Financial Results - Atlassian: The company's latest quarterly results were stronger than Wall Street expected, but the company's long-term outlook was weaker than investors expected. As a result, shares for IT service management (ITSM) software companies -- including Atlassian and ServiceNow, among many others -- are down this morning.

6. ITSM Integration - AWS-ServiceNow: Perspectium has launched ServiceBond for AWS, which integrates IT support between Amazon Web Services (AWS) and a customer's ServiceNow service management system. Leveraging the integration, ServiceNow customers can create, view, update and resolve AWS cases without having to separately access the AWS Support Portal. https://www.wlns.com/ap-top-news/perspectium-provides-integration-with-amazon-web-services-for-seamless-it-service-and-support/1932924974

5. SMB Financial Planning: Centage, which develops cloud financial planning software, has launched Planning Maestro -- a planning and analytics platform for SMB customers.

4. M&A - Splunk Partner: Managed security specialist Tesserent has acquired enterprise security specialist and Splunk partner Rivium for $3.2 million, CRN Australia reports.

3. M&A - Georgia MSPs: Atlanta-based Montra Solutions has acquired Midtown Technology Partners, a neighboring provider of managed IT services, according to Atlanta Inno.

2. M&A - MSPs and CSPs: Ntiva has acquired Diverse Technology Solutions (DTS), a cloud service provider for hosted data, voice, and business IT solutions. Both companies have extensive M&A experience.

1. Top 100 Vertical Market MSPs 2019: We’ll unveil the complete list — yes, all honorees — and associated research during our April webcast. Register now to join us.

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.