Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Tuesday, November 15, 2016.
Actually, there are 13 entries 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. Help Wanted: ISG Technology seeks an HR generalist; Carbonite seeks a channel account manager and Continuum seeks a senior partner development manager. Those positions and more are now listed on the ChannelE2E Job Board. Post and promote your open positions here.
12. Australia MSPs Merge: Sydney managed services provider RDP IT has merged with CRM and data analytics firm BICG Australia in an effort to business intelligence solutions across Australia, in addition to development, cloud, recruitment and managed services, CRN Australia reported. To track all VAR, MSP and CSP mergers, visit the ChannelE2E Milestones section daily.
11. Internet Industry Letter to Trump: U.S. internet companies including Facebook and Amazon have sent President-elect Donald Trump a detailed list of their policy priorities, according to Reuters. The policy priorities include promoting strong encryption, immigration reform and maintaining liability protections from content that users share on their platforms. During the presidential campaign, Trump made statements that conflict with some of the letter's content.
10. No Succession Plan?: Imagine building a business worth from $500 million to $1 billion -- but you don't really have a succession plan in place. That's sort of the situation facing IDG, the massive publisher launched by the late Pat McGovern. The publisher has been up for sale for more than a year, and IDG could soon be sold to a Chinese investment firm, according to Reuters. McGovern, an IT media industry legend, died in 2014.
9. Apple Wearable Computing: Apple may make another move into the wearable computing market. Stepping beyond smart watches, the company may launch some sort of Apple digital glasses product...
8. Prosper CEO Change: Online lending marketplaces aren't what they used to be. The latest case in point: Prosper has changed CEOs. Aaron Vermut is stepping down and the company's CFO will move up to the CEO slot.
7. Startup Valuations Slipping: Startup valuations reached all-time highs in 2014 and 2015, and have since fallen to their 12-year averages, according to analysis from Fenwick & West.
6. New Relic Partner Momentum: New Relic, which specializes in application performance monitoring and infrastructure management tools, is hosting a partner day conference today in San Francisco. Among the partners making some noise at the conference: SHI International (most revenue growth on the platform); UXB and ProtoSecurity (geographic and vertical momentum); and Pivotal and Digitas for their first-year momentum in the program. A broader customer conference, New Relic FutureStack 2016, kicks off tomorrow. ChannelE2E is set to interview CEO Lew Cirne and Channel Chief John Gray at the conference.
5. Multi-Cloud Management: Scalr has launched native support for VMware vSphere deployments. Scalr claims it offers a single pane of glass to manage resources, enforce policy, and control costs across public and private clouds such as AWS, Azure, Docker, Google, OpenStack, and now vSphere.
4. SD-WAN Call Monitoring: VeloCloud Networks has unveiled an SD-WAN solution that supports Voice Quality Monitoring (VQM) capabilities. VeloCloud VQM enables service providers and Enterprises to monitor, diagnose and proactively troubleshoot network issues impacting voice communications, the company claims.
3. ESOP Lawsuit: The U.S. Department of Labor has sued the fiduciaries of a Virginia-based Employee Stock Ownership Plan. The department alleges that the defendants failed to protect the assets of the plan. Although the lawsuit doesn't involve a tech company, it's important reading for any owners and employees who are mulling an ESOP strategy.
2. Kaspersky Declares War Against Microsoft: Kaspersky Lab founder Eugene Kaspersky alleges that Microsoft is using anti-competitive practices to harm his anti-virus security business and customers. In a blog he says Kaspersky is reaching out to the European Union and Russia to force Microsoft to address three issues:
To oblige Microsoft (i) to provide new versions and updates of Windows to independent developers in good time so they can maintain compatibility of their software to Windows; (ii) explicitly inform the user of the presence of incompatible software before upgrading Windows and recommend the user to install a compatible version of the software after the upgrade; (iii) always explicitly ask the user for his/her approval to enable Windows Defender.
ChannelE2E has reached out to Microsoft for comment. We'll update this entry with Microsoft's statement if we receive one.
1. Rest of This Week: ChannelE2E will be in California attending New Relic FutureStack 16, which will focus heavily on APM and infrastructure monitoring. Want to potentially meet at the conference? Email me: [email protected].
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