Category Archives for "Managed Services News"

Cloud and data center services provider Nutanix could be up for sale soon. The company is getting takeover interest.

Private equity firms or other big players in tech could be potential buyers, the Wall Street Journal reported. The paper cited “people familiar with the matter” who also said it’s “far from certain” that there will be an agreement. Those same people didn’t specifically name the potential buyers.

Nutanix specializes in software-defined storage, cloud infrastructure, disaster recovery, security and more. The company also has been large strides in hybrid cloud management.

Nutanix went public back in 2016. It’s coming off a stellar quarter, where it reported revenue of nearly $386 million. That beat analysts’ expectations. The company claims its technology is used by more than 22,000 organizations globally, Silicon Angle noted.

On the channel front, Nutanix just last month enhanced its partner program. The move comes as the company tries to shift away from legacy compensation and sales models. Think subscriptions. Changes to Nutanix Elevate include the New Business Individual Incentive. This mean paying partners’ salespeople and engineers when they sell Nutanix into net-new accounts. Another change is a pilot program for an incentive that pays select partners for consistent, on-time renewals. Furthermore, Nutanix Elevate now features a channel-led selling rebate. This is for partners how handle deals on their own throughout the entire sales cycle.

Wall Street likes the idea of a Nutanix takeover. The company’s stock price jumped almost 25% on Friday after the news broke. It continued to ride that wave a bit on Monday, up almost another 1%.

AT&T and its various channel programs are putting more investments into partner choice and enablement. This comes as the Dallas-based carrier doubles down on core competencies.

That statement comes from Randall Porter, who stepped into the role of  AT&T’s indirect channel lead this past summer. Porter, who oversees sales and partner management for the AT&T Partner Exchange, AT&T Alliance Channel and ACC Business programs, said AT&T will continue “leaning in heavily” into the indirect channel. He said the carrier will make updates to its partner portal and deal registration process in the upcoming quarters. He also said AT&T will give partners more intelligent data about potential customers.

“When we talk about leaning in more heavily to our partners, it really comes down to two things: providing them choice and providing enablement,” Porter told Channel Futures.

AT&T’s Randall Porter

Porter three months ago accepted the role of vice president, AT&T channel chief. That came amid a shift that more closely aligned AT&T Partner Exchange, Alliance Channel and ACC Business under Porter’s leadership. He reports to Sarita Rao, senior vice president, integrated and partner solutions at AT&T. Rao oversees those three AT&T channel programs, in addition to the wholesale and hyperscaler groups.

AT&T’s Sarita Rao

Porter said AT&T forecasts an increasing reliance on partners for applications and managed services that complement AT&T’s investments in fiber and 5G.

“Given that opportunity for growth both in new and existing customers with partners, we felt like it was the right decision to pull the entire indirect ecosystem together under Sarita’s leadership,” he said.

Realignment

AT&T’s different partner programs have historically varied quite significantly. The Alliance Channel carries an association with the agent/advisor channel and teamed selling (although the program recently unveiled a non-teamed track and changed the way it differentiates between subagents and TSDs). ACC Business was historically associated with non-teamed sales and residual commissions. Partner Exchange (APEX) started in 2011 as a resale program for partners providing full management. Moreover, Porter said Alliance and ACC aligned directly with AT&T’s national business markets sales organization, co-selling into a large number of retail customers. Partner Exchange, on the other hand, aligned more closely with wholesale.

However, Porter said AT&T chose to change those alignments as it continued to grow its indirect efforts.

“As we developed a plan for growing indirect overall and ensuring that we had enough leadership and resources behind that to scale with our partners in the market, we chose to combine all of our indirect channels across [Partner Exchange], Alliance, ACC, wholesale and our hyperscalers,” he said.

Ongoing Investments

Poter said new capabilities like deal registration will bolster the partner experience. He said deal registration differs depending on the program.

“The intent of the strategy and capability is to ensure that regardless of your program, you have the ability to register a deal to either work that on your own, down a solo path, or if needed, work it in conjunction with our direct team from a co-sales standpoint. And so the automation and the linkage into your Salesforce systems would all be there to give the capability for that choice for the partner,” he said.

He also said AT&T plans to give partners more granular enablement that involves customer data.

“[We will be] getting a lot more intelligent with our data and our leads – tying that to …

Broadcom, the Silicon Valley chipmaker, is stepping on the gas to get approval for its $61 billion VMware acquisition.

