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The musical chairs of wireless partnerships continues — this time with AT&T and Dish Network.

The companies signed a strategic partnership that makes AT&T Dish’s primary mobile virtual network operator (MVNO). The network services agreement pays AT&T more than $5 billion over the next 10 years. Dish will use AT&T’s wireless network to expand coverage for Dish customers and support its goal of covering 70% of the U.S. population with its OpenRAN-based 5G network by 2023. On the other hand, AT&T can use the spectrum that Dish has been collecting over the last decade, though it must request it.

Dish’s John Swieringa

Customers of Dish’s Boost Mobile, Ting Mobile and Republic Wireless retail brands will benefit from the partnership. John Swieringa, Dish’s chief operating officer and group president of retail wireless, said AT&T is offering transport and roaming services.

“Teaming with AT&T on this long-term partnership will allow us to better compete in the retail wireless market and quickly respond to changes in our customers’ evolving connectivity needs as we build our own first-of-its kind 5G network,” Swieringa said.

AT&T maintains both a “low-band” network that reportedly covers more than 250 million people, as well as a smaller but faster “high-band” (also known as mmWave) network.

AT&T’s Thaddeus Arroyo

“Teaming with Dish on this agreement is not only a testament to the strength of our network, but it further validates the investments we’ve made in our fiber and wireless infrastructure,” AT&T Consumer CEO Thaddeus Arroyo said.

Implications

The nonexclusive deal raises all the more intrigue when we remember that Boost Mobile and Republic Wireless currently use the Sprint network that T-Mobile acquired. Dish entered the wireless market after the U.S. Justice Department ordered T-Mobile to sell Boost Mobile to Dish in order to complete its merger with Sprint. The Justice Department wanted to ensure that a fourth wireless carrier existed to ensure competition.

GlobalData’s Tammy Parker

Tammy Parker, senior analyst at GlobalData, noted that T-Mobile and Dish haven’t exactly seen eye-to-eye.

“… although Dish’s involvement [in the Justice Department deal] saved T-Mobile’s acquisition of Sprint, the relationship between Dish and T-Mobile appears to have been fraught from the start. T-Mobile’s plans to shutter its 3G network by January 2022, leaving many of Dish’s customers without network service, has created an especially contentious standoff between the two companies, which likely helped pave the way for Dish’s new agreement with AT&T.”

Parker notes that AT&T can terminate the agreement if Dish experiences a “qualifying change of control.” In other words, if another party takes over at least half of Dish, AT&T would only need to take care of Dish MVNO customers for another two years.

But Parker predicted that Dish and AT&T will play nice with each other.

“The [network service agreement] is not exclusive for either party, so both can go out and find new dance partners; however, given the depth and breadth of this agreement, that would appear both unlikely and unnecessary,” Parker said.

Light Reading’s Jeff Baumgartner mused that the deal could pan out very well for Dish and very poorly for AT&T.

Dish has announced several different partnerships that will help it build a 5G network. The company announced in April that it would build its 5G network on AWS.

Nokia will provide the 5G standalone core, and Dell will provide Radio Access Network (RAN) and edge compute infrastructure.

AT&T, on the other hand, announced late last month that it will outsource its 5G core network to Microsoft Azure.

Partner M&A continues to hit the news wire.

We’re seeing MSPs and agents participate in consolidation like never before. Yes, there’s no shortage of IT and security vendors that are buying and selling and getting involved with private equity, but the partners are doing M&A in a big way. Core BTS continued its evolution from VAR to cloud-focused MSP with the acquisition of Aptera Software. Upstack continues to lure telecom consultancies with its deep pockets and the promise of agent equity.

Not all M&A news made the gallery. For example, Xerox enhanced its SMB practice by purchasing a document solutions provider, and Cisco finished purchasing a vulnerability management platform.

Check out the 16 acquisitions that we covered in the slideshow above.

Did you see our previous monthly M&A recap? Check it out.

