Nutanix Talks Furloughs, Salesforce Tackles COVID-19, Google and Splunk Team Up

There is little sign of COVID-19 letting up, even as some states loosen shelter-in-place restrictions. As such, the virus is both inhibiting and spurring business decisions. In this cloud news roundup, find out who is imposing furloughs and who is releasing new technology so organizations can bring back workers. Also, who is enabling big data insights.

Nutanix Furloughs ‘Carefully Scripted’

As COVID-19 has dealt its economic blows, cloud largely has gone untouched. Until now. The novel coronavirus has forced Nutanix, whose software unites public, private and distributed clouds, to institute furloughs as it navigates the pandemic’s effects.

Nutanix furloughs impact one in four employees who must take unpaid leave while the company works through the pandemic.

According to The Mercury News, Nutanix told the State of California in mid-April that it is implementing two “separate, one-week unpaid furloughs” for 1,457 employees, or about 26% of its global workforce. The reductions will take place over the next six months. In a letter to California’s Employment Development Department, Nutanix cited COVID-19 as the direct cause for the decision.

However, the company made clear