Content, 5 things

5 Channel Partner Updates: Wednesday 10 January 2018

Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Wednesday, January 10, 2018.

Actually, there are 14 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… 

14. Net Neutrality: U.S. Senate Democrats said on Tuesday they will force a vote later this year on the U.S. Federal Communications Commission’s reversal of landmark Obama administration net neutrality rules and will try to make it a key issue in the 2018 congressional elections, Reuters reports.

13. Talent - CSP: 3Cloud LLC, a Microsoft Gold Certified Azure cloud consulting firm, has hired Jacob Rivera as VP of sales and business development. He previously was a Microsoft sales director. Rivera will drive revenue for 3Cloud's professional services, managed services, and Cloud Solutions Provider (CSP) lines of business.

12. Talent - Data Protection: Veritas Technologies is transitioning the CEO role from Bill Coleman to Greg Hughes. Coleman remains a member of the Veritas board, which Hughes also joins. The planned transition comes more than a year after Symantec sold Veritas. In recent quarters, Veritas has worked overtime to strengthen its partner program while moving aggressively toward cloud- and subscription-based services for data protection, backup and more.

11. Distribution Momentum: An impressive 70 percent of vendors expect a double-digit increase in sales through distribution in 2018, up from 55 percent with such expectations last year, according to a new Global Technology Distribution Council survey. The most progress involves cloud, security, IoT and data center solutions and services. And the No. 1 objective vendors expect from distributors? Recruiting new types of solution providers. PS: Special thanks to Scott Campbell of CommCentric Solutions for the heads-up.

Kevin Murai
Kevin Murai

10. Synnex CEO Transition: Synnex CEO Kevin Murai is retiring but will become chairman of the board. COO Dennis Polk will shift to president and COO, while Dwight Steffensen will become Lead Independent Director. The CEO transition comes after Murai successfully transformed the company from a traditional distributor into more of a business process services company. The journey included a healthy mix of organic R&D along with mergers and acquisitions.

9. Business Continuity: ClearSky Data, provider of on-demand primary storage with built-in offsite backup and DR as a single service, has achieved Advanced Technology Partner status in Amazon Web Service (AWS) Partner Network (APN).

8. Funding - Code Quality & DevOps: Bugsnag, a cloud service that helps developers find bugs inside their software, announced $9 million in Series B funding, TechCrunch notes. The company also released a new dashboard featuring a stability score -- which can give customers an unbiased grade of the current stability of their software, Bugsnag claims.

7. Remote Support: Bomgar has launched Remote Support 18.1, which enables IT service desks and customer support centers to access and fix nearly any remote device, running any platform, located anywhere in the world, the company claims. The update includes GDPR pseudonymization (<-- we can't pronounced that word either...) support and customer agreement enhancements.

6. Growth: Agiloft, Inc, a provider of agile business process software, achieved 45 percent year-over-year revenue growth and a 200-percent increase in channel sales in 2017, the company says. Agiloft also grew its headcount by 30 percent during the year. 

Replated Podcast: VIPRE Security&#8217;s Marya Munir and

5. Top Partners - Security: VIPRE Security unveiled its first-ever Partners of the Year honorees. The lineup includes:

The honors arrive during a key time for VIPRE and its partner base, according to Marya Munir, VIPRE senior director of marketing. The company spent more than a year developing, testing and enhancing a pure cloud platform for partners. The cloud offering reached general availability in fall 2017. Partners quickly embraced the offering, which leverages machine learning and real-time behavior monitoring. The cloud launch included close work with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to optimize performance on AWS infrastructure. Stay tuned. We'll be sharing more VIPRE-related milestones in the weeks ahead...

4. Partner Program: Egenera, a provider of wholesale cloud services to the channel, has launched the Xterity Partner Program (XPP). It's designed to help resellers capitalize on SMB cloud services.

3. ESOP Valuations: The U.S. Department of Labor is closely watching ESOP valuations. The reason: Without a proper valuation process in place, employees may wind up paying far too much to acquire a business from prior ownership. According to Porter Wright Morris & Arthur LLP, the Department of Labor appears to be tracking three core issues: The selection of a valuation advisor; oversight of the appraiser; and the overall fiduciary review process. ESOPs, or employee stock ownership plans, allow company owners to gradually transition the business to employees. The upside: Employees ultimately share in the profits and performance of the company. The downside: Without proper management in place, those same employees could see their own net worths plummet.

2. VMware Layoffs: This just in...

1. How Much Is Your Business Really Worth?: Find out by joining ChannelE2E's January 18 webcast. We'll cover VAR, MSP & CSP valuations; key KPIs to help you increase your company valuation; and the Top 100 M&A deals of 2017. Guest speaker: Service Leadership Inc. CEO Paul Dippell. Register Now. 

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.