A solid security blueprint helps you to provide the cybersecurity and threat protection solutions that your customers increasingly demand. But the success of any cybersecurity blueprint relies on a solid marketing strategy and setting the right goals for your business.

What does that mean?

To shed some light, let’s look a little deeper at each of these key areas.

How to Get Your Marketing Right

Your marketing strategy needs to achieve a few critical objectives:

1. Align with your business plan
2. Define your target plans and the marketing mediums you intend to use
3. Help drive your business goals

Crucially, your security blueprint marketing strategy also needs to focus on your services and the benefits you’ll offer to partners–rather than the solutions and technology you provide.

Defining a cybersecurity blueprint marketing strategy begins with examining your value proposition. This outlines the products and services you offer, what makes you stand out from your competitors, and why customers should buy from you.

You can then detail how you’ll sell and deliver your products and services, including identifying the channels you want to use to target customers. This strategy needs to follow the ‘Five Ps’ marketing rules of price, promotion, place, people and process.

From there, you can commission market research that helps you to establish your target audience and create customer profiles. This includes understanding the types of organizations you want to target, who their decision-makers are, and their purchasing and behavioral habits.

How to Communicate with Customers

With your target customers defined, it’s vital to understand how to communicate with them effectively.

While there are some general best practices to follow regardless of your audience, the specifics may differ depending on whether you’re communicating with new business targets or existing customers.

• Existing customers: Marketing to existing customers requires consistent, ongoing communication. It requires regular touchpoints, such as phone calls and emails, about best practices along with active discussions around customers’ next steps.
• New customers: When communicating with net new customers, the focus needs to be on what you can help them achieve if they partner with you. Having a good brand image in the organization’s peer group can be crucial to your success here. It encourages customers to elevate your reputation through word of mouth and strengthens your position heading into new sales processes.

How to Set Achievable Goals

In addition to a solid marketing strategy, you also need to set attainable and realistic goals, which is only possible by assessing the current state of your business.

Factors you need to consider include:

• Who you’re selling to and how
• How many deals you have and the size of those deals
• The amount of revenue you’re bringing in
• Your sales cycle process
• Lead conversion figures
• What’s driving your customers’ purchases
• Your current resources

Getting a good grasp of this information lays the foundations for setting future goals and helps you assess whether your growth targets are realistic. This includes establishing a firm understanding of why you want to expand your offering, the solutions you want to add, the types of businesses you’re targeting and your go-to-market strategy.

Goal setting tends to be a curved progression that starts slowly and accelerates as you progress. It’s essential to set goals low, aim to build momentum, and increase expectations as your expertise develops.

Like your marketing strategy, this often depends on whether you’re targeting new or existing customers. Growth will likely be sharper when targeting existing customers and tends to be a slower process for net new customers.

Furthermore, the SMART framework, which was developed by Peter Drucker, can help you to set goals that are clear and easy to achieve.

This framework offers the following guidelines:

• Specific: Goals that are sensible, simple, and significant
• Measurable: Goals that are meaningful and motivational
• Achievable: Goals that are agreed upon and attainable
• Relevant: Goals that are realistic, reasonable, and results-based
• Timely: Goals that are time-limited and time-sensitive

Learn more about cybersecurity marketing and security blueprint goal setting by downloading our From Blueprint to Foundation, Addressing the Gaps in Your Security Design whitepaper.

This guest blog is part of a Channel Futures sponsorship.

As the sensors and hardware that drive the internet of things (IoT) get smarter and more numerous, network providers will need to work with businesses to consider proper bandwidth and security.

IoT offers the potential for improved operations and greater insights into performance across virtually all industries. From smart cities to manufacturing to healthcare to agriculture and retail, companies have more than ever deployed IoT sensors and devices to offer more accurate, actionable data, and to help drive new revenue streams through better informed decisions.

