5 Channel Partner Updates: Friday 15 November 2019

Here are five (actually, far more…) technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Friday, November 15, 2019.

Our Daily Brew

A. What’s Hot Today

1. Funding - IT Service Desk Automation: Moveworks has raised $75 million in Series B funding. The company develops artificial intelligence software to automate IT service management (ITSM) and customer support. The round was led by ICONIQ Capital, Kleiner Perkins, and Sapphire Ventures with participation from our existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners, Bain Capital Ventures, and Comerica Bank. The round also included a personal investment from John W. Thompson, partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners and Chairman of Microsoft.

2. Funding - Help Desk Software: Freshworks has raised $150 million in Series H funding from Sequoia Capital, CapitalG (formerly Google Capital) and Accel. The valuation is $3.5 billion. Freshworks, launched in 2010, has roughly 2,500 employees and nearly 40,000 paying customers. Side note: Series H is an extremely late round, which suggests Freshworks' next move is likely an IPO or strategic asset sale of some sort...

3. Funding - Partner Relationship Management (PRM): Private equity firm Vector Capital has invested $20 million in Impartner. The channel platform software provider will use the funding for organic growth as well as potential acquisitions.

4. Research - Artificial Intelligence:  Three-quarters of C-level executives believe if they don’t move beyond experimentation to aggressively deploy artificial intelligence (AI) across their organizations they risk going out of business by 2025, according to Accenture research titled "AI: Built to Scale".

5. Xerox-HP Negotiations: Activist investor Carl Icahn has taken a stake in HP Inc. and is pushing for the PC maker's merger with printer maker Xerox, arguing that a union could yield big profits for investors, according to the Wall Street Journal and Reuters.

6. Talent - Distribution:  Mike Zilis will succeed Gina Mastantuono as Ingram Micro’s CFO on January 1, 2020. Mastantuono is leaving become CFO of a U.S. publicly traded company, the distributor says.

7. Talent - Cloud Workspaces: IGEL is now led by co-CEO Jed Ayres and CEO and Founder Heiko Gloge. The company now has roughly 400 employees.

B. Partnerships and Strategic Alliances

1. Channel Talent - MSP Software: ID Agent veteran Dan Tomaszewski has joined parent company Kaseya as VP of channel success and powered services.

2. Channel Talent - Cisco Departure: Nirav Sheth, vice president of worldwide sales and systems engineering for Cisco's Global Partner Organization is leaving the company for a channel-facing role elsewhere, CRN reports. Sheth has been instrumental in Cisco's return to the small business market, and ongoing efforts to engage MSPs (managed services providers).

3. Channel Talent - Edge Networks: QOS Networks has hired Windstream Enterprise veteran Michael Brennan as VP of channel sales. QOS specializes in the design, deployment, and management of edge solutions like SD-WAN, learning WiFi, network integrations like ITSM platforms, IoT, cloud and SaaS, edge compute, and 5G readiness, the company says.

4. MSP Peer Groups: Taylor Business Group (TBG), a coaching, consulting, and peer group company, has launched a grant program to help MSPs and Technology Solution Providers (TSPs) join the organization.  MSPs and TSPs can apply for the Grow Together Opportunity Program grant by visiting www.taylorbusinessgroup.com/grant. The application period runs through December 19, 2019. TBG will contact grant awardees directly and will also post their names on its company website.

5. Cloud Services - Salesforce and Microsoft Azure: Salesforce is moving its Marketing Cloud service to Microsoft Azure.

6. 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. Next Five Technology Conferences

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