5 Channel Partner and MSP Updates: Wednesday 09 September 2020

Here are five (actually more) technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Wednesday, September 09, 2020. Sip up.

Our Daily Brew

A. What’s Happening Today

1. MSP Ticketing Software Reinvented?: Licorice, a software startup in Texas, hopes to help MSPs to vastly improve their service desks. The effort involves a new way to manage help desk tickets. Stay tuned for more details.

2. MSP Data Protection: More than 400 SolarWinds MSP partners have embraced SolarWinds Backup Recovery Testing across over 3,100 devices since June 2020.  Recovery Testing supports regular automated test recoveries of the most critical servers and scheduled reports that include screenshot verification of the recovered system state. The feature offers automated reporting on a 30- or 14-day schedule.

3. Cloud-based Backup: Afi Data Platform 2.8 has launched to assist MSPs with cloud-based data protection services.

4. ServiceNow Deployment Testing: Tricentis has launched Tricentis Test Automation for ServiceNow. The software enables 40 times faster testing of ServiceNow applications with the highest level of usability to increase test coverage and quality, Tricentis asserts.

5. M&A - IT Service Management: BMC is acquiring Alderstone, a provider of ITSM (IT service management) adoption and modernization software. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

6. BT Group Takeover?: BT's executives are working with advisors to defend the telecom service provider from potential hostile takeover bids, according to Bloomberg. BT's stock has fallen to an 11-year low, and private equity firms such as CVC Capital Partners have studied the feasibility to take over BT, the report says.

7. Distribution - Spin-Off: Synnex is on track to spin off its Concentrix business later this year, according to an SEC filing.

8. Private Equity - Cloud-Managed Network Services: Warburg Pincus has invested in Infoblox, a provider of secure cloud-managed network services. Warburg and existing investor Vista Equity Partners are now equal partners in the company.

9. Private Equity - Privileged Access Management (PAM): Cove Hill Partners has invested in SecureLink, a provider of vendor privileged access management (VPAM). Upon closing, Cove Hill will become SecureLink’s majority owner, with Vista Equity Partners maintaining a minority stake in the company.

10. Private Equity - SaaS-based Billing: Primus Capital has invested in Rev.io, which develops a billing, back-office and payments SaaS platform for MSPs and technology companies. Terms of the recapitalization were not disclosed.

11. SAP Growth Strategy: SAP is pursuing growth, but won't sacrifice its goal of expanding margins in the medium term, Reuters reports.

12. SAP Cloud Cost Optimization: Virtustream, a Dell Technologies business, has introduced start/stop automation for SAP software. The result: SAP customers can optimize their costs and controls through new self-service tools and step-by-step status updates. The functionality is now available in the Virtustream Enterprise Cloud via the xStream portal, Virtustream said.

13. Talent - Colocation & Data Centers: INAP has hired Oracle veteran Joe Corvaia as executive VP and chief revenue officer.

14. Talent - Commerce Lifecycle Management: Agiloft has hired Zuora and Apttus veteran Kevin Niblock as chief revenue officer (CRO). It's the latest in a growing list of strategic moves at Agiloft, which recently named Eric Laughlin CEO, and received a $45 million growth equity investment from FTV Capital.

15. HPE Small Business Storage: Hewlett Packard Enterprise has announced the the next generation of the HPE Modular Smart Array (MSA), The new HPE MSA Gen 6 provides entry level hybrid flash storage to small and midsize businesses. Moreover, MSPs can connect the platform toHPE Cloud Volumes Backup, a built-in enterprise cloud backup service using HPE Recover Manager Central. HPE Cloud Volumes Backup cloud services are also now available through HPE GreenLake.

16. Huawei's Google Android Alternative: Huawei is expected on Thursday to describe its progress developing an alternative to Google Android, Reuters reports.

B. Channel Partner Programs and Strategic Alliances

1. Talent - Partner Relationship Management: Impartner has named Bill Curran as chief revenue officer. Curran succeeds CRO and former North American Channel Chief at Akamai Mark Rogers, who assumes the role as SVP of Alliances & Strategic Relationships.

2. Talent - ServiceNow: The company has hired SAP veteran Vanessa Smith as SVP, global go-to-market. In this newly created position, Smith will oversee the company’s global go-to-market strategy. She reports to Kevin Haverty, chief revenue officer (CRO). We're checking to see if or how Smith will coordinate her work with David Parsons, senior vice president of global alliances and channel ecosystem. Parsons reports to Lara Caimi, chief customer and partner officer at ServiceNow.

3. Partnership - Network Operation Centers: Moogsoft and Orange Business Services are partnering in the Americas to streamline incident management and help prevent outages for Orange enterprise customers.  The effort involves a new virtual network operations center (NOC) solution based on the Moogsoft AIOps Platform. The NOC solution allows IT teams within Orange customers’ organizations to operate virtually and collaboratively, Orange asserts.

4. Partnership - Microsoft and Nutanix: The partnership delivers Nutanix Clusters on Microsoft Azure.

5. Partnership - Cloud Migrations: Rackspace and Exasol have partnered to help customers migrate their applications and data to the cloud.

6. Cloud Distribution - Remote Control: Ingram Micro Canada's Cloud Marketplace has agreed to distribute TeamViewer's remote connectivity and control software. Ingram Micro and TeamViewer inked a global distribution agreement in April 2020, which has been rolled out to 19 countries, including Canada.

7. Partner Program - Cloud Communications: Deloitte Digital has joined the Twilio Build partner program as a premier Global Systems Integrator (GSI).

8. T-Mobile 5G Partner Program: Details are here.

C. Technology Conferences & Virtual Partner Events