Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Tuesday, February 20, 2018.
Actually, there are 17 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…
17. Weak iPhone Demand?: Weak OLED panel production at Samsung suggests
iPhone X demand is weaker than pundits previously expected...
16. Distribution Part One: ROI Communications Corp. is the 15th sales partner to reach platinum status with
Intelisys, a technology services distributor owned by
ScanSource.
15. Distribution Part Two: Tech Data's
Maverick AV Solutions Business has greed to distribute
Crestron SR, a next-generation Skype Room (SR) system offering, in the U.S. following its successful launch across Europe in 2017, the companies say.
14. Storage Automation: Tintri today unveiled Tintri Centralized Upgrade, which will enable customers to send out centralized upgrades of multiple Tintri storage systems across data centers with no disruptions, the company says.
13. Reality Check - Arista: In case you missed it, growing Cisco rival
Arista Networks suffered a major haircut last week. Shares fell 16 percent amid concerns about the company's cloud-centric offerings and ongoing legal war with Cisco. Still, Arista remains in growth mode. Revenues surged 42.7 percent in the company's most recent quarter.
12. Data Center Expansion: CoreSite Realty has bought two acres of land in Chicago for $4.5 million to build a four-story, 175,000-square-foot data center, starting later this year or in early 2019,
Crains reports. The site is about a mile from CoreSite's existing data center at 427 S. LaSalle St., which is next to the Chicago Board of Trade.
11. Talent:
- Cherwell Software has hired Ann Boyd as VP of corporate communications (Ann Boyd), Vineet Misra as VP of information systems and Matt Klassen as VP of product marketing.
- Cradlepoint has hired Marc Bresniker as VP of product management, and Pankaj Malhotra as SVP of engineering.
- Equinix has named Palo Alto Networks Veteran Oren Yehudai to oversee the company's partner program in EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa).
Go to page two of two for items 10 to 1. We promise: No slideshows await you.
Welcome to page two of two, featuring today's items 10 to 1.
10. Chatbots: Roughly 25 percent of customer service operations will leverage chatbots and so-called virtual customer assistants by 2020, according to Gartner.
9. ITSM Software: ManageEngine is bringing a visual change workflow builder to the cloud version of its flagship IT service management (ITSM) software, ServiceDesk Plus. This change workflow builder includes a drag-and-drop interface with multiple stages, statuses, notifications and actions, such as approvals, all of which can be added as nodes across the life cycle of a workflow, the company asserts.
8. Outsourcing: Christian Brothers Services has outsourced its entire data center, network and data protection operations to
U.S. Signal.
7. M&A - Potential Chip Deal: Qualcomm raised its offer to buy
NXP Semiconductors to $127.50 per share today, and said it now has the backing of the shareholder group led by Elliott Management that opposed the previous proposal,
Reuters says. Meanwhile, Broadcom is still trying to acquire Qualcomm.
6. M&A - IT Services: ConvergeOne is acquiring Arrow Electronics’ Systems Integration business, which specializes in unified communications, contact center, and voice and data technologies.
5. M&A - IT Consulting: CTG has acquired
Paris-based Soft Company, a consulting and engineering firm with expertise in both business and information systems. The all-cash transaction is valued at $16.5 million, not including potential future earnout.
4. M&A: Schurz Communications, a media conglomerate, has acquired Online Tech, an IT services provider that specializes in HIPAA-audited cloud and data center services.
3. M&A - Xerox Update: Xerox in a
letter to shareholders defended its pending M&A deal with Fujifilm -- a day after activist investor Carl Icahn said he would vote against the merger,
The Wall Street Journal notes.
2. PSA-RMM Integration: Harmony PSA now integrates with NinjaRMM. The connection allows MSPs to include all NinjaRMM notifications in Harmony’s Tickets view. The integration covers client account mapping, automatic asset discovery and automatic ticket open/close based on Ninja alert messages, the companies say.
PS: Chatter about NinjaRMM attracting more investment money? We've heard it from time to time but nothing official has hit our inbox...
1. Unitrends for MSPs: As you may recall, James Lii and Mike Sanders since late 2017 have been driving a
Unitrends push with MSPs. Yet another backup and disaster recovery provider in a crowded market? Actually, the story is different than that. And there are key signs of progress. Stay tuned.