The company reportedly will try to fast-track antitrust approval from the European Union. People “familiar with the matter” told Reuters that Broadcom will cite competition from cloud giants AWS, Microsoft and Google in its quest. In other words, those companies are already so big, approving this deal won’t create more of a competitive unbalance.

Based on that fact, one of the people Reuters cited suggested that the European Commission surely wouldn’t need to go to a second phase of approval. That usually takes four months to complete.

To get to phase two, “there has to be a real competition problem – horizontal, vertical, foreclosure risk – and I think we can show those risks don’t really exist in this case,” the source told Reuters.

To this point, there has been no pursuit of EU approval by Broadcom, the source said.

VMware Acquisition by Broadcom Almost a Record-Breaker

Broadcom first announced the acquisition of cloud and virtualization giant VMware in May. If regulators give it the green light, it will be one of the biggest tech mergers in history.

The deal would expand the depth of critical infrastructure solutions that each company can provide to enterprise customers. For Broadcom, it’s a big boost to its software portfolio. Company execs predict revenue from infrastructure software sales will jump from 23% of the business to 49% once it closes. Expect VMware to keep its brand name, incorporating assets from the Broadcom Software Group.

This acquisition follows on Broadcom’s significant acquisitions of Symantec and CA Technologies over the past few years. When announcing the VMware deal, the company only said it expected it to close sometime during its 2023 fiscal year, which begins Oct. 31, 2022.

GARTNER IT SYMPOSIUM/XPO — Over the last two years, CIOs and IT executives have faced swings in the economy, along with the complexities of the COVID era.

In uncertain and tumultuous times, leaders should embrace what’s called IT for sustainable growth.

That’s according to analysts who espoused its benefits during the opening keynote of the Gartner Symposium/Xpo Monday in Orlando, Florida.

CIOs and IT executives can foster this growth — one that considers digital investments that deliver repeatable financial and performance results in an efficient and responsible way.

Three strategies embody sustainable growth: revolutionary work, responsible investment and resilient cybersecurity.

How to Revolutionize Work

Tina Nunno is distinguished VP analyst at Gartner.

Gartner’s Tina Nunno

“We have a unique opportunity with the pandemic,” Nunno said. “So many workers at home also significantly increased their digital skill sets and their appetite for technology. Seventy-nine percent of all workers see digital technologies as essential to their jobs, and 75% see improving their digital skill sets as important to business success.”

That technological savviness means workers are unlikely to put up with insufficient workplace technologies, pushing some to leave their positions. When workers were satisfied with enterprise IT applications, they were twice as inclined to stay — and were higher performing.

“However, only 31%, or one in three, report that they have all the technology they need to work effectively,” Nunno said.

Artificial Intelligence

Besides bolstering technological resources, it is important to take the “friction” out of work, Nunno said. Friction is when work is unnecessarily hard. The more friction points an organization has, the worse employees perform, and retention remains low. By investing in digital skills and removing friction, organizations can create a workforce that is better engaged.

To have such employee participation, businesses shouldn’t be afraid to invest in AI augmentation, Nunno said. She gave the example of doctors relying on AI to improve their practice.

“The job of the physician is not to blindly follow the prediction of the AI system, but to use the data to help assess why the patient’s risk is so high and determine which types of care would best prevent the patient from becoming worse. … AI is not going to replace physicians, but physicians who use AI are going to replace physicians who don’t. The high impact workforce of the future is AI-enabled,” Nunno said.

If aggressively adopting AI sounds futuristic, try embracing the “intraverse,” a virtual office that incorporates emerging metaverse technologies. It brings employees together in immersive meetings to collaborate and innovate. Gartner predicts that immersive meeting technologies will not plateau for five to 10 years. Organizations that experiment with technologies early will attract talent who want to stay ahead of the pack.

Making Responsible Investments

The analysts reinforced the idea that sustainability includes environmental, social and governance initiatives, and IT plays an integral role.

Kristin Moyer (pictured on stage above) is distinguished VP analyst at Gartner.

“Responsible investment matters to people,” she told the crowd. “Employees get the opportunity to make a difference. Customers get solutions that align with their values, and investors get a more attractive return on your previous investments in digital.”

Being responsible means implementing what Moyer identified as the intelligent connected infrastructure (ICI). ICI combines …

Vendasta has acquired Yesware, a sales productivity platform for businesses. The two companies have worked closely for many years.

Yesware’s tools allow sales teams to track email outreach activity, test what does and doesn’t work, and share that data across teams.

