5 Channel Partner Program and MSP News Updates: Friday 22 January 2021 -

Here are five (actually, more) technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Friday, January 22, 2021. Sip up.

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A. What’s Brewing Today: Technology News

1. Survey – Top 100 Vertical Market MSPs: Participate here to earn potential honors. Deadline for entries is today (Friday, January 22).

2. M&A - MSPs: Thrive, a Top 100 Vertical Market MSP and Top 250 MSSP, has acquired Apex IT Group, an MSP in the Greater Philadelphia region. Thrive is backed by private equity firm M/C Partners. Apex was originally built by George Mach, and for some time had financial backing from TruMethods CEO Gary Pica and TruMethods CTO Bob Penland. Mach more recently has been building CounterAct Cybersecurity Group. Stay tuned for more details on the Thrive-Apex IT Group M&A deal.

3. ServiceNow Reporting Software: VividCharts and NewRocket have announced a new joint offering to enhance ServiceNow reporting.

4. Startup - IT Service Management (ITSM) Software: StackPulse has emerged from stealth mode and raised $20 million in Series A funding led by GGV Capital. StackPulse develops a "reliability platform for developers, SREs and on-call engineers. Teams use StackPulse to reduce alert fatigue, decrease toil, bring down Mean Time to Resolution and meet Service Level Objectives," the startup says.

5. Distribution - Data and Cyber Protection: D&H Cloud Marketplace has agreed to distribute the Acronis Cyber Cloud platform.

6. Partnership - Unified Communications: Semafone, a provider of data security and compliance solutions, says the company's Cardprotect Voice+ is compliant with key customer engagement solutions from Avaya.