Channel Brief: Flexera Overhauls Channel Program for 2025

After Pat Gelsinger stepped down as Intel's CEO, the company's interim co-CEO, Michelle Johnston Holthaus, took to the stage at Barclay's technology conference and threw a little FUD into the mix.

As Paul Barker at CIO reported, "Michelle Johnston Holthaus appears to be trying to scare buyers off the rival processor architecture. ... Holthaus said, “[I]f you look at the return rate for ARM PCs, you go talk to any retailer, their number one concern is, ‘I get a large percentage of these back because you go to set them up and the things that we just expect [to work], don’t work.’”

Barker's piece attempts to confirm the claims that ARM-based PCs have a higher return rate, but neither analysts nor channel partners nor OEMs provided actual evidence or data that this is the case.

What's your take? Do you have to return ARM PCs because of interoperability challenges?

As always, drop me a line at [email protected] if you have news to share or want to say hi!

Grab your coffee. Here's what you need to know today.

Today’s Tech, Channel and MSP News

1. Flexera plans channel program changes for 2025: Tech spending and risk management firm Flexera will make significant investments into its channel partner program in 2025, the company said. After acquiring Snow Software, Flexera will integrate Snow Software benefits and expand the focus on MSPs with additional capabilities in FinOps, IT asset management (ITAM) and SaaS management. Flexera also plans to release a new partner services layer for Flexera One applications.

2. Bitdefender's technology alliance program: Bitdefender this week announced a new technology alliance partner (TAP) program. The program allows resellers and MSPs to optimize security operations across multivendor environments by streamlining the building, testing, validating and documenting of interoperability between partner solutions and Bitdefender's GravityZone platform, the company said.

3. Dashlane launches reseller/channel program: Credential security firm Dashlane this week announced it will launch a channel partner program. The tiered program will offer training, access to sales and marketing resources, and certifications, among other benefits, the company said.

4. Trace3 acquires Zivaro for fed expansion: Irvine, California-based solution provider Trace3 has acquired Zivaro to significantly expand its reach into the federal government and state, local and education (SLED) market. Trace3 also gains a major presence in the Denver area where Zivaro is based.

5. Cisco plans to acquire SnapAttack: Cisco this week announced it plans to acquire SnapAttack, a privately held company headquartered in Arlington, VA that offers a threat detection and engineering platform. The acquisition would bring SnapAttack's threat detection/ endangering (TD/E) management lifecycle solution under Cisco's Splunk umbrella to streamline the research, writing, validation and deployment of threat detections, Cisco said.  Partners and customers will more easily migrate their security content to Splunk and modernize their SIEM, the companies said.   

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