5 Channel Partner and MSP News Updates: Wednesday 06 January 2021

Here are five (actually, more) technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Wednesday, January 6, 2021. Sip up.

What’s In Our Daily Brew?

A. What’s Brewing Today: Technology News

1. Funding - Pax8: The cloud marketplace provider, which works closely with MSPs, has raised $96 million in funding.

2. Funding - Cloud Monitoring Software: Chronosphere has raised $43.4 million in Series B funding, bringing the total raised to $55 million. This round was led by previous investors Greylock Partners, Lux Capital and venture capitalist Lee Fixel with participation from new investor General Atlantic. The funding arrives as multiple companies strive to deliver next-generation cloud monitoring tools. Startups to watch include Augmentt and SaaS Alerts, as ChannelE2E pointed out in August 2020.

3. Funding - Sales Management Software:  SalesLoft, which develops a sales engagement software platform, has raised $100 million at a $1.1 billion valuation, bringing total funding to $245 million. Owl Rock Capital led the round with participation from Insight Partners, HarbourVest, and Emergence.

4. Talent - Storage: Pure Storage has hired VMware veteran Ajay Singh as chief product officer (CPO), effectively immediately. Singh reports to Pure Storage Chairman and CEO Charles Giancarlo.

5. Talent - Software Tools: SmartBear, a provider of software development and quality tools, has hired CloudHealth Technology and Veracode veteran Greg Nicastro as EVP/GM of products and technology.

6. Talent - Managed Communication Services: Carousel Industries has hired Juan Gonzalez for the newly created role of senior VP of customer success.

7. Artificial Intelligence - Dell PCs: The latest Dell commercial PCs feature Dell Optimizer software, which uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to automatically fine-tune application performance, battery life, audio quality and connectivity, the PC giant says.

8. White House Technology Staff: President-elect Joe Biden has named David Recordon as director of technology in the White House’s Office of Management and Administration, and Austin Lin as Recordon's deputy. Recordon and Lin both come from roles at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative before taking technology roles on the Biden transition team late last year. They also have in common stints working at Facebook, FedScoop reports.

B. Channel Chiefs, Partner Programs and Strategic Alliances

1. Talent - Commvault Channel Chief: The data protection provider has hired Dell EMC veteran John Tavares as VP, global channel and alliances. 

2. Nutanix Partner Program Member: Computex Technology Solutions — an American Virtual Cloud Technologies Inc. company, has achieved Cloud Champion Status, the highest tier in the Nutanix Elevate Partner Program.

3. Partnership - Azure Cloud Reliability  and AIOps: HEAL Software Inc. and Nous Infosystems Inc. are partnering to promote artificial intelligence for IT operations (AIOps) software, which enables IT operations teams to find and fix problems before they happen. Together the two companies aim to make Microsoft Azure Cloud applications more reliable and improve integrations and plugins for IT operations teams, the companies say.

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