Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Tuesday, January 9, 2018.
Actually, there are 16 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…
17. Channel Dictionary: The 2112 Group built one. Very nice.
16. Resignation: Lenovo North America Channel Chief Sammy Kinlaw has resigned to pursue an opportunity outside of the PC and hardware giant, a spokesperson has confirmed to ChannelE2E. Rob Cato will be interim NA Channel Chief, the hardware giant has confirmed.
15. Seagate Momentum: The storage hardware specialist increased its revenue forecast for the current quarterly, and reportedly invested in a crypto currency startup. Seagate's stock surged about 7 percent yesterday on the reports.
14. GoPro Falls From the Sky: Apparently, even a great brand can't save a company from dramatic market shifts coupled with bad business moves. GoPro's stock fell 27 percent yesterday when the company announced weaker-than-expected quarterly results, layoffs and an exit from the drone market.
13. Samsung Warning: Apparently, Samung profits aren't growing as quickly as some investors would like...
12. Fallen Unicorn: Practice Fusion, an electronic health records (EHR) software specialist, has been acquired. The company's valuation once reached nearly $1.5 billion. But once the EHR hype settled down, Practice Fusion's valuation plummeted. AllScripts paid just $100 million in cash to acquire the humbled startup.
11. Venture Capital Bubble?: Funding to billion-dollar companies hit an all-time high in 2017 but the number of venture-capital-backed exits hit its lowest point since 2011, according to PitchBook. Amid those two data points, is a venture capital bubble about to pop? Hmmm...
Continue to page two for items 10 to 1.
Welcome to page two. Here are items to to 1 for today.
10. Talent - Tomorrow's Leaders: More teenagers, especially girls, are open to the possibility of a career in IT, according to a research report released by CompTIA. Seven in ten teenagers surveyed for the CompTIA report “Youth Opinions of Careers in Information Technology” say they are open to the possibility of a career in the tech arena. That’s up from 62 percent in a 2015 CompTIA survey, the organization says. Increasing interest among girls is driving the positive momentum. In the latest survey 62 percent of girls between the ages of 13 and 17 said they would consider a tech career, an increase of 11 percentage points from 2015. Among boys, 80 percent have considered technology as a career option to some degree, up from 72 percent in 2015, the report finds.
9. Talent - Storage: Cohesity, which specializes in hyperconverged secondary storage,has named Lynn Lucas as its inaugural chief marketing officer. The news comes only a few days after Cohesity hired Nimble Storage and NetApp veteran Keith Macove as senior director of North America channel sales. Cohesity increased its revenues 600 percent in 2017 vs. 2016, though actual dollar figures were not disclosed.
8. Talent - Network Services: Windstream has named Eric Solomon as VP of channel sales for the western region, reporting to Senior VP Curt Allen. Solomon has more than 15 years’ experience in the industry and comes to Windstream from Masergy, where he was global account manager working with master agents and channel partners. Earlier, Solomon worked at Windstream where he was a top-performing senior sales channel manager for eight years. Winstream is attempting to regain momentum after a challenging 2017, which involved layoffs and a surprise dividend cut that upset investors. Still, there are signs of progress and financial health -- including Windstream's recent MassComm acquisition.
7. Funding - Application Performance: Apcela, focused on high-performance application delivery, has closed additional funding from existing investor Claritas Capital and appointed Jack Dziak as President and COO. Mark Casey remains CEO. Dziak previously was EVP, global products at Sungard Availability Services. Earlier, he held C-level positions with Neustar, Sprint Nextel, and MCI Communications, and key posts at Coopers & Lybrand as well as Accenture.
6. Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs): Cargas Systems Inc., a business software and consulting company, is gradually transitioning to an ESOP ownership model. CEO Chip Cargas owns about 40 percent of the company, and the remaining 60 percent is held by roughly 70 of the firm's 100 employees, according to Central Penn Business Journal. ESOP business models could become more popular as SMB owners age out of the market and attempt to transition their businesses to employees. The ESOP model has multiple business advantages but also comes with some risks -- especially if the business has inconsistent revenue and profit performance.
5. MSP Platforms: The 20, a business development group for MSPs, has expanded its executive team. Director Ciera Cole has been promoted to COO. Roland Technology Group CIO Jonathan Blakey has joined The 20 as CIO. And Marketing Manager Karen Wong has been promoted to CMO. The 20, led by CEO Tim Conkle, offers an RMM, PSA, and documentation platform along with a US-based support desk and NOC.
4. SolarWinds MSP for iOS, Android: SolarWinds MSP's N-central Mobile app is now available on Apple iOS and Google Android devices, allowing MSPs to manage their dashboards, review alerts, and launch scripts at any time from their smartphone or tablet, the company says.
3. M&A - Log Management: SolarWinds has acquired Loggly, a provider of cloud-based log monitoring and log analytics software. Loggly is a SaaS-based, unified log monitoring and log analytics product, that aggregates, structures, and summarizes log data so users can analyze and visualize their data to answer key questions, spot trends, and deliver actionable reports, the companies say. The deal aligns with SolarWinds' existing SaaS portfolio -- including Papertrail, AppOptics and Pingdom. We're checking to see if or how SolarWinds will extend Loggly to the SolarWinds MSP business unit.
2. Momentum - Business Continuity: Veeam Software generated $827 million in total bookings revenue for 2017, up 36% year-over-year. Veeam Channel Chief Kevin Rooney described some of the major partner program moves, milestones and priorities to ChannelE2E late last year. We'll share more details later today.
1. Last Call -- Top 100 Vertical Market MSPs: Complete the survey here by Friday, January 12. Once submitted, your company could be ranked among the Top 100 Vertical Market MSPs when we unveil results in February. Yes indeed: February.