Vendasta (No. 54 on the 2022 Channel Futures MSP 501) brings technology services to almost 6 million SMBs through its relationships with channel partners, such as advertising agencies and media companies. Bringing Yesware’s sales enablement technology, including email tracking and campaign management together with Vendasta’s end-to-end technology platform will extend new offerings to each company’s customers.

With the complementary technology, Vendasta’s channel partners will have access to new sales tools that drive revenue and engagement with their customers. Combining Yesware’s technology with Vendasta’s platform will help transform the way both businesses deliver critical solutions and CRM to SMB clients.

The deal marks an acceleration of both companies’ strategic growth plans. In addition, it introduces Yesware’s user base of customers to Vendasta’s end-to–end platform and sales channels.

Vendasta didn’t say how much it paid for Yesware.

Vendasta, Yesware Offer Complementary Solutions

Jeff Tomlin is Vendasta‘s co-founder and CMO.

Vendasta’s Jeff Tomlin

“The two companies did not compete head to head,” he said. “The solutions have always been complementary and hence the motivation behind the acquisition. The Yesware team brings a wealth of knowledge in the CRM and sales productivity space. Their experience and thought leadership will be invaluable as we build out our platform.”

Vendasta is focused on building the No. 1 platform for selling digital solutions to local businesses, Tomlin said.

“As such, we have placed a massive investment into our marketing automation and CRM selling system,” he said. “The addition of Yesware will provide our customers with superior tools to improve their sales productivity. On the flip side, Yesware customers will benefit from the broad range of tools and capabilities that Vendasta offers.”

Vendasta Adding Yesware Team to Its Operations

Vendasta will add Yesware’s Boston-based team to its operations. The company has offices in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada; Toronto; and Chennai, India, Tomlin said.

“Many of Yesware’s customers would be considered partners for Vendasta,” he said. “And they will gain access to everything Vendasta has to offer once we’ve integrated the two companies.”

Joel Stevenson is Yesware‘s CEO.

“Having worked closely with Vendasta for many years as one of our customers, I can confidently say that we share a vision to democratize technology for local businesses,” he said. “Both companies take a user-first approach to building an end-to-end sales platform users love that delivers results. I can’t wait to see what the Yesware team can accomplish, backed by a technology company that puts tens of millions of dollars into R&D each and every year.”

Zift Solutions is introducing ZiftOne for Ecosystems. The partner relationship management (PRM) and through-channel automation (TCMA) software provider says the new offer includes the company‘s through-partner marketing automation suite and a set of new features.

That combination works together to improve partner collaboration and sales through multiple channel partner types, the company said.

Gordon Rapkin is CEO at Zift Solutions.

Zift’s Gordon Rapkin

“We’ve seen the channel transform from selling through an individual partner to collaboration across value-added resellers (VARs), distributors, managed service providers (MSPs), and agencies to drive product value and better enable sales across different regions and geographies,” said Rapkin. “We view PRMs as the hub for companies embracing a collaborative partner program model. ZiftONE for Ecosystems offers these companies a place to host, manage and grow their partner ecosystem.”

New Features

Zift Solutions says the new ZiftOne for Ecosystems features help partners interact with a supplier’s offerings most effectively. They include:

• Partner Finder. Channel partners can search for a specific partner to meet their needs. They can also create a profile to promote themselves to other partners. Here, they can highlight skills, services and complementary products they can bring to a deal.
• Multi-Partner Deal Registration. This offers a way for partners to document if and when other partners are collaborating with them. This can include non-transacting partners who had an influence on the deal closing. This gives customers of ZiftOne for Ecosystems a more accurate picture of who is influencing customer decisions, the company said. Then, suppliers are in position to reward each partner who participated in the deal.
• Provider Locator. As you would expect, this feature connects channel partners with service providers. Zift Solutions says this gives suppliers peace of mind that the listed service provider will maintain understanding of the brand and market. The ZiftOne portal lets partners search for whatever they need within their geographical area, then connect with the appropriate providers.

ZiftOne for Ecosystems is available now. Existing ZiftOne customers can reach out to their customer success manager to add the new features.

Big-name technology vendors like Dell and AWS have unveiled new or updated products and services that partners can sell.

Companies all across the world of enterprise IT and telecommunications have been engaging their partners with new offerings. And more and more of these offerings cater to a distributed hybrid workforce that needs to engage with secure, multicloud applications. Dell, for example, partnered to launch container-as-a-service solutions for its Apex subscription-based infrastructure offering.

This roundup of new offerings includes more than just vendors. A few technology services distributors made this list. One signed a cybersecurity vendor, and another signed an SD-WAN/SASE vendor. Yet another one unveiled a service that combines energy and internet of things. On the traditional IT hardware distributor side, Ingram Micro recently launched a digital experience platform. We also included an MSP that added new cloud engineering services for its customers.

