Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Tuesday, September 11, 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. AI Server: Cisco Systems has unveiled its first server built from the ground up for artificial intelligence and machine learning workloads, the networking giant says.
11. SD-WANs: Epsilon is leveraging Cato Networks for cloud-based SD-WAN services that improve last-mile network performance and security, the companies say.
10. Google Executive Resigns: Fei-Fei Li, chief scientist at Google’s cloud-computing division, is leaving after controversy over the use of the company’s artificial intelligence technology and a deal with the Pentagon, Bloomberg reports.
9. Funding, Talent - Bare Metal: Packet, a bare metal automation platform for developers, has raised $25 million in Series B funding led by Third Point Ventures, with participation from Battery Ventures, JA Mitsui Leasing and Samsung NEXT as well as existing investors SoftBank Corp. and Dell Technologies Capital. Moreover, Packet has hired Ihab Tarazi as CTO and George Karidis as COO. Packet supports over 60,000 bare metal installs each month, the company says.
8. Partner Program: PagerDuty has launched the PagerDuty Integration Partner Program. The platform already has 300-plus integrations.
7. Partner Program: PlanetOne's US-based agents are promoting 8x8's cloud phone, meeting, collaboration and contact center solutions to midmarket and enterprise customers.
6. IT Services Outages: Roughly 70 percent of U.S. businesses experienced at least one unplanned IT disruption over the last 12 month, according to US Signal's 2018 IT Resiliency Survey results. The most common outages involved:
- natural disasters (53 percent)
- errors while implementing new technology (26 percent)
- ransomware (21 percent)
- IT overloads (21 percent)
5. Salesforce Consulting Services: CloudMasonry, the Chicago-based cloud consulting firm is offering Salesforce consulting services to its growing list of Midwest clients.
4. Microsoft Azure Cloud Partners: Atmosera, a Microsoft Azure cloud services provider, has inked an agency distribution agreement with AVANT Communications. Atmosera customers gain a one-stop shop for cloud enablement solutions, the companies assert.
3. M&A - MSPs: AccountabilIT has acquired ClearPointe Technologies in Little Rock, Arkansas. ClearPointe is an MSP specializing in cloud-based transformations, migrations and managed services.
2. Top 50 MSPs for AWS/Top 50 MSPs for Azure: Participate in the survey here and potentially earn honors for your MSPs. Plus: Get the honoree lists and see the research by attending our next ChannelE2E webcast. Register now.
1. Never Forget: September 11, 2001.
