5 Channel Partner Program and MSP News Updates: Thursday 21 January 2021

Here are five (actually, more) technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Thursday, January 21, 2021. Sip up.

What’s In Our Daily Brew?

A. What’s Brewing Today: Technology News

1. Survey - Top 100 Vertical Market MSPs: Participate here to earn potential honors.

2. Disrupting MSPs? FlipServe is seeking to disrupt the traditional MSP market. The company has launched on-demand, outcome-based IT cloud services. Rather than paying for IT services based on output, FlipServe users pay for IT services based on measurable outcomes or business impacts they can objectively assess, the company says. The FlipServe platform will also provide opportunities to gig employees globally. Still, FlipServe's website appears to be in startup mode. Areas like "press releases" and "blogs" appear empty as of today.

3. AWS Managed Services: Rackspace Technology has been selected by GEANT’s new procurement framework, Open Clouds for Research Environments (OCRE), to provide Amazon Web Services (AWS) solutions to European Researchers.

4. Talent - Multi-Cloud Managed Services: Rackspace has named Rodrigo Martineli as Latin American Vice President and General Manager.

5. Funding - No Code Chatbot: Landbot, a “no-code” chatbot builder, has raised $8 million in Series A funding led by the Spanish-Israeli VC firm Swanlaab. CDTI also supported the round. Previous investors Nauta Capital, Encomenda and Bankinter also participated in the round, TechCrunch reports.

6. Microsoft 365 Security: Varonis Systems has upgraded its data security and analytics platform to further protect Microsoft 365 from cyberattacks and hacks.

7. Earnings: IBM is expected to announce quarterly results later today. Among the key areas to watch: Red Hat's impact on IBM's hybrid cloud strategy; the implications of recent cloud consulting acquisitions; and updates on the pending spin-out of IBM's managed infrastructure services business.

B. Channel Chiefs, Partner Programs and Strategic Alliances

1. Integration - AWS Backup Monitoring:  N2W Software has launched N2WS Backup & Recovery v3.2. The upgrade integrates with Datadog's monitoring dashboard. Datadog is an increasingly popular cloud-scale monitoring platform for applications, infrastructure and more.

2. Partnership - Data Protection: StoneFly is now a Veeam Gold ProPartner.

3. Partnership - Cloud Native and Automation Solutions: Cisco Systems and Red Hat are partnering to promote cloud-native and automation solutions.

4. Partnership - AI Solutions: Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has named Remark a Silver Partner in HPE's Technology Partner Program. HPE and Remark will jointly market AI solutions addressing retail management, security, surveillance, and health security.

5. Partner Program: iSolutions, a Google Cloud Partner, has joined the HYCU Cloud Services Provider Program. iSolutions supports more than 600 customers across the Middle East and North Africa.

6. Partner Program: IGEL has launched IGEL Velocity, a newly redesigned global partner program.

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