Category Archives for "Managed Services News"

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.

NetFortris, the managed IT and cloud provider, has appointed Rich Gavaghen to SVP of sales. He’s a longtime telecom professional with more than 20 years of executive sales experience.

In his new role, Gavaghen leads revenue-generation initiatives, including channel sales and account management, sales engineering and recruiting. He also drives profit-and-loss management, training, culture building and partnering with marketing to build brand awareness.

Setting Expectations

NetFortris’ Jamie Minner

Jamie Minner is CRO at NetFortris. Gavaghen served organizations by growing revenue and helping create a winning culture, Minner said.

“He’s laser-focused on retention of customers, partners and employees by setting expectations and delivering accountability. We’re thrilled to welcome Rich to the NetFortris team and look forward to driving growth together,” he added.

Before joining NetFortris, Gavaghen held executive sales positions for more than 20 years. These included roles as VP of sales at Digital Realty and VP of sales at ByteGrid. In addition, he was senior director of sales at Zayo Group (formerly Latisys). Earlier in his career, Gavaghen served in regional sales executive positions at XO Communications, Internap and Cbeyond.

Strong Leadership

NetFortris’ Rich Gavaghen

Gavaghen is a current member and former national board member of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America.

“I’m excited to start the next chapter of my career with NetFortris,” Gavaghen said. “We are a well-funded, flat organization with strong leadership and a cutting-edge managed IT solution set that’s priced fairly for businesses of all sizes that are accelerating their digital transformations to survive and thrive despite the pandemic.”

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 2,700 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 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.

Claroty is partnering with TD Synnex to enable channel partners to buy The Claroty platform through TD Synnex. This marks the tech distribution giant’s expansion into industrial and health care IoT security.

Claroty is a security company for cyber-physical systems (CPS) across industrial, health care and enterprise environments. The agreement allows Claroty’s channel partners to buy the platform directly through TD Synnex. Additionally, Medigate by Claroty, a clinical device data security and integration platform, is now available in TD Synnex’s portfolio.

Growing Need for IoT Security

TD Synnex’s Reyna Thompson

Reyna Thompson is senior vice president, product management, at TD Synnex.

“[…] cyber and physical systems [are becoming] increasingly connected,” said Thompson. “Organizations across a wide range of verticals have a growing need for security solutions that are specially designed to protect these newly formed connections. We are delighted to strengthen our portfolio of cybersecurity offerings.”

The platform will give customers Claroty’s visibility, protection and threat detection solutions to secure their most critical assets.

The Claroty platform aims to protect all connected assets across industrial (OT), enterprise (IoT), and health care (IoMT) environments – the Extended IoT (XIoT). It does this all while detecting and enabling response to the earliest indicators of potential threats. The platform boasts flexible and rapid deployment options, an extensive integration ecosystem and robust API. In addition, it integrates with customers’ existing technology stacks and is universally compatible with their existing workflows. This is regardless of scale, architecture, or programmatic maturity. The platform offers fully integrated secure remote access and remote incident management capabilities spanning the entire incident life cycle, the company said.

Medigate by Claroty

Medigate (recently acquired by Claroty) is a dedicated health care IoT security platform. It allows health care providers to safely deliver connected care. Furthermore, the platform melds together its intuitive medical workflows and proprietary protocols with the reality of today’s cybersecurity threats. This makes it so that hospitals can operate all clinical assets on their network while ensuring patient privacy and safety.

Claroty’s Keith Carter

“Teaming up with TD Synnex is a huge value-add to the Claroty Focus Partner Program, giving our partners greater financing options and TD Synnex’s world-class support, pre-sales services, and global fulfillment capabilities, while also giving our customers more freedom to choose the Claroty partner that is right for them,” said Keith Carter, VP, worldwide channels and alliances, at Claroty. “TD Synnex’s ability to help organizations make the most of their technology investments will be instrumental for accelerating sales with partners and advancing our customers’ cybersecurity programs.”

Dell Technologies last week shared its Q3 results, showing orders revenue through the channel was up 34% year-over-year globally. Partners were also responsible for 62% of all new and reactivated buyers globally. Heading up the vendor’s partner organization is Dell Technologies’ global channel chief, Rola Dagher. We caught up with her to discuss all things partner-related.

What does she see as the biggest threats and opportunities facing channel partners? What investment plans does Dell Technologies have for its partners? What does the Apex launch and “everything as a service” mean for the channel? And what about those rumors of Dell taking business direct?

