5 Channel Partner Program and MSP News Updates: Thursday 25 February 2021 -

Here are five (actually, more) technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Thursday, February 25, 2021. Sip up.

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Who We Serve: Content for managed services providers (MSPs), IT service providers (ITSPs), technology solutions providers (TSPs), cloud services providers (CSPs), IT consulting firms, systems integrators, VARs, independent software vendors (ISVs), and any other partner acronym that further caffeinates our already stellar SEO.

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A. What’s Brewing Today: Technology News

1. Diversity and Inclusion - Cybersecurity: RangeForce and BlackGirlsHack (BGH) are partnering to provide training resources to black girls and women, and increase representation and diversity in the cybersecurity field.

2. Diversity and Inclusion - IT Consulting: Cognizant has announced a five-year, $250 million effort to advance economic mobility, educational opportunity, diversity and inclusion, and health and well-being in communities around the world.

3. Diversity and Inclusion - More Updates: See our complete coverage of tech industry diversity and inclusion -- the progress, challenges and milestones.

4. IT Consulting Revenue: Perficient, a major IT consulting company, announced Q4 2020 financial results. Key figures include:

Total revenues of $162.6 million, up 12 percent from $145.2 million in Q4 of 2019.

Net income was $8.4 million, down 29 percent from $11.8 million in Q4 of 2019.

But there is a silver lining in the reduced net income. Indeed, each of Perficient's three acquisitions in 2020 performed above expectations...

5. Pure Storage Financial Results: Pure Storage announced Q4 results for fiscal year 2021. Key figures include:

Revenue of $502.7 million, up 2 percent from the corresponding quarter the previous year.

A net loss of $52.2 million, larger than the $4.6 million net loss from Q4 the previous year.

6. Storage Cloud: Seagate Technology has introduced Lyve  Cloud, a storage-as-a-service platform and an Amazon S3-compatible storage-only cloud.

7. Wireless 5G Networks: Hewlett Packard Enterprise has announced the HPE Open RAN Solution Stack. The stack enables the commercial deployment of Open RAN at scale in global 5G network, HPE asserts. The stack was developed by HPE’s newly formed Communications Technology Group (CTG).

8. Red Hat OpenShift Upgrade: Red Hat, owned by IBM, has announced Red Hat OpenShift 4.7, the latest version of the enterprise Kubernetes platform.

B. Channel Chiefs, Partner Programs and Strategic Alliances

1. Partner Training - Cloud Services: Sherweb has launched Partner University, a new online training program for its partners.

2. Partnership - Wipro and Cisco: Wipro is launching a Cisco Business Unit focused on such areas as Intent-Based Networking, Digital Workplace Virtualization, Hybrid Cloud, Application Transformation, Security and Enterprise 5G. The two companies have worked together for 25 years.

3. Channel Chief: INAP has named Monique Stone as VP of channel and alliances, as well as the details of its 2021 channel partner program.

4. Talent - Customer Engagement Software: Mobivity Holdings has hired Al West as chief revenue officer.