5 Channel Partner Updates: Tuesday 26 September 2017 -

Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Tuesday, September 26, 2017. Actually, there are 19 (oh my) 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:

Related: Podcast with HP Channel Chief Stephanie Dismore

19. HP Inc. 3D Printing: HP Inc. says its 3D printing business is gaining customer and partner momentum. Among the key milestones: New European customers include Danfoss Group, ETH Zurich, Jaguar-Land Rover, KTM and The Manufacturing Technology Center. Also, Henkel, is set to become the first global reseller of HP Jet Fusion solutions. So far, HP's 3D printing reseller program has attracted more than 30 selected, trained and certified partners in Europe. The company made the announcements during TCT Show 2017, a conference in the UK. HP Inc. did not disclose revenue figures or financial milestones related to the 3D printer wins. 18. HP Enterprise vs. Shareholder Activists?: Keep a close eye on an HP Enterprise shareholder meeting set for October 18. At least four activist groups are expected to press HPE for info on the company's strategic plan. HPE's latest quarterly results exceeded Wall Street's expectations, but critics think the company remains far too dependent on hardware sales. Among the items at issue: How HPE potentially plans to spend its $7 billion war chest... 17. Enterprise Chat: Zoho today unveiled Cliq, a chat software platform that blends instant messaging with video, audio, and group conferencing to create a unified communications system for organizations of any size. Cliq, which is free but jumps to $2 per user per month for certain features, is available immediately as a web application; a native application for Mac, Windows and Linux; and mobile apps for iOS, Android and Windows Phone.

16. Dell EMC Talent: Virtustream Channel Chief Scott Millard will soon leap to parent company Dell EMC, where he will lead the storage channel efforts, CRN reported. Virtustream is Dell EMC's specialized infrastructure as a service (IaaS) business, which zeros in on specific managed workloads (like SAP) in the cloud. 15. Data Center Talent: 1547 Datacenters has hired industry veteran John Bonczek as president. He previously was VP of sales at Digital Realty. 14. Data Center Investments: If Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform are killing traditional on-premises data centers and co-location facilities, then why are investors set to attend a major Data Center Investment Conference later this week in Chicago?

13. Startup Partner Program: 128 Technology, a venture-backed startup that positions itself as the Secure Vector Routing company, has launched the 128 Technology Solution Partner Program. Brian Norris, VP of solution partners, is driving the program.

12. Red Hat Momentum: Red Hat's quarterly revenue surged 21 percent to $723 million in Q2 2018, the company disclosed yesterday. The company's application development and emerging technology business efforts saw 40 percent growth -- proving that Red Hat has successfully evolved beyond its Linux roots.

11. New Initiative: PacketFabric has launched a partner program for its software definite networking (SDN) platform. Chris Teeluck is driving the effort. But wait. There's more. See items 10 to 1 on page two.

Welcome to page two of two. Here are items 10 to 1. 10. Splunk Partner Program: The Splunk partner program now has about 950 partners across 75 countries. A recent partner portal launch has attracted more than 3,000 active users and more than 900 new deal registrations since the portal launched six weeks ago. Splunk is rallying partners and customers at this week's .Conf2017 event in Washington, D.C. 9. SD-WANs: Magna5, a national cloud communications and hybrid network service provider, has selected the VergX Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) offering to provide SD-WAN & SD-Security solutions to its Agent Channel and enterprise customers, the company says. 8. Unified Communications: WTG is now a Master Agent in the Digium Cloud Agent Program. The partnership allows WTG’s agents to offer customers Digium’s Switchvox Cloud Unified Communications (UC) phone system. Digium's cloud and on-premises solutions leverage Asterisk, an open source PBX platform. 7. Synnex Momentum: Synnex Q3 2017 revenue jumped 16.5 percent to $4.277 billion, the distributor said yesterday. Technology solutions revenue grew 15.8 percent to $3.8 billion, and Concentrix revenue surged 21.9 percent to $496 million. The results easily beat Wall Street's expectations in terms of both earnings and revenues. 6. Cloud Management: Accelerite has launched general availability of Rovius Cloud, an enterprise hybrid cloud platform that eases deployment, monitoring and management of on-premises and public cloud compute, storage and networking resources, the company claims. Rovius Cloud for AWS is available immediately. Rovius Cloud for Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure will be available in Q4 of this year. 5. Office 365 Cloud Performance Monitoring: ManageEngine has extended its Applications Manager platform to support Office 365 performance monitoring. We'll share more details later today. 4. Microsoft Partner Pitch: Microsoft is pitching four ways partners can innovate with Microsoft 365 and Azure. The pitch surfaces at this week's Ignite conference. 3. Recurring Revenue Management Tool: RecVue, a recurring revenue management platform, has raised $2 million in new financing. The platform, only two years old, already manages $5.5 billion in annual recurring revenues for customers. 2. M&A: Mitel has completed the ShoreTel acquisition. The companies announced the $530 million deal in July 2017. 1. M&A -- IT Services: PCM Technology Solutions UK Ltd, a subsidiary of PCM Inc., is acquiring Stack Technology Holdings Ltd. (The Stack Group) in the UK. We'll share more details soon.