Good morning, channel partners. And thanks for all of your readership this week (there's been quite a bit of it). To keep the party going, here are five technology news updates, insights, chatter and plenty more to start your day for Friday, November 6, 2015.
Actually, today's update involves 12 items for VARs, managed services providers (MSPs), cloud service providers (CSPs) to sip on.
12. Still Innovating: Michael Proper built one of the world's top MSPs around 2008. But more recently, he's been focused on ClearOS and the latest version 7 release. Proper is a sharp guy with a heck of a story in terms of life-work priorities. If you're running ClearOS I'd welcome the opportunity to hear about your experiences.
11. Cloud Monitoring M&A: New Relic, the fast-growing application monitoring service, has acquired Opsmatic, a cloud infrastructure monitoring company. Yowzers: Application-level monitoring and Infrastructure-level monitoring. If New Relic gets its partner program and MSP program right, this could be a killer combo for the channel. And by the way: New Relic announced stronger than expected earnings yesterday.
10. It's All About Setting Expectations: First, the bad news. Symantec's profit fell 36 percent in the security company's latest quarter. Now, the good news. Those results actually beat Wall Street's tepid expectations. A recent launch, dubbed Symantec Advanced Threat Protection, could help the company to compete more effectively against traditional AV providers and disruptive rivals like Cylance, CrowdStrike and FireEye.
9. Spin City: FireEye blamed weak earnings on a so-called "reduction in the threat landscape" triggered by improved relations with China. Huh? Rivals like Tanium told The Wall Street Journal that FireEye's spin on weak earnings doesn't add up, since the threat landscape is getting worse, not better.
8. Data, Dollars and Partners: Keep an eye on Tableau Software. The data-driven software company's revenue grew 64 percent to $170.8 million in its latest quarter, lifting shares a lofty 17 percent. And yes, there's a Tableau Partner Program.
7. Virtual Channel Chief: GetChanneled Co-founder Ted Roller is now acting channel chief at Mailprotector, leading the security company's sales and marketing efforts. We'll be back with more details soon.
6. Enterprise Networking: Juniper expanded its Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) portfolio this week. Keep an eye on the new Cloud CPE. It includes a service orchestration platform that allows partners to deliver and manage virtualized network services... including security.
5. From Copier Dealer to MSP: ImageQuest, a former office equipment (OE) dealer, has embraced the Continuum Managed Services platform to transform into an MSP. The proof? 75 percent of ImageQuest's revenues now involve managed IT services, and 25 percent still involve OE. Still, keep in mind that top-line revenue figures remain confidential...
4. Hadoop Part 1: MapR Technologies, one of the top providers of Hadoop for big data applications, says its Q3 bookings rose 160 percent amid low customer churn. Watch for continued channel moves now that MapR President and COO Matt Mills is in the house.
3. Hadoop Part 2: Hortonworks, one of the leading providers of Hadoop software for big data applications, says Q3 revenue surged 159 percent to $33.1 million. Yet the company's stock fell nearly 19 percent on Thursday and it's now trading near a 52-week low. Why? Wall Street wants even faster growth and investors are worried about continued losses, including a $32.5 million loss in the latest quarter...
2. On the Move: Rumor has it channel veteran and MSP expert Dan Wensley may be taking on a bigger role at Passportal, the password automation company that works closely with MSPs. So, is Wensley going to be Passportal's channel chief? Hmmm... think bigger. Bush, Obama and ...
1. Amazon's Cloud Valuation -- Be Careful: Amazon Web Services is now valued at $160 billion, according to Deutsche Bank. Sure, AWS is successful. But let's be really careful here. Look at the math and the risks. First, annual revenues for AWS are running at about $8 billion -- meaning that the business is worth 20 times revenues? Not likely. Second, how many Unicorns -- you know, the big startups bound to die -- run their infrastructure in Amazon? The answer is likely "a lot of them." When the Unicorn bubble bursts, Amazon will take a serious hit. Hey, that almost deserves a separate blog entry...
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