Here are five (actually more) technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Friday, July 24, 2020. Sip up.
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A. What’s Happening Today
1. M&A - IT Consulting: Accenture has completed its acquisition of Sentelis, a data consulting and engineering company. Accenture had announced its intent to acquire Sentelis in June 2020.
2. Funding - Cloud Contact Center: TalkDesk has raised $143 million in Series C funding from a combination of new and existing investors.
3. Cloud MSP - Rackspace Growth and Debt: Rackspace has grown under private equity owner Apollo Global Management. But Rackspace's debt load has also grown, according to the San Antonio Express News analysis.
4. Managed IT Services: Konica Minolta Business Solutions and All Covered, a Top 100 Vertical Market MSP, have launched All Covered Assurance (ACA), an all-in-one turnkey IT management services platform.
5. Partner Program - SaaS Marketing: Ulistic, an MSP marketing agency, is now a SharpSpring Platinum Partner. SharpSpring is a cloud-based marketing and email software platform.
6. Cloud PCs: Workspot’s SaaS platform is now available on Google Cloud. The result: Google Cloud Platform (GCP) customers can deploy Windows 10 cloud PCs in any Google Cloud region, Workspot says. It sounds like the company's SaaS platform is catching on with customers. Workspot generated 300 percent annual recurring revenue (ARR) growth in Q1 2020 compared to Q1 2019, with 286% net revenue retention. Still, the company has not disclose actual dollar figures for revenue or EBITDA.
7. Google Cloud - Mainframe Application Migrations: LzLabs has joined the Google Cloud Partner Advantage Program as a Technology Partner, offering customers tools to migrate legacy applications from mainframe environments to the Google Cloud.
8. Distribution - SaaS Management: Ingram Micro Cloud has agreed to distribute CoreView, a SaaS management platform that helps partners and customers to track security, license optimization and adoption of SaaS services.
9. Intel Chip Delay: Intel delivered stronger-than-expected quarterly financial results yesterday, but the technology giant also disclosed production delays for its new 7-nanometer chip technology. The new chips are roughly six months behind schedule -- giving rival AMD a near-term performance advantage, some Wall Street analysts assert. Intel's stock ($INTC) fell about 13 percent in pre-market trading on July 24, 202o.
10. Amazon vs. Startups?: More than two dozen entrepreneurs, investors and deal advisers claim Amazon appeared to use its Alexa investment arm to gather competitive information from startups, and then used that information to help develop competing products, The Wall Street Journal reports. An Amazon spokesman said the company doesn’t use confidential information that companies share with it to build competing products.
11. Counterfeit Equipment Concerns: Cisco Systems is taking key steps to keep counterfeit equipment out of the authorized market, the networking giant explains in a blog to partners.
C. Upcoming Technology Conferences & Virtual Partner Events
- CompTIA ChannelCon 2020 (August 4-6, Virtual Conference)
- IoT World 2020 (August 11-13, Virtual Conference)
- Kaseya Connect IT Global 2020 (August 24-27, Virtual Conference)
- IT By Design: Build IT 2020 (September 1, Virtual Conference)
- SaaStr 2020 Home: Virtual Cloud Business Conference (September 2-3)
- Bonus: ChannelE2E’s complete event calendar
- Add Your Event To Our Calendar: Submit it here.
