Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Wednesday, August 30, 2017.
Actually, there are 18 (wow) 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.
18. HIPAA Guidance: Some good news (and potential bad news) for MSPs in the healthcare sector. On the one hand, MSPs and CSPs are not responsible for their clients’ HIPAA compliance. But those service providers Might Be At-Risk... Mike Semel explains why here.
17. Oracle Talent: Oracle is hiring 5,000 cloud professionals in the United States to more effectively compete against Salesforce. Impressive. But Oracle didn't disclose how many employees it has cut from its traditional hardware and software business units this year...
16. Automation vs. IT Experts: At HCL Technologies, just 40 percent of the company's 1350 Australian workforce are on the temporary visas, down from 70 percent. Why's that? Apparently, the answer involves IT automation...
15. SD-WAN Partnerships: Symantec, VMware and Forcepoint are among the latest members of the VeloCloud SD-WAN Security Technology Partner Program, joining inaugural members IBM Security, Check Point Software Technologies, Fortinet, and Zscaler, the company said.
14. Partner Program, Part One: Pivot3 has expanded its partner program for hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) solutions...
13. Partner Program, Part Two: Sennheiser's new dealer registration program allows VARs to lock-in prices for up to one year with savings of up to 15%, depending on the deal, if they register an opportunity via the company's new portal, the company says.
12. Distribution: ScanSource's net sales rose 5 percent to $917.3 million in Q4 2017, driven by growth in the Worldwide Barcode, Networking & Security segment, the value added distributor said. 11. Data Center Expansion: TierPoint will build a second data center in Baltimore less than a year after expanding its current Baltimore facility. TierPoint is a national Hybrid IT /Cloud service provider with 40 data centers in 20 US markets and 8 multi-tenant cloud pods serving 5000+ customers. Go to page two of two for the conclusion of this blog Welcome to page two of two. Here are the top 10 items for today. 10. StorageCraft Guarantee: StorageCraft on September 1 will launch a $100,000 Recovery Guarantee for all qualified StorageCraft partners. To be eligible, a partner needs to be Platinum-level and have on staff one StorageCraft Certified Engineer and one StorageCraft Certified Master Engineer. Qualified partners’ machines that are protected at the Cloud Premium Service Level are included in the guarantee. If a qualified partner’s machines cannot be virtualized during a true failover event, StorageCraft will compensate the partner up to $100,000, the company says... 9. Backup Market Shakeout: ESW Capital, a private equity firm in Austin, Texas, has acquired a 14.4 percent stake in FalconStor, the struggling storage management company that has had hit-and-miss relationships with MSPs for the past decade. ESW's stake in the FalconStor is worth about $2 million, according to Newsday. We keep wondering if a backup market consolidator -- say, Carbonite? -- will swoop in and buy FalconStor's intellectual property.... 8. Backup Momentum: Arcserve's revenue grew 15 percent in fiscal year 2017, double that of the backup and recovery market, the company says.Worldwide sales of flagship Arcserve Unified Data Protection (UDP) increase by 28 percent year over year. 7. MSPs Support VMware Cloud on AWS: Multiple MSPs and technology companies have vowed to offer managed services and monitoring technologies for the new VMware Cloud on AWS service. Key supporters include Rackspace, Faction, Datapipe and Presidio on the MSP front, and Dynatrace on the software monitoring front. Still, it's unclear how much near-term revenue the services will generate. VMware Cloud on AWS is only available in one AWS region, and additional regional support won't arrive until 2018... 6. M&A, Part One: SolarWinds MSP has acquired SpamExperts B.V., a provider of email security solutions deployed in the cloud or on-premises, with services for incoming (spam and virus) filtering, outgoing filtering, and email archiving. We'll share more details soon. 5. M&A, Part Two: Congruity360, a provider of professional and managed services for enterprise data management, has acquired NextGen Storage, a hybrid-cloud consulting and vendor-sourcing services firm. We'll share more thoughts soon.Hurricane Harvey Business Recovery Updates
The latest on Hurricane Harvey and flooding across Texas and Louisiana includes... 4. ATMs Flooded: The fate of ATMs -- cash machines -- remains a major question mark, especially for locals who are trying to get their hands on physical money during emergency relocations. 3. Business Recovery: Datto, a data availability specialist that works closely with MSPs, has dispatched support team on the ground in Texas. However, roughly 35 partners in the area can't physically reach the team and are instead leaning on Datto's Norwalk (Connecticut) and Rochester (New York) support centers. Those recoveries were underway as of Tuesday. 2. Flood Relief: Microsoft, Amazon and other technology giants are donating money to the Red Cross to assist Hurricane Harvey relief efforts. Also, Ingram Micro's Trust X Cares and the Southern Star Chapter have set up a go fund me page to assist those in need. 1. Power Outages, Network Outages: For the latest coverage of outages across Texas and Louisiana, check these links:- Power outages across Texas and Louisiana
- Network outages -- cellular, broadband and broadcast -- across Texas and Louisiana
