Category Archives for "Managed Services News"

Moving to expand its bench of Azure, Dynamics and Office 365 specialists, IBM acquired Microsoft cloud partner Neudesic. Terms of the deal, announced this week, were not disclosed. But like many companies Big Blue has acquired to add hybrid and multi-cloud skills, Neudesic is part of IBM Consulting.

Neudesic is a longtime, prominent Microsoft partner that is celebrating its 20^th anniversary this year. Based in Irvine, California, many of Neudesic’s 1,500 Microsoft cloud experts operate in India. Neudesic offers various Azure infrastructure and application development, modernization and integration services. Among them: migration, DevOps, data engineering and AI.

IBM’s John Granger

“Neudesic adds deep Azure cloud, data engineering and data analytics expertise to accelerate our clients’ hybrid cloud journeys,” IBM Consulting senior VP John Granger wrote on LinkedIn.

Granger added that the Neudesic deal builds on several acquisitions IBM Consulting has made over the past two years. They include Sentaca, SXiQ, BoxBoat, Nordcloud and Taos.

Through roughly a dozen acquisitions brought into IBM Consulting during the past two years, it has amassed certifications in AWS, Google Cloud Platform, Databricks, Snowflake, Denodo, Kubernetes, MuleSoft, RedHat, Salesforce, UIPath, SAP and Oracle. Neudesic will expand its Microsoft certifications as well, according to IBM.

Competing with Partners?

For now, Neudesic services will only be delivered by IBM Consulting, according to a spokesman. Anurag Agrawal, principal analyst with Techaisle, said IBM could be giving its partners a mixed message.

Techaisle’s Anurag Agrawal

“It shows that regardless of spinning off its managed services business as Kyndryl, IBM is still interested in building and growing its consulting practice to drive services revenue,” Agrawal said.

“The strategy harkens back to IBM’s history, the primary focus on services as a revenue generator, and is distant from moving to the contemporary as-a-service business model. The move should be to reduce conflict and not introduce newer conflicts,” Agrawal added.

Tier 1 Microsoft CSP

Nevertheless, the addition of Neudesic gives IBM an added and critical path to the Microsoft ecosystem. Among Neudesic’s key alliance partners: Citrix, Databricks, DocuSign and Nintex. Other Neudesic partners include AppDynamics, Perigine and Salesforce’s Tableau.

Neudesic has been a Microsoft Gold partner for 17 years, and it became one of Microsoft’s Tier 1 CSPs in 2020. Through the CPS program, Neudesic delivers around-the-clock support and proactive monitoring of Azure, Office 365 and Dynamics 365 environments. Microsoft has recognized Neudesic on numerous occasions. Most recently, Neudesic was Microsoft’s U.S. financial services partner of the year. In 2020, it was the U.S. customer experience partner of the year.

Like IBM’s other acquisitions of cloud service providers, Neudesic will maintain its brand and website. Paul Galvin, Neudesic’s director of application innovation, expressed optimism about the deal on LinkedIn.

“Among many things, this is a step on the path towards becoming the #1 Microsoft partner in the world,” Galvin noted. “Fun times ahead and lots of opportunity for me and my colleagues and for those of you out there interested in joining us at this very exciting time.”

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An ever-increasing number of organizations are building their businesses in the cloud. In 2022, cloud services are expected to reach over $482 billion, up from $313 billion in 2020. As companies embrace hybrid, multi-cloud, and edge strategies and shift from a cloud-first to a cloud-smart approach, the IT Industry Outlook 2022 study by CompTIA shows networking, cloud computing, and storage becoming critical areas of infrastructure focus.

Join VMware and iland for our upcoming webinar where we’ll discuss what service providers and consultants can do to help customers navigate the multi-cloud marketplace and deliver a consistent service experience regardless of where cloud  workloads land. Plus we’ll share:

• What you can do to stay on top of, even ahead of, cloud trends
• How to help customers deploy the right workloads and the right data to the right cloud
• Ways to provide data accessibility and protection in a multi-cloud world
• Why you don’t need a PhD in cloud pricing to be a trusted advisor to your customers

Brought to you by:

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If you have already registered, click here to access.