Scroll through the 15 images above to see the latest products and services made with the channel in mind.

Also, check out the previous new services roundup, which covers the month of August.

Sarah Marsh

Corporate culture often fosters the idea that we should keep our personal and professional lives separate.  Even the concept of maintaining a work/ life balance perpetuates the belief that you shouldn’t intermingle the two.  For many hard-working, intelligent women, that means checking your identity as a mother at the office door.

The past few years of hybrid work presented a unique opportunity for us moms to (finally) bring our authentic selves to work.  The walls came down and we welcomed our teams into our homes.  The lines between work and home life blurred as we struck a balance between teaching at the kitchen table and meeting deadlines. It brought humanity back to the workplace as we acknowledged that people need to bring their full selves to work.

After experiencing virtual and hybrid environments for the last few years, the need for developing real, honest and authentic connections at work is critical.  Here are a few other learnings that moms can embrace in the workplace:

Recognize the skills you bring.

Patience, empathy, problem solving, multitasking, and the ability to take on unexpected challenges are all products of the experience of motherhood that translate really well in the corporate world. Embrace the value that you bring to your role and your organization because of motherhood, not despite it.

Embrace the personal moments.

I remember in the not-too-distant past, my son knew he needed to be absolutely silent when I took a work call while he was in the car or room.  As we started to navigate a new world where we were working and learning from home, I had to quickly adapt as he started to pop into video calls to “meet” my team.  As I started to invite children and pets to team calls, volunteer walks and virtual charity events, I watched the dynamics change across my organization.  Embracing a crazy new life as a WFH mom/ leader/ teacher in front of the camera helped me to become a more empathetic and authentic leader when my team needed it the most. Despite spending over a year apart, my team grew closer than ever as we continued to connect on a more personal level.

Ditch the guilt.

The unspoken pressure to be readily available, easily accessible, and without conflicting family priorities can bring crippling guilt to working mothers.  Boundaries can be even harder to maintain in a WFH environment, so be intentional and deliberate about how you schedule your time and be firm with your priorities. Give yourself some grace and remember that while you can’t be in two places at once, you can be 100% present where you are.

Make time for personal check-ins.

Employees thrive when they bring their whole selves to work, so give them the opportunity to share what’s meaningful to them outside of the office. Intentionally set aside time for simple check-in calls, without any business on the agenda, to stay connected to colleagues and employees.  Now more than ever, we lack the casual conversations that happened previously between meetings or at the coffee station.  In a small group meeting, teams may start with ‘personal/ professional check-ins’ where each person shares something they are excited about or proud of personally and then work-related.  This is a great way to get the team connected before jumping into business.

To working moms everywhere: let’s stop masking our identities and start bringing our whole selves to work.  When we break down the boundaries and start to develop meaningful, authentic relationships, all employees, and especially women, thrive in the workplace. After all, it takes a professional village just as much as a personal village for working moms to succeed.

Working mom Sarah Marsh is director of partner relationships for enterprise cloud applications provider Workday. She is a founding member of the Channel Futures DE&I Advisory Board and was included on the inaugural DE&I 101 list.

Tech Data has formally transitioned to the TD SYNNEX brand in Europe, and Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). The change comes after the merger between Tech Data and Synnex Corp. in 2021.

The combined distribution giant now serves partners and vendors in more than 100 countries.

The distributor will continue to go to market as Tech Data, a TD Synnex Company, in Asia Pacific (APAC). The exception is Japan, where its operations are already branded TD Synnex. However, all businesses in APAC will have the same access to resources to provide consistent reach across diverse markets.

TD Synnex’s Rich Hume

“This is a special moment of celebration as we launch the TD Synnex brand in Europe and LAC,” said Rich Hume, CEO, TD Synnex.

Hume said the firm is “doubling down on our commitment to delivering higher value” to its ecosystem partners. It will do this “through our end-to-end technology portfolio and our comprehensive services offerings, all underpinned by the passion, commitment and deep knowledge of our 22,000+ co-workers around the world,” he said.

Sustainability Program

In addition, TD Synnex announced a commitment “to being a diverse, inclusive employer of choice.” It flagged a structured global program focused on achieving environmental sustainability objectives.

“Just as TD Synnex plays a vital role helping transform the technology landscape, we have an equally important responsibility to have a positive impact on the world,” said Hume. “Our focus on corporate social responsibility embodies our commitment to make the world a better place, both today and into the future.”

