5 Channel Partner Program and MSP News Updates: Thursday 04 March 2021

Here are five (actually, more) technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Thursday, March 4, 2021. Sip up.

What’s In Our Daily Brew?

A. What’s Brewing Today: Technology News

1. SPAC Momentum & Concerns: The Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) craze continues. So far this year, 207 SPACs have held IPOs and raised a combined $65.7 billion, according to SPACInsider.  By contrast, SPACs drove 248 IPOs and raised a combined $83 billion in all of 2020. SPACs are blank-check companies that form to raise money and launch IPOs -- and then acquire or merge with businesses after the IPO. There is concern that the SPAC market is becoming overheated, with too many investors striving chasing a limited pool of companies that are truly ready to be publicly held. ChannelE2E tracks more than 40 technology SPACs here.

2. AWS Cloud Cost Management: DevGraph has released CloudFix AWS cost optimization software. CloudFix AWS "automatically analyzes AWS accounts to find cost-savings opportunities and automatically deploys fixes at scale – instantly reducing cloud costs," the company says.

3. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) - IT Consulting Services: OpenBots, an open source RPA software company, has introduced consulting services -- known as QuickPacks -- to help organizations more quickly roll out RPA bots.

4. Free RPA From Microsoft: Microsoft is offering Power Automate Desktop for free to all Windows 10 users. The RPA software includes 370 prebuilt actions that help businesses build automated workflows across  applications. It also allows users to write scripts that automate repetitive and time-consuming tasks, Yahoo Finance notes.

5. Micro Service Management: Sumo Logic has updated the Sumo Logic Observability Suite in such areas as Service Maps and Service Dashboards. The suite also features "the extension of its Root Cause Explorer solution to include Kubernetes metrics and tracing, expansion of its Global Intelligence Service for Kubernetes, as well as a new beta program for both AWS Lambda support and Browser Real User Monitoring." The result: "DevOps and site reliability engineers (SREs) get a holistic view of all microservices to identify and resolve issues faster."

6. Splunk Quarterly Results: Splunk has announced Q4 fiscal 2021 financial results. The details include:

The Splunk results generally exceeded Wall Street's expectations.

7. Snowflake Quarterly Results: Snowflake announced Q4 of fiscal 2021 financial results. The details include:

The Snowflake results generally exceeded Wall Street's expectations.

B. Channel Chiefs, Partner Programs and Strategic Alliances

1. Partnership - Entrepreneurs & Marketing Experts: GrowTal, a marketplace for  marketing experts, is partnering with Ureeka, a community that provides entrepreneurs with "access to people, programs, and connections they need to grow and scale their businesses." Under terms of the partnership, Ureeka's entrepreneur community will have access to GrowTal's marketplace of freelance marketing contractors.

2. Distribution - Malware Analysis and Detection: Ingram Micro and VMRay have expanded their distribution agreement from Europe to the United States.

3. Partnership - IT Consulting and Vulnerability Management: Global IT consulting firm HCL Technologies will embed Qualys VMDR (Vulnerability Management, Detection and Response) into the HCL Technologies CyberSecurity Fusion Center (CSFC), the two companies say.

C. Channel Partner Summits, MSP Conferences and Virtual Events Calendar