The IoT market is expected to continue its growth trajectory. By 2027, there will be 41 billion connected IoT devices, or “things,” according to a report from Business Insider, up from 8 billion in 2019. All told, the IoT market is expected to grow to more than $2.4 trillion annually by 2027.

The ability to integrate modern devices with internet connectivity is good for business. But all of this doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Robust technology that can gather and process huge amounts of data, transmit it great distances, and turn it into reliable actions quickly requires networks that can handle the work.

Underlying network technologies such as 5G, WiFi, and low-power, long-range wide-area networks (LoRaWAN) need to work in tandem as organizations seek to optimize sought-after efficiencies. Let’s have a look at how that works.

The Current State of IoT and Network Needs

In an effort to make operations more efficient and effective, an increasing number of companies is deploying IoT, AI and machine learning, connecting billions of sensors and transmitting data through battery powered devices. Although the technology is similar, the deployment is different by industry. Examples include:

• Energy and utilities: water meters and use optimizations, buoy sensors in the ocean to detect tsunamis, automated smart valves to flush systems, leakage detection
• Healthcare: refrigeration monitoring for medications, equipment location and monitoring, sanitation reminders and monitoring
• Smart cities: municipal lighting control, waste management, fire and water leak detection and response, rodent control
• Asset tracking, fleet management and logistics: tracking and monitoring everything from people to pallets, bicycles, animals and cargo ships; planning floor space, worker shifts and lunch breaks to help make warehouses and operations more efficient, increasing analytics that can help drive decision-making

The reality is that IoT will continue to grow in many different industries as companies discover more use cases that can help them create efficiencies that make operations more efficient. This will require investment in infrastructure upgrades to properly support the additional network needs. The good news is that most enterprise companies already have the WiFi and broadband bones in place to upgrade their systems.

As the number and type of IoT devices and sensors proliferate, networks can provide:

• Increased ability to connect any number of myriad IoT endpoints
• Reliability
• Smart gateway intelligence
• Programmability
• Edge processing
• Traffic monitoring and prioritization
• Managed connectivity costs

“Connectivity is the lifeblood of a business these days,” says Christian Nascimento, vice president, product management and strategy, Comcast Business. “Everyone already has broadband or some form of connectivity. It’s not a huge investment to layer sensors and analytics resources on top of that. The longer-term benefits that a business gets far outweigh the costs.”

The marriage of WiFi and LoRaWAN

Advancements in technology are leading to smarter sensors that make localized decisions and become actionable insights. Machine learning and AI will help sensors get smarter, but they will also need a robust and capable network for optimal performance. Click Page 2 to continue reading…

The musical chairs of wireless partnerships continues — this time with AT&T and Dish Network.

The companies signed a strategic partnership that makes AT&T Dish’s primary mobile virtual network operator (MVNO). The network services agreement pays AT&T more than $5 billion over the next 10 years. Dish will use AT&T’s wireless network to expand coverage for Dish customers and support its goal of covering 70% of the U.S. population with its OpenRAN-based 5G network by 2023. On the other hand, AT&T can use the spectrum that Dish has been collecting over the last decade, though it must request it.

Dish’s John Swieringa

Customers of Dish’s Boost Mobile, Ting Mobile and Republic Wireless retail brands will benefit from the partnership. John Swieringa, Dish’s chief operating officer and group president of retail wireless, said AT&T is offering transport and roaming services.

“Teaming with AT&T on this long-term partnership will allow us to better compete in the retail wireless market and quickly respond to changes in our customers’ evolving connectivity needs as we build our own first-of-its kind 5G network,” Swieringa said.

AT&T maintains both a “low-band” network that reportedly covers more than 250 million people, as well as a smaller but faster “high-band” (also known as mmWave) network.

AT&T’s Thaddeus Arroyo

“Teaming with Dish on this agreement is not only a testament to the strength of our network, but it further validates the investments we’ve made in our fiber and wireless infrastructure,” AT&T Consumer CEO Thaddeus Arroyo said.

