Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, rumors and more to start your day for Monday, November 2, 2015.
Actually, today's update involves eight items for VARs, managed services providers (MSPs) and cloud services providers (CSPs) to sip on.
8. Twins: Hewlett-Packard Co. is no more. The company is officially two separate businesses, effective yesterday. Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (public ticker: HPE) offers servers, networks, storage and more to corporate customers. HP Inc. Among the early winners -- Helmerich & Paynes Inc., which owns www.HPInc.com and will surely see a traffic boost in the days and months ahead...
7. Google SMB Guru Branches Out: Allan C. Thygesen, VP of global SMB sales and operations, has joined RingCentral's board as an independent director... Hmmm...
6. New Crowdfunding Rules: So, you run a small business that's seeking to raise money. Or maybe you're an aspiring angel investor. The crowdfunding scene sounds like an exciting, simple way to match startups with potential investors. But slow down and take a minute to read some new crowdfunding rules from the SEC.
5. Apple Watch Sales: Apple CEO Tim Cook and the rest of the executive team decline to discuss specific Apple Watch sales figures. But an SEC filing seems to reveal that Apple Watch has generated nearly $1.7 billion in sales during its first give months of availability. Pretty impressive considering how much the smartwatch buzz has faded in recent months.
4. Healthy Midmarket Momentum: U.S.-based midmarket companies grew 7.2 percent in Q3 2015 – up from 6.6 percent in year-over-year growth in the second quarter, according to the National Center for the Middle Market. We'll share more insights on the data later today.
3. Beacon Technology in Businesses: Trying to understand beacon technology opportunities for channel partners? Check out this short story from Entrepreneur, which explains how beacon technology is finding a home within local government applications, sporting events and more.
2. Catching Up: Avnet VP Tim FitzGerald and I look forward to catching up later this week. FitzGerald was way ahead of the cloud computing curve within the distribution market, helping Avnet to pinpoint key cloud partner opportunities before they became obvious to the average observer. So what is FitzGerald researching these days? Stay tuned.
1. Join Us: As I've mentioned a few times, ChannelE2E will attend next week's WestconGroup Connect and IT Nation 2015 conferences. We'll also host a Big Data for MSPs session at IT Nation on Thursday, Nov. 12 at 1:45 p.m. ET in room Bayhill 17.
Read Them All: Did you miss one of our 5 Channel Partner Observations? Find the archive here here. Subscribe: Receive ChannelE2E’s blog headlines, insights and updates in your inbox daily. Subscribe to our enewsletter. Thanks to those who already have.
