5 Channel Observations: 7 Oct 2015
Good morning, channel partners. Greetings from Orlando, where I’m attending Gartner ITxpo today. But enough about me. Here are five technology news insights, updates, chatter, gossip and more to start your day for Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2015.
Actually, today’s update involves 13 items for VARs, managed services providers and cloud services providers (CSPs) to sip on.
13. Safe Harbor No More: A major European court ruling — involving so-called Safe Harbor — may change how channel partners, MSPs and cloud services providers manage and move customer data between Europe and the U.S. Just about everyone thinks the ruling — which ends Safe Harbor — is a really big deal. But few people have described exactly how channel partners will be impacted. Here’s our view on Safe Harbor’s demise and the channel impact.
12. Fiorina’s HP Tenure: The Wall Street Journal took a closer look at Carly Fiorina’s tenure as CEO of Hewlett-Packard. The picture still isn’t pretty. But some Fiorina defenders insist that her vision ultimately benefitted future HP CEOs like Mark Hurd. I’m not sure I agree.
11. Real Data Compliance vs. Sports Fantasy Systems: How do sports fantasy sites like DraftKings and FanDuel gather, protect and manage data? The New York attorney general will investigate those questions and more. The big concern involves insiders — company employees — who can potentially gain access to DraftKings and FanDuel information and algorithms for potential financial gain. Hmmm… Instead of rigging the outcome of a sports contest we now live in a world where insiders can potentially rig — or leverage — the data. I wonder: Are Organized Crime groups are keeping up with the changing times?
10. Samsung Rebound… And More: Samsung predicted its first quarterly profit growth in two years. Sounds great. But I have a hunch (hmmm… )there are more surprises coming — particularly in the area of vertical market software and applications… And partners. Stay tuned.
9. MSP M&A: Logicalis Group, an international IT solutions and managed services provider, has acquired Lekscom, a Jersey-based networking and collaboration provider. We’re poking around for more details.
8. Ironic: Some pundits expected MSPs to become CSPs. But in Rackspace’s case, the CSP is looking more and more like an MSP — providing remote monitoring and management services to third-party clouds like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure…
7. Microsoft Surface Book: I’ve spent the past 24 hours or so thinking about Microsoft Surface Book, the company’s first full-blown notebook computer. I keep coming to the same conclusion. Sometimes, you have to alienate to innovate. Sometimes that means irritating partners in your quest to deliver something that’s really great. And let’s not forget: It’s not like PC makers are somehow exclusively loyal to Microsoft these days — especially as Chromebooks continue to gain some popularity in some niches.
More: See Items 6 through 1 — including new partner programs and the next stage for RMM (remote monitoring and management) on next page.
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