Implications

The nonexclusive deal raises all the more intrigue when we remember that Boost Mobile and Republic Wireless currently use the Sprint network that T-Mobile acquired. Dish entered the wireless market after the U.S. Justice Department ordered T-Mobile to sell Boost Mobile to Dish in order to complete its merger with Sprint. The Justice Department wanted to ensure that a fourth wireless carrier existed to ensure competition.

GlobalData’s Tammy Parker

Tammy Parker, senior analyst at GlobalData, noted that T-Mobile and Dish haven’t exactly seen eye-to-eye.

“… although Dish’s involvement [in the Justice Department deal] saved T-Mobile’s acquisition of Sprint, the relationship between Dish and T-Mobile appears to have been fraught from the start. T-Mobile’s plans to shutter its 3G network by January 2022, leaving many of Dish’s customers without network service, has created an especially contentious standoff between the two companies, which likely helped pave the way for Dish’s new agreement with AT&T.”

Parker notes that AT&T can terminate the agreement if Dish experiences a “qualifying change of control.” In other words, if another party takes over at least half of Dish, AT&T would only need to take care of Dish MVNO customers for another two years.

But Parker predicted that Dish and AT&T will play nice with each other.

“The [network service agreement] is not exclusive for either party, so both can go out and find new dance partners; however, given the depth and breadth of this agreement, that would appear both unlikely and unnecessary,” Parker said.

Light Reading’s Jeff Baumgartner mused that the deal could pan out very well for Dish and very poorly for AT&T.

Dish has announced several different partnerships that will help it build a 5G network. The company announced in April that it would build its 5G network on AWS.

Nokia will provide the 5G standalone core, and Dell will provide Radio Access Network (RAN) and edge compute infrastructure.

AT&T, on the other hand, announced late last month that it will outsource its 5G core network to Microsoft Azure.

Nitro Software, the global document productivity software company, and Infinicept, the provider of embedded payments, on Monday unveiled new or updated channel programs.

Nitro Software has updated its Partner Acceleration Program and launched its new partner portal. These changes allow the company to become a channel-first leader in PDF productivity and eSignature solutions.

The Partner Acceleration Program offers a discount and margin structure to channel partners. It also offers support from the Nitro team to help partners build their Nitro business.

As part of the program, resellers and distributors receive a range of benefits. Those include specific program and campaign incentives, sales and marketing support, partner enablement tools, and sales certifications.

Nitro’s Simon Taylor

Simon Taylor is Nitro Software’s vice president of global channel and alliances.

“Nitro has had a mature sales channel for many years,” he said. “However, with the growth we experienced through partners in 2020 during COVID-19, we realized it was time to invest in the structure, incentives and growth trajectory we want from a channel program that can take us as close to 100% partner-centric as possible. Additionally, we are bringing on new and different types of partners so we needed a program that would accommodate that.”

Input from Partners

Nitro Software worked with about a dozen resellers and distributors across three primary regions: Asia Pacific, the Americas and EMEA. The company wanted to understand how best to incentivize them, Taylor said. That includes for both land-and-expand deal opportunities and, more importantly, higher levels of growth and attainment relative to the Nitro product platform.

“On the partner portal, we looked at a few solutions and went with one that ultimately was simple and that integrated into our core sales pipeline management,” he said. “A few partners were also on the beta of the portal implementation to iron out any concerns.”

The updated program will give Nitro Software and its partners a competitive advantage, Taylor said.

“First, deeper pricing discounts relative to opportunity registration against deal values of 20 users or more by subscription,” he said. “Second, the same discounts to grow and expand their customer use of Nitro, which is a little unheard of in both our competitors and in many subscription/SaaS vendor organizations. So we do think in our industry we are unique at this point. Finally, longevity in the growth and adoption of a platform that is intrinsically tied to partner/customer success. Over time we plan to bring even more advantages to our partners, including professional service/integration opportunities, as well as referral and co-sell models.”