Speakers:
Theresa Caragol, Contributing Editor, Channel Futures
Theresa is the founder and CEO of AchieveUnite Inc., a strategic advisory firm that provides business acceleration services to global enterprises including partner and channel development, go-to-market planning, M&A channel integration, and industry and channel training programs including a virtual peer-group business and channel leadership training program called ACE. She has more than 20 years of experience in building and managing multi-million-dollar indirect channel teams and strategic alliance businesses and programs from inception to sales success. Before founding AchieveUnite, Theresa held senior executive roles at Extreme Networks, Ciena and Nortel.
Jack Bailey, Director of Enablement, iland
Jack has more than 15 years of experience in the IT world, with a career that has focused on virtualization and business resiliency. His skill set includes a blend of frontline and leadership positions in technical administration, technical sales, product, and enablement roles at companies such as Zerto and Rubrik. Currently, Jack helps ensure iland partners and iland internal sales teams can provide accurate and meaningful engagement with our shared customers and prospects.

Patrick Verhoeven, Director, Multi-Cloud Strategy, VMware
Patrick leads Multi-Cloud Solution Strategy for partners at VMware, helping VMware cloud providers monetize services and accelerate growth with multi-cloud, modern apps, networking, security, and digital workspace solutions.  Patrick has over 20 years of IT experience in the managed and cloud services industry in product management and business development roles with leading technology companies, including Accenture, Sabre, Digex, Verizon/Terremark, HPE and VMware.

New Confluera research shows cybersecurity remains a top obstacle as most organizations accelerate their cloud adoption strategies.

Confluera polled 200 U.S. IT leaders at medium-to large-sized organizations on how they are tackling the cloud-centric IT security landscape.

According to the Confluera cloud security research, 97% of IT leaders said their strategy includes the expansion of cloud deployments. In some cases, that includes the adoption of multiple platforms such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud and Azure.

This strategy is not without its challenges, however. About 63% of IT professionals identified cyber threats designed to target cloud services as the top obstacle to their cloud strategy.

Cloud and multicloud adoption has greatly increased the workload of already burdened IT teams. Among the respondents, about half said they are adequately staffed to manage the frequency of alerts they receive. IT teams spend 54% of their time investigating security alerts. And over half of those alerts turning out to be false or benign alarms.

As threats within the cloud proliferate, IT leaders are looking for solutions to help them quickly separate the signal from the noise so they can act on the real threats promptly.

Increased IT Security Workload

John Morgan is Confluera‘s CEO.

Confluera’s John Morgan

“One of the most significant findings from the report is the adoption of cloud services being the biggest contributor to increased IT security workload, ahead of supporting remote access and workers,” he said. “With the change in work model, many organizations had prioritized the security related to the use of endpoint devices, personal devices and unknown networks. With many organizations across industries accelerating and expanding their cloud deployments, the new finding is an important data point for them to consider. Their cloud strategy must account for the additional security resources and dedicated tools, without which they are almost guaranteed to experience disruptions and delays to their deployment plans, not to mention increasing the potential for breaches.”

Many organizations should also take time to reassess their attack detection strategy, Morgan said.

“The survey showed that while the overwhelming majority of organizations create threat storyboards of attacks, they do so using third-party services and mostly as part of the forensic exercise after an incident,” he said. “Organizations must rethink and change their strategy to leverage some of the modern technology to get ahead of the attacks and intercept them before they can do harm.”

Top Challenges

When asked what challenges were associated with adopting multiple cloud platforms, 69% said maintaining consistent cybersecurity coverage across all cloud infrastructures. Nearly half said securing the resources to manage different cloud infrastructures. In addition, nearly 45% identified the difficulty detecting threats progressing from one cloud infrastructure to another.

The Confluera cloud research also shows cloud adoption isn’t slowing down because of cybersecurity concerns.

“In fact, many organizations are not simply expanding their services, but also embarking on multicloud services,” Morgan said. “The problem is that something will have to give. If organizations push forward with their cloud strategy, but it does not address the security concerns, they will have significant security exposure. As identified in the survey, many IT professionals are optimistic for 2022 primarily based on security innovations. Now the organization must make the necessary investment to match.”

The majority of respondents note the availability of new cybersecurity tools as the reason for their positive outlook.

“Organizations should focus on maximizing the IT security staff’s time, enabling them to work smarter,” Morgan said. “Automation can help. However, streamlining the wrong part of the security process can make the situation even worse by increasing the tasks requiring human analysis. What organizations should focus on is to assess which aspects of the IT security staff’s task can best be automated. For example, with so much time lost investigating false positives, streamlining the process to bubble up only the alerts that matter can drastically improve security staff’s productivity as well as improve their job satisfaction.”

Ensono is set to pay out more than $80 million to employees under a new Associate Equity Appreciation Program.

Officially announced by the company today, it launched the scheme late last summer. Ensono was acquired by global investment firm KKR in June 2021. Since then it says it has been “hyper-focused” on growing its employee base as it expands into new markets worldwide.

