5 Channel Partner Program and MSP News Updates: Wednesday 17 March 2021

Here are five (actually, more) technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Wednesday, March 17, 2021. Sip up.

What’s In Our Daily Brew?

A. What’s Brewing Today: Technology News

1. Tech SPACs Under Pressure: Special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) that focus on Technology, Media and Telecom (TMT) mergers or acquisitions are under pressure, according to S&P Global. Related: See ChannelE2E's expansive list of technology SPACs here.

2. IPO  - Cloud Service Provider: Digital Ocean plans to launch an IPO valued at about $4.8 billion in the next few weeks. The company will trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol $DOCN, CNBC reports.

3. MSP Honored: LAN InfoTech, an IT solutions provider in Fort Lauderdale, ranks among Florida's fastest-growing private companies, according to the second annual Inc. 5000 Regionals research.

4. SBA Leader: The U.S. Senate has confirmed Isabel Guzman as administrator of the Small Business Administration.

5. Growth - Customer Experience: Cyara will finish the first half of its 2021 fiscal year with SaaS bookings coming in 35% ahead of plan, a 95% customer retention rate and 7+ billion seconds of synthetic CX testing traffic annually, the company says. Actual revenue dollar figures and profit figures were not disclosed. Also, Cyara has named Perry Gale as  VP to oversee Europe, Middle East, and Africa region (EMEA).

6. Big Data Application Automation: NetApp has launched Spot Wave by NetApp, and introduced Spot Ocean’s support of Microsoft Azure Kubernetes Service. Wave automates the provisioning, deployment, autoscaling and optimization for running Apache Spark big data applications on Kubernetes in the cloud, NetApp says.

7. Layoffs - Business Intelligence Software: SAS has cut about 100 positions but also remains in hiring mode. SAS has roughly 14,000 employees worldwide, WRAL TechWire reports.

B. Channel Chiefs, Partner Programs and Strategic Alliances

1. Channel Chief - Data Protection: Imperva has hired Micheal McCollough as global VP of strategic growth. In this role, he will be responsible for scaling the channel business, further developing and growing the Imperva Partner Ecosystem, and creating new partnerships, the company says.

2. Talent - Unified Communications: Broadvoice has hired Lauri Martinez as Vice President of Channel Marketing.

3. Partner Program - Cloud Voice Services: Aircall, a cloud-based voice platform, has launched a new app partner program. The program allows partners to build, launch, and grow their apps in the largest ecosystem for voice, Aircall says.

4. Partner Program - Hybrid Cloud Data Warehouses: Yellowbrick Data has launched a channel partner program called the Yellowbrick Velocity Partner Network. Initial partners include distributor Arrow Electronics.

5. Partner Program - Cloud Data Management: Informatica has announced program enhancements to drive cloud-first, cloud-native success for its more than 9,000 strategic global partner resources.

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