5 Channel Partner Updates: Monday 17 September 2018

Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Monday, September 17, 2018.

Actually, there are 12 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:

12. Dell Financial Meeting: Dell will host an analyst meeting on Tuesday as part of its final push to sell Wall Street on a complex deal that will return the corporate IT giant to the public market, The Journal notes.

11. Networking: Linksys has unveiled business-class smart switches including. The lineup includes: 

The new Linksys Smart Gigabit PoE+ Switches are designed to offer business-class management, security, speed and quality of service (QoS), the company asserts.

10. AWS Cloud Cost Management Tools: A growing list of providers is here.

9. Cloud Monitoring Tools: Google has announced Stackdriver Workspaces, a tool that enterprises can use to monitor workloads and computing resources across Google Cloud Platform (GCP), on-premises and Amazon Web Services (AWS) environments, eWeek notes.

8. Salesforce Financial Services Cloud: Salesforce has upgraded Financial Services Cloud to further unify customer experiences across consumer and commercial lines of business in banking, wealth management and insurance. The upgrade features new capabilities for business and commercial bankers, as well as new AI innovations and integrations, Salesforce asserts.

7. Amazon Storefronts: Amazon has launched Storefronts -- which features more than one million products from nearly 20,000 U.S. small and midsize companies across all 50 states...

6. Amazon Investigation: Amazon is investigating suspected data leaks and bribes of its employees as it fights to root out fake reviews and other seller scams from its website, The Wall Street Journal says. Employees of Amazon, primarily with the aid of intermediaries, are offering internal data and other confidential information that can give an edge to independent merchants selling their products on the site, The Journal reports.

5. NEC Slams Gartner Magic Quadrant: The details are here... My own opinion? I value the Magic Quadrant reports. They are very detailed, featuring nuances about products and services you can't find elsewhere. But every time you read a report you should go the extra mile and search for additional vendors in the category. Gartner's ranking strategy sometimes leaves certain vendors out in the cold. For instance, the company's disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) report largely overlooks pure channel players. That's foolish.

4. NOC, Service Desk Partnership: GMS Live Expert and Inbay have inked a partnership that allows MSPs to access GMS’s North American based Outsourced Help Desk and NOC as well as Inbay’s offshore NOC services 24/7, 365 days a year. The two companies are jointly discussing their service offerings at this week's GlueCon conference in Phoenix. We'll share more details soon.

3. M&A - Network Infrastructure: ZenFi Networks and Cross River Fiber have completed their merger, creating a locally-owned and operated communications infrastructure company serving the New York and New Jersey metro region.  The combined company, operating as ZenFi Networks, focuses on fiber optic networks, distributed colocation, and wireless siting solutions for enterprise, carrier and wireless operators.

2. M&A - InfoSys acquires Salesforce Partner: InfoSys has acquired Fluido, a Salesforce consulting partner that employs at least 200 cloud services professionals.

1. MSP Conferences: ChannelE2E is closely tracking this week's IT Glue's GlueCon conference and SolarWinds MSP's Empower MSP. Check our homepage for ongoing updates.