Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Friday, June 22, 2018.
Actually, there are 12 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:
12. SAP CRM vs Salesforce: SAP is seeking to double its CRM business within two years -- essentially targeting Salesforce's business along the way...
11. Funding - Hybrid Cloud Management: CloudBolt Software Inc., developers of a self-service hybrid cloud management platform, has raised $23 million in Series A funding led by Insight Venture Partners.
10. BlackBerry Momentum: BlackBerry's revenues have exceeded Wall Street expectations for four consecutive quarters.
9. Private Cloud Management: IBM in July will extend its Cloud Managed Services (CMS) capabilities to the IBM Cloud Private application platform. Hundreds banks, airlines and government organizations already rely on IBM Cloud Managed Services for managing enterprise applications on security-rich clouds, the technology giant claims.
8. IBM-Box Partnership: IBM and Box are applying Watson AI technologies to the Box Skills framework. That means customers can apply Watson technologies to enterprise content managed in Box.
7. Office 365 Cost Management: Aspera, a provider of SaaS management solutions, has released LicenseControl for Office 365, a cloud-based Software Asset Management solution that optimizes Microsoft Office 365 subscriptions, the company says.
6. Managed Cloud Services: ePlus has launched three managed cloud services including:
- ePlus Cloud Managed Backup, which is designed to meet customer-specific backup and retention policies with offsite backup copies stored in the cloud.
- ePlus Cloud Disaster Recovery, which is a customized disaster recovery approach designed to meet Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs) and Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs) featuring orchestrated failover and testing.
- ePlus Cloud Hosted Infrastructure, which is designed for complex applications requiring a customized live hosting platform.
ePlus did not disclose the names of its backup and infrastructure partners.
5. M&A - SMB Lending: KeyBank has acquired a digital lending platform for small businesses developed by Bolstr, the company has confirmed.
4. M&A - ESOP Experts: Ascensus has acquired Swerdlin & Company and SES Advisors. Ascensus gains advisors who assist business owners with ESOP (employee stock ownership plan) business transitions.
3. M&A - Telecom Services: Private equity firm Grain Management has acquired Great Plains Communications, a telecommunications provider in Nebraska. We'll share more details soon.
2. M&A - Hosted Telephony: BluArc has officially acquired Toronto-based phone company, About Communications. After several months of negotiations, the deal was finalized on June 4.
1. ConnectWise - Private MSSP Meeting: ConnectWise CEO Arnie Bellini yesterday held a closed door meeting with about two dozen CISOs, MSSPs and MSP CEOs. What apparently was discussed? We’ll share some exclusive details on MSSP Alert today.
