Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Wednesday, February 14, 2018.
Actually, there are 17 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. Major Government SMB Errors? Certain U.S. government agencies incorrectly classified EY and PricewaterhouseCoopers as "SMEs" (small and midsize enterprises) for government contract bids and wins. The serious error means some agencies may be overstating how effectively they work with SME partners...
16. Managed Print Services: Xerox has launched MPS Essentials Suite -- a managed print services bundle to help partners drive SMB recurring revenues.
15. Hardware Ain't Dead: The U.S. B2B indirect hardware market reached $57 billion in 2017, up four percent vs. 2016, according to The NPD Group’s Distributor Track and Commercial Reseller Tracking Service. This increase outpaced the annual U.S. GDP growth and demonstrates the strength of the hardware market in the B2B channel, which is being driven by segments such as PCs and networking devices, the market watcher says.
14. Momentum: Cloudian, an enterprise object storage system specialist, grew its customer base by 100 percent in 2017, and revenues hit a new record every quarter in the year. The company did not disclose actual dollar figures.
13. Talent - MSPs: Vology has hired Jay Grubbs as VP of sales. He'll focus on driving revenue growth at the managed IT services provider. He previously held a similar post at Tracker.
12. Partner Program - Colocation: vXchnge, a colocation data center services provider, has launched a channel partner program. Launch members include Unitas Global, Bridgepointe Technologies, Avant and MicroCorp, the company says.
11. Partner Program - Oracle NetSuite: ERA Consulting Group, Smartbridge, Softengine and Vibrant Inc. have joined Oracle NetSuite's partner program and launched cloud ERP practices. Related: NetSuite Channel Chief Craig West shares his partner strategy on this podcast.
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Welcome to page two for items 10 to 1.
10. Partner Program - ServiceNow: Stefanini, a $1 billion global IT provider based in Brazil, has achieved the ServiceNow Bronze Services Partner designation. Related: ServicNow's Knowledge18 conference is set for May in Las Vegas.
9. Partner Program - Agiloft: Sequent Inc. is now an Agiloft Certified Reseller, joining the company's Partner Program. Sequent specializes in Microsoft Dynamics and SQL server deployments.
8. Cloud Revenue Run Rates: Ziff Davis crunched some numbers to come up with an annual revenue run rate chart for cloud services. Still, I think the figures are a bit misleading since AWS's cloud business is so clearly defined, and I suspect figures for Microsoft and IBM lump in a range of services beyond IaaS and SaaS.
7. M&A - Distribution: Private equity firm Blackford Capital has acquired Online Tech Stores (OTS), a wholesale distributor of aftermarket imaging supplies and accessories, including: laser printer toner cartridges, ink cartridges, toner, copier toner, ribbons, thermal fax consumables, and other products and peripherals. Financial terms were not disclosed.
6. M&A - WaaS: CloudJumper has acquired IndependenceIT, essentially assuring that CloudJumper controls its technical destiny in the workspace as a service (WaaS) market. CloudJumper, which has an MSP-friendly approach to business, had been an IndependenceIT partner and customer, leveraging some of the company's technology for WaaS capabilities.
5. Office 365 Backup: More than 25,000 organizations, representing 2.3 million Microsoft Office 365 mailboxes, have downloaded Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 to protect their data, Veeam says.
4. Apple Macs & MSPs Partner Conference: The first ever Addigy Partner Summit for Apple Mac-focused MSPs and VARs is set for late February in Miami.
3. DattoCon18 Keynote Speaker: Herjavec Group CEO Robert Herjavec will keynote DattoCon18 in June. Herjavec had been scheduled to keynote Autotask Community Live in September 2018. That Autotask conference recently merged into DattoCon. Of course, Robert is on Shark Tank. But we prefer to put the spotlight on his security know-how: Herjavec Group is a Top 100 MSSP, according to our sister site MSSP Alert.
2. PSA Integration: Pulseway has expanded its PSA (professional services automation) integrations to include CustomerThermometer and QuoteWerks. Also, Pulseway's RMM (remote monitoring and management) platform now has new operating system patch management capabilities for MSPs and enterprises. The IT management software provider claims the updates allow users to more effectively address vulnerabilities like Spectre and Meltdown.
1. Thursday: Join our Webcast as we unveil the Top 100 Vertical Market MSPs for 2018.
