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5 Channel Partner Updates: 20 January 2017

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Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Friday, January 20, 2017.

Actually, there are 14 timely entries 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…

Bob Zimmermann
Bob Zimmermann

14. MSP Talent: Whitlock, a video collaboration company, has hired Bob Zimmermann as director of managed services sales. He previously held executive-level roles at Prysm and Spectralink (which Polycom acquired).

13. MSP-CSP Partnership: CloudSmartz now offers its customers direct access to NYI's hybrid solutions marketplace. Customers gain streamlined application management, private and public cloud hosting, and bare metal services all via a single provider, within a single platform, the duo says.

12. Help Desk SLAs:  TeamSupport, a B2B help desk and customer support software company, has launched a new service level agreements (SLAs) feature. Among the perks: Help desks can now manage SLAs that even including local time zone provisions.

11. IT Project Management: Thoma Bravo has acquired Planview, which develops IT project portfolio management software... We'll share more thoughts soon.

10. Big Data Managed Services: CenturyLink has launched CenturyLink Big Data as a Service (BDaaS) with Managed Cloudera. The new managed service offering combines CenturyLink's expertise in data and advanced analytics, network, cloud and application services with Cloudera's Apache Hadoop-based data management and analytics platform.

9. Government Clouds, Part IDoubleHorn, a cloud services brokerage, has won a Texas Department of Information Resources (Texas DIR) SaaS contract. This contract enables DoubleHorn to provide Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) to state and local government agencies, public education, and other public entities throughout the state of Texas. The DIR SaaS contract (contract number DIR-TSO-3635) is in effect through December of 2017, with three optional one-year extensions. Financial terms were not disclosed. DoubleHorn also specializes in multi-cloud management.

8. Government Clouds, Part II: CSRA Inc., a government-focused IT solutions provider, has added Amazon Web Services to the General Services Administration (GSA) IT Schedule 70 under the Cloud Computing Services Special Item Number (SIN) 132-40. In other words, CSRA can resell both AWS commercial and AWS GovCloud (US) services that deliver additional levels of regulatory compliance

7. Oracle Acquires Cloud APIs: Oracle has acquired Apiary, an API specialist that could help customers to more easily integrate various cloud and on-premises applications. It sort of sounds like Apiary competes against Dell Boomi, which announced a channel chief leader earlier this week (item 4 here).

6. IBM Turnaround?: IBM's quarterly revenues have fallen for 19 consecutive quarters. The latest results, revealed yesterday, underwhelmed Wall Street. But Integer Investments believes IBM has finally bottomed out, and the financial firm predicts IBM will grow its revenues in 2017. Hmmm... I'll withhold comment until IBM shares some partner program updates in the next few weeks... The IBM PartnerWorld 2017 conference is set for February.

5. SADA Systems Growth:  SADA Systems plans to invest more than $11 million over the next year to accelerate its public cloud services and technology consulting business. The Google G Suite, Microsoft Office 365 and Facebook Workplace partner had revenues of $70 million in 2016, up from $47 million in 2015. We'll share more thoughts soon...

4. Partner ProgramsReflexis Systems has launched a Developer Partner Program, which allows partners to develop and market applications that complement the Reflexis platform of workforce management and real-time store operations solutions. Nextenture is the first Developer Partner Program member.

3. Partner Program Database: Nearly 150 companies are now listed in ChannelE2E's Partner Programs Database. Use the database to search for cloud, storage, security, and other types of vendors. Or, submit your partner program information to be listed in the database. It's free.

Bertrand Yansouni

2. Google Channel Chief: Former Cloudera Channel Chief Bertrand Yansouni has joined Google as VP of global partner sales and strategic alliances. I don't know if he succeeds or works with Google Channel Chief Murali Sitaram. It's a safe bet Yansouni will present at Google Cloud Next 2017 -- the company's major conference for cloud partners and customers. Google is expected to tout its its Windows Server and SQL Server cloud services at the conference -- an aggressive counter to Microsoft Azure.

1. President Trump: Today's inauguration day. I could share a few thousand thoughts. Or simply stick to the facts. Here is what President Donal Trump wants to do in his first 100 days, according to Trump himself. The 100-day clock starts at noon ET today...

More: Read all of our daily 5 Channel Partner UpdatesPlusSubscribe to our daily enewsletter. Thanks to those who already have.

Joe Panettieri

Joe Panettieri is co-founder & editorial director of MSSP Alert and ChannelE2E, the two leading news & analysis sites for managed service providers in the cybersecurity market.