5 Channel Partner Updates: Wednesday 21 February 2018

Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Wednesday, February 21, 2018. Actually, there are 18 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… 18. M&A - Xerox Alternatives?: Xerox shareholders Carl Icahn and Darwin Deason said on Tuesday the U.S. company should seek to sell itself to one of its rivals or a private equity firm, Reuters reports. The shareholder grandstanding comes amid Fujifilm's pending $6.1 billion buyout of Xerox. If there were alternative bidders with better terms for Xerox -- wouldn't they have surfaced by now? 17. Partnership - Unified Communications: ADTRAN is working with Telarus to open new channel opportunities for the ProCloud Subscription Services Program, the two companies say. Partners can now work with Telarus, the largest privately-held master agent in the U.S., to sell ProCloud Unified Communications (UC) and NG Firewall in an agent commission model, the duo adds. 16. Partnership - IoT: AT&T has teamed up with Ericsson to build out new IoT professional services capabilities, the companies say.

15. Partner Program Milestone: AT&T's Partner Exchange program is now five years old. Randall Porter shares milestones and key learnings in this blog. 14. Partner Program: RISC Networks, a platform of IT discovery and analytics has updated its partner program. 13. Partner Program - Data Protection: QuintessenceLabs, after completing integrations with partners like NetDocuments, PKWARE and VMware, is launching a new technology alliance partner program today. The QLabs TAP program is for partners seeking to inject data protection support into any application, the company says. 12.  IT Services - India Forecast: India’s software services exports will see revenue growth of 7 percent to 9 percent in constant currency terms in the fiscal year to March 2019, according to the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM). The industry industry continues to recover from what has been a tough year, Reuters says. 11. SD-WAN Market Growth: According to Frost & Sullivan, 7 percent of enterprise IT decision-makers say they have deployed SD-WANs; and 23 percent of them stated they planned to deploy SD-WANs in the next 12 to 24 months. Instead of managing the deployments directly, Frost & Sullivan is pushing enterprises to embrace MSPs for SD-WAN assistance. 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. SD-WANs Meet Azure, AWS: Riverbed Technology today announced updates to its SD-WAN and cloud networking solution, SteelConnect. The offering provides unified connectivity and policy-based orchestration spanning hybrid WAN, branch LAN/WLAN, data centers, and the cloud.  The offering now supports AWS Direct Connect and Azure ExpressRoute.

Pam Cory

9. Talent: BitTitan, which assists MSPs with managed services automation, has hired Dell EMC veteran Pam Cory as VP of marketing. Cory will lead all product, brand and channel marketing, as well as drive strategy around demand generation, business development, and media relations for BitTitan’s IT services automation platform (MSPComplete) and a cloud migration solution (MigrationWiz). 8. Momentum - IT Outsourcing: GlobalLogic has crossed $550 million in revenues and is on track to achieve the $1 billion target by 2020, according to Economic Times. The US-based company founded by four Indian IITians in 2000, specializes in outsourced R&D and engineering services for global multinationals like Nokia, Samsung, CocaCola and Ericsson, the report says. 7. Managed VoIP Services: Cytracom today unveiled Ivie, an integrated voice intelligence engine built to help MSPs further simplify, secure, sell and scale managed VoIP services to meet the needs of SMBs and SMEs, the company says. 6. Momentum - MSP Engagements: Reduxio Systems, which develops converged data storage management and protection solutions for the enterprise, says it's gaining rapid momentum with MSPs. Key adopters include Halski Systems (Georgia, U.S.A.) and Evercom Technology (UK). However, Reduxio didn't describe actual revenue of business growth stats associated with its MSP growth. 5. Intellectual Property - MSPs: OneNeck IT Solutions has earned a patent for “Temperature-Humidity Monitoring Assembly for Closed Server Cabinet.” The patent covers a vertically sweeping roaming robotic-sensor designed to move up and down a closed server cabinet. Data centers include hundreds of such cabinets. During each vertical sweep, the sensor assembly records the heat and humidity then generates a color-coded heat map, the IT service provider says. 4. Cisco Service Providers: Cisco continues to open its arms wider to service providers. The company will describe its service provider strategy on February 28. The company has also introduced a network automation portfolio for service providers. In addition, Cisco has been working with ConnectWise to promote more automation to SMB-centric MSPs. 3. M&A - MSPs: Voneus, a rural community broadband specialist, has acquired Lde Smart Alarms. The deal expands Voneus’ ability to deliver enterprise-grade connectivity and managed services to businesses located across the UK, Total Telecom says. Founded in 1988, Lde provides bespoke managed services to approximately 50 corporate customers located across the UK, the report says.. Fortinet

Chris Day

2. IT Glue's Next Move: After approximately 18 months of R&D, IT Glue today will launch MyGlue, CEO Chris Day confirms. The MSP platform provides a "new recurring revenue stream by bringing the power of documentation and password vaulting downstream to their clients," Day says. Additional details will surface during a Webcast today at 1:00 p.m. ET. We'll likely share more details later today. Related: GlueCon 2018 is set for September in Phoenix.