Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Wednesday, February 27, 2019.
Actually, there are 13 timely updates designed for managed services providers (MSPs), cloud services providers (CSPs), IT consulting firms, systems integrators, VARs, independent software vendors (ISVs), and telco agents to sip on.
13. Conference - Data Protection: Commvault Go 2019 is confirmed for October.
12. Financial Results - Best Buy: The retail giant disclosed these results for its three months ended February 2, 2019:
- Revenue was $14.8 billion, down from $15.4 billion in the comparable quarter last year.
- Net earnings were $735 million, up from $364 million in he comparable quarter last year.
The revenue decline mainly involved an extra week of sales in the previous year's quarter. The results generally beat Wall Street's expectations. We're checking to see if Best Buy has any update on the performance of its Geek Squad business.
11. Financial Results - IT Services: Perficient, an IT services firm, has disclosed its Q4 2018 financial results. Key metrics include:
- Overall revenue was $131.7 million, down from $133.5 million in the corresponding quarter for 2017.
- Service revenue increased 11 percent to $130.0 million.
- Net income increased 16 percent to $7.5 million.
The revenue and net income figures generally exceeded Wall Street's expectations. Key milestones involved partnership honors for the company's IBM Watson & MicroStrategy expertise.
10. Alibaba Cloud Upgrades: The fast-growing cloud provider introduced serverless computing, data analytics, global networking, high performance storage, and enterprise database upgrades. Already strong in Asia, Alibaba is expanding rapidly into Europe while also supporting U.S. customers worldwide. It's unclear how aggressively Alibaba will push directly into the U.S. market against Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services.
9. Distribution - Networking: Westcon-Comstor Americas, a Synnex business, has agreed to distribute Opengear's secure, resilient network access and automation solutions.
8. Partner Program - Data Protection: QuorumLabs has updated its MSP channel program in the Americas.
7. Integration - Log Management & Threat Intelligence: Fluency and Webroot now integrate with one another, allowing MSPs and customers to leverage log management and threat intelligence services.
6. Integration - LogicMonitor & ServiceNow: LogicMonitor, a SaaS-based performance monitoring platform, now has a certified integration with ServiceNow.
5. Talent - MSP: Vology, an MSP in Tampa, Florida, has hired Grant Newmyer as CFO. He previously held key financial roles at IQor, First Advantage and Sara Lee Corp. Vology manages & maintains 260,000 devices at 32,000 customer sites through its U.S.-based Network Operations Center (NOC) and Security Operations Center (SOC), the company says.
4. M&A - Kaseya Parent: Insight Venture Partners, Kaseya's parent, has acquired the majority of Israeli Venture Capital Fund's Genesis Partners IV portfolio. The portfolio includes several existing Insight investments -- such as monday.com (project management), Sisense (business analytics), and JoyTunes (A.I.-based music lessons).
3. M&A - MSPs: Storagepipe Solutions Inc. has acquired GridWay Computing Corporation, an MSP in Ottawa.
2. New MSP Conference: Auvik Networks has confirmed plans for Frankly MSP Live 2020, which is scheduled for January.
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