Category Archives for "Managed Services News"

Sep 20

How to Maximize Your Vendor Relationship

By | Managed Services News

Maximizing vendor relationships is all about understanding what the other side is trying to achieve.

Cox's John Muscarella

John Muscarella

One of my top priorities is to ensure everyone on my team is completely partner-focused, from understanding each partner’s key growth goals to learning what their target markets are so we can help deliver business outcomes for their customers. We want to “think like a partner.” It’s a process we are working to hone, and we heavily invest in training, partner listening, and time to maximize growth for both partners and Cox Business.

With this focus, I particularly enjoy it when new partners ask how they can best work with us and get more attention/mindshare from my channel team. I’m always happy to answer this question because the core of any effective strategic partnership is a two-way street. I tell partners the same thing I tell my teams about our partners: “Think like us. Think like a vendor. What do we want? What key goals are we trying to achieve?” And I always tell them, “Feel free to ask us, and all your vendors. If we as vendors are doing our jobs correctly, we’re reaching out to you and asking these questions. We’d love for you to ask us the same.”

Answers to those questions and what specifically you do once you have the answers are at the heart of how partners can maximize vendor relationships. It is all about understanding what the other side is trying to achieve.

Of course, growth in the form of higher sales volume is an easy answer. But that is not the entire picture. What must happen upstream as a leading indicator of future revenue? Depending on your vendor, these are possibilities:

  • It’s important to them that they grow the number of accreditations or certifications.
  • They lack opportunities in their funnel, and they really need partners to focus more on lead generation.
  • Within total revenue, they are looking for increased sales of certain products.
  • The vendor made an acquisition, and they are looking at aggressively growing sales volume with the product(s) from the acquired company.
  • The vendor is trying to increase post-sale coverage and reach to augment their own support center.
  • The vendor is trying to slow the hiring of more people for their own professional services team by enabling partners to do that work.

In the end, if the partner or the vendor is really interested in maximizing the relationship and enjoying the benefits of what that means, you must be committed to understanding what is important to them and adjusting your approach to focus on those very important outcomes.

As the Vice President Channel Sales at Cox Business, John Muscarella is responsible for the overall readiness strategy for the indirect business sales channels. His team has the primary responsibility to develop, implement ­and sell solutions utilizing the Cox Communications network throughout the country. John has more than 25 years of experience in business management, which includes sales and leadership positions with companies such as Polycom, Sprint and EDS.

This guest blog is part of a Channel Futures sponsorship.

Sep 20

Avant Special Forces Summit: Advisors Face the Cybersecurity Question

By | Managed Services News

Most partners say they sell cybersecurity, but most haven’t even begun.

AVANT SPECIAL FORCES SUMMIT — Technology advisors are selling more cybersecurity services, but the increase comes with a steep investment.

Partners  heard a lot about cybersecurity at the Avant Special Forces Summit in Austin, Texas on Tuesday. The technology services distributor hosted a number of breakout sessions on the topic and has lined up several presentations from cybersecurity providers. And if you talk to any partner on the floor, cybersecurity will inevitably come up as a point of emphasis for their firm.

But selling cybersecurity means different things for different people. And for many partners, they’ve only scratched the surface of building a security practice.

Dyson, Dave_Eclipse

Eclipse’s Dave Dyson

“There’s not a heck of a lot of people selling,” Eclipse CEO Dave Dyson told Channel Futures. “So some of us are dabbling. A lot of people are intimidated and not doing it at all. And then you have the occasional unicorn who sells a ton of security, because that’s their specialty.”

Channel Futures is on the scene at Special Forces Summit interviewing technology advisors about their security growing pains.

Scroll through the 13 images above to hear from partners and vendors about what it takes to build a cybersecurity practice.

 

Sep 20

Latest M&A: HP-Poly, Accenture, Lumen, Rackspace, Thoma Bravo, More

By | Managed Services News

A $3.3 billion acquisition strengthens opportunities for hybrid work. Can you guess which deal?

As our latest M&A edition shows, we observed some of the same trends in August as we did in July. It appears there’s no hitting the brakes when it comes to cybersecurity mergers and acquisitions in particular.

