5 Channel Partner Updates: Wednesday 23 October 2019 -

Here are five (actually, far more…) technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Wednesday, October 23, 2019.

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A. What’s Hot Today

1. ConnectWise IT Nation Preview: Multiple daily updates are here. Check that link daily.

2. Financing - Data Centers: Aligned Energy, a data center provider that works closely with MSPs, has lined up a $495 million secured credit facility with investors including Goldman Sachs Bank USA, CPPIB Credit Investments Inc. (CPPIB Credit), and others.

3. Venture Capital Targets 'Old' Startups: Peter Thiel’s venture-capital firm is raising nearly $3 billion—and in a switch from the company’s usual script, much of the war chest will be poured into the swelling ranks of technology startups that have stayed private for years, The Wall Street Journal reports.

4. IT Service Management (ITSM): SolarWinds Service Desk now features chat and mobile app upgrades to improve the ITSM platform's customer support capabilities. SolarWinds positions Service Desk as a more affordable alternative to ServiceNow, which yesterday announced a high-profile CEO transition.

5. Microsoft Financial Results: Microsoft is expected to announce its latest quarterly financial results after the market closes today (October 23). The big question: Can the company maintain its torrid Office 365 and Microsoft Azure cloud services growth rates.

6. Talent: Riverbed has hired Mitel veteran Rich McBee as president and CEO.

7. Pentagon JEDI Cloud Contract: Defense Secretary Mark Esper is recusing himself from any decisions involving a controversial Pentagon cloud computing contract worth as much as $10 billion, to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest, Bloomberg reports. Oracle has protested the contract process, claiming a winner-take-all approach risks locking the Pentagon into proprietary cloud services. Amazon Web Services (AWS) has been widely expected to win the deal, with Microsoft Azure in the running.

B. Partnerships and Strategic Alliances

1. DattoCon19 Paris: More than 850 MSPs are attending DattoCon19 this week in Paris, according to Datto. The company announced numerous cloud business continuity, networking, backup and disaster recovery (BDR), professional services automation (PSA) and SaaS protection enhancements at the event.

2. MSP Partner of the Year: CMIT Solutions has been named Continuum’s Alliance Partner of the Year. CMIT's member companies leverage Continuum to monitor more than 50,000 endpoints, the companies say.

3. IoT Analytics: Verizon and SAP are co-developing "next generation" IoT analytics solutions that will allow applications to process data where it is generated, the two companies say.

4. Distribution - Printers: D&H Distributing is "adding resources and sales specialists to support its growing portfolio of printer offerings" from Lexmark, Brother, Ricoh and others, the distributor says.

5. MSP Partner Program: LucidLink, a provider of cloud-native file services has launched a new, global Managed Services Provider (MSP) program.

6. Partner Program: IT solutions provider Sayers has achieved platinum status in the IGEL Partner Program -- which support an edge OS for cloud workspaces.