Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Thursday, February 22, 2018.
Actually, there are 14 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…
14. Avatar & Bot Help Desks: A life-like avatar called Cora (pictured) is being put through her paces by Royal Bank of Scotland, helping customers with basic queries and giving its digital banking drive a more human face, Reuters says.
13. HP Earnings: HP Inc. is set to disclose its latest quarterly earnings results later today...
12. HP Partner: Flexxible IT, a workspace as a service specialist, has launched a “one-stop-shop” channel program with HP Inc. that features pre-integrated workspace solutions targeting small and midsize enterprises that need to deploy an on-premises workspace or hybrid cloud solution.
11. Customer & Partner Engagement: InsideView Append has launched on the Salesforce AppExchange, empowering businesses to connect with their customers, partners and employees in entirely new ways. This new Lightning Data application appends and enriches data natively within Salesforce for more precise targeting, and improved sales and marketing engagement.
10. IoT Managed Services: Google Cloud IoT Core, a fully managed service that allows customers to securely connect and manage IoT devices at scale, is now generally available.
9. Growth: Hybrid cloud management specialist Scalr's recurring revenues jumped 200 in 2017 vs. 2016, and bookings across the company's existing customer base rose nearly 75 percent. Sounds impressive... though the company did not disclose actual dollar figures, nor do we know if Scalr is profitable.
8. Cisco Meraki Managed Services: NorthState Technology Solutions, a secure cloud and IT solutions provider, has added Cisco Meraki as a Service (MaaS) to its line of business offerings. The service is monitored and managed 24x7x365 by NorthState’s managed services teams.
7. Talent: Uptima, which specializes in field service and quote-to-cash operations, has hired Bill Butler as CEO. He previously held key posts at CallidusCloud (being acquired by SAP), Cameleon Software (acquired by PROS) and FPX (acquired by HGGC).
6. Enterprise IT Monitoring: Blue Medora has unveiled BindPlane – which delivers a standardized approach to enterprise monitoring integration, the company says. The BindPlane offering, according to Blue Medora, features:
- Dimensional Data: A combination of enterprise-grade metrics that go up to 87% deeper than community or open sourced plugins and BindPlane’s data enhancements that include the inter- and intra- relationships between different layers of the IT stack.
- Native Platform Integration: Critical “last mile” integration that ensures intelligent alerts, built in dashboards and more function like they are supposed to in any supported platform.
- BindPlane Manager: A centralized controller that automates endpoint discovery and data collection.
5. M&A - APM: Accedian Networks Inc. has acquired Performance Vision, which specializes in network and application performance management (NPM/APM). Financial terms were not disclosed. Scores of service providers leverage Performance Vision to offer managed NPM and APM services to their end customers.
4. Microsoft Azure Cloud Consulting: Quisitive has launched a Microsoft Azure Cloud Assessment Program, and plans to hire 50 IT consultants out of its Dallas headquarters to meet growing demand in cloud computing, the company says.
3. Azure Rightsizing: Cloud cost management specialist Cloudability has launched Rightsizing Recommendations for Azure. A popular and broadly adopted feature for AWS users since it launched last year, Rightsizing Recommendations helps enterprises optimize cost by providing pertinent information on how they can build and scale their cloud infrastructure tightly around their needs, so that they only provision the resources their business will actually use.
2. MSP Outsourcing Management: 4me, which develops a platform that allows enterprises to manage their various MSP relationships, has secured $1.65 million in seed funding from Storm Ventures. We'll share more details later today.
1. That's Middle Class?: You now need a $303,000 household income to buy a median-priced home in San Francisco, according to the California Association of Realtors affordability index. But don't worry. The economy is booming. What could possibly go wrong?
