5 Channel Partner Updates: Friday 31 May 2019 -

Here are technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Friday, May 31, 2019.

A. Our Daily Brew

What We Serve: Content for managed services providers (MSPs), 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.
Frequency: Every business morning.
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B. Freshly Brewed News and Chatter

1. MSP Software: NinjaRMM, the fast-growing provider of cloud-based remote monitoring and management (RMM) for MSPs, has launched Credential Exchange. The new feature grants MSPs and IT admins "unparalleled management access and control over client devices," the company says. We're double checking to see how the new capabilities potentially further safeguard MSP and end-customer interactions. Stay tuned for more details soon.

2. Funding - MSP Automation Software: Liongard has raised $4.5 million in Series A funding. TDF Ventures led the round with participation from existing investors Integr8d Capital, Gestalt Theory Venture Partners, Richard Yoo (the Founder of Rackspace Managed Hosting), and others. The software company develops Roar -- which automates the IT documentation process for MSPs. The platform can gather data from endpoints, applications, network devices and cloud services. We've got deeper details to share. Stay tuned.

3. Funding - Data Protection: OwnBackup, a cloud-to-cloud backup and recovery vendor, has raised $23.25 million in Series C funding led by Insight Venture Partners and Vertex Ventures. Existing investors Innovation Endeavors, Oryzn Capital and Salesforce Ventures also participated in the round. The company also announced general availability of OwnBackup Archiver, which helps customers to address compliance policies for SaaS data. OwnBackup CEO Sam Gutmann previously co-founded Intronis, a backup company that Barracuda Networks acquired. Related: Insight also owns Kaseya, an MSP-centric software company that owns such data protection platforms as Spanning and Unitrends. Spanning, like OwnBackup, is a cloud-to-cloud backup service.

4. M&A - MSPs: NTT Com Managed Services has acquired CAPSiDE, a Spain-based provider of hyperscale cloud managed service.

5. Talent - MSP: Carousel Industries, a major MSP, has hired James Suller as VP of customer success. He is responsible for enhancing the company’s customer success/lifecycle advisory team and processes.

6. Cloud Cost Management: Two developments to note here. First, ParkMyCloud's public cloud cost management tool now recommends resource “RightSizing” changes for cost optimization on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). These changes can save up to 75% on oversized instances and databases, the company claims. Second, Microsoft has extended its Azure Cost Management tool to also manage AWS costs. No joke. Impressive.

7. China Preps Tech Black List?: China said it will establish a list of so-called “unreliable" entities it says damage the interests of domestic companies, a sweeping order that could potentially affect thousands of foreign firms as tensions escalate after the U.S. blacklisted Huawei Technologies, Bloomberg says.

8. Financial Results: The latest earnings from Dell, Tech Data and VMware have surfaced.

9. Printers & Voice Control: Ricoh has announced RICOH Intelligent Voice Control. The offering, which involves work with Amazon Web Services (AWS), delivers "intuitive voice-activated controls for Ricoh's intelligent devices, starting with its IM Series of intelligent multifunction printers (MFPs)," the company says.