5 Channel Partner and MSP Updates: Wednesday 09 December 2020

Here are five (actually, more) technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Wednesday, December 9, 2020. Sip up.

Our Daily Brew

A. What’s Happening Today

1. FireEye Security Tools Stolen: Details about the theft are here.

2. Ingram Micro Acquired: Here are breaking details.

3. M&A - 3D Printing: Stratasys is acquiring 3D printing start-up Origin in a deal worth up to $100 million. The acquisition is expected to close in January 2021.

4. Funding - Databases: SingleStore has raised $80 million in new funding and a partnership with advanced SAS. Kaseya parent Insight Partners led the Series E round,  with participation from new financial investor Dell Technologies Capital and equity participation from Hercules Capital. Existing investors Accel, Anchorage, Glynn Capital, GV and Rev IV also participated.

5. Funding - Data Privacy: Skyflow announced a $17.5 million Series A to drive growth of its data privacy vault. The round, led by Canvas Ventures, brings the total amount raised to $25 million over the last year and includes Foundation Capital, which led the seed round, Skyflow says.

6. IPO - C3.ai: Led by Oracle veteran Tom Siebel, C3.ai is expected to raise $651 million in an IPO.  The enterprise artificial intelligence (AI) company will have a market value of roughly $4 billion, Bloomberg reports.

7. Upcoming 5G Auction: Verizon and other cellphone providers are expected to spend billions of dollars to secure prized spectrum for their 5G networks in a U.S. government sale that kicks off December 15.

8. SAP Developer Tools: SAP has unveiled new tools, updates and services for "making developers' lives easier, regardless of skill level or job focus," the business application software provider says.. These new offerings include low-code/no-code tools, a free tier model for SAP Cloud Platform, free learning opportunities and further updates to SAP Business Technology Platform. Deeper details about the new developer offerings are outlined here on SAP's website.

9. Unified Communications: 8x8 has announced 8x8 Open Communications Platform enhancements.

10. Backup: BackupAssist has released BackupAssist Classic version 11. it features an enhanced ransomware solution, password protection, and S3 compatible destinations, as well as the introduction of Cyber Black Box.

B. Channel Chiefs, Partner Programs and Strategic Alliances

1. Talent - Channel Chief: Ramp, a  provider of enterprise video delivery solutions, has hired Doug Collins as VP of global channels and partnerships. Collins previously held partner-centric posts at Hive Streaming, NWN, Oracle and AT&T’s Unified Communications and Collaboration Division.

2. Partnership - MSP-MSSP: EMBER IT has launched EMBER365, which "combines best-in-class information security and IT services, fully managed Microsoft 365, around-the-clock monitoring, rapid incident response, managed threat detection and response. The MDR service is powered by Red Canary.

3. Partnership - SD-WANs: Verizon Business is expanding its Software Defined-Wide Area Network (SD WAN) portfolio to include the Silver Peak Unity EdgeConnect edge platform as a managed service offering. Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) acquired Silver Peak in 2020 for $925 million.

4. Partnership - Cloud Contact Centers: Telarus, a technology services distributor and master agent, has agreed to leverage UJET's cloud contact center solutions.

5. Microsoft Teams - Incident Management: An xMatters app for Microsoft Teams is now enabled for use in Teams meetings. The result: DevOps and on-call teams can now access incident details to collaborate and resolve incidents within the meeting, xMatters says.

6. Partner Program - Electronic Test & Verification: Pickering Interfaces, a supplier of modular signal switching and simulation solutions for use in electronic test and verification, has launched its Pickering Partner Program.

7. Partner - ServiceNow: Trintech, a global provider of Record to Report software solutions for the office of finance, has been named a ServiceNow Elite Partner in the ServiceNow Technology Partner Program. Trintech also unveiled a new financial close automation solution, CadencyDirect, The offering is available through the ServiceNow Store.

8. Integration - Application and Network Performance Monitoring: Kentik Firehose now integrates with New Relic. The result: Engineers and operations professionals "will gain access to enriched, contextual network telemetry correlated with their application data," The companies say. Potential use cases include troubleshooting complex applications, detecting and geo-locating network threats affecting their applications, and understanding the role of cloud infrastructure on application performance, Kentik asserts.

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