Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Wednesday, June 27, 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. Xerox vs. Fujifilm Feud: Fujifilm is threatening to compete against Xerox if Xerox abandons a joint business relationship between the companies. Um... is that really a threat or just an expected outcome?
19. Partner Program - MSPs: Hyperconverged technology specialist Scale Computing has launched an MSP program with a "flexible pricing model that reduces CapEx through a price per-node, per-month, OpEx subscription," the company says.
18. AWS Migration: Rackspace has been named an AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP) Partner to help businesses migrate to AWS. On a related note, Rackspace employees hold more than 1,000 AWS technical certifications. Also, the company has AWS Competency status in seven areas: Financial Services, Migration, Storage, Microsoft Workloads, Oracle, DevOps, and Marketing and Commerce.
17, SMB Retirement Plans: Principal Financial Group has launched two "Principal Flex" retirement packages to help small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and tax-exempt organizations offer flexible retirement benefits to employees, the company says. Principal claims to serve more than 37,000 SMB organizations with nearly 1.3 million participants.
16. Salesforce Data Protection: Druva Inc. has launched Druva inSync on the Salesforce AppExchange. The offering ensures "business-critical data within Salesforce are protected and available for fast recovery and quick responses to legal and compliance needs," Druva claims.
15. Partner - ServiceNow: Cask LLC has achieved the ServiceNow Gold Services Partner designation. The company has more than 10 years experience assisting customers with ServiceNow deployments.
14. Partner - AWS: Six Nines IT has achieved Premier Consulting Partner status within the AWS Partner Network (APN).
13. Partner Program - Cloud Cmmunications: Twilio has launched the Twilio Build partner program. It features an API-first, developer-first approach.
12. Partner Program - HCI: Nutanix has launched a new Velocity channel partner program for mid-market partners that have hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) expertise. In a related move, Nutanix and Lenovo are launching a hyperconverged software-ready product called Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Certified Nodes.
11. Talent - MSP Leader: Yorktel has hired Mike Brandofino as chief operations officer (COO). The company also named Ken Scaturro as chief revenue officer earlier this year.
Continue to page two for today's items 10 to 1.
Welcome to page two of two. Here are items 10 to 1 for today.
10. Talent - Azure Consulting: Atmosera, a Tier-I Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider (CSP), has named Ellie Soleymani as director of marketing and Mark Lipscomb as director of customer success.
9. Talent - Data Federation: AtScale, a data federation and cloud transformation specialist, has named Christopher Lynch executive chairman and CEO.
8. IT Management: LogicMonitor now integrates with Terraform. The connection automatically configures hybrid infrastructure into the LogicMonitor platform, the companies say.
7. Shark Tank Invades Continuum Navigate Conference: Shark Tank's Barbara Corcoran is confirmed to keynote Continuum Navigate 2018, scheduled for September in Boston. The company will also host an ‘MSP Shark Tank," featuring four MSP attendees pitching their cybersecurity marketing ideas. The winner will receive $15,000 in co-marketing funds.
6. Funding - SD-WANs: TCV has invested $90 million in SD-WAN specialist Silver Peak. The company now has about 800 enterprise customers (mostly in North America). An accelerated channel push is under way.
5. M&A - Security: Temprano Techvestors has acquired Charlotte, North Carolina-based Corporate Armor, a supplier of technology security and infrastructure products. We'll share more thoughts soon.
4. M&A - Healthcare IT services: Acccient has acquired A2U, a healthcare IT services provider that works closely with Citrix. Accscient is part of FutureTech Holding (FTH) -- which has strategic holdings in the healthcare, financial and technology sectors.
3. M&A - Office Equipment: Marco Technologies has acquired Prime Office Innovation assets. Zygoquest Group advised Prime Office on the deal.
2. M&A - MSPs: Global Technology Resources Inc. (GTRI) has acquired Network Professionals Group (NPG). The deal allows GTRI to expand its managed services in multiple areas -- including networking, security, data centers, cloud, collaboration, and help desk offerings. We'll share more details soon.
1. MSP Benchmarking: SolarWinds MSP has launched MSP Pulse, a benchmarking tool that enables MSPs to "effectively understand the health of their business, with deep insight into opportunity areas for new investment, and an understanding of how they rank against their peers," the company says. MSP Pulse was developed in partnership with The 2112 Group. Ingram Micro and Microsoft partnered with The 2112 Group on a similar tool in 2017. We'll share more thoughts soon.