Infinicept Launches Partner Network

Meantime, Infinicept has launched its Partner Network. The program meets the evolving needs of companies as they embed payments into their digital experiences. It provides them with a curated set of providers so they have full control over their payments journey.

The new Partner Network includes dozens of prequalified solution providers and industry leaders. It delivers transparency and the choice to power embedded payments in a way that works for them.

Infinicept has established partnerships and/or integrations with Payroc, Handpoint Technologies, Mastercard, Discover, LexisNexis, Very Good Security and more.

Todd Ablowitz is Infinicept’s co-CEO and co-founder.

Infinicept’s Todd Ablowitz

“Our customers have been asking the industry to give them an open, flexible experience for years,” he said. ” We’ve been listening. As we have seen the embedded payments and payment facilitator markets explode over the last few years, and especially coming out of the pandemic, we observed an acute need for a best fit, agnostic approach to aligning payment processors and value add providers with the needs of software-led payments companies.”

Competitive Advantages

Infinicept’s platform helps software companies partner with providers best suited for their business, Ablowitz said.

The Partner Network doesn’t just give partners a competitive advantage, he said. It also gives customers a competitive advantage by having the visibility and transparency to match the right solution for their needs.

“For our partners, Infinicept’s business development team is actively sourcing opportunities from our proprietary database of many thousands of software companies and bringing our partners those opportunities on a silver platter,” Ablowitz said. “Our partners gain additional competitive advantage from working within the Infinicept ecosystem, which is built on trust through the industry’s leading experts on compliance and merchant risk management. The Infinicept ecosystem provides a new level of visibility and accountability into the embedded payments world, enabling scale and accelerated growth opportunities for our partners.”

Rapid7 has acquired IntSights Cyber Intelligence, a provider of contextualized external threat intelligence and proactive threat remediation. Rapid7 is paying $335 million in cash and stock in the deal.

With the acquisition of IntSights, Rapid7 will combine its threat intelligence and understanding of customer environments with IntSights’ external threat intelligence capabilities. The combination will provide customers with a unified view into threats. It’ll also provide attack surface monitoring, relevant insights and proactive threat mitigation for all organizations, the company said.

Moreover, the acquisition enhances Rapid7’s cloud-native extended detection and response (XDR) offering, InsightIDR. It does so by enabling alerts to ensure efficient security operations, earlier threat detection and accelerated response times.

Shared Belief

Corey Thomas is Rapid7’s chairman and CEO.

Rapid7’s Corey Thomas

“Cybersecurity is a lopsided battle today and the odds consistently favor attackers,” he said. “Both IntSights and Rapid7 have a shared belief that organizations will succeed only when they have a unified view of internal and external threats, complete with contextualized intelligence and automated threat mitigation, which will allow security teams to focus on the most critical threats. We look forward to working with IntSights to make this vision a reality for our customers.”

Guy Nizan is IntSights’ co-founder and CEO.

IntSights’ Guy Nizan

“We founded IntSights to make threat intelligence instantly accessible and actionable for organizations of any type or size,” he said. “We are excited to join Rapid7 to continue this mission and to bring our threat intelligence capabilities to even more customers.”

IntSights drives the productivity and outcomes that security operations teams need. It does so by providing continuous coverage for external threats, from identification to mitigation, to remediation.

Rapid7’s Insight Platform includes a set of capabilities across detection and response, vulnerability management, cloud security, application security, and security orchestration and automation. The company intends to bring IntSights’ external threat intelligence capabilities into its platform to unlock faster threat identification and remediation across the company’s entire solution portfolio.

Partner M&A continues to hit the news wire.

We’re seeing MSPs and agents participate in consolidation like never before. Yes, there’s no shortage of IT and security vendors that are buying and selling and getting involved with private equity, but the partners are doing M&A in a big way. Core BTS continued its evolution from VAR to cloud-focused MSP with the acquisition of Aptera Software. Upstack continues to lure telecom consultancies with its deep pockets and the promise of agent equity.

