5 Channel Partner Updates: Wednesday 22 January 2020

Here are five (actually, a bit more…) technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Wednesday, January 22, 2020. Sip up.

Our Daily Brew

A. What’s Hot Today

1. M&A - MSSP: ActZero has acquired IntelliGO Networks, a Top 200 MSSP and Top 20 MDR cybersecurity service provider. This is M&A deal Number 71 that MSSP Alert and ChannelE2E have covered in 2020. See the complete M&A deal list here.

2. M&A - Collaboration: CollabNet and XebiaLabs, backed by private equity firm TPG Capital, have merged to create an end-to-end Agile DevOps platform for enterprises. Also, Broadcom veteran Ashok Reddy has been named CEO. Financial terms were not disclosed.'

3. Funding - DevOps: Sysdig has raised $70 million in Series E funding led by Insight Partners with participation from previous investors, Bain Capital Ventures and Accel. Glynn Capital also joined this round, along with Goldman Sachs. Sysdig’s total funding to date is $206 million.

4. Funding - Cloud Integration: TriggerMesh, a Kubernetes based cloud native integration platform provider, has raised $3 million in seed funding led by Index Ventures and Crane Venture Partners. TriggerMesh's platform seeks to enable organizations to build applications that span multiple cloud and data center environments.

5. Talent - Unified Communications: Broadvoice COO George Mitsopoulos is shifting to the newly formed chief product officer (CPO) position. He will oversee strategy and execution of all product-related activities, including establishing a product vision, product innovation, product development, product design, software engineering and network operations. Herb Pyles succeeds Mitsopoulos as COO.

6. IBM Revenues: IBM reported a slight increase in quarterly revenue, ending a streak of falling sales and providing a first indication CEO Ginni Rometty’s roughly $33 billion acquisition of open-source software giant Red Hat may help turn around Big Blue’s fortunes, The Wall Street Journal reports.

7. PSA Software: HarmonyPSA is now has Apple iOS and Google Android applications. The apps offer largely the same comprehensive functionality as the Harmony PSA platform, the company says.

B. Partner Programs and Strategic Alliances

1. Robotic Process Automation (RPA): UiPath has announced a new partner enablement strategy designed to extend its advanced training platform for its partners. Keep an eye on the UiPath Academy for Partners, which allows partners to customize their approach to enablement, achieve profitability and establish differentiation in the market, the company asserts.

2. Cisco-SAP Partnership: Cisco Systems is touting several partnership developments with SAP, including SAP Data Hub on Cisco Container Platform; AppDynamics monitoring SAP environments; Cisco DNA spaces; and Cisco Data Center Solutions for SAP. Context about the partnership surfaced in a blog from Robert Madl, Cisco's ambassador for the SAP relationship.

3. Microsoft Partner Business Unit: HCL Technologies (HCL) has launched an HCL Microsoft Business Unit focused on Microsoft technologies -- particularly Business Applications, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Microsoft Azure, IoT, and AI/Machine Learning, Microsoft 365 and Windows 10. The business unit integrates one of the largest Microsoft Dynamics practices in the world with PowerObjects, an HCL company, and will bring together more than 5,500 professionals, reaching more than 2000 customers, HCL says.

4. Canada - Managed Print Services: The Government of Canada has named Ricoh Canada Inc. one of three managed print services (MPS) providers, Ricoh says.

5. Channel Growth - Hybrid Infrastructure Management: Virtana, formerly named Virtual Instruments, generated nearly 50% growth in channel-initiated business, and 50% growth in its cloud services business over the past 12 months, the company says. Actual revenue and dollar figures were not disclosed.

6. Distribution: Telarus, the largest privately-held distributor and Master Agent of business cloud infrastructure and contact center services, has agreed to offer Peerless Network, a  provider of telecommunications services.

7. Talent - SMB Distribution: D&H Distributing has promoted Trevor May to VP of  Purchasing, US & Canada. He will work to further improve partner experiences and ease-of-doing business with D&H, the distributor says.

8. Partnership - Cloud Storage: Wasabi, the hot cloud storage company, has partnered with Quest Software to leverage cost-effective cloud storage directly through the Quest QoreStor user interface, the companies say.

9. DevOps Partners: CircleCI has announced a suite of orb integrations with 20 partners such as Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, Salesforce, among others. These orbs allow developers to automate deploys in minutes directly from their CI/CD pipeline, the company says.

10. Partner Program - Application Development: Progress has launched Progress Accelerate, a global partner program framed around Forrester Researcher Principal Analyst Jay McBain's Trifurcated Channel Model observations. The partner program includes:

In addition, Progress provides a dedicated global partner operations team available to ensure technical, sales and business-related questions and needs are addressed, the company says.

C. Upcoming Technology Conferences

Got news to share for our morning update? Email me: [email protected].