Under the Associate Equity Appreciation Program, employees become associates. They can benefit financially from Ensono’s future success through a salary-based stake in the company.

Ensono has 2,800 associates in the U.S., U.K., Germany, Poland and India, comprising software engineers, architects, consultants, strategists and marketers.

Employment Turnover

The firm acknowledges the high rates of turnover in the IT industry has hindered the recruitment of skilled workers. Ensono said its clear that the prioritization of employee well-being and engagement is more important than ever before.

Ensono’s Hannah Birch

“I’m really proud of awarding equity to everybody in our organisation,” said Hannah Birch, Ensono’s European managing director.

“Whether you’re the chief executive officer or you’re the receptionist, or even one of our new apprentices, everybody in the company was awarded equity. That has really changed the mindset to that of owner-operator,” she said. “You’ve got a really different experience because you get that commitment. In a talent war, I don’t want to lose my staff at all. I think it does change people’s behaviour. It gives much more of that customer centric view around how we want to look after our client base.”

For now, Birch says financial incentives such as the Associate Equity Appreciation Program are still “really rare” among organizations. But this is likely to change.

“Look at Gen Z to the baby boomers, the various challenges across society, and the way in which you need to engage the next generation. This will start to become the norm. Ten years from now, that distribution of wealth throughout an organisation will become much more normal. But I think we’re very forward leading in that respect.”

Apprenticeship and Kick-Start Scheme

Birch joined the same day that KKR acquired the company.

“What that bought with it was a round of investment, particularly in the European business,” she said.

One of first things Birch did was invest in an apprenticeship program.

“Everywhere I’ve been, I’ve been a really big supporter of early and career development. I thought that was a big omission for Ensono,” she said. “So we had four apprentices join us in September, in association with Leeds Trinity University.”

Ensono has also signed up to the UK government’s Kickstart Scheme. This initiative aims to create jobs for 16- to 24-year-olds on welfare support or who are at risk of long term unemployment.

“A lot of people during COVID were displaced or gave up their university places and really were a bit nomadic,” said Birch. “Our commitment to them is to train them over a six-month period, give them skills. Hopefully we’ll take a number of those on. But if not, they go back into the workplace with a set of skills they didn’t have previously.”

Ensono frequently ranks high on Channel Futures’ MSP 501.

Radware is acquiring SecurityDAM for $30 million as part of a strategic initiative to accelerate the growth of its cloud security services business.

SecurityDAM is a distributed denial of service (DDoS) network operator. It supplied Radware with scrubbing center services for the provision of Radware’s Cloud DDoS Protection Service.

Radware is acquiring SecurityDAM for $30 million with contingent payments of up to $12.5 million based on the performance of Radware’s cloud DDoS protection service after the deal.

As part of the initiative, Radware plans to grow its innovation center in India. Moreover, it plans to further expand its cloud network footprint and capacity, and its cloud services division.

New Partner Opportunities

Sharon Trachtman is Radware’s chief business operations officer.

Radware’s Sharon Trachtman

“The strategic cloud initiative means improved innovation, integration and service excellence across Radware’s cloud services,” she said.

For Radware partners, it will create more opportunities for selling and cross-selling the company’s cloud portfolio, Trachtman said. It also provides an “even more competitive product offering.”

Demand for cloud security services is growing, Trachtman said. Companies are accelerating their digital transformations and cloud migrations to stay competitive.

As the demand for agile application development grows, the exposure to cyber risks also increases, she said.

“Our cloud initiative will enable us to offer our partners and their customers even more security innovations and protection in the current threat landscape,” Trachtman said.

Cloud Security Initiative

Radware plans to open new and expand existing cloud security centers in major cities around the world. It also plans to continue innovating across its cloud security data center architecture.

Furthermore it will advance its service availability and protection level with new cloud service enhancements. Those include a new portal for its DDoS protection service, enhanced DNS attack detection and prevention, and an integrated global content delivery network service with hundreds of cloud centers globally and based on AWS CloudFront.

“We’ll be able to scale our cloud services capacity faster to help our partners respond to the growing volume of threats and offer more unique security innovations in the domains of application and infrastructure protection,” Trachtman said.

Verizon customer service ranked first in the annual ISP list by CableTV.com. And it wasn’t the only category the telecom giant topped.

CableTV.com conducted its annual internet customer satisfaction survey. The organization asked more than 5,000 Americans about how satisfied they are with the speed, price and reliability of their internet connections this year.