For example, global investment firm KKR has acquired a prominent cybersecurity company with more than 200,000 customers worldwide. It purchased the company from another familiar face in the investment world, Thoma Bravo. This raises another point. Investment firms are as much a part the channel as other organizations.

We selected 18 companies that participated in M&A in August. Some deals got attention for their size, such as HP closing its Poly acquisition. We paid attention to others for their geographic reach. This included Pax8‘s acquisition of Umbrellar, which allows the cloud marketplace provider to expand into New Zealand.

Lastly, we focused on one acquisition across the pond: OpenText is acquiring its British rival, Micro Focus. Unfortunately, Micro Focus is dogged by a number of financial challenges. The bright side is that OpenText may be able to turn things around.

See our slideshow above for all of the latest channel-impacting M&A. Then, if you didn’t catch our previous M&A gallery, you can find it here.

Sep 20

Latest M&A: HP-Poly, Accenture, Lumen, Rackspace, Thoma Bravo, More

By | Managed Services News

A $3.3 billion acquisition strengthens opportunities for hybrid work. Can you guess which deal?

As our latest M&A edition shows, we observed some of the same trends in August as we did in July. It appears there’s no hitting the brakes when it comes to cybersecurity mergers and acquisitions in particular.

For example, global investment firm KKR has acquired a prominent cybersecurity company with more than 200,000 customers worldwide. It purchased the company from another familiar face in the investment world, Thoma Bravo. This raises another point. Investment firms are as much a part the channel as other organizations.

We selected 18 companies that participated in M&A in August. Some deals got attention for their size, such as HP closing its Poly acquisition. We paid attention to others for their geographic reach. This included Pax8‘s acquisition of Umbrellar, which allows the cloud marketplace provider to expand into New Zealand.

Lastly, we focused on one acquisition across the pond: OpenText is acquiring its British rival, Micro Focus. Unfortunately, Micro Focus is dogged by a number of financial challenges. The bright side is that OpenText may be able to turn things around.

See our slideshow above for all of the latest channel-impacting M&A. Then, if you didn’t catch our previous M&A gallery, you can find it here.

Sep 20

Broadcom, Cisco, Fortinet, VMware Among Growing SASE Market Leaders

By | Managed Services News

SASE spend is on pace to top a staggering figure this year.

Despite economic uncertainty, there was more than 30% growth in SASE in the second quarter of 2022. That’s according to a recently published report from the Dell’Oro Group. Overall, secure access service edge (SASE) spend is on pace to top $6 billion this year. The strong enterprise appetite for network and security transformation drove robust growth in the SASE-related SD-WAN networking and security service edge (SSE) security market.

The Dell’Oro Group’s SASE & SD-WAN findings encompass manufacturers’ revenue covering the SASE and access router markets. In addition, the report analyzes the SASE market from two perspectives. These include technology (SD-WAN networking and SSE security) and implementation (unified and disaggregated). The report also provides unit information for the access router market.

Dell'Oro Group's Mauricio Sanchez

Dell’Oro Group’s Mauricio Sanchez

Mauricio Sanchez is research director, network security and SASE & SD-WAN at Dell’Oro Group.

“Even in an environment of macro-economic angst, enterprises continued to strategically invest in SASE technologies to secure and improve connectivity for cloud-based apps and hybrid work,” Sanchez said. “Both SASE’s components, SSE and SD-WAN, saw more than 30% growth, showing enterprises value SASE’s network and security transformation benefits.”

Additional Findings

According to the report, the SASE market has over 35 vendors, with the top 11 representing 80% of the market by revenue. The top four overall SASE vendors are Broadcom/Symantec, Cisco, Palo Alto Networks and Zscaler (in alphabetical order). They represented 50% of the market by revenue.

Regarding security, the top three SASE security (also known as SSE) vendors are Broadcom/Symantec, Cisco, and Zscaler (in alphabetical order). They represented 60% of the market by revenue. SSE use cases with the most vigorous growth were zero trust network access (ZTNA) and firewall as a service.

