Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Friday, January 19, 2018.
Actually, there are nine 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…
9. Huawei Fines: Top executives of Huawei, including founder Ren Zhengfei, will pay a self-imposed fine totaling 3 million yuan ($469,000) for management oversight of some quality breaches at the firm, an internal company memo shows, according to Reuters. The fines come as Huawei strives to maintain relationships with major U.S. customers. The U.S. government is pressuring AT&T and other firms to drop Huawei products over concerns that equipment from the Chinese company may contain back doors and other security concerns...
8. IBM Growing, But...: IBM revenues rose 4 percent to $22.5 billion in Q4 2017 -- a sign that the company's shift toward "strategic imperatives" like cloud computing and cognitive computing is starting to pay dividends. However, IBM's stock fell on the earnings news amid long-term profit margin concerns...
7. Branding: Peak 10 and ViaWest, a Top 100 Merger for 2017, have now changed their corporate name to Flexential. The company's CXO leadership also is making key moves to more deeply engage partners. VP of Channel Sales Dave Sroka shared details with ChannelE2E this week. We'll pull back the curtain on the conversation soon.
6. Compliance: Box has unveiled Box GxP Validation to help customers maintain GxP compliance in the cloud. Box GxP Validation enables Pharmaceuticals, Biotechnology and Medical Device businesses to develop, validate and operate their GxP compliance standards within Box, the company asserts.
5. MSP Cloud Connections: TekLinks has unveiled Amazon Web Services (AWS) Direct Connect and Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute connectivity through TekLinks’ multiple data centers. Direct connections to public clouds are increasingly popular -- but the technology is mostly offered by big network infrastructure and data center providers, TekLinks' move shows that the direct public cloud connections are pushing beyond enterprise use cases down into midmarket and SMB opportunities...
4. Employees Acquire IT Services Provider: Network ROI, a Midlothian-based IT firm, has completed a successful employee buy-out after receiving £1m in funding from alternative finance specialist, ThinCats, according to Business Quarter.
3. IT Services Milestone: Irish IT services provider Ergo is targeting turnover of €100 million by 2020 after reporting a €30 million hike in revenues last year, according to Irish Times. The Dublin company, which employs more than 250 people, offers IT solutions ranging from cloud and managed services to software and infrastructure, the report notes.
2. More MSP M&A: We're aware of one -- or perhaps two -- key M&A deals that will likely surface the week of January 22. Stay tuned.
1. Top 100 Vertical Market MSPs 2018: Our research is now complete. Register now to attend our February 15 webcast to see the complete Top 100 Vertical Market MSPs list for the first time, and learn about the key players in each vertical...