Not all M&A news made the gallery. For example, Xerox enhanced its SMB practice by purchasing a document solutions provider, and Cisco finished purchasing a vulnerability management platform.

Check out the 16 acquisitions that we covered in the slideshow above.

Did you see our previous monthly M&A recap? Check it out.

The latest big-tech M&A talk involves a potential merger of rivals Avast and NortonLifelock, and Intel potentially acquiring semiconductor manufacturer GlobalFoundries.

London-listed cybersecurity firm Avast is in advanced talks with U.S. rival NortonLifeLock about a merger. The pairing would create a leader in consumer security software.

Avast released a statement confirming that its board of directors is in advanced discussions regarding the possible merger.

“There can be no certainty as to whether any transaction will take place or the terms on which any possible merger may be agreed,” it said. “A further announcement will be made if and when appropriate. The possible merger may be implemented as a cash and share offer for Avast by Norton.”

Avast said NortonLifelock has until Aug. 11 to either announce a firm intention to make an offer for Avast or say it doesn’t intend to make an offer. This deadline can be extended.

Avast confirmed advanced talks of a merger without NortonLifelock’s consent. NortonLifelock didn’t respond to requests for comment.

A Closer Look at Potential Merger

Tony Massimini is senior industry analyst for information and network security at Frost & Sullivan. He said NortonLifelock is heavily consumer with some business in SMB. On the other hand, Avast has more emphasis on SMB and also in consumer.

Frost & Sullivan’s Tony Massimini

“NortonLifelock is about two-and-half times the size of Avast,” he said. “This would add revenue for NortonLifelock and expand its customer base.”

In terms of endpoint security on the consumer side, there are just a handful of companies, Massimini said. NortonLifelock is the dominant player in consumer, and both NortonLifelock and Avast are top players in SMB.

“This will make NortonLifelock a stronger player in consumer-SMB,” he said. “That market’s not as crowded as the overall endpoint market.”

Potential changes in the consumer market could make for a “very competitive 2022,” Massimini said. In addition to the potential NorthLifelock-Avast pairing, McAfee is selling off its enterprise business. The McAfee that remains will focus more on consumer.

Intel Exploring GlobalFoundries Acquisition

In the meantime, Intel is reportedly exploring a deal to buy GlobalFoundries for about $30 billion. The Wall Street Journal broke the news, citing people familiar with the matter.

Any acquisition talks don’t appear to include GlobalFoundries directly, as a spokesperson for the company said it was not in discussions with Intel.

The potential acquisition comes amid a global semiconductor shortage, according to Reuters. The potential acquisition could help Intel shore up production of chips. Carmakers are struggling to keep operations running due to the shortage.

Neither Intel nor GlobalFoundries responded to requests for comment.

These potential deals follow Microsoft’s announcement that it’s acquiring RiskIQ, and Apollo Global Management reportedly wanting to buy consumer assets from Lumen Technologies in a deal worth more than $5 billion.

In addition, Broadcom reportedly was pursuing an acquisition of SAS Institute. However, Jim Goodnight, SAS’ CEO, sent a companywide email telling employees that the company is not for sale.

Partner M&A continues to hit the news wire.

We’re seeing MSPs and agents participate in consolidation like never before. Yes, there’s no shortage of IT and security vendors that are buying and selling and getting involved with private equity, but the partners are doing M&A in a big way. Core BTS continued its evolution from VAR to cloud-focused MSP with the acquisition of Aptera Software. Upstack continues to lure telecom consultancies with its deep pockets and the promise of agent equity.

Not all M&A news made the gallery. For example, Xerox enhanced its SMB practice by purchasing a document solutions provider, and Cisco finished purchasing a vulnerability management platform.

Check out the 16 acquisitions that we covered in the slideshow above.

Did you see our previous monthly M&A recap? Check it out.