The top three SASE networking (also known as SD-WAN) vendors are Cisco, Fortinet and VMware (in alphabetical order), Dell’Oro Group said. They represented one-half of market by revenue. SD-WAN hardware demand continued to outstrip supply.

Lastly, unified SASE grew twice as fast as disaggregated SASE.

Sep 20

Latest M&A: HP-Poly, Accenture, Lumen, Rackspace, Thoma Bravo, More

By | Managed Services News

A $3.3 billion acquisition strengthens opportunities for hybrid work. Can you guess which deal?

As our latest M&A edition shows, we observed some of the same trends in August as we did in July. It appears there’s no hitting the brakes when it comes to cybersecurity mergers and acquisitions in particular.

For example, global investment firm KKR has acquired a prominent cybersecurity company with more than 200,000 customers worldwide. It purchased the company from another familiar face in the investment world, Thoma Bravo. This raises another point. Investment firms are as much a part the channel as other organizations.

We selected 18 companies that participated in M&A in August. Some deals got attention for their size, such as HP closing its Poly acquisition. We paid attention to others for their geographic reach. This included Pax8‘s acquisition of Umbrellar, which allows the cloud marketplace provider to expand into New Zealand.

Lastly, we focused on one acquisition across the pond: OpenText is acquiring its British rival, Micro Focus. Unfortunately, Micro Focus is dogged by a number of financial challenges. The bright side is that OpenText may be able to turn things around.

See our slideshow above for all of the latest channel-impacting M&A. Then, if you didn’t catch our previous M&A gallery, you can find it here.

Sep 20

To Be Effective, Cybersecurity Tools Must Be Collaborative

By | Managed Services News

Just like the myriad expanding galaxies seen in the latest images from the James Webb space telescope, the cybersecurity landscape consists of a growing number of security technology vendors, each with the goal of addressing the continually evolving threats faced by customers today. To be effective, cybersecurity tools must be collaborative—be it sharing relevant threat intelligence, device and user insights, acting on detection and remediation workflows, and more.

We at Cisco Secure have embraced this concept for a while now with our continually growing ecosystem of multivendor technology integrations. At the RSA Conference 2022 earlier this year, Jeetu Patel, Cisco’s Executive Vice President and General Manager of Security and Collaboration, spoke (see below) of how the “cybersecurity poverty line” is widening and how malicious actors are taking advantage of this gaping hole to unleash persistent attacks. It is imperative that cybersecurity vendors interact with and collaborate with each other to close this gap. To do this, security vendors must adopt open ecosystems of APIs to easily integrate with each other to provide effective ways for mutual customers to defend against and react to cybersecurity attacks.

As in prior years, this fiscal year 2022 saw us growing to include new ecosystem partners and integrations. With 22 new partners and 51 new integrations in our ecosystem, Cisco Secure Technical Alliance (CSTA) now boasts over 450 integrations, including technical integrations with Cisco Duo and Cisco Kenna. This gives our mutual customers the freedom to implement the cybersecurity tools of their choice, with the knowledge that these tools can integrate with each other if they need to. Customers can thus realize a better return on investment in their cybersecurity spending and improve their cybersecurity posture.

In this annual round-up of our ecosystem, we congratulate our new partners in CSTA and existing partners, as well, who have either created new integrations across our portfolio or augmented existing ones. For more details on each partner integration in this announcement, please read through the individual partner highlights here.

Happy integrating!

Brian Gonsalves is Senior Manager, Product Management & Business Development, Security Business Group, Cisco.

This guest blog is part of a Channel Futures sponsorship.

Sep 20

Kyndryl: New Platform Leverages Company’s Core Technology Strengths

By | Managed Services News

Its capabilities have reduced the number of incidents per server per month for enterprises by about 74%.

IT infrastructure services provider Kyndryl has launched Kyndryl Bridge, a new digital integration platform. It gives business leaders control over customizing their mission-critical operations and real-time insight into their complex IT estates.

Kyndryl Bridge integrates and connects the complex management and process tools that enterprises throughout the global economy rely upon. Its capabilities have, on average, reduced the number of incidents per server, per month for enterprises by 74%.

