Good morning, channel partners. Here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter, and plenty more to start your day for Thursday, January 19, 2017.
Actually, there are 15 timely 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…
15. Oracle Lawsuit: The U.S. Department of Labor has sued Oracle, alleging the technology giant routinely pays white male workers more than their counterparts in the same positions, The Wall Street Journal reports. Um... does that mean all companies are being put on notice to close the gender wage gap?
14. Fastest-Growing Technology Certifications: The 25 fastest-growing technology certifications right now are...
13. IT Service Management Acquisition: ServiceNow has acquired DxContinuum, which develops algorithms for machine learning and predictive analytics. What does all that mean? ServiceNow's IT service management platform continues its push toward more intelligence, more automation and more insights. Beneficiaries should include IT support professionals along with sales teams...
12. Distribution: Arrow Electronics is one of Informatica's first authorized distributors in North America. Informatica, which develops data management solutions, is making a channel push this year. Senior VP Rodney Foreman is leading the charge.
11. Application vs. Infrastructure Management: What's more important... Application Performance Management (APM) or Infrastructure Performance Management (IPM)? Virtual Instruments wants it both ways... and is blending the two terms to prove it. The company positions itself as "the leader in application-centric infrastructure performance management." Hmmmm... Virtual Instruments turned a profit in 2016. Among the reasons: Acquiring Xangati and promoting the Load DynamiX platform for hybrid data center management.
10. APM - AppDynamics vs. New Relic: If you're trying to get a feel for the application performance management (APM) market, take a look at perceived market leaders like AppDynamics (preparing to IPO) and New Relic (already publicly held). This chart gives you a snapshot look at AppDynamics and New Relic business KPIs so far...
9. Managed Cloud Win: Fusion has signed a three year, $100,000 managed cloud services contract with a software company in Washington, D.C. The deal involves Apptix, which Fusion acquired in November 2016.
8. Government Cloud Win: CenturyLink has won a 10-year NASPO ValuePoint Cloud Solutions Master Agreement, which allows CenturyLink to sell the company's cloud solutions to state and local governments. Potential options include CenturyLink's FedRAMP-certified government cloud. Master Agreements are awarded to cloud solution providers whose offerings meet stringent security and data protection requirements, CenturyLink notes.
7. Slowing Cloud Growth?: CIOs expect to shift 21% of their company’s applications to a public cloud this year, and 46% by 2020, according The Wall Street Journal. That’s up from 16% today, but down from earlier projections, based on Morgan Stanley research.
6. Accelerating Cloud Growth?: Meanwhile, Oracle CEO Mark Hurd said 80 percent of corporate data centers will be gone by 2025. Hurd continues to predict that two companies will dominate the SaaS market. Naturally, Oracle is on his list of leaders. But Hurd won't publicly predict the other company's name...
5. Channel Chief - Mimecast: HP Enterprise veteran Eli Kalil has joined Mimecast as senior VP of global channel sales. Mimecast specialists in email and data security.
4. Channel Chief - Dell Boomi: Dell Boomi has named David Tavolaro as VP of business development. Tavolaro oversees Boomi's global partner channel, which has grown more than 50 percent in the pat year. Boomi is a PaaS integration platform that allows customers to integration data across applications. In our view, it's one of the hidden gems within Dell Technologies...
3. IBM Earnings: IBM is expected to announce quarterly earnings sometime today. We'll share some partner insights after the quarterly results surface... Meanwhile, IBM also is preparing for PartnerWorld 2017 -- which is set for February in Las Vegas.
2. StorageCraft: What's new at StorageCraft? Hmmm... Ask me around lunch time today...
1. Top 100 Vertical Market MSPs: Participate in our Top 100 Vertical Market MSPs survey, and your company could earn honors in our annual list and report. The survey runs now through March 2017, with results in April.
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