5 Channel Partner Updates: Tuesday 14 January 2020

Here are five (actually, a bit more…) technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Tuesday, January 14, 2020. Sip up.

Our Daily Brew

A. What’s Hot Today

1. M&A - ServiceNow Partners: ICF is acquiring ServiceNow and Appian partner Incentive Technology Group (ITG) for roughly 6.6 times annual EBITDA, according to ChannelE2E estimates.

2. M&A - IT Monitoring: LogicMonitor has acquired Unomaly, an AIOps company in Stockholm, Sweden. MSPs that run LogicMonitor's software will gain new ways to automatically track and correct infrastructure issues -- thereby improving end-customer experience (CX), the company says. Private equity firm Vista Equity Partners owns LogicMonitor.

3. PC Sales and Market Share: PC shipments rose about 2.3 percent in 4Q 2019 as customers raced to shift from Windows 7 to Windows 10 machines. Microsoft is phasing out Windows 7 support this week. Lenovo, HP Inc. and Dell control roughly two-thirds of the PC market, according to the latest IDC and Gartner figures.

4. Cloud Management: Zyxel has redesigned its Nebula Cloud Networking Solution to better serve MSPs and end-customers, the company says.

5. Talent - Unified Communications: Mitel has hired Poly veteran Tarun Loomba as executive VP of unified communications products and solutions.

6. Talent - AWS and Oracle Cloud: AWS veteran Ariel Kelman has joined Oracle as chief marketing officer, CNBC reports. Kelman had been vice president of worldwide marketing for AWS. Amid Kelman's departure, Amazon has named engineering veteran Matt Garman to oversee the cloud unit's sales and marketing teams.

7.Talent - Google Cloud Partner: SADA, a Top 200 Public Cloud MSP and Google Cloud partner of the year for 2019, has named two executives to its board of directors. They are:

8. Talent - Desktop as a Service (DaaS): CloudJumper has hired Cisco and Lenovo veteran Amie Ray as enterprise channel sales manager.

9. Talent - Big Data: Cloudera has named Robert Bearden as president and CEO. Bearden is a familiar name to Cloudera customers, partners and employees. He co-founded Hortonworks, which merged with Cloudera in 2019.

10. Talent - Process Automation: Nintex has hired SAP Concur veteran Ben Brewer as chief revenue officer.

11. Pentagon JEDI Cloud Contract: Amazon will ask a judge to temporarily block Microsoft  from working on a $10 billion cloud contract from the Pentagon, Reuters reports. Amazon, which was seen as a favorite for the contract, plans to file a motion for a temporary restraining order on Jan. 24 and a federal court will issue its decision on Feb. 11, according to the filing.

B. Partner Programs and Strategic Alliances

1. MSP Conference: Auvik Networks, which develops network monitoring and management tools for MSPs, has kicked off its Frankly MSP conference in California. Here's what MSPs might expect at the conference.

2. Funding and Distribution: Chicago-based Invoiced and San Francisco-based Balbix have earned regional honors, and are one step closer to potentially winning the $1 million cash in Ingram Micro's Comet Competition. The competition provides aspiring local independent software vendors (ISVs) and startups access to a wider global audience. Runners-up from Chicago are Morpheus Data, Coreview and Cyglass, and from San Francisco, Blue Hexagon, Air Slate and Nerdio. Each runner-up receives $50,000 in funding and free entry to Ingram Micro’s Cloud Summit in May 2020.

3. Distribution - Network Test Equipment: Ingram Micro in the U.S. has agreed to distribute certain VIAVI test instruments for fiber and cable networks, and performance management solutions for enterprise networks.

4. Distribution - UCaaS: D&H Distributing, a provider of SMB and consumer technologies to the North American high-tech channel, has added RingCentral to the company’s cloud solutions portfolio.

5. All Partner Programs: Search the comprehensive ChannelE2E Partner Program Database here. Also, submit your company information here and your partner program can be listed in the database.

C. Upcoming Technology Conferences

Got news to share for our morning update? Email me: [email protected].