Kyndryl Bridge takes advantage of Kyndryl’s core technology strengths. It pulls together decades of expertise, operational data patterns and IP to generate actionable insights. These redefine how enterprises improve and accelerate their AI-powered analytics and business objectives, the company said. In doing so, it creates a direct flow between digital business and the tech that drives it. Kyndryl Bridge aims to meet customers where they are today.

Kyndryl's Martin Schroeter

Kyndryl’s Martin Schroeter

Martin Schroeter is Kyndryl’s chairman and CEO.

“Dealing with complexity is what Kyndryl does best, and what customers need most. Kyndryl Bridge will be a way for our customers, and Kyndryl, to run their mission-critical infrastructure and digital transformation journeys better,” Schroeter said. “Kyndryl is committed to transforming how IT services are delivered, and Kyndryl Bridge is core to our long-term strategic mission to grow our ecosystem of alliance partners, use tools and IP to create a robust advanced delivery system, and ultimately dedicate more expertise and focus to best serve customer accounts at scale.”

Business Agendas

When it comes to the global economy, digital modernization efforts sit at the top of business agendas. Sixty percent of CIOs cite it as their most critical growth driver in 2022. However, business and technology complexity – along with a shortage of critical IT skills – has slowed progress for most enterprises.

Kyndryl Bridge is evolving to deploy ready-made, industrial-scale solutions from Kyndryl and its broad and growing partner ecosystem. Its intelligent management tools, powered by automation and AI, will provide technology leaders with real-time insights to prevent downtime and better forecast future needs and costs.

Kyndryl's Antoine Shagoury

Kyndryl’s Antoine Shagoury

Antoine Shagoury is Kyndryl’s CTO.

“By enabling leaders to focus less on managing IT systems, they can build and support their digital business strategies while freeing up IT resources for higher-value work,” Shagoury said. “It provides greater access and control over critical tools, and Kyndryl experts in cloud, data and AI, security and resiliency, mainframe modernization and other important aspects of the IT estate.”

Sep 20

Proteus Acquisition Boosts Resourcive Cybersecurity Consulting Practice

By | Managed Services News

“We’ve been chipping away at cybersecurity practice ourselves, and I think now is the time to pour fuel on that fire,” Kyle Hall said.

New York-based technology advisor Resourcive is buying consulting firm Proteus Advisors. It’s a move that increases Resourcive’s cybersecurity expertise.

Resourcive says the acquisition will create a new cybersecurity module within the company. Proteus founder Adrian Tilston will lead the practice. Resourcive didn’t say how much it’s paying for Proteus. The deal brings together a company in Proteus that has dabbled in the technology advisory (agent) space and a company in Resourcive that has dabbled in cybersecurity consulting.

Hall, Kyle_Resourcive

Resourcive’s Kyle Hall

“We’ve been chipping away at cybersecurity practice ourselves, and I think now is the time to pour fuel on that fire,” Resourcive president Kyle Hall told Channel Futures.

Hall said Resourcive has already helped customers with solutions such as cybersecurity assessments, SOC as a service and MSSP services. However, cybersecurity comprised a less frequent component of the agency’s portfolio, Hall said. He added that a growing number of network engagements encompass security.

“Adrian will lead our cyber practice, which will be uniquely positioned to bridge the gap [among] finance, IT and procurement departments when it comes to assessing and executing on cybersecurity initiatives,” said Hall.

Tilston, Adrian_Resourcive

Proteus Advisors’ Adrian Tilston

Hall said that after meeting Tilston, he initially wanted to hire him. Tilston had advised on security solutions as a government contractor before he launched Proteus in 2021. But ultimately it made sense to bring on Proteus as a company. The consulting firm provides a range of services to its business customers, including audits/assessment, program management and roadmap creation and execution. 

The Military Connection

Hall, Tilston and their companies shared military backgrounds. Tilston graduated from the U.S. Military Academy and spent 11 years in the Army. In addition to serving in the infantry, he served for the Special Forces as a Green Beret. Hall also served in the Special Forces.

Keep up with the latest channel-impacting mergers and acquisitions in our M&A roundup.

“As a fellow former Green Beret, Adrian will bring the ‘By, With and Through’ mentality to ensuring security vendors are utilized by our clients to drive maximum value from those services,” Hall told Channel Futures.

