Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Wednesday, May 23, 2018.
Actually, there are 20 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…
20. Momentum: HP Enterprise's Q2 2018 revenues rose 10 percent to $7.5 billion, which beat Wall Street's expectations.
19. Distribution - Cisco: Tech Data has launched a Cisco 1Source portal, a digital platform and suite of APIs that enable channel partners to customize business processes to make the best use of their resources and systems, the companies say.
18. Distribution - for Sale?: Several Chinese groups, including Huarong Asset Management, have been in discussions this year to buy Ingram Micro from HNA Group as the once-acquisitive conglomerate continues its efforts to retrench, according to sources with knowledge of the talks, Reuters reports. However, HNA has “no plans or intention to sell Ingram” and has great confidence in the company’s prospects for continuing strong growth, a spokeswoman for the group told Reuters late on Monday.
17. Partnerships - Zerto: At this week's ZertoCON 2018 conference in Boston, Zerto unveiled an IT Resilience Platform. The offering empowers partners and customers to "build resilient, always-on businesses with backup, disaster recovery and cloud mobility converged in a single, simple, scalable platform." Meanwhile, Navisite announced four business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) client wins as part of the client momentum resulting from its strategic partnership with Zerto, the companies say.
16. Partner Program: Pure Storage unveiled a new partner program with new tiers, more partner enablement and training services, the all flash array storage company says. Pure remains committed to a 100 percent channel business model. CEO Charles Giancarlo earlier this week hinted that the partner program updates were on the way. The official announcement surfaced yesterday at the Pure Storage Accelerate 2018 conference in San Francisco.
15. Cloud ERP on Microsoft Azure: Epicor Software's cloud ERP platforms will be available worldwide on Microsoft Azure, the companies have confirmed.
14. Cloud BI on AWS: Information Builders is now a Consulting Partner in the AWS Partner Network (APN), and one of the first independent software vendors to subscribe to AWS Managed Services. For customers and partners, the Information Builders Cloud – Powered by AWS is now available.
13. Business Continuity Part One: Cloud services provider OVH is expanding its Veeam relationship from Europe to the United States. As one of the largest cloud partners in the EMEA region, OVH has been recognized in France as a Veeam Cloud Provider of the Year for two consecutive years. The relationship extends further with OVH US last week attending VeeamON 2018 in Chicago as a silver sponsor, and working closely with Veeam to continue to enhance the OVHcloud business continuity solutions, the companies say.
12. Business Continuity Part Two: Pivot3 has expanded its Intelligent Hybrid Cloud to bring workload mobility and disaster recovery capabilities to customers across AWS, Azure and Google.
11. WaaS: CloudJumper, a Workspace as a Service (WaaS) platform provider, has launched Streaming App Services. The offering allows ISVs and ASPs to offer cloud-enabled applications to business customers.
Continue to page two of two for items 10 to 1 today.
Welcome to page two of two, featuring items 10 to 1 for today.
10. Application Migrations - Automation: RiverMeadow Software Inc., a provider of automated application migration technology and services, now supports Microsoft Azure.
9. Chromebooks for Business: Acer will unveil its first line of high-end laptops running Google’s Chrome OS Today, Reuters says, as the computer maker looks to help Google in its effort to win over business users after taking the U.S. education market by storm.
8. Facebook Apology Tour: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologized to EU lawmakers on Tuesday, saying the company had not done enough to prevent misuse of the social network and that regulation is “important and inevitable,” Reuters notes. Critics allege that Zuckerberg dodged several tough questions about privacy during the meeting.
7. Partnerships - AI: Microsoft is partnering with Accenture and Avanade to develop joint AI (artificial intelligence) solutions, according to Channel Chief Gavriella Schuster. Interestingly, the news surfaced on LinkedIn (owned by Microsoft) rather than on Microsoft's own corporate blogs...
6. Funding: Valimail, a San Francisco, California-based provider of automated email authentication solutions, raised $25 million in Series B funding.
5. Network Management: SolarWinds has upgraded its its network management solutions on multiple fronts. The enhancements include:
- Network Performance Monitor (NPM) 12.3 – Along with Network Insight for Cisco Nexus, including detailed visibility into virtual Port Channels (vPCs), the latest version of NPM provides network monitoring capabilities and detailed visibility for multi-vendor environments, the company says.
- Network Configuration Monitor (NCM) 7.8 – The updated version brings stronger automation and control of network functions and, like NPM, adds Network Insight for Cisco Nexus switches. It provides configuration snippets and the ability to filter, search, and view access control lists (ACLs), including object groups, and Virtual Device Context (VDC) support, the firm says.
- IP Address Manager (IPAM) 4.7 – Tthe latest version now automates IP requests and monitors hybrid environments with Amazon Route53 and Azure DNS support, SolarWinds says.
- NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA) 4.4 – The new version offers IT professionals significantly improved speed and performance in identifying network traffic issues and removing bottlenecks, while providing better security, SolarWinds asserts.
- VoIP and Network Quality Manager (VNQM) 4.5 – The latest version of VNQM adds support for monitoring of SIP trunks, enabling users to manage voice quality and performance across networks using the latest VoIP technologies, the firm says.
PS: It's a safe bet more and more of SolarWinds' network management offerings will surface within the SolarWinds MSP business over time...
4. Talent: ConnectWise has named Brad Schow has been appointed VP of consulting. In this new position, Schow will lead a team that is expanding the company’s current product-focused consulting service into an end-to-end offering designed to help technology teams, businesses and leadership reach growth goals, ConnectWise says.
3. Talent: - Magna5, which offers a voice and data services, has named Richard (Rick) Lottie as its new CEO. Lottie has served as Magna5 executive chairman and board member for the past six months. He succeeds Greg Forrest, who has recently stepped down.
2. M&A - Management Buyout: Excalibur Communications, a telecom and IT solutions service provider in the UK, has confirmed a management buyout backed by Santander Corporate and Commercial. We'll share more details soon.
1. M&A - MSPs: Cloud MSP Reliam has acquired G2 Tech Group, an AWS partner and MSP that specializes in DevOps and SaaS managed services. We'll share more details later today.
