Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Wednesday, July 19, 2017.
Actually, there are nine timely updates 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…
9. CenturyLink UaaS: CenturyLink recently added a Unified Communications-as-a-Service (UCaaS) platform powered by the BroadSoft Government Cloud to CenturyLink's General Services Administration (GSA) IT Schedule 70 contract. CenturyLink is currently ranked No. 35 on Washington Technology's 2017 Top 100 list of federal government IT contractors.
8. Dell EMC Leadership: Kevin Connolly will succeed Kevin Peesker as Dell EMC Canada President at the end of July. The move comes roughly one year after EMC shareholders approved the company's sale to Dell. Here's a look at the Dell EMC deal's performance so far.
7. IoT Network Services: Comcast plans to expand its enterprise Internet of Things (IoT) service, machineQ, to 12 major U.S. markets in the weeks and months ahead. MachineQ is an IoT network service and platform that uses Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) technology based on the globally-adopted LoRaWAN protocol to build and deploy solutions for businesses and municipal organizations.
6. Big Data Shakeup?: Hortonworks, which promotes Hadoop and other big data solutions, announced a management shakeup yesterday. The moves include:
- Alan Fudge Joins as Chief Revenue Officer
- Scott Reasoner Promoted to Chief Accounting Officer
- Rajnish Verma steps down as president and COO
The company says Q2 revenues will exceed expectations -- but Hortonworks didn't mention a profit forecast. As a result, shares fell about 6 percent in after hours trading. The company will announce actual Q2 financial results on August 3. Hortonworks' key rivals include Cloudera and MapR. We'll be watching all three companies closely for more clues about big data software adoption...
5 . IBM Shrinkage Continues: IBM's latest quarterly results one again involved falling revenues. Moreover, the company's Q2 2017 revenue results, announced yesterday, fell short of analyst expectations. Everybody knows IBM's traditional hardware, software and IT services businesses are under pressure. But there are fresh concerns about IBM's strategic growth offerings -- especially in the area of cloud services, where the company seems to be losing ground vs. Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. We'll share more thoughts soon.
4. IT Service Management: ManageEngine has upgraded its Desktop Central endpoint management solution. The enhancements allows MSPs and IT admins to troubleshoot remote computers using voice and video chat, control multiple monitors while troubleshooting, and manage computers’ registry keys remotely. The upgrade also adds Linux support.
3. Managed Cloud Services: Rackspace has expanded its managed cloud services to support Pivotal Cloud Foundry. Rackspace will manage Pivotal Cloud Foundry on any public or private cloud, as well as on customer-owned infrastructure, the company says. The move comes as Rackspace attempts to rebound from layoffs earlier this year.
2. Veeam Momentum: Veeam has achieved 36 straight quarters of double digit growth, according to the backup and disaster recovery company. Worldwide revenue bookings will rise about 27 percent in Q2 2017 vs. Q2 2016. Much of the momentum involves enterprise hybrid IT deals, the company says. Veeam is striving to generate $1.5 billion in revenue in 2020, up from a $1 billion goal in 2018, the company said during its VeeamOn 2017 conference in May. In some ways, Veeam is on a collision course with Datto in the MSP sector as well, ChannelE2E believes. But while Datto has its own cloud and a pure MSP strategy, Veeam leans on third-party cloud services providers (CSPs) and also has a blended direct/channel sales model.
1. M&A: ConvergeOne has acquired Annese & Associates, a Cisco Gold Certified Partner in New York. ConvergeOne serves more than 5,700 customers, including 52 percent of the Fortune 100 and 40 percent of the Fortune 500 customers across the healthcare, finance, manufacturing, education, and energy industries. We'll share more details soon.
