5 Channel Partner Updates: Tuesday 21 January 2020

Here are five (actually, a bit more…) technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Tuesday, January 21, 2020. Sip up.

Our Daily Brew

A. What’s Hot Today

1. IT Services - Franchise Growth: CMIT Solutions surfaced in the Top 25 percent of Entrepreneur Magazine's Franchise 500 list. CMIT is owned by private equity firm Craftsman Capital, and led by CEO Roger Lewis. The IT service provider now has more than 200 locations across the United States. That's an increase of about 15 locations from 2018. A CMIT Solutions franchise costs about $128,300 to get started. The figure includes working capital and a typical franchise fee of $49,950, the company says.

2. M&A - Cloud Data Management: Are more deals coming?

3. Private Equity - IT Services Recapitalization: OceanSound Partners has recapitalized Smartronix and Trident Technologies, two major IT services providers. These are M&A and Investment Deals Number 62 and 63 that ChannelE2E has covered in 2020. See the complete M&A deal list here.

4. Private Equity - Warning: Investors keep flocking to private equity in Asia even though returns are declining, The Washington Post warns. They should take heed: Payouts are likely to get worse from here, rather than better.

5. Conference: Acronis has confirmed its Global Cyber Summit for October 19-21 in Miami Beach, Florida.

6. Multi-Cloud Revenues - IBM Earnings: IBM will share its latest quarterly results after U.S. markets close today (Tuesday, January 21). Among the big questions: Will IBM's recent Red Hat acquisition help the company to accelerate multi-cloud management revenues? IBM's own cloud badly trails AWS and Microsoft Azure in the public cloud infrastructure market. But Red Hat's Linux, virtualization and storage software may allow IBM to weave a multi-cloud fabric across all the major cloud providers. Still, multi-cloud competition from Dell's VMware, in particular, remains fierce.

7. Talent - MSP: NexusTek, an MSP backed by Evergreen Services Group, has hired Chris Wheeler to succeed Corey Sisler as chief financial officer (CFO). Wheeler's earlier roles included CFO at Hosting.

8. Talent - Best Buy CEO Probe: The board of  Best Buy is investigating allegations that CEO Corie Barry, the former leader of Geek Squad, had an inappropriate romantic relationship with a fellow executive, who has since left the electronics retailer, The Wall Street Journal reports.

9. Talent- DigitalOcean Layoffs: The cloud services provider has cut roughly 30 to 50 employees, TechCrunch reports.

10. Talent- Intel Layoffs 2020: Details are here.

B. Partner Programs and Strategic Alliances

1. Talent - Communications:  Ooma Inc., a smart communications platform for businesses and consumers, has made three channel talent hires. They include:

2. Talent - Value-Added Distribution: Exclusive Networks has hired Blue Coat, Fortinet and IBM veteran Scott Lewis as senior VP of Americas. Extreme has made multiple strategic hires in recent weeks -- including Gerard Allison (SVP, EMEA), Brad Gray (SVP, APAC) and Barrie Desmond (SVP Marketing & Communications).

3. Alliance - Data Centers: Ovation Data Services Inc. will leverage Pavilion's Hyperparallel Flash Array (HFA) technology in the company's Seismic Nexus and Technology Centers.

4. Partnership - Data Center Services: eStruxture’s MTL-1 data center in Montreal now supports Beanfield Technologies's HYPERroute low-latency, private network service with connectivity to key cloud on-ramp locations in the United States.

5. Partnership - SD-WANs: CMC Networks and Neutrona Networks have inked an exclusive partnership to offer SD-WAN services to customers across Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America.

6. Partnership - IT Services: CBTS and Hawaiian Telcom are partnering to launch a Hawaii office and support enterprise customers across that state. Both companies are subsidiaries of Cincinnati Bell Inc. Private equity firm Brookfield Infrastructure, in turn, owns Cincinnati Bell. Hawaiian Telcom manages Hawaii’s largest next-generation fiber network, and offers communications and networking solutions. CBTS is a an IT services provider to over 3,000 enterprise clients across North America.

7. IT Services - Expansion: Microsoft partner Littlefish will add 150 new employees to its headcount with the opening of a new service centre in Sheffield, ChannelWeb UK reports.

8. 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].