Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Tuesday, December 19, 2017.
Actually, there are 13 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:
13. PSA Software Meets Slack: Mavenlink, a provider of cloud-based PSA and project management software software, now integrates with Slack. It's part of a growing trend in the business management and MSP software markets, where numerous companies are plugging into slack to improve business collaboration and overall management.
12. Talent: SolarWinds MSP and LogicNow veteran Alistair Forbes is now chairman of Harmony Business Systems -- which develops Harmony PSA. Forbes is active with multiple MSP-centric technology companies. He also serves on Auvik Networks' board, and he's part of Mercia Technologies -- a UK-based investment firm.
11. Partner Program - Quality Assurance: CloudQA has launched a partner program to help VARs, ISPs, web designers and consultants specialize in quality assurance for web applications.
10. Partner Program - Distribution: Hitachi Vantara Federal Corporation has inked a distribution agreement with immixGroup. The deal should help Hitachi Vantara Federal to push even deeper into the federal IT market, the companies say.
9. Partner Program - Xerox: Hilyard’s Business Solutions and Rabbit Office Automation have joined Xerox's channel partner program. The twist: Both solutions providers are multi-brand dealers that want to support Xerox’s connected office technology, including the new line of ConnectKey-enabled workplace assistants. Overall, Xerox has signed up more than 50 new document technology partners in the United States and Western Europe in 2017. The relationships "reinforce Xerox’s efforts to seize a larger share of the small- and medium-size business (SMB) market by broadening its multi-brand dealer base," the company says.
8. Amazon Web Services in France: Amazon Web Services has launched the AWS EU (Paris) Region -- which could be attractive to local developers and companies focused on GDPR and other compliance mandates. This is AWS’s fourth region in Europe, joining existing regions in Germany, Ireland, and the UK. Moreover, AWS now provides 49 Availability Zones across 18 technology infrastructure regions globally with another 12 Availability Zones and four regions in Bahrain, Hong Kong SAR, Sweden, and a second AWS GovCloud Region in the US expected to come online by early 2019, the company says.
7. Oracle Cloud Partner: Mythics Inc., a Platinum Level member of the Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN),has achieved Oracle Specializations for Oracle Management Cloud and Oracle Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).
6. Unitrends MSP Push: Unitrends has launched Unitrends MSP, a wholly owned subsidiary dedicated to business continuity as well as Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) to MSPs. The business unit has dedicated R&D, sales, service and support teams. Also, Unitrends MSP is releasing BackupIQ, an artificial intelligence-powered task list for partners. Familiar Name: Take a closer look and you'll notice Mike Sanders is CEO of Unitrends MSP. Sanders, a Kaseya veteran, recently sold Cenersys to IT Glue. More than 50 MSPs have tested Unitrends services over the past year, and the platform integrates with Autotask (now owned by Datto), Connectwise, Kaseya and Solarwinds MSP.
6. Ingram Micro & IBM MaaS360: The U.S. Ingram Micro Cloud Marketplace now offers IBM Maas360 -- a unified endpoint management platform. A free 30-day trial is available as part of the rollout. Ingram Microsoft Cloud will expand Maas360's availability outside the U.S. in early 2018, the companies say.
5. Managed Services Contract: Optus Business is rolling out managed services to HOYTS Group movie theaters. The five year deal spans connectivity, data security and digital signage management across 48 cinemas, regional offices and more.
4. M&A - IT Services: We've tracked multiple M&A deals across the VAR, MSP and CSP sectors in recent days. The moves include: ConvergeOne buying AOS; Scantron acquiring WRK Systems; Equinix acquiring 10 data centers; and a key M&A deal involving two Texas-area MSPs. Bonus: Track all merger and acquisition news here.
3. Top 20 IT Training Companies: Training Industry has unveiled its Top 20 IT Training Companies List for 2017 here.
2. Kaseya PSA: Kaseya's PSA platform now supports more than 1,000 MSPs. For the sake of context, rival PSA offerings like ConnectWise Manage (likely 10,000+ partners) have larger installed bases, but Kaseya is relatively new to the PSA game and the company is striving to diversify beyond RMM (remote monitoring and management) capabilities. We'll share more details and perspectives from Kaseya CEO Fred Voccola later today...
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