Content, 5 things

5 Channel Partner Updates: Wednesday 20 December 2017

Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Wednesday, December 20, 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. Earnings: Red Hat's revenues hit $748 million in the company's fiscal 3Q 2018, up 22 percent compared to the corresponding quarter last year. Among the big growth areas: Application development-related revenues, which jumped 44 percent to $162 million.

9. AWS Database Services: MongoDB Atlas, a fully managed database service, is now available on the AWS Marketplace. It is now available across 14 AWS regions.

8. VMware for Microsoft Azure: After trading insults in recent weeks, Microsoft and VMware apparently buried the hatchet and the two companies will work together to ensure VMware's software is fully supported on Azure.

7. Investments - SD-WANs: Victory Square Technologies has signed a Letter of Intent to acquire 20 percent of Multapplied Networks Inc. ("MNI), which specializes in SD-WAN technology.  MNI's revenue will reach about CAD$1.2 million in 2017, and the company expects to reach about CAD$3 million in 2018.

6. Secure Browser-based Workspaces: Awingu and Barracuda Networks are partnering to deliver secure, browser-based workspaces. We're curious to see if or how the relationship potentially competes with MSP-centric workspace as a service offerings like CloudJumper and iTopia.

Ted Hulsy
Ted Hulsy

James Lii

5. Talent: Among the industry executives on the move...

  • Chief Revenue Officer Ted Hulsy has exited iTopia, according to his LinkedIn profile. Hulsy, an eFolder and SonicWall veteran, is a major MSP advocate. iTopia, which works closely with Google Cloud Platform, says its MSP-centric business model remains firmly in place. We'll be watching to see where Hulsy surfaces next.
  • Intermedia and Infrascale veteran James Lii has joined Unitrends MSP as VP of channel sales, according to his LinkedIn profile. The official Unitrends MSP business launch, focused on data protection, surfaced yesterday. Kaseya veteran Mike Sanders is CEO. Sanders recently sold Cenersys to IT Glue.

4. Data protection: Veeam Availability Suite 9.5 Update 3 is now available. It offers centralized data management for virtual, physical and multi-cloud workloads. Veeam calls it the biggest release in the company's 10-year history. We'll be watching to see how quickly existing Veeam MSPs and CSPs embrace the upgrade...

3. Google Cloud MSPs: Taos is now a Google Cloud Premier Partner and one of the initial members of the Google Cloud Platform MSP ecosystem. Taos specializes in cloud, DevOps and automation services for customers. A growing number of MSPs have embraced Google's cloud strategy in recent months.

Kent McNall

2. Retirement Blog: Quosal founder Kent McNall recently retired from ConnectWise -- but we haven't heard the last of him. McNall apparently will share career observations, learnings and flashbacks in his new, personal blog. I'm most interested to hear about his time at  Gas Powered Games (now called Wargaming Seattle).

1.  Top 100 Vertical Market MSPs: Complete this survey and your company could be ranked among the Top 100 Vertical Market MSPs when we unveil results in Q1 2018.

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.