It found Verizon held onto its top spot as the best ISP in overall customer satisfaction for another year. More than two in three (69%) Verizon customers were extremely or very satisfied with their internet service. AT&T barely overtook Xfinity (Comcast) at 64% and 62%, respectively. Customers also reported that Verizon’s “excellent” fiber network and no-contract service helped it maintain its top position. Verizon Fios also earned the CableTV.com Editor’s Choice award in its fiber internet provider rankings.

To learn where providers such as Spectrum, Cox and CenturyLink landed compared to Verizon customer service in the rankings, check out the slideshow above.

Juan Fernandez is making waves in the industry once again. Most recently the vice president of managed IT services at ImageNet, Fernandez has stepped into a new role as co-founder and CEO of the MSP Growth Coalition.

The MSP Growth Coalition is a group of broadly experienced and growth-oriented professionals. Each has come together for the sole purpose of accelerating the capacity and growth of midsize MSPs. Hand-selected by Fernandez, coalition executives bring forth proven methods, approaches and management competencies designed to lift organizations to a level of sustained performance. 

Juan Fernandez

The MSP Growth Coalition brings together resources with years of successful business and MSP experience. One thing they all have in common: They have a dedication to the success of their customers.

“The last couple of years presented an opportunity and revealed weaknesses,” said Fernandez. “The opportunity is in growth; the need for MSP service is exploding. But this growth comes with many challenges, including fast-paced technical change, fierce competition and labor constraints. The companies that will win will develop the ability to learn quickly and the flexibility to embrace continuous change. They will also hone the skills to pivot to meet the market. That’s what this coalition represents.” 

Growth Goals

The primary goal of the MSP Growth Coalition is to accelerate owners’ and managers’ ability to form and run highly effective businesses. It also aims to help modern business owners in all areas of growth with a predictable success model.

“We are here to help build a new era of business owners that have all the tools they need to be successful in all areas of business,” said Fernandez. “The Growth Coalition was built on that foundation and designed to create a unique experience where business owners are able to grow their business with predictable success in all areas of their business in one place, most importantly with people that care only about your growth and success.” 

The Management Shift

This is a fantastic time for MSPs; there are opportunities abound in the industry. As a result, the management challenge has shifted from hustling to woo every customer, to intelligently marketing and developing the capacity to deliver. 

Joe Rojas

“Success depends on building a business machine that can execute plans, deliver results and scale efficiently,” said Joe Rojas, CEO, Start Grow Manage. “The challenge facing MSPs today is running the business, not managing the technology.”

“I am very proud and excited to be a part of the MSP Growth Coalition,” said Carlos Martinez, co-founder. “The vCIO community has been in need of a more formalized enablement program by providing training, tools and peer group participation for quite some time. The focus of our vCIO school is to mentor and enable vCIOs and TAMs to sharpen their skill sets, implement processes, and [offer] specialized tools to promote growth and increase customer retention by focusing on the customer experience. In addition, there will be workshops and exercises focusing on soft skills such as communication, team building and project coordination.”

Coalition members include:

• Collene Rudio – Strategy & Capacity
• Joe Rojas – Sales & Marketing
• Nelson Tepfer – Financial
• Carlos Martinez – Operations & vCIO

Only halfway through the week, the cloud computing sector is exploding with news. For starters, Google Cloud has come out swinging with an avalanche of announcements. Look for deals with consultancy Dun & Bradstreet, Ingram Micro Cloud and a milestone achievement with managed service provider Softchoice.

All of those tidbits underscore that Google Cloud, still the world’s third-largest public cloud provider, is making good on its goals to gain market share against Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. It might even make a profit (the company to date remains unprofitable and executives seem less inclined to worry about that than they are to act on vision.)

Google Cloud has been making much of its headway through its indirect channel relationships. The company has appointed a new channel chief, Kevin Ichhpurani, to guide that strategy. It’s also consolidating its direct and indirect sales into one organization. (Recall that Carolee Gearhart has left the vendor after a little more than three years.) In fact, we have a Q&A forthcoming with Jim Anderson, who now leads Google Cloud’s direct sales teams. We’ll have that for you soon.

In the meantime, though, IBM has some application modernization intentions via its IBM Z as a service on IBM Cloud. This concerns the hybrid cloud. Next, MSP Ensono has achieved a cloud milestone with Microsoft Azure. And fellow MSP Thirdera, which specializes in ServiceNow, has launched a platform partners can use. Finally, Oracle Cloud has secured – no pun intended – U.S. Department of Defense approval to process sensitive Air Force data. That’s significant, given that few cloud providers hold such high-level permissions.