Moreover, Proteus had been engaging with SkillBridge, a job training program for transitioning service member, which Resourcive had also used.

Tilston said Resourcive offers Proteus a new set of opportunities. He also pointed to the cultural fit.

“As a former Green Beret, the cultural fit between Resourcive and Proteus Advisors will allow our clients to continue to experience the unique benefits of working with special operators when tackling some of their toughest challenges,” Tilston said.

Resourcive earned platinum status from Intelisys in 2018.

Industry M&A

While many agencies have agreed to acquisitions in the last year, a great deal of attention has focused on those that sold to a private equity-owned company. But other channel partners, including Resourcive, ARG and Helm Partners, have announced deals that they regard as strategic purchases, typically to expand a particular prat of their business. Helm’s purchase of Convergent Technologies, for example, gave it a new wireless management practice.

 

Sep 20

Colleges Offer Opportunity for IT Solution Providers

By | Managed Services News

IT solution providers can enter long-term engagements that allow them to act as trusted advisors.

As pandemic-related concerns persist, colleges and universities are walking a fine line between on-campus and remote learning while struggling with IT staff shortages. These challenges open up opportunities for IT solution providers to deliver managed power services to monitor and service campus IT infrastructure and uninterruptible power supplies (UPS).

Delivering a hybrid learning approach that combines remote and on-campus classes strains IT departments. In many cases, they’re already stretched thin. To compound the issue, IT workers are in short supply, so recruitment is a challenge. In a recent blog, IT industry association CompTIA said that “skilled IT workers will be hard to find and difficult to keep” throughout 2022.

Adding to the issue, CompTIA says, many IT workers are considering taking part in the “great resignation,” with 72% of respondents in a recent poll saying they may quit their jobs within 12 months.

IT solution providers are in a solid position to augment IT needs at colleges and universities. Providers can take over many IT tasks through remote management and automation. One of those tasks is the management of the power infrastructure. Solution providers can simplify power management for colleges and universities by delivering it as a service while reducing downtime potential.

Power on the Edge

To effectively manage the power infrastructure, organizations increasingly rely on edge computing networks that keep processing, storage and analytics as close as possible to data sources and users. Edge computing sites are essentially micro data centers with many of the same requirements of a data center, such as security and UPS.

Edge sites tend to multiply as organizations need to grow. As a result, managing these sites can be a daunting task for any organization, especially a college or university with multiple campuses. Therefore, edge computing sites typically must be managed remotely, which is what IT solution providers can do.

UPS Protection — Spotlighting Managed Power Services

The Ventura County Community College District (VCCCD) turned to an IT solution provider, California-based UPS Protection, when the district wanted to improve its power infrastructure management. Their IT infrastructure spanned 120 wiring closets dispersed through three campuses in Southern California. The college previously took a break/fix approach to power management at all its edge sites, which was time-consuming and ineffective.

UPS Protection embarked on a project to ensure every wiring closet was protected and remotely monitored to improve management and reliability. The provider implemented Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure IT Expert for visibility, monitoring and alarming, combined with Schneider’s Monitoring & Dispatch 24/7 service, enabling an automatic response whenever there is a problem with a UPS.

Reaping Managed Power Services Benefits

For the college, the UPS Protection implementation solved a problem. The school now has a strategy in place to reduce unplanned IT downtime. UPSs are running properly and quickly serviced with managed power services whenever there is an issue.

For the IT provider, the implementation creates a new source of recurring revenue on top of the initial hardware sales. Recurring revenue is attractive because it ensures a continuous cash flow so that providers don’t have to keep relying on the next solution sale to keep the business healthy.

Access UPS Protection Customer Story

Delivering managed power services to higher education institutions or customers in other segments like retail and banking spurs business growth for IT solution providers. And as IT solution providers take over remote management of IT assets such as the power infrastructure, they enter long-term engagements that allow them to act as trusted advisors. Interested in seeing how UPS Protection did it? Discover more about UPS Protection’s managed power success story in improving uptime for Ventura County Community College District.

This guest blog is part of a Channel Futures sponsorship.

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