5 Channel Partner and MSP News Updates: Monday 04 January 2021

Here are five (actually, more) technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Monday, January 4, 2021. Sip up.

What's In Our Daily Brew?

A. What’s Brewing Today: Channel Partner & Technology News

1. New SolarWinds CEO Arrives: Former Pulse Secure CEO Sudhakar Ramakrishna officially succeeds Kevin Thompson as CEO of SolarWinds today. Amid the recent SolarWinds Orion security incident and the pending SolarWinds MSP spin-out (a.k.a. N-able), here are five priorities for Ramakrishna, according to ChannelE2E.

2. Resellers and Digital Transformation: When distribution giant Ingram Micro in Dubai recently launched a cybersecurity assessment tool called CyberGramSM, we wondered if the tool was available in the United States. The distributor's reply: An Ingram Micro Practice Development Program in the United States is similar to Ingram's CyberGram effort.

3. Cisco Exiting Smart Cities?: Cisco Systems is pulling back from its smart cities initiative, The Wall Street Journal reports. The effort leveraged Cisco Kinetic for Cities as well as the Jasper IoT platform acquisition from 2016.

4. VMware Files Lawsuit Against Nutanix CEO: VMware sued former Chief Operating Officer Rajiv Ramaswami before the New Year, alleging he breached his contract during an interview process to join Nutanix. Ramaswami and Nutanix says the VMware lawsuit is without metrit. VMware and Nutanix compete against each other in the HCI (hyperconverged infrastructure) software market.

5. Talent - Cloud-native Data Protection: Trilio has hired Sonatype and IBM veteran Dalton Menhall as vice president of worldwide sales.

6. 5G Wireless Network Rollout: Verizon 5G Edge with AWS Wavelength are available in two new locations: Denver, Colorado and Seattle, Washington. Verizon 5G Edge, a mobile edge computing (MEC) platform, lets developers build applications for mobile end-users and wireless edge devices with ultra-low latency, extended battery life, massive throughput and more, Verizon says. Verizon and AWS launched Verizon 5G Edge with AWS Wavelength in August 2020 in Boston and the San Francisco Bay Area and have since expanded to 10 cities including Atlanta, Dallas, Las Vegas, Miami, New York and Washington, D.C., the companies say.

7. IPO - SAP Business Unit: Experience management software company Qualtrics has filed for an initial public offering (IPO), two years after SAP acquired the business, Crunchbase reports.

8. New AI Legislation: Details are here.

9. Talent - Google Workers Unionize: Employees of Google and parent company Alphabet announced the creation of a union today, escalating years of confrontation between workers and management of the internet giant, Blooomberg reports. The Alphabet Workers Union said it will be open to all employees and contractors, regardless of their role or classification. It will collect dues, pay organizing staff and have an elected board of directors, the report says.

10. SPAC Conflicts of Interest: Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs) are forming to potentially buy MSP software companies, sources tell ChannelE2E. Amid the SPAC hype wave, the SEC has issued new guidance about potential SPAC conflicts of interest...

B. Channel Partner Summits, MSP Conferences and Virtual Events Calendar