5 Channel Partner Updates: Thursday 19 March 2020 -

Here are five (actually a bit more) technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Thursday, March 19, 2020. Sip up.

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A. What’s Hot Today

1. Today – SOCaaS Considerations for MSPs: Join the live webcast today (March 19).

2. Free Tools to Assist Work From Home: Here’s the list, updated daily.

3. Private Equity - Dry Powder Drying Up?: If you think private equity firms are well positioned to make investments during the coronavirus pandemic, give this article a read for some clarification and context on how dry powder can potentially disappear.

4. IT Management: Park Place Technologies has unveiled PPTechMobile, a mobile application that will give customers real-time access to maintenance events in their data center and IT infrastructure. The mobile app, like the Park Place customer portal, allows customers to:

Submit, edit and view incidents
Monitor escalation process
Access all contracted assets

We're checking to see if the offering is multi-tenant for MSPs.

5. DevOps - Public Cloud MSP: 2nd Watch, a Top 200 Public Cloud MSP, has unveiled 2nd Watch Managed DevOps. The new offering is for clients that want the benefits of a DevOps culture, mode of operations, and tool stack powered by GitLab, without the hassle of configuring, deploying and managing the model on their own, the company says.

6. Collaboration Services- Partner: Telarus is now a master agent for Avaya Cloud Office by RingCentral offering. Avaya Cloud Office is an all-in-one collaboration solution providing communications, file sharing, and collaboration capabilities across unified voice, video, messaging, digital customer engagement, and meetings. Telarus will provide this new Avaya UCaaS offer to its extensive network of over 4,000 technology brokers, the company says.

7. Financial Results - Accenture: The company delivered stronger-than-expected quarterly results this morning, though keep in mind they don't fully reflect the current coronavirus pandemic -- and its escalating business impact.

8. Cloud Communications: NTT has launched a new Cloud Communications division. Previously known as Arkadin, the Cloud Communications division delivers NTT's Intelligent Workplace solutions.

9. Funding - Cloud Governance: CoreStack, a Seattle-based venture-backed startup that empowers enterprises to achieve continuous and autonomous cloud governance at scale, has announced an $8.5 million Series A funding round led by Naya Ventures, the company says.

10. Apple - New iPad Pro and MacBook Air: Apple has announced a new iPad Pro that's "more powerful than most Windows PC laptops," the company says. Also, Apple unveiled a MacBook Air refresh that starts at $999.