Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Tuesday, October 31, 2017.
Actually, there are 21 (oh my) 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:
21. Samsung Momentum, Management Changes: Samsung named a new generation of top managers on Tuesday and promised to reward shareholders with $26 billion in payouts to 2020, as it reported record third-quarter profit, Reuters says.
According to the report:
- CFO Lee Sang-hoon had been recommended as the new chairman of the board, and long-time co-CEOs J.K. Shin and Yoon Boo-keun are stepping down.
- Kim Ki-nam, 59, was appointed to lead the Device Solutions division which makes components including memory chips;
- Koh Dong-jin, 56, would head up IT and Mobile Communications; and
- Kim Hyun-suk, 56, would lead Consumer Electronics, Samsung said in a statement.
- Samsung is expected to recommend the three new heads of divisions as co-CEOs after the next shareholder meeting in March
20. Avaya Financial Results: Avaya's fiscal quarter 2017 revenue is expected to be in the range of $787 million to $791 million, which includes approximately $5 million of revenue from the Networking business prior to the divestiture on July 14, according to a preliminary company estimate released yesterday. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be in the range of $225 million to $230 million, or 28.4% to 29.2% of revenue, the company said. Actual results will surface in December.
19. Hardware M&A: Extreme Networks has completed the Brocade data center acquisition. This is the third in a series of network-centric acquisitions in the past year. The others were the networking divisions of
Zebra and Avaya.
18. IoT Partnership: Pitney Bowes and Arrow Electronics are partnering to enable public sector authorities to securely gather, process and analyze data collected through IoT devices to improve physical infrastructure efficiencies, the companies say.
17. Distribution: D&H Distributing is expanding its focus on the education vertical to include virtual and augmented reality solutions that will usher-in “The Classroom of the Future,” the company claims. Efforts include acclimating VARs to a “curriculum-based sales strategy" -- preparing partners well ahead of the fall IT purchasing season, D&H says.
16. Strategic Software Guidance: Presidio, the IT solutions provider, has dedicated software practice under the leadership of Matt Rehm, senior director of of the Software Solutions Practice. The practice focuses on a timely topic: Subscription, lifecycle adoption services and consumption management. We'll share more details soon, and we'll also catch up with Presidio at Cisco Partner Summit for deeper details.
15. Talent Part One: Pax8, the value-added cloud distributor, has promoted Jennifer Bodell to VP of channel and Don Jeter to VP of marketing. Both continue reporting to Nick Heddy, senior VP of sales and marketing. Meanwhile,
Ryan Walsh has been promoted to the company’s chief channel officer (CCO). Walsh leads the company’s IT channel strategy, partner solutions, and vendor relations. He continues to report to CEO John Street.
14. Talent Part Two:
SecurityFirst has hired Richard Vaughn and Nicholas Waddell as directors of channel sales. The two will help create new channel partnerships and build the go-to-market strategy for SecurityFirst’s recently launch DataKeep, a new data-centric security software solution that simplifies data protection while ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements and data privacy mandates, the company says. Vaughn previously was Toshiba’s US Channel Chief. Waddell is a Cylance and Ingram Micro veteran.
13. Multi Cloud Management: The multi-cloud management market will reach $4.49 billion by 2022, up from $1.17 billion in 2017, according to MarketsandMarkets. That's a 30.9 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR). ChannelE2E believes most customers will move most of their workloads to a single cloud service, but most MSPs will need to offer multi-cloud management because aggregated customer choices for those workloads will stretch across Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform and more.
12. AWS Cloud Partnership: AT&T has expanded its
strategic relationship with Amazon Web Services...
11. Workspace as a Service Part One: Companies that give employees ready access to the apps they need are nearly three times as likely to be rated leaders in digital transformation by their employees compared to companies that do not (81 percent versus 31 percent), according to recent
VMware research.
But wait. There's more. Check out page two of two for items 10 to 1.
Here are items 10 to 1.
10. Workspace as a Service Part Two: CloudJumper has expanded its strategic relationship with ProfitBricks, a channel-focused cloud IaaS provider. CloudJumper will deploy WorksSpace WaaS solutions within the Switch Tier 5 Data Center campus in Las Vegas.
9. Cloud Services Momentum: Egenera, a provider of wholesale cloud services to the channel, says revenue for the company’s Xterity Cloud Services business grew 58 percent in Q3 2017 compared to Q3 2016, capping off 21 consecutive months of revenue growth. Impressive, but keep in mind: We don't have a feel for actual revenues or potential profit figures...
8. State of IT Service Providers: IT service providers face multiple growth challenges --
both in terms of securing new customers and entering new markets, and strengthening existing customer relationships -- according to NetEnrich survey results released today. We'll share more details soon.
7. Remote Desktop Services: ISL Online -- creators of remote support, access and help desk software for technology service providers, help desks and IT departments in over 100 countries -- has
formally opened operations in North America, the company says. The company, headquartered in Slovenia, plans to engage North American VARs and MSPs. ISL Online allows users to access and support computers and mobile devices from afar.
6. Service Desks: ManageEngine is set to unveil a
rapid-start enterprise service desk today. The offering allows customers to build and deploy service desks in 60 seconds or less, ManageEngine claims. It's built on ServiceDesk Plus, which is used by 100,000 service desks worldwide.
5. MSP Network Monitoring: Auvik Networks' monthly recurring revenue grew 23 percent in Q3 2017 vs. Q2 2017, according to a monthly newsletter from the company. Also, the network-centric RMM (remote monitoring and management) software provider has expanded its team 27 percent since Q2, though we don't know exact headcount numbers. Auvik raised about CAD$15 million in August for continued expansion. The company integrates with several traditional RMM offerings, but firms like
Kaseya and
SolarWinds MSP are ramping up their own network-centric capabilities.
4. Funding - Backup: Trilio Data, a Boston, Massachusetts-based provider of OpenStack backup and recovery solutions, raised $5 million in Series A funding, according to
FINSMES.
3. M&A: Acora, a UK-based IT services company, has acquired Just Computing Ltd., an MSP. We'll share more details soon.
2. Millennial Business Momentum: 82 percent of millennial entrepreneurs plan for their businesses to expand in the next six to 12 months, above the overall average of 71 percent across age groups,
according to a First Citizens survey. We'll share more thoughts on that soon.
1. Cisco Partner Summit 2017: We arrive at Cisco Partner Summit today. Stay tuned for
live coverage at the conference through Thursday.
