Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Thursday, October 5, 2017.
Actually, there are 10 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.
10. Veeam - Careful of Market Saturation: On the one hand, Veeam is growing incredibly fast -- and backup partners are profiting. But on the other hand, the company continues to sign big agreements that allow big companies to resell the company's software. The latest example: NetApp customers can purchase complete Veeam and NetApp solutions directly from NetApp and its resellers in a single transaction, according to Veeam. The backup company says partner opportunities remain plentiful... but we're curious to see how all the enterprise relationships with big vendors (Dell EMC, Cisco, HPE, NetApp, etc.) plays out.
9. Password Management - An Oxymoron?: Nearly 90 percent of IT decision-makers believe they have sufficient password protection policies in place, according to a OneLogin survey. However:
- 25 percent of respondents don’t require user passwords to meet a minimum length requirement;
- only 41 percent check employee passwords against common password lists;
- only 24 percent require users to rotate passwords monthly or more; and
- only 54 percent enforcing users to rotate passwords on a quarterly basis.
8. Password Management Part Two: Multiple companies within the IT channel and MSP sector are striving to help partners bolster password management, authentication and access for customers. Names to know include PassPortal (that second P should be lower case; just curious to see if C&D ping me about it) and Kaseya's AuthAnvil (that second A is accurately presented as upper case). BTW: It sounds like AuthAnvil revenues have been accelerating lately, thanks to SaaS-oriented Powered Services. More details soon.
7. Autonomous Cars & Stocks: These 30 tech stocks are hitched to autonomous ("driverless") cars, according to Morgan Stanley. Instead of chasing that list, you could always follow the millennials and give your investment money to a financial bot over at Wealthfront or Betterment.
6. Talent: Pitney Bowes SMB Leader Mark Shearer plans to retire in the first quarter of 2018. Jason Dies, who previously led the company's Document Messaging Technologies (DMT) business, will succeed Shearer. Grant Miller, previously COO of DMT, succeeds Dies as president of DMT.
5. Partner Program: PayNearMe, a provider of cash payment processing solutions for government and enterprises, has launched the PayNearMe Channel Partner Program for U.S. partners.
4. Offshore Outsourcing Challenges: Even the Philippines, it seems, needs to rapidly retrain its workforce as automation and artificial intelligence begin to impact IT outsourcing and call center services. Here are the challenges and associated opportunities, according to Bloomberg.
3. More Office Depot-CompuCom Deal Analysis: You know I'm skeptical about Office Depot's $1 billion buyout of CompuCom. My concerns include the deal's lofty valuation. But perhaps I'm being overly critical. At Forrester Research, Jay McBain sees some potential upsides as Office Depot locks arms with CompuCom to transform its business...
2. M&A Report - Q3 2017 Stats: Though facing slight market headwinds, mergers and acquisitions through the third quarter of 2017 totaled nearly 1,500 announced transactions and $160 billion in value across the media, information, marketing, software and tech-enabled services sectors, according to JEGI. We'll share more thoughts soon.
1. Get Honored: Participate now in one or more of the following surveys and potentially earn honors in the following areas:
- Top 100 Vertical Market MSPs - 2018 Honorees
- Top 50 Channel Partner Summits of 2018
- Top 100 Mergers and Acquisitions of 2017
Deadlines vary for each survey. Jump in now.