Dell’s Rola Dagher

Check out our Q&A with Rola Dagher in the slideshow above to find out.

Cisco Systems beat analyst expectations in its fiscal second-quarter earnings, but falling collaboration revenue leaves room for improvement.

Cisco drove $12.7 billion in revenue, an increase of 6% from the year-ago quarter. The company had said last quarter that it was anticipating revenue growth between 4.5% and 6.5%. CEO Chuck Robbins said Cisco still faces supply chain issues. Those challenges offset the 30% product order growth Cisco reported in its second quarter.

Cisco saw solid growth in multiple product categories. The company reported 9% year-over-year growth for software product revenue. In addition, Cisco’s Internet for the Future category increased 42% year-over-year ($1.3 billion). Its optimized application experiences improved 12% year-over-year to $180 million, and its networking business increased 7%, to $5.9 billion.

Not all product categories grew, however. Enterprise routing dipped down, despite growth in SD-WAN. In addition, the networking business dropped slightly from its fiscal first quarter.

Moreover, Cisco’s hybrid work product portfolio (which it will rename as “Collaboration”) dropped 9%, to $1.07 billion. This portfolio includes its Webex unified communications offering.

Cisco’s disappointing collaboration numbers might explain why it has been working to expand partner efforts in that area. The company has also been expanding its agent/commission-based partner model. Telarus recently joined Intelisys as technology solutions brokerages that offer Cisco Webex to their subagents.

“They’re just not seeing the cloud adoption from some of their traditional channels, and they really see this channel as the future of cloud sales,” Telarus vice president of UCaaS Shane Speakman said earlier this month.

Splunk Acquisition?

Media reports circled last weekend that Cisco offered Splunk $20 billion for a buyout.

When pressed about Cisco’s rumored acquisition offer for Splunk, Robbins said Cisco does not comment on rumors. However, he said Cisco will take a “disciplined” approach to inorganic growth.

“We are constantly evaluating potential opportunities,” Robbins said on an earnings call.

Chris Ichelson runs 360 SOC, an MSSP and Cisco partner. He said a Splunk buyout would help his business immensely. Specifically, it would help him break into the Splunk partner base.

360 SOC’s Chris Ichelson

“That’s a game-changer for me, because then it opens Splunk up to us,” Ichelson told Channel Futures. “Splunks wants a $100 million commitment. If you don’t give them $100 million, you can’t be an MSSP with them.”

However, Ichelson said Cisco would probably need to up its offer to $30 billion. He referenced IBM’s $34 billion acquisition of Red Hat.

“I think it calls for parallel money,” he said.

Cisco executives have been working to make the company offer more software and services.

You can check out Cisco’s financial information for yourself.

SentinelOne partners now have access to DataSet, the company’s new data analysis solution.

The company built DataSet on the technology from its acquisition of Scalyr. SentinelOne acquired the cloud-native, cloud-scale data analytics platform last year for $155 million.

DataSet delivers an enterprise data platform for live data queries, analytics, insights and retention.

Ken Marks is SentinelOne‘s vice president of worldwide channels.

SentinelOne’s Ken Marks

“DataSet is disrupting the massive data analytics market,” he said. “And it opens up opportunities for our partners to address new use cases of live data beyond cybersecurity. DataSet drives collaboration between DevOps, IT, engineering and security teams by having all the data from all sources and time periods in one unified data platform.”

New Opportunities for SentinelOne Partners

With DataSet, SentinelOne partners will create solutions for log management, performance monitoring, long-term data retention for compliance and audit, data lake, and security information and event management (SIEM) optimization use cases. Each of these capabilities are large data markets with significant demand for superior solutions, Marks said.

“Since the [Scalyr] acquisition, we’ve been hard at work building the best team and product to begin this exciting new chapter of our growth,” he said. “DataSet is SentinelOne’s data platform analyzing trillions of events 24/7/365. We have made several improvements in the scalability, price performance and usability of the platform that we are now making available to all our customers.”

SentinelOne partners are excited to leverage a “transformative technology” for real-time analytics of all data across all time periods at scale, Marks said.

‘Unique’ Architecture

“Traditional data platforms were designed decades ago in the pre-cloud era and simply don’t work for modern environments,” Marks said. “They are slow, siloed, expensive to scale and complex to operate. DataSet eliminates schema requirements at ingest to make data available to query instantly. Our unique architecture utilizes modern cloud-native technologies and massively parallel processing to generate insights in milliseconds. Delivered as a cloud-native SaaS, DataSet delivers lower total cost of ownership (TCO) by orders of magnitude compared to legacy data solutions.”

