5 things

5 Channel Partner Updates: Wednesday 16 August 2017

Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Wednesday, August 16, 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:

Mark Hurd
Mark Hurd

10. Oracle Overlooks Partners In Major Interview: Oracle CEO Mark Hurd has nearly doubled the company's sales staff to more than 35,000 employees over the past six years, according to The Wall Street Journal. The article describes how Oracle trained that staff to sell cloud services. The target customer for that sales team push: Everyone from enterprise accounts down to small businesses and startups. The word "partner" does not appear anywhere in the article. I'll give Hurd the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps he said "partner" during the interview process but The Journal apparently didn't hear it. Related Conference: When Oracle OpenWorld 2017 arrives in October, Hurd and the rest of the leadership team better say the "partner" word far more loudly if the company wants to keep pace with Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform and Salesforce...

Robert Potter

9. Talent: Verodin, a technology company that measures security effectiveness and controls assurance, has hired former Symantec VP Robert Potter as its chief revenue officer (CRO).  He previously held executive roles at Lancope (acquired by Cisco), RSA (acquired by EMC) and EMC (acquired by Dell).

8. Avaya Revenues: Avaya's Q3 revenues were $803 million, down $1 million compared to the prior quarter and down $79 million year-over-year, the company says. Also adjusted EBITDA was $204 million or 25.4% of revenue vs. adjusted EBITDA of $199 million for the prior quarter and $223 million for the third quarter of fiscal 2016. The results arrive as Avaya attempts to emerge from bankruptcy later this year with a new CEO and an updated pension plan payment strategy for retired employees.

7. Application Performance Management: VividCortex, a database performance management company that helps businesses improve application performance, reliability, and uptime,has raised $8.5 million in Series A-1 funding led by Osage Venture Partners (OVP). To date, VividCortex has raised $15 million. Related: Need funding or financial help? Check out the ChannelE2E Funding and Financing Database -- which lists hundreds of funders across the United States...

6. Customer Experience Monitoring: SolarWinds has upgraded Pingdom, a digital experience monitoring (DEM) solution. Pingdom allows businesses and service providers to monitor how users are experience Web, mobile and other applications. We're curious to see if SolarWinds extends the Pingdom offering over into its SolarWinds MSP business unite for IT service providers. Related Conference: SolarWinds MSP's Empower MSP Conference is set for October in Orlando, Fla.

5. Managed SD-WAN Services: OneCloud Networks, an MSP for for unified communications, networking, and mobile device management, has selected CloudGenix SD-WAN solutions to extend its portfolio of managed services.

4. PSA Upgrade: Krow Software has upgraded its PSA platform for Salesforce. The new offering includes contract management, punch time reporting, invoicing, expenses and integration enhancements. It competes most directly against FinancialForce, another PSA system for Salesforce.com. The upgrade announcement arrives only a few days after PSA rivals like Mavenlink, Kimble and Promys each announced customer wins and product milestones.

3. Autotask User Interface: Autotask has released a new ticket interface for its IT service management platform. The interface allows IT service providers and MSPs to  customize ticket settings -- even aligning the settings with service level agreements (SLAs), Autotask says. Among the areas of improvement to watch, according to the company:

  • Details Panel presents high-level information about the customer, primary contact and the priority and status of the ticket.
  • The Main Canvas provides a description of the ticket and all correlated activities. This includes notes, time entries and attachments. Ticket Timeline takes complex ticket data and presents it as a series of goals.
  • The Insights Panel offers a variety of mini widgets that provide information to help manage a ticket more effectively.

More information about the new Autotask ticket interface is available here. Autotask and many of its core rivals have been striving to simplify their software user interfaces, especially as low-cost, easy-to-deploy MSP software platforms emerge. Related Conference: Autotask Community Live 2017, the company's annual customer and partner conference, is set for September near Miami. Email me ([email protected]) if you'd like to potentially meet at the event.

Tim Weller, CEO, Datto

2. Datto's Future: When Datto recently hired a new CFO (Akamai veteran Timothy Weller) ChannelE2E speculated that the data protection specialist was ramping up for a potential IPO. But now a few sources speculate otherwise. They say the more likely scenario involves Datto getting acquired. Hmmm... I'm not suggesting any deals are looming. And I suspect internally, Datto's big priority is ramping up its networking and security businesses. But we'll be listening closely for M&A chatter, too. Related Conference: DattoCon18, the company's annual partner conference, is set for June 2018 in Texas.

1. MSP Discovers Security Breach: TekLinks, the well-known MSP, recently discovered and closed a server security breach on a healthcare customer system. The healthcare customer has now disclosed the breach to its clientele. Our sister site, MSSP Alert, is checking in with TekLinks and the healthcare business to understand if or how the breach raises HIPAA issues.

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.