Here are five (actually, more) technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Friday, August 27, 2021. Sip up.
What’s In Our Daily Brew?
- Who We Serve: Content for managed services providers (MSPs), IT service providers (ITSPs), technology solutions providers (TSPs), 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.
- Reaching the Barista: Send news, tips and rumors to [email protected].
A. What’s Brewing Today: Technology News
1. M&A - Customer Service Automation: Zendesk has acquired Cleverly, an AI software startup. The acquired technology will allow Zendesk partners to further automate customer service workflows, the buyer says.
2. M&A - Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) Software: Quantum is acquiring EnCloudEn, an early stage HCI software company. The deal will "enable Quantum to expand the addressable market for the company's video surveillance portfolio, offering customers a solution using their server hardware of choice with a flexible subscription-based software model," the buyer says.
3. Funding - IT Service Management (ITSM) Software for School Districts: Incident IQ has received a strategic growth investment from JMI Equity. More than 650 school districts across 48 states leverage Incident IQ to help manage workflows across IT, facilities, and operations. Financial terms of the investment were not disclosed.
4. Funding - SaaS-Based Enterprise Technology Management (ETM): Oomnitza has completed a $20 million growth funding round led by C5 Capital, and includes Aspenwood Ventures (also known as Hummer Winblad Venture Partners) and Gula Tech Adventures, along with existing investors Riverside Acceleration Capital and Shasta Ventures.
5. Managed Services & Data Protection: Secure Data Technologies, a Cisco partner and MSP in St. Louis, Missouri, has expanded the company's SecureAssist managed services offerings. The strategy involves backup, disaster recovery (BDR) and email security solutions to "provide customers with best-of-breed technology along with our legendary engineering support to keep customers' data protected to meet their RPO/RTO requirements," Secure Data asserts.
6. Executive Leadership - MSP and ServiceNow Partner: Coreio, an MSP with ServiceNow expertise, has promoted Chief Operating Officer Rob Muroff to CEO, effective immediately. He apparently succeeds former CEO David Naiman, though Naiman's status with Coreio was not mentioned in the press release. Muroff joined Coreio in 2016 after nearly 15 years at RBC. Also of note: Stephen Baird continues as Coreio's CTO, extending a 20-year relationship working with Muroff. Coreio has M&A experience. The MSP acquired ServiceNow partners IntelliNet Technologies in 2019 and TGA (Tony Grice & Associates) in 2018.
7. Robotic Process Automation: Automation Anywhere has introduced an RPA Maturity Assessment tool. The goal: Simplify how automation teams, business leaders, and citizen developers adopt, deploy, and scale intelligent automation. The tool could be particularly useful for IT consulting firms, VARs and MSPs that are assisting end-customers with workflow, business automation and digital transformation projects, ChannelE2E believes.
B. Technology Industry Earnings and Quarterly Financial Results
1. HP Earnings: HP Inc. disclosed financial results for Q3 of 2021. Key metrics from the PC and printer manufacturer included:
- Net revenue of $15.3 billion, up 7 percent compared to Q3 of 2020.
- Net earnings of $1.1 billion, up 51 percent from $700,000 in Q3 of 2020.
The earnings beat expectations, but revenues and HP's guidance fell short of Wall Street's expectations.
2. Workday Earnings: Workday disclosed financial results for Q2 of fiscal 2022. Key metrics from the SaaS-centric provider of HR and financial applications included:
- Total revenues of $1.26 billion, up 18.7 percent from Q2 of fiscal 2021.
- Net income of $105.7 million, up sharply from $28 million in Q2 of fiscal 2021.
The results surface shortly after WorkDay and Google announced a cloud partnership that countered AWS and Salesforce, along with various Microsoft 365 and Azure initiatives.
3. VMWare Earnings: VMware disclosed Q2 financial results for fiscal 2022. Key financial metrics from the virtualization and hybrid cloud software provider included:
- Revenue of $3.14 billion, up 9 percent compared to the second quarter of fiscal 2021.
- GAAP net income of $411 million, down from $447 million in the second quarter of fiscal 2021.
VMware's financial forecast disappointed investors, many of whom are focused on VMware's imminent spin-off from parent Dell Technologies.
C. Channel Chiefs, Partner Programs and Strategic Alliances
1. Channel Chief - Data Center Services: Evoque Data Center Solutions has hired Lumen and Level 3 Communications veteran Monica Walton as vice president of channel sales. Moreover, Evoque has expanded its partner program for connectivity, cloud, colocation and data center services.
2. Security Software - MSP License Management Tools: The Kaspersky License Management Portal (LMP), which enables MSPs to order and manage Kaspersky product licenses, now supports regular license ordering. The result: The process of renewals and new license ordering for partners and distributors is now automated and can be done in a few clicks instead of email correspondence, Kaspersky says.
3. Partner Program - Security: Trend Micro has launched WeDiscover -- a channel partner demand generation program -- across the Asia Pacific, Middle East, and Africa (AMEA) market. The demand generation initiative provides a "well-designed framework for channel partners to identify unexplored markets, investigate newer revenue streams and accelerate sales," Trend Micro says.
4. Partner Program - Log Management: Logit.io has launched a new global partner program to engage MSPs, MDR service providers, VARs and technology alliance partners. Partners can offer customers open-source technology, such as Kibana, Grafana & AWS’s offering of Elasticsearch & Kibana (soon to be known as Opensearch and Opensearch Dashboards), Logit.io says. Use cases for the software, according to the company, include:
- Infrastructure, server, cloud, container, SSL and uptime monitoring;
- compliance and auditing;
- business intelligence & analytics;
- SIEM (security information and event management); and
- application performance monitoring (APM).
5. Partnership - Artificial Intelligence and Automation: Wipro and DataRobot have inked an Augmented Intelligence partnership to "help customers become AI driven enterprises and accelerate their business impact," the two companies say.
6. Partner Program - Collaboration: Xilica has launched the Xilica One Partner Program. The program features sales and marketing resources that help partners to target enterprise, education and government clientele.
D. Channel Partner Summits, MSP Conferences and Virtual Events Calendar
- Build IT Live 2021 (August 30-September 1, New York)
- Lenovo Tech World 2021 (September 8, Virtual)
- Barracuda Secured.21 (September 14-16, Virtual)
- Nutanix .Next 2021 (September 20-23, Virtual)
- Salesforce Dreamforce (September 21-23, Hybrid)
- ChannelE2E’s complete event calendar
- Add Your Annual Event To Our Calendar: Submit it here for consideration.
