Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Tuesday, August 15, 2017.
Actually, there are eight timely updates designed for VARs, managed services providers (MSPs), cloud services providers (CSPs), independent software vendors (ISVs), telco master agents and telco agents to sip on. Take a look:
8. MSP Software Acquired (Again): Naverisk, promoter of RMM (remote monitoring and management) and IT service desk solutions for MSPs, has been acquired for the second time in two years. The new owner gobbled up Naverisk as part of the ECi Software buyout. But will that new owner hang onto the RMM provider? We're checking with our sources for details...
7. Australia Managed Services: Continuum, as expected, is expanding its Australia-based business operations. The MSP platform provider has partnered with BlueChip InfoTech to distribute Continuum's RMM (remote monitoring and management), help desk and NOC services to Australia MSPs. The target is about 3,000 MSPs in the SMB sector. Continuum accelerated its global push earlier this year. Chief Revenue Officer Bob Kocis is leading the charge, and Senior Channel Development Manager Frank Bauer relocated to Sydney, Australia for the effort. The Australia MSP market is particularly strong. Companies such as Kaseya and SolarWinds MSP (which own the former N-able) have operated there successfully for roughly a decade.
6. Zerto Win: The cloud services and computing solutions unit for C Spire, a diversified telecommunications and technology services company, has chosen Zerto as its enterprise class disaster recovery solution vendor, the two companies confirmed yesterday.
5. Some CEOs Abandon Trump: Intel CEO Brian Krzanich is the latest high-profile executive to resign from President Trump's manufacturing council. In a blog post, Krzanich described why he exited the council. His departure follows Trump's response to violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. It took Trump two days to specifically denounce KKK, neo-Nazis and white supremacists for violence that took the life of counter protester Heather Heyer. Critics say Trump should have clearly called out and denounced the hate groups the day of the violence.
4. Microsoft Surface Quality Debate: Here's what Microsoft is saying internally about Surface quality and reliability, according to a memo viewed by Paul Thurrott. The memo is in response to a Consumer Reports article that says Surface suffers from overall quality issues.
3. Amazon Web Services Security: Amazon and several technology partners yesterday announced new AWS security tools during a summit in New York. The highlights included:
- Amazon Macie for AWS, a data loss prevention system and managed security service from the cloud giant.
- Splunk Insights for AWS Cloud Monitoring.
- A free trial of McAFee Virtual Network Security Platform on AWS.
- Also at the summit, Amazon unveiled an AWS Migration Hub filled with tools to help IT consulting firms move customer workloads to the cloud platform.
2. Ingram Advanced Solutions Momentum: Ingram Micro is touting the growth of its Advanced Solutions organization across the Americas. Expect partner momentum updates today from Paul Bay, executive and group VP of the Americas; Kirk Robinson, senior VP, Go-To-Market; and other company executives. We'll share more details soon.
1. VMware Momentum: VMware is showing serious momentum ahead of the VMworld conference later this month in Las Vegas. The company raised its financial forecast yesterday without mentioning the strength of any specific products by name. But it's a safe bet NSX and vSAN -- the company's software-defined networking and software-defined storage offerings -- are leading the way. Also, proponents highly anticipate the VMware Cloud on AWS launch in a few weeks. Still, I'm not convinced the VMware-AWS partnership will be a win for both companies.
