Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to sip on for Monday, May 16, 2016.
Actually, there are 20 entries for VARs, managed services providers (MSPs), cloud services providers (CSPs) and independent software vendors (ISVs) to sip on. Take a look…
20. Amazon IoT Button: Amazon has rebranded its in-home consumer buttons as the IoT Button. Jeff Bezos, however, isn't claiming that Amazon created the Internet of Things...
19. Faster Apple App Store Approvals: Apple is approving App Store application submissions more rapidly. Skeptics think the accelerated approval process has little to do with Apple automation/quality control. Instead, some folks think Apple is merely trying to accelerate its services revenues more rapidly...
18. Hosted PBXes, Part I: Keep a close eye on the market...
17. The Book on Channel Chiefs: What keeps channel chiefs up at night? This eBook from Impartner, which specializes in partner relationship management (PRM), attempts to offer the answer.
16. Earnings: Cisco Systems and Salesforce each are expected to deliver quarterly earnings on May 18. We'll be curious to learn how Cisco's hyperconverged and Salesforce's big data businesses are ramping up...
15. Cloud-based Spending Management: Need to get your corporate spending under control? Coupa has just released R15, the latest upgrade to the company's cloud-based spending management platform. It also features a contract management add-on module...
14. Server Virtualization Shrinkage: The server virtualization market is now saturated, and year-over-year sales are now shrinking, according to Gartner. That's no surprise to VMware, which is seeking to promote network virtualization (NSX) and storage virtualization (vSAN) amid the vSphere business slowdown...
13. Students vs. Google Apps: A student-led privacy lawsuit continues to gain backers, though legal wrangling could derail the suit before it becomes a potential threat to Google, The San Jose Mercury News reports. The suit claims Google scanned students' Google App accounts without their permission...
12. Google Enterprise Strategy: Some new clues about Google's enterprise business strategy could emerge this week at the Google I/O 2016 conference. The conference is designed mostly for Android developers. But this year's event includes Google Cloud Platform sessions. And it's a safe bet some Google Apps for Work chatter will emerge. One key change ahead of the event: Google's head of enterprise apps has changed jobs to focus on Google's fledgling Virtual Reality business.
11. Healthy Fiber Diet: Acadia, focused on a fiber optic transmission business, has launched a successful IPO. Shares in the company rose 35 percent last week. It's only the second tech IPO so far in 2016. Dell took SecureWorks public earlier this year, but the managed security service provider didn't perform all that well in its debut...
10. Office 365 Cloud Monitoring: Tools like ConnectWise CloudConsole and Kaseya 365 Command allow MSPs to manage Office 365 for customers. But keep an eye on Microsoft Operations Management Suite (OMS). An OMS Office 365 management solution is now in public preview, though I don't know if it has multi-tenant capabilities for MSPs and VARs...
9. Managed IoT Services: SaaS and cloud pundit Jeff Kaplan makes the case for managed IoT services -- pointing to Tata Consultancy launching eight such services with Oracle last year. We're certainly seeing managed IoT services pop up -- particularly when it comes to industrial machine monitoring and management. Just be careful of the consumer IoT hype, where offerings like Google NEST have struggled to catch on...
8. Hosted PBXes Part II: Because channel-friendly M&A allegedly is coming, though I don't know for sure...
7. Security Operations Centers: You know about NOCs (network operations centers). But MSPs and their software providers are now taking a closer look at SOCs (security operations centers). Here's a look at how a successful SOC operates...
6. Public Cloud - US vs Europe: Even as the public cloud services market grows rapidly, adoption in Europe still lags that of the U.S. Here's the evidence.
5. Cloud Costs: Despite fierce competition in the cloud services market, costs aren't going down. And in some cases, costs could be going up, according to a survey by UBS Group AG. As ChannelE2E has long maintained: Cloud computing isn't about cost savings. Instead, it's about speed to market and speed to innovation.
4. Fresh Funding: AtScale, which offers a self-service business intelligence platform for Hadoop, has launched $11 million in Series B funding. Details surfaced this morning.
3. What Are Profits?: The next time a tech company tells you they're profitable ask them to define the term. Indeed, a lengthy list of tech startups has twisted the profit definition to meet their needs -- rather than investor needs...
2. 2017 Partner Conferences: We're less than halfway through 2016, but the ChannelE2E Technology Event Calendar is already starting to list 2017 partner conferences and summits -- starting with Citrix Summit 2017 in January. Submit your partner conference or summit to us for potential inclusion on the calendar.
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