5 Channel Partner Updates: Monday 02 December 2019

Here are five (actually, far more…) technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Monday, December 2, 2019.

Our Daily Brew

A. What’s Hot Today

1. AWS Partner News: Track the latest AWS re:Invent 2019 conference news here.

2. M&A - Government IT Services: Accenture has acquired Apis Group, a privately held Australian consultancy that provides strategic advisory, digital design and delivery services to government organizations.

3. M&A - Potential Merger: Deutsche Telekom is examining a possible tie-up with French peer Orange, German business daily Handelsblatt reported last week, Reuters notes.

4. Private Equity and Dot Org Websites: In a move that could shake up the Internet, private equity firm Ethos Capital is buying the company that owns every .org domain on the web, CNN reports. Nonprofits, which make up the majority of the .org domains, are panicking about the purchase, scampering to sign a petition spearheaded by the National Council of Nonprofits that calls for blocking the deal, CNN adds.

5. Private Equity - Investment Challenges: U.S. private-equity firms, armed with a record amount of cash, are struggling to find ways to spend it, The Wall Street Journal reports. The aggregate value of U.S. buyouts fell 25% year to date through October, compared with the same period a year earlier, according to data provider Preqin, the Journal says.  With U.S. equity markets surging, already expensive takeover candidates have gotten even pricier, making many of them too rich for even the most optimistic private-equity buyer, the Journal concludes.

6. Talent - Private Equity: Silver Lake has named company veterans Egon Durban and Greg Mondre to the newly formed roles of co-chief executive officers, Reuters reports. Silver Lake's current IT-related investments include Alibaba, Cegrid, Dell Technologies, EverCommerce, LocaWeb, Motorola Solutions, ServiceMax, SolarWinds and WP Engine.

7. Talent - Vertical Market MSP: Hilltop Consultants, a Top 100 Vertical Market MSP in the legal sector, has hired Alisa Michael as senior account director in the Atlanta, Georgia, area.

8. Talent - Mobile Insurance App: Sun Microsystems co-founder and former CEO Scott McNealy has joined GloveBox's board of advisors. Founded in 2019, Denver-based GloveBox aims to simplify insurance policy access for consumers by aggregating policy documents, regardless of carrier, in one centralized location.

9. Talent and Diversity- Global Consulting: Accenture has named 787 people to managing director and senior managing director. A record 260 women were promoted to managing director, accounting for 36% of promotions to this level, and up from 32% in 2018. Accenture aims to grow the percentage of women managing directors globally to 25% by 2020, the company says.

10. Branding - Managed Print Services: ONNYX, a provider of managed print services and subsidiary to Flex Technology Group, has changed its corporate name to FTG of Greater Ohio (FTG-GO).

11. Data Protection - Google Cloud Platform (GCP): Dicom Systems has launched Unifier Cloud Archive for Google Cloud Platform. The result is a disaster recovery and business continuity archive for Enterprise Imaging.

12. Splunk Bug: Splunk it telling customers and partners to perform software upgrades in order to avoid a Y2K-like bug.

13. Lawsuit - Banking IT Services: Branch Banking and Trust (BB&T) has filed suit against Hitachi, alleging that the IT giant's failure to properly install and maintain an IT system triggered a catastrophic outage at the financial services firm, Law360 reports.

B. Partnerships and Strategic Alliances

1. Talent - Avanya Channel Chief: Avaya has hired Mitel Networks veteran Jon Brinton as vice president, North America Channel Sales.

2. Talent - Extreme Networks Channel Chief: Extreme Networks Channel Chief Gordon Mackintosh has left the company, CRN reports. Mackintosh's departure surfaced only a few weeks after Extreme hired Pete Doolittle as senior VP of Americas sales.

3. AWS Partner Program - Cloud Management Tools: CloudCheckr unveiled a worldwide partner enablement program at the conference.

4. AWS - MSP Partner: Umbrella Infocare of India has achieved APN Premier Consulting Partner status. The company already carries such designations as MSP, DevOps and WAR (Well Architected Review) Partner recognition from AWS. Umbrella is also working on achieving AWS Migration competency by March 2020.

5. Partnership - Seed Funding: Florida Funders and The University of South Florida are partnering on  a startup seed fund, the two organizations have disclosed. The move allows both organizations to more effectively fund early stage businesses -- including pre-revenue or early revenue startups. Florida Funders already has a track record backing Series A-type investments, which typically involve revenue-producing businesses. Disclosure: I'm a  Florida Funders member.

6. All Partner Programs: Search the comprehensive ChannelE2E Partner Program Database here. Also, submit your company information here and your partner program can be listed in the database.

C. Next Five Technology Conferences

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