5 Channel Partner Updates: Wednesday 05 June 2019

Here are five (actually, far more...) technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Wednesday, June 5, 2019.

A. Our Daily Brew

B. Freshly Brewed News and Chatter

1. M&A - Small Business Slowdown?: Pepperdine University’s Graziadio School of Business and two industry groups, the International Business Brokers Association and the M&A Source. We'll share more thoughts soon.

2. M&A: SoftwareONE has acquired a controlling stake in InterGrupo, a Latin America cloud technology consulting and application modernization provider. InterGrupo’s outstanding expertise in this field, along with its managed services in Modern Workplace and Unified Communications, will be incorporated into SoftwareONE’s existing global service delivery model.

3. Bots and ITSM Automation: Serviceaide has upgraded Luma, a virtual agent for automating IT and other service management functions. The new capabilities are listed here.

4. Automation's Impact on Jobs: Automation could force more than 100 million women globally to find new occupations by 2030, according to a study from McKinsey Global Institute. The study, released Tuesday, shows technological advancements affect the genders nearly evenly. That finding upends the notion that automation hits predominantly male manufacturing workers the hardest. Source: The Wall Street Journal.

5. Salesforce Financial Results: The cloud CRM company's Q1 revenues, earnings and financial forecast exceeded Wall Street's expectations.

6. Secureworks Financial Results: The MSSP's latest financial results and longer-term forecast reveal how difficult it is to master managed security services.

7. Pivotal Software Financial Results: The cloud software platform, owned by Dell Technologies, delivered stronger-than-expected revenues and earnings for Q1, but a weak sales forecast spooked investors and Pivotal's stock plummeted about 30 percent on the news.

8. Apple Home Network Security: Apple is doubling down on privacy with new features and hardware for HomeKit, its expansive framework for smart home devices, VentureBeat reports.

C. Partner Programs and Strategic Alliances

1. Azure Partner Momentum: Ingram Micro Cloud says its Azure Accelerate partner program has serious momentum. From 2018 to 2019, total program membership rose 51 percent; the end-user base rose 90 percent increase; and the average reseller revenue from the program rose 160 percent. Still, Ingram did not disclose actual revenue dollars or reseller counts.

2. Microsoft Azure & Oracle Cloud vs. AWS: Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud have inked an interoperability partnership enabling customers to migrate and run mission-critical enterprise workloads across the two systems, the two companies say. Enterprises can now connect Azure services, like Analytics and AI, to Oracle Cloud services, like Autonomous Database, the two firms say. Taken together, "Azure and Oracle Cloud offer customers a one-stop shop for all the cloud services and applications they need to run their entire business," the duo claims. Roll all that info together, and the two companies are essentially countering Amazon's various managed database services.

3. Distribution - Cybersecurity: Synnex-Westcon has agreed to distribute BlackBerry Cylance to help resellers jumpstart their MSP and MSSP cybersecurity services.

4. Networking: Aerohive, which specializes in cloud-managed networking, launched a new  Partner Portal built on Salesforce Partner Communities.

5. Application Performance Management (APM):  Turbonomic and AppDynamics are partnering to integrate Application Resource Management (ARM) with Application Performance Management (APM). The result: Enterprise customers can "achieve fully-automated application performance assurance," the companies assert.

D. Next Five Technology Conferences

Got news to share for our morning update? Email me: [email protected].