Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Thursday, May 24, 2018.
Actually, there are 11 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.
11. Cryptocurrency Fraud?: The Justice Department has opened a criminal probe into whether traders are manipulating the price of Bitcoin and other digital currencies, dramatically ratcheting up U.S. scrutiny of red-hot markets that critics say are rife with misconduct, according to Blooomberg.
10. Storage Earnings: NetApp's Q4 revenues grew 11 percent -- which beat Wall Street's expectations. But Wall Street is concerned about competitive pressures, which pushed the company's stock down nearly 4 percent in overnight trading.
9. Lenovo Rebounds: Lenovo Group's Q4 revenues were US$10.6 billion, up 11 percent from the corresponding quarter last year. It's the company's first double digit increase in 10 quarters. PC and smart devices revenues jumped 16 percent; and data center revenues surged 44 percent to US$1.2 billion.
8. Talent: Veeam Chief Marketing Officer Kate Hutchison is exiting the fast-growing data protection company to pursue external opportunities, CRN reports.
7. Application Performance Monitoring: Still not sure where APM potentially fits into an MSP business? Oppenheimer and Cisco Systems will offer an AppDynamics business overview on June 6. I suspect most of the content will be designed for financial analysts who track Cisco. But an AppDynamics primer could trigger some new business ideas for MSPs.
6. AWS Consulting: stackArmor has achieved Amazon Web Services (AWS) Government Competency status.
5. MSP Partner Momentum: Webroot says annual recurring revenue grew 14 percent for its third quarter ending March 31, 2018. This marks the seventeenth consecutive quarter of double-digit, year-over-year revenue growth for the company, Webroot says. The firm also added more than 1,100 MSPs to its partner base in Q3, lifting total MSP engagements to 12,000 partners.
4. IT Consulting Lawsuit: Sparta Consulting must pay more than $20 million for botching an IT project for Copart, Law360 reports. Sparta parent KPIT Technologies provided more details about the suit in an earnings statement, according to MoneyControl.com.
3. Compensation: One-in-five employees is now willing to sacrifice future pay increases for better healthcare benefits, according to a recent PwC survey.
2. M&A - Hosting Services: Hostway has acquired the MyHosting.com and Mail2Web lines of business from Ingram Micro. We'll share more details soon.
1. M&A - IT Services: Converge Technology Partners has acquired BlueChipTek, an IT professional services organization that serves Silicon Valley customers. BlueChipTek focuses on data center infrastructure integration and cloud optimization. We'll share more details soon.