With Scalyr, SentinelOne will continue to innovate and “push boundaries” on behalf of its customers and partners, he said.

“We are investing in DataSet, so our customers can easily understand their data and bring it to every decision and action for the best business outcomes,” Marks said.

Hundreds of customers use the DataSet platform for broader use cases other than security, he said.

“We are looking at expanding these capabilities and look forward to enhancements,” Marks said.

Axcient, the software provider for MSPs, has launched the enhanced Axcient Partner Program (APP). The company designed it to be simple to use and access. The program includes a flexible platform that serves as a gateway to a range of benefits. In silver, gold and platinum tiers, benefits scale as partners grow their business with Axcient.

Axcient’s Charlie Tomeo

Charlie Tomeo is chief revenue officer at Axcient.

“While Axcient has always had a partner program, we enhanced the new program to meet the evolving needs of our partners,” Tomeo said. “It now enables more certification and training opportunities, virtual labs, access to more marketing development funds, and more.”

The program offers partner benefits by tier. A promotion by tier is based on twice-a-year evaluations. The company said partners should comply with program requirements and business performance metrics — specifically monthly recurring revenue (MRR).

The following benefits are included in each tier:

Silver

• Full-service support through Axcient’s tech touch team, a resolution-focused support system available through the Axcient partner portal or via telephone for high complexity issues.
• Dedicated Partner Success Manager (PSM), which consults partners about Axcient’s solutions and the potential APP value.
• Access to the Axcient Partner Portal, a one-stop-shop to access benefits, including Axcient University, the AMP, APP documentation and policies, and an administrative hub for managing client backup and recovery.
• Credit-based referral program rewards when a partner refers an MSP who also becomes an Axcient partner.

Gold

• Access to a knowledgeable channel marketing manager (CMM) to support proposal-based marketing plans for lead generation, demand support, and sales strategies.
• Proposal-based marketing development funds enable partners to design and execute marketing campaigns, like events. Axcient assists in the form of funds, collaboration and an Axcient representative.

Platinum

• Marketing concierge services, providing the partners with customized marketing support, such as personalized email and social campaigns, vertical-specific collateral, and other tailor-made assets.
• Quarterly solutions operational audit, offering an in-depth review of Axcient solution implementation and operational infrastructure, along with new product updates and recommendations to improve product performance and efficiency.
• Eligible to join the Axcient Partner Advisory Committee (PAC), which brings leaders from the Axcient partner community together for interactive discussions with the Axcient leadership team to build rapport, gain insights into the service roadmap, influence decisions, share best practices with peers, and gain practical knowledge to improve growth and profitability.

Progressive’s Robert Cioffi

Robert Cioffi is COO at Progressive Computing.

“The relationship that we have with Axcient is something that we value tremendously,” Cioffi said. “Axcient values the relationship we have with them and takes the time to address our concerns. It’s definitely a team effort and behind that team is just great people.”

Uniphore, the provider of conversational automation, just got $400 million in its Series E funding round. The round brings Uniphore’s total funding to $610 million. It is led by NEA and raises the company’s valuation to $2.5 billion.

The new round of funding is Uniphore’s largest to date. It will help Uniphore make advancements in voice AI, computer vision and “tonal emotion.” In addition, business operations will expand globally, specifically in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific.

Uniphore’s Umesh Sachdev

Umesh Sachdev is CEO and co-founder of Uniphore.

“Understanding conversations and the data and insights derived from them is essential to every business,” Sachdev said. “Our conversational automation engine has been delivering powerful and innovative solutions to help enterprises not just survive but thrive amidst all the demands placed on them by customers. It is an incredibly exciting time to be in this industry and at Uniphore.”

The market for automating enterprise conversations has rapidly accelerated in the past few years. Companies recognize the impact of positive customer interactions on their brand image and customer loyalty. As a result, many businesses have turned to AI and automation to create smooth and frictionless customer experiences.

Partner Program

Uniphore also says it is committed to its partners. In October, it launched its Uniphore Unite partner program. This supports an expanding market for using AI and automation technology to  improve the customer experience (CX).

The program includes resources to support the partner life cycle end to end. It enables partners to leverage Uniphore’s technology to expand their portfolio and profitability. Also, Uniphore provides a value proposition that combines improved CX along with a return on investment. This increases customer satisfaction while driving cost savings, the company said.

Uniphore’s Jafar Syed

Jafar Syed is SVP and global head of channel alliances and partnerships at Uniphore.

