5 Channel Partner and MSP Updates: Monday 07 December 2020 -

Here are five (actually, more) technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Monday, December 7, 2020. Sip up.

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A. What’s Happening Today

1. Exit - Microsoft U.S. Channel Chief: David Willis, the head of Microsoft's U.S. partner ecosystem, is exiting the company, he disclosed in a blog post.

2. M&A - AppSmart Acquires Master Agent MicroCorp: SVP and GM Renee Bergeron explains why.

3. M&A - Cisco Acquires IMImobile: Here's why.

4. Partnership - NTT and SAP: The two companies, which have worked together for more than 30 years, disclosed this expanded relationship.

5. Private Equity and IPOs: Private equity firm Thoma Bravo is preparing to build a $750 million SPAC (special purpose acquisition company), multiple reports suggest. Thoma Bravo already owns such MSP-focused technology and software businesses as Barracuda, ConnectWise, SolarWinds and Sophos, among many others. SolarWinds, meanwhile, is preparing to spin-off SolarWinds MSP as its own publicly held company. Thoma Bravo has not disclosed whether the SPAC effort is related to the potential SolarWinds MSP spin-off.

6. Rebrand - Analytics and Financial Services: Asset Control has rebranded as Alveo to reflect the "significant change that has happened within the business since moving to new ownership over two years ago," the company says. Alveo provides data integration and analytics solutions in the financial services sector.

7. Business Communications: Nextiva has released a new version of NextOS, which features "fully integrated communication applications with business software along with AI and workflow automations," the company says.

8. Apple Device Management: Addigy's Apple device management platform now supports macOS Big Sur. The Addigy platform supports such capabilities as :

User-approved mobile device management (MDM) supervision: Newly enrolled devices in Addigy’s ADM platform are automatically considered supervised, giving IT administrators access to the device.

New Privacy Preferences Policy Control (PPPC) property for screen recording: Users can now approve screen capture or listen for whitelisted applications.

Bootstrap token and secure token: Addigy users can use bootstrap tokens to automatically grant secure tokens to any local account when it is signed onto a macOS device.