Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Wednesday, January 3, 2018.
Actually, there are 13 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:
13. Talent Part One: Cohesity has hired Nimble Storage and NetApp veteran Keith Macove as senior director of North America channel sales. Cohesity, a fast-growing startup, specializes in secondary storage data consolidation.
12. Talent Part Two: T2 Tech Group, a healthcare-focused IT consulting firm in Los Angeles, has promoted Leigh Sleeman to partner. He previously was senior program manager, with a 17-year career in healthcare technology.
11. Funding - Disaster Recovery: One Concern has raised $20 million in Series A funding. The company develops artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies for next-generation disaster recovery. This isn't your typical business continuity story. Instead, One Concern focuses on technologies that allow communities and people to prepare mitigate, respond and recover from major disasters like earthquakes...
10. Abandoning Oracle?: Amazon and Salesforce are shifting workloads away from Oracle databases toward open source and homegrown alternatives, according to The Information. The report pressured Oracle's stock on Tuesday, but some skeptics think the story is overblown. A Drexel Hamilton financial analyst even called the report fake news...
9. Amazon vs Red Hat: Amazon's latest Linux 2 launch has some pundits worried about Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)... I've owned a few Red Hat shares for roughly a decade and I'm not ready to press the panic button. Yet.
8. Rural Broadband Expansion: Microsoft is partnering with organizations across the country to form Connect Americans Now (CAN), a coalition that will pressure policymakers to help bring broadband internet access to rural America, GeekWire reports. Hmmm... Sort of sounds like a next-generation MuniWireless movement.
7. Thank You: To The 2112 Group CEO and Chief Analyst Larry Walsh for a 30-second conversation yesterday. Rush vs. Pink Floyd? (Nope.) Patriots vs. Jets recap? (Please, no.) Star Trek vs. Star Wars (Not this particular conversation). The end of cloud, server and PC performance as we know it? Perhaps...
6. M&A - Apple iOS: Apple has acquired BuddyBuild, a mobile app development service provider. Financial terms were not disclosed. BuddyBuild launched in October 2015 and raised $7.6 million in Series A funding in May 2016. The company provides a "seamless continuous integration, continuous delivery, user feedback and crash reporting solution for mobile teams."
5. M&A - IoT Distribution: Arrow Electronics is acquiring eInfochips, a design and managed services company focused on IoT solutions for retail, healthcare, aerospace and other vertical markets. eInfochips, which has 1,500 employees, will expand Arrow’s IoT “sensor-to-sunset” platform by adding engineering, solution architecture, embedded software development, security, mobile device connectivity, app development, cloud configuration and management, and managed services, Arrow indicated. Financial terms were not disclosed.
4. M&A - IT Services Providers: Three deals caught our attention in recent hours. They include:
- Zumasys acquiring TCS Network Consulting;
- CloudScale365 acquiring FuturTech Consulting; and
- TrueIT finalizing the Summit Group buyout for Microsoft Dynamics expertise.
We'll share more details about each M&A deal later today.
3. Amazon and Next-Generation MSPs: We've already highlighted to the Top 50 MSPs for Amazon Web Services. But how can MSPs actually build profitable AWS consulting, migration and managed services business practices? The cloud giant and Forrester Research claim they've found the answers. We'll share more details really soon...
2. Top 100 MSP Buyers and Sellers: Who are they? We'll reveal the list on January 18 during our next webcast. Register now.
1. Hmmm: Keep your eyes on the MSP software sector... Something other than a blizzard is on the way.
