5 Channel Partner and MSP Updates: Wednesday 18 November 2020 -

Here are five (actually, more) technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Wednesday, November 18, 2020. Sip up.

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A. What’s Happening Today

1. MSP Automation: SolarWinds MSP has introduced a new Automation Cookbook to help MSPs reduce technician redundancies and costs associated with managing and protecting their customers, the company says.

2. APIs - Cloud Services & PSA Software: Sherweb has introduced APIs that will "enable partners to easily integrate their mission-critical software solutions with Sherweb’s partner portal, allowing them to be more efficient and accelerate their business growth," the cloud solutions provider (CSP) says. The first open API for billing will be available to partners in December 2020. The interface will allow partners to connect any PSA solution or their own billing tool to Sherweb’s platform.

3. Cloud Cost Management: Apptio has launched Cloudability SaaS and Cloudability Shift. Cloudability SaaS allows technology and finance leaders to discover, manage, and optimize spending on software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications throughout their organization. Cloudability Shift gives users custom-made migration plans for moving applications to SaaS models.

4. Business Continuity Planning: Agility Recovery has launched Agility Planner -- a tool that offers a centralized, all-in-one approach to business continuity planning, the company says.

5. Video Conferencing Management: Unify Square, a monitoring & management software and services provider for Zoom and Microsoft Teams platforms, achieved 40 percent (or more) sales growth over the past 12 months. Actual revenue and profit figures were not disclosed.

6. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) - Bot Management: Pegasystems has launched Pega RPA Auto-balancing – a Robotic Process Automation (RPA) feature that automatically provisions workloads between an organization’s available bots. The new Pega Robot Manager capability uses artificial intelligence (AI) to "intelligently optimize the capacity and efficiency of bot resources on the fly with no human intervention," the company claims.

7. Talent - 5G Managed Services: Mavenir, a network software provider for 4G/5G networks, has hired Vishant Vora as president, global customer operations and managed services. Vora will lead Mavenir’s global end-to-end business operations including network design, rollout and deployments, solutions and systems integration services, managed services and related strategic initiatives.

8. Talent - Distribution: ScanSource has hired Steve Jones as senior executive vice president and chief financial officer effective mid-December 2020. He will report to ScanSource Chairman and CEO Mike Baur.

9. Avaya Financial Results: Avaya's Q4 revenue was $755 million, up 4 percent year over year. Also, GAAP net income was $37 million, up from $9 million in Q4 the previous year.

10. Funding - Workforce Analytics: ActivTrak, a provider of workforce analytics and productivity management software, has raised $50 million in Series B funding to scale go-to-market activities in sales, marketing, and channels. Sapphire Ventures led the round with Elsewhere Partners participating. The company now has more than 8,000 customers and over 250,000 users.

B. Channel Partner Programs and Strategic Alliances

1. Apple Small Business App Developers: Apple said it plans to start a program to lower its App Store commissions for software developers that make $1 million or less in proceeds each year from the store, Reuters reports. The Apple Store Small Business Program is scheduled to launch January 1, 2021.

2. Partnership - Cloud Storage: Wasabi and DataCore Software are partnering to provide customers with a "fast, practical, and cost-effective solution for archiving inactive files and saving snapshots to the cloud in a secure format," the two companies say.

3. Partner Program - Data: VoltDB has launched a new global channel partner program for OEMs, value-added resellers (VARs), technology partners, and systems integrators (SIs).

4. Distribution - Security: D&H Distributing has added ESET’s antivirus and cybersecurity solutions to the D&H Cloud Marketplace transactional platform.