“Uniphore Unite provides structure and foundation for enhanced partner collaboration,” Syed said. “[The program] will facilitate the creation of a strong community built around the mission to transform CX across the board.”

Uniphore’s leadership is excited about future products and thrilled to participate in this new round, said Hilarie Koplow-McAdams, venture partner, NEA.

“As we continue to operate in an increasingly virtual work model, technologies like Uniphore’s are a necessity for organizations that want to unleash their competitive advantage and take their business to the next level.”

Linode has agreed to sell to Akamai Technologies.

Akamai will pay $900 million in cash for the 19-year-old independent cloud computing provider.

At first glance, the deal might seem a little odd. Akamai has made its name as a content delivery network provider that now also does security and edge computing. It goes after big organizations. Linode positions itself as an alternative to the hyperscalers – Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform – for developers and smaller managed service providers. For Akamai, though, adding Linode to its services lineup transforms it into “the world’s most distributed cloud services provider.”

Those were Akamai CEO’s Tom Leighton’s words on Tuesday during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call. He said Akamai primarily wants Linode’s managed virtual machine and managed container capabilities to combine with Akamai’s edge network and 4,000 points of presence (PoPs).

Akamai’s Tom Leighton

“The net of all this is that we believe that Akamai and Linode can solve customers’ needs in ways that are not addressed in the market today, forming a powerful winning combination that will enable customers to build, deliver and secure their apps on the platform that powers and protects life online,” Leighton said.

To that end, Akamai will use Linode to go beyond security and content delivery and add cloud computing. Leighton called it “a breadth and depth of services uncommon in the cloud space today.”

Adam Karon agreed. Karon serves as COO and general manager of the edge technology group at Akamai.

Akamai’s Adam Karon

“[U]nique capabilities can come together when we are able to combine Akamai’s edge platform with Linode’s cloud computing capabilities and then add in our global traffic manager product to route across multiple clouds and cloud locations our global large private network that … connects cloud and edge locations and messaging, bringing it all together, coordinating cloud and edge services,” Karon said on Tuesday. “You end up with the world’s most distributed compute platform from cloud to edge making it easier for developers and businesses to build, run and secure applications.”

Christopher Aker, Linode’s founder and CEO, said joining Akamai addresses some key problems. Customers, he said, “face new challenges as cloud services become all-encompassing, including compute, storage, security and delivery from core to edge. Solving those challenges requires tremendous integration and scale, which Akamai and Linode plan to bring together under one roof.”

Linode’s Christopher Aker

Akamai will split its business into three main groups: security, delivery and compute.

“Compute will include Linode, plus our edge applications and net storage businesses,” said CFO Ed McGowan. “We believe that with strong execution, we can deliver more than $500 million of annual compute revenue in 2023.”

OK, So What Can MSPs and Other Partners Expect?

Channel Futures has reached out to Akamai to ask for insight into its plans for the Linode channel program. We didn’t hear back by the time of publication. However, looking at the company’s comments in the Feb. 15 earnings call, we can make some inferences.

First, as McGowan said, Akamai expects Linode to contribute to margins “as we continue to capitalize on revenue and cost synergies, including leveraging our go-to-market channel and marketing organizations to accelerate revenue from enterprise customers.”

That sounds like a peripheral reference to the channel — until considering Leighton’s input to analysts: “Linode doesn’t really have a sales force, never mind a sales force like Akamai has going after major enterprises. And you combine that with the fact that our major enterprise customers have wanted us to have this capability for them.”

Later, Leighton also said that Akamai is “interested in the developer base for sure because our large enterprise customers, their apps are built and, in many cases, managed, by the developers. So we really care about a developer-friendly solution. But we are going to take this to our large enterprise customers.”

When that happens, Leighton is not fretting those organizations eventually tossing Linode in favor of a hyperscaler. That situation often crops up when an enterprise outgrows a smaller cloud platform and certainly would impact any channel partners administering Linode services.

“I think you will not see this be a situation where [customers] migrate from, say, a Linode to a hyperscaler,” Leighton told analysts. “[O]ur customers are interested in alternatives and end-to-end solutions that — maybe there are some functions on hyperscalers today that I think would migrate to Akamai’s new cloud platform. We’ll be the world’s most distributed cloud platform with now market-leading solutions in not just delivery and security but also compute.”

Related to that, Akamai sells direct and through partners including behemoth telecom service providers, as well as Rackspace Technology, Capgemini America and IBM Services. Most Channel Futures readers consider …