Michael O’Brien

New cybersecurity risks are arising in tandem with complex IT setups and extended network edges. As a result of the changing threat landscape, some businesses are turning to managed security service providers (MSSPs), to help them more readily gain access to cutting-edge technology and hard-to-find security expertise.

MSSPs must provide the correct mix of services and 24/7 security, as well as affordable solutions that improve risk management and compliance, to position themselves competitively in a crowded market. To provide more competitive offers, this is a two-fold issue that calls for speed and scale in detection and response.

Solutions Checklist for Modern MSSPs

Understanding clients’ security and business goals is necessary to develop a successful service offering. To assist customers with these goals, an MSSP must develop a strong set of solutions that gives customers access to the newest technology and security know-how at a reasonable cost. These solutions include:

• Advanced threat detection: This is related to the MSSP’s ability to include advanced threat intelligence in its offering. Customers seek a provider who can immediately identify threats at machine speed and has real-time access to comprehensive threat intelligence.

When combined with actionable alerts (see below) in a single pane of glass, an MSSP can help customers rapidly respond to zero-day attacks, other new threats and variants of well-known attacks, which lowers the risk of a data breach.

• Actionable alerts: Alert fatigue and information overload are common issues for security teams, so security monitoring is a key requirement. Security teams find themselves wasting too much time on erroneous alert investigations in the absence of high-fidelity warnings that effectively correlate events.

MSSPs must deliver context-rich, aggregated alerts to customers that decrease false positives while also defining, directing and accelerating investigations. MSSPs that can implement severity-based prioritizing and real-time analytics can set themselves apart from competing providers.

• Automated response: Some customers may have SOC teams that require help via automation because they are hampered by manual, labor-intensive, inefficient processes often brought on by disparate and nonintegrated systems.

MSSPs with automated response capabilities can serve a bigger market with more complex requirements by addressing higher-level criteria. MSSPs can provide very distinctive services by providing security orchestration, automation and response (SOAR) with updated playbooks.

• SOC services: Customers also turn to their MSSPs for services, including asking experts to guide them through the incident response process or even to function as their security operations center (SOC) or support their current team.

MSSPs are required to provide a variety of services from their own SOC, particularly those that can be provided at certain service levels or customized to meet the needs of specific customers. By providing fully or jointly managed SOC services, MSSPs may close the talent gap via offering not only the technology and tools customers need but the staff as well.

• Flexible deployment: Research repeatedly reveals that security is the main challenge during digital transformation. The primary issues causing businesses to look for MSSPs with flexible solutions are rising threats, cloud adoption, remote work, distributed computing and complexity.

Most customers want their MSSP to manage their compliance and cyber risk. If they want to stand out from the competition, MSSPs must provide adaptable technology such as virtual machines, appliances or cloud-delivered services, as well as pay-as-you-go options that let customers quickly and easily onboard new solutions as their needs change. MSSPs must therefore provide on-demand services with comprehensive self-service catalogs, notably for incident response and reporting.

Visibility & SIEM: Today, irrespective of company size, most customers use many point products that create visibility and control gaps. To overcome these gaps, many choose an MSSP that offers a cohesive security information and event management (SIEM) solution for a reasonable price.

The capacity to take in enormous volumes of data from a diverse variety of vendor products is one of the cornerstones to SIEM efficacy. One way MSSPs can stand out in the market is by offering centralized management and customization possibilities through API integrations. Additionally, MSSPs should think about offering granular analytics and reporting with event management, which emphasizes significant activity and alerts and offers a reasonably priced substitute for conventional in-house SIEM deployments.

Seizing the Opportunity

The opportunity is ripe for MSSPs, but the number of such organizations in the market is growing all the time.

How can you stand out amid competitors and really show prospects you’ve got the goods? Scalability and customization must go together when developing solutions. Both services and technology are crucial; offering value using the appropriate technologies to tackle the appropriate challenges at the appropriate cost is a key component of providing a solution.

The core value of MSSPs is to make technology, knowledge and services accessible and predictable. Keeping this in mind, MSSPs ought to concentrate on a platform strategy that enables the creation and delivery of flexible, scalable solutions which scale with the MSSP and their customers while bringing the highest business value to the MSSP.

Michael O’Brien is regional vice president of strategic routes to market for Fortinet. He has extensive experience in global and national channels, sales management, cloud, managed services, software-as-a-service and infrastructure-as-a-service across a spectrum of customers’ IT needs. You may follow him on LinkedIn or @Fortinet on Twitter.