Finally, we already covered Akamai Technologies’ pending acquisition of Linode — read that here. As a quick recap, though, Akamai is buying the independent cloud computing provider for $900 million in cash. We’re still working to find out what this deal means for the indirect channel, since Akamai targets large enterprises and Linode aims more at smaller businesses, often through managed service providers.

Check out all the cloud computing news you need to know, in the slideshow above.

Only halfway through the week, the cloud computing sector is exploding with news. For starters, Google Cloud has come out swinging with an avalanche of announcements. Look for deals with consultancy Dun & Bradstreet, Ingram Micro Cloud and a milestone achievement with managed service provider Softchoice.

All of those tidbits underscore that Google Cloud, still the world’s third-largest public cloud provider, is making good on its goals to gain market share against Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. It might even make a profit (the company to date remains unprofitable and executives seem less inclined to worry about that than they are to act on vision.)

Google Cloud has been making much of its headway through its indirect channel relationships. The company has appointed a new channel chief, Kevin Ichhpurani, to guide that strategy. It’s also consolidating its direct and indirect sales into one organization. (Recall that Carolee Gearhart has left the vendor after a little more than three years.) In fact, we have a Q&A forthcoming with Jim Anderson, who now leads Google Cloud’s direct sales teams. We’ll have that for you soon.

In the meantime, though, IBM has some application modernization intentions via its IBM Z as a service on IBM Cloud. This concerns the hybrid cloud. Next, MSP Ensono has achieved a cloud milestone with Microsoft Azure. And fellow MSP Thirdera, which specializes in ServiceNow, has launched a platform partners can use. Finally, Oracle Cloud has secured – no pun intended – U.S. Department of Defense approval to process sensitive Air Force data. That’s significant, given that few cloud providers hold such high-level permissions.

Finally, we already covered Akamai Technologies’ pending acquisition of Linode — read that here. As a quick recap, though, Akamai is buying the independent cloud computing provider for $900 million in cash. We’re still working to find out what this deal means for the indirect channel, since Akamai targets large enterprises and Linode aims more at smaller businesses, often through managed service providers.

Check out all the cloud computing news you need to know, in the slideshow above.

Bridgepointe Technologies is using its $100-plus million investment from Charlesbank Capital Partners to invest in another company.

Bridgepointe said on Thursday that it will provide funding to Double Tap Networks, a Seattle-based technology advisory firm. Double Tap has partnered with Bridgepointe for several years. It will use the investment for “further growth of existing and new services,” the company said.

Bridgepointe last month announced that Charlesbank was giving it more than $100 million in a strategic investment. Bridgepointe co-founder Scott Evars told Channel Futures at the time that his team planned to invest in partners that fit its culture.

Bridgepointe’s Scott Evars

“Double Tap Networks is an ideal investment for us as we grow in the coming months and years,” Evars said. “Bridgepointe is aggressively seeking out partners who complement our model while focusing on supporting our customers, IT strategists and suppliers.”

Double Tap

Guy Lupi founded Double Tap in 2011 and has partnered with Bridgepointe for several years. Double Tap helps customer source data, infrastructure and voice solutions.

Double Tap’s Guy Lupi

“The market is changing rapidly as more companies shift to the cloud, but they’re overwhelmed by choice,” Lupi said. “Bridgepointe’s investment will enable us to accelerate our growth and fully leverage potential opportunities with both enterprise and midmarket clients.”

Lupi previously worked for MSP and IT consultancy Lloyd Group. He also spent seven years at InfoHighway Communications, which Broadview Networks acquired in 2007.

“We’re pleased to share our investment in Double Tap Networks, as they have a proven model for making the procurement of IT infrastructure, cloud and technology services easy,” Bridgepointe co-founder Brian Miller said. “We have had a front-row seat to Double Tap Networks’ rapid growth over the last several years, and with increased demand for their services they are uniquely positioned to capitalize on growing and new market opportunities.”

Bridgepointe Technologies’ Brian Miller

Bridgepointe launched in 2002. Many channel partners, which Bridgepointe refers to as IT strategists, operate under the Bridgepointe brand, leveraging Bridgepointe’s supplier contracts and sales support. Bridgepointe’s leaders differentiate themselves from the traditional technology solutions brokerage (TSB) market with their strategy of facing the end customer alongside the subagent.

Evars said Bridgepointe will use its Charlesbank investment to hire customer-facing talent and enhance its tools, in addition to investing in partners. The company will likely triple its staff in the upcoming two years, according to Evars.