5 Channel Partner Updates: Thursday 19 July 2018 -

Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Thursday, July 19, 2018.

Actually, there are 12 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:

12. AWS vs Cisco Networking Myth: Amazon has denied that it plans to challenge Cisco in the network switch market. A report claiming Amazon planned to sell home-grown network switches had pressured Cisco's stock late last week...

11. More Lexmark Layoffs: Here are the early details.

10. All-Flash Storage: Pure Storage has unveiled announced FlashStack with FlashBlade to accelerate data warehouses...

9. HP Workstations: HP Inc. has unveiled new HP Z Workstations for product designers, architects, creative professionals, OEMs, educators and financial/office workers...

8. SAP Momentum: The software giant has raised its cloud revenue expectations for 2018...

7. IBM Momentum: IBM's latest quarterly revenues and profits beat Wall Street's expectations. Revenue for Q2 2018 was $20 billion, or roughly $120 million higher than expected. Cybersecurity revenues rose more than 80 percent to hit $1 billion in the quarter.

6. Microsoft Azure Cloud MSPs: Smartronix and Hanu are the latest companies to join the Microsoft Azure Expert Managed Service Provider (MSP) program. Microsoft formally announced the MSP program earlier this month...

5. Distribution and Microsoft Azure: Tech Data has agreed to distribute Advantech, which develops embedded and automation products and solutions for IoT. The solutions will be preconfigured for Microsoft Azure and related Microsoft services such as Power BI. Also, Tech Data has formed a strategic partnership with Keonn Technologies, a manufacturer of radio frequency identification (RFID) hardware and software products. The companies will deliver retail inventory systems hosted on Azure.

4. Talent - Data Protection: Druva has hired Infoblox veteran Thorsten Freitag as chief revenue officer (CRO) and Splunk veteran Sherry Lowe as chief marketing officer (CMO). They report directly to CEO Jaspreet Singh.

3. Business Continuity - Partnership: Sungard Availability Services (Sungard AS) has unveiled an enhanced Cloud Recovery – Virtual Servers service, which leverages a partnership with Zerto.

2. Field Service Talent: Watch for Techadox to make its on-demand labor workforce pitch at CompTIA ChannelCon later this month.

1. IT Automation: SolarWinds has unveiled multiple updates across its software portfolio. The updates include:

Log Manager for Orion, a new log management tool for on-premises IT environments.
SolarWinds N-central 12.0 for MSPs, which features deeper PSA application integration, enhanced patch management, and NetPath — which is also available on SolarWinds RMM.

We'll share more perspectives about the SolarWinds moves in the next day or so...