Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Friday, August 17, 2018.
Actually, there are 13 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:
13. Dell Technologies Tracking Stock Plan: Dell will probably have to sweeten an offer to buy a tracking stock tied to VMware that is central to its plan to restore its public listing, Bernstein analyst Mark Moerdler said in note, Bloomberg reports.
12. Lenovo Business Recovery: Lenovo Chief Financial Officer Wong Wai Ming offers some upbeat statements about the company's turnaround, which appears to be accelerating. Among the wildcards: The US-China trade war, and Lenovo's push into data centers -- where entrenched rivals and the shift to cloud services represent major challenges.
11. Oracle vs. Rimini: Oracle has won permanent injunction against Rimini Street, banning the company from reproducing, preparing derivative works from, or distributing Oracle software to others or to access source code for that software for testing or development. Rimini is a well-known provider of third-party Oracle customer support. Oracle has alleged that Rimini violates various Oracle intellectual property.
10. AMD vs, Intel - Data Centers: AMD is poised to take market share from Intel in the fast-growing data center market, The Wall Street Journal predicts. Recent financial results from AMD suggest the company's data center momentum is already accelerating -- though the company has a small footprint in the sector.
9. M&A- Intel Artificial Intelligence: Intel has acquired Vertex.AI, startup that had a mission of making it possible to develop “deep learning for every platform,” building a deep learning engine called PlaidML to do this. Vertex will move into Intel's Movidius unit, TechCrunch notes.
8. Google Cloud Storage: Google's rebranding of its cloud storage service from Google Drive to Google One has taken a major leap forward, with the tech giant now allowing anyone in the United States to sign up for the plan, not just users already paying for online storage capacity, Apple Insider notes.
7. Microsoft's Secret to Azure Reliability: Microsoft plans to open-source Open Network Emulator (ONE), the system that simulates the entire network that powers Azure, DataCenter Knowledge reports. ONE allows Microsoft to catch and mitigate bugs before making Azure network updates -- essentially improving the hyper-scale cloud's reliability and performance.
6. Business Continuity: ManageEngine RecoveryManager Plus, an Active Directory backup and restoration solution, can now back up and restore Exchange Online mailboxes.
5. MSP Marketing: Mindmatrix is expanding its MSP Advantage Program to include content creation -- helping MSPs to more deeply engage target customers, the company says.
4. Funding & Channel Push: Cazena, a big data as a a service (BDaaS) startup, has raised $10 million in funding, reports 300 percent year-over-year growth and is focusing its go-to-market efforts on the channel, according to a company spokesperson. Among the key offerings: An AppCloud allows partners and customers to access analytics and machine learning tools and apps all from Cazena's cloud.
3. Tech Mentoring: Twenty students recently attended iDTech summer camp thanks to scholarships from CompTIA's board of directors. CompTIA's goal: Close the 'confidence gap' -- which CEO Todd Thibodeaux says keeps some students from diving into the technology industry. The students were selected based on their involvement with local non-profit organizations that offer community support and skills building programs, CompTIA Chairwoman Amy Kardel notes. Kardel also is director and co-founder of Clever Ducks, an IT services company in California.
2. M&A: Advantix has acquired TeraNova, a mobility and IoT managed services provider.
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