5 Channel Partner Updates: Friday 20 September 2019

Here are five (actually, far more…) technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Friday, September 20, 2019.

A. Our Daily Brew

B. Today’s Morning Brew

1.  Top 200 MSSPs 2019: In case you missed the news, our sister site MSSP Alert has unveiled the Top 200 MSSPs for 2019 -- an extensive look at the world's Top 200 managed security services providers, managed detection and response (MDR) specialists, Security Operations Center as a Service (SOCaaS) companies and more.

2. IT Service Management (ITSM) - Government: ServiceNow has secured FedRAMP High authorization. The designation enables federal agencies to embrace the ITSM platform if they so choose.

3. M&A - Funding Ready: Apex Technology Acquisition Corporation apparently has raised $350 million for potential acquisitions...

4. M&A - Is Splunk Buyer or Seller?: Wall Street analysts often consider Splunk a buyout target, but CEO Doug Merritt says his company remains a buyer in the data market...

5. Ping IPO: Shares of Ping Identity rose about 30 percent during the company's IPO yesterday.

6. Datadog IPO: Shares of Datadog rose 39 percent during the company's IPO yesterday. Here's some background on Datadog's business and financial growth. The company apparently declined a takeover bid from Cisco Systems ahead of the IPO...

7. Climate Change: Amazon has vowed to meet the Paris Agreement 10 years early -- essentially striving to be net zero carbon by 2040, a decade ahead of the Paris Accord's goal of 2050.

C. Channel Partner Programs and Strategic Alliances: MSPs, CSPs, ISVs, VARs

1. Talent - Technology Training: CompTIA and the Grow with Google program are partnering to help certified IT professionals stand out from the crowd. We'll be watching to see if CompTIA announces similar certification partnerships with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and the Microsoft cloud teams, in particular.

2. Carbonite-Webroot: Carbonite, parent of Webroot, will move away from a partner program that required robust certifications to get a healthy margin and instead embrace a model where certifications provide a margin boost but aren’t a barrier to entry, according to VP Charlie Tomeo (as reported by CRN).

3. Office 365 Data Protection: Databank has partnered with Veeam Software to introduce Backup for Microsoft Office 365. Databank is the latest in an extremely long list of companies that now offer data protection for Office 365, Exchange Online, Sharepoint Online, OneDrive, Teams and more.

4. All Partner Programs: Search the comprehensive ChannelE2E Partner Program Database here. Also, submit your company information here and your partner program can be listed in the database.

D. Next Five Technology Conferences

Got news to share for our morning update? Email me: [email protected].