5 Channel Partner Updates: Friday 17 May 2019 -

Here are technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Friday, May 17, 2019.

A. Our Daily Brew

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B. Freshly Brewed News

1. Philanthropy: Former ConnectWise CEO Arnie Bellini has vowed to donate $70 million over the next 20 years to various Tampa Bay, Florida-area organizations.

2. Funding - Cloud Cost Management: Replex has raised $2.45 million in seed funding and $4.15 million since the company launched. The company's platform allows business owners, finance managers and IT managers to see who spends what on cloud services within an organization. From there, the user can manage cloud chargebacks to specific departments or users for various cloud services.

3. M&A - CRM & Marketing Automation: SugarCRM has acquired Salesfusion, a provider of marketing automation solutions. Financial terms were not disclosed.

4. IT Services - Rest in Peace: Traditional IT services, featuring big monolithic contracts, are dead, according to Rackspace VP Prashanth Chandrasekar.

5. Talent - Data Protection: Commvault has hired Sandra Hamilton as VP of customer success. She oversees the data protection company's Systems Engineering, Professional Services, and Support teams. Hamilton succeeds Rob Kaloustian, who shifts to a new role of senior VP, New Business Incubation. This is the latest step in new CEO Sanjay Mirchandani's three-point plan to grow the company after Commvault disclosed disappointing quarterly financial results in April 2019.

C. Partner Program Updates

1. AWS Cloud Consulting: Sourced Group, a global IT consultancy specializing in large-scale cloud transformations for regulated industries, has achieved Amazon Web Services (AWS) Premier Consulting Partner status in the AWS Partner Network (APN). Sourced has major locations in Singapore; Sydney, Australia; and Toronto, Canada.

2. Alibaba Cloud: Nine partners have joined the company's EMEA Ecosystem Partner Program, which launched in 2018. The new partners include Cloud Temple, Equinix, EVA Group, Groupe Cyllene, GTI Software & Networking, PROJIXI Europe, SKALE-5, SMILE, and Xebia. Existing EMEA partners include companies such as Linkbynet, Ecritel, Micropole, and Intel. Alibaba Cloud has also partnered with French universities to develop talent in the big data market, the company says. The company is planning partner summits in the UK and Germany to further accelerate partner momentum. The EMEA announcements come only a few days after Alibaba Cloud announced $1.1 billion in quarterly revenue.

3. OneStream: The provider of corporate performance management (CPM) solutions for the mid-sized to large enterprises is opening the OneStream XF MarketPlace to partner-developed solutions. OneStream CEO Tom Shea announced the XF MarketPlace partner “pilot” program at the company’s annual Splash User Conference and Partner Summit in New Orleans this week.

4. Mobile Device Management for MSPs: Xeo.ai, which runs an online marketplace, has agreed to offer IBM MaaS360mobile device management software to MSPs throughout Canada and US.