Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Friday, May 25, 2018.
Actually, there are 10 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.
10. Bitcoin Scam: South African authorities are investigating an alleged cryptocurrency scam that defrauded investors of 1 billion rand ($80 million) with promises of huge returns that never materialized, Reuters says.
9. Splunk Earnings: Splunk's fiscal Q1 2019 revenues were $311.6 million, up 37 percent from fiscal Q1 2018, the big data analysis software company disclosed yesterday. The revenue results beat Wall Street's expectations, but shares have dipped about 3 percent amid concerns that deal sizes may be shrinking.
8. Nutanix Earnings: Revenue at hyperconverged software specialist Nutanix grew 41 percent to $289.4 in Q3 2018, beating Wall Street's expectations. But earnings fell short of expectations, and a mixed outlook for Q4 2018 concerned some investors. Still, shares were up more than 55 percent so far this year ahead of the earnings announcement, CNBC notes.
7. Distribution - Talent: Tech Data has appointed Raffaelo Piccolo as managing director, Mexico effective June 1, 2018, to focus on "profitable revenue generation." His key initiatives are to "cultivate hypergrowth, new business development and enhanced vendor relationships. Piccolo will be based in Mexico City and report to Deena Piquion, vice president and general manager, Latin America and Caribbean."
6. Parters of the Year: VMware this week honored these partners as the best of the best.
5. Talent: Blackbaud has named Susan Connors president and general manager of its Managed Services business. The business provides operational services—from database, campaign and digital management to staff augmentation and more—to help customers scale their impact with measurable outcomes and increased efficiency, Blackbaud claims.
4. Beyond APM: Dynatrace is extending beyond its application performance monitoring (APM) heritage. The software company has launched Management Zones, which provides software insights based on a user’s role and access rights. The value: Organizations can ensure each user sees the information they need to improve their productivity without compromising security, Dynatrace asserts.
3. Momentum - PSA: Kimble Applications continues to win PSA (professional services automation) deals across multiple types of customer segments -- including IT consulting firms and software companies. Still, we don't want to hype the wins since we don't have a feel for Kimble's actual revenue or profit figures...
2. M&A Spending: Merger mania is back with a vengeance this year, CNN Money says. Companies have announced more than $2 trillion in deals so far in 2018, the report says. That's a record pace for merger activity, topping the deal volume from the first few months of 2007, CNN Money says while citing Thomson Reuters for the figures...
1. Millennials & Retirement: So much for conventional wisdom, which suggests millennials will suffocate under a pile of personal debt. In reality, millennials are most likely of all demographic groups to have set specific retirement goals and have the highest amount of savings—relative to age—in group retirement plans, according to a J.D. Power 2018 Group Retirement Satisfaction Survey. We'll share more thoughts soon.
