Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to end your day for Wednesday, November 8, 2017.
Actually, there are 10 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:
10. Google Gains Cloud Momentum?: Salesforce will host some of its services on Google Cloud Platform. Translation: Salesforce is hedging its dependence on Amazon Web Services. Google, meanwhile, recently inked a cloud relationship with Cisco Systems. Plus, smaller companies like Itopia are working with Google to promote various SMB services into the MSP sector.
9. MSP Earnings: RigNet, a vertical market MSP focused on the energy industry, says Q3 2017 revenues were $50.8 million, up $200,000 from the corresponding quarterly last year. That's actually impressive, considering RigNet's core market (the offshore oil industry) has contracted considerably in recent years. In response, the company has pushed hard into IoT and software development.
8. WatchGuard SMB: WatchGuard Technologies has unveiled hardware upgrades for the Firebox T Series of unified threat management (UTM) appliances. The throughput improvements and added features in WatchGuard's new T15, T35 and T55 tabletop appliances allow users at small offices, home offices and distributed enterprises to experience "blazing-fast Internet speeds," the company claims.
7. Endpoint Security Claims: VIPRE Endpoint Security Cloud Edition is celebrating recent performance testing conducted by AV-Comparatives, a software testing organization. The Real-World Protection Test examined over 300 live malicious URLs found in the field, replicating the same daily infection vectors that typical SMBs would experience. VIPRE achieved a 100 percent protection rate, the company says...
6. Speed Matters: Trend Micro says the company's TippingPoint 8200TX and 8400TX Threat Protection System (TPS) family offer the "industry’s fastest inspection throughput in a single device." Hmmm... We haven't run any tests on our own...
5. Datto-Autotask Math: SMB Nation has a rather interesting second-day look at some of the math leading up to the Datto & Autotask merger...
4. Cloud Services M&A: The Moelis Australia Government Infrastructure Fund has acquired a 23 percent stake in Vault Systems, a Canberra-based cloud services wholesaler, according to ARN.
3. Small Business Lending: Intuit is launching QuickBooks Capital, a new lending and credit model to help young small businesses overcome the barriers they have traditionally faced in accessing small dollar loans, the company says.
2. Professional Services Automation: FinancialForce, which develops ERP and PSA solutions that integrate with Salesforce, says the company is "all in" on Salesforce Einstein -- an AI technology that brings "world-class analytics and predictive capabilities" to customers.
1. IT Nation 2017 Live Coverage: You'll find all of the daily chatter here. Plus, managed security-related news -- involving AlienVault and Arctic Wolf Networks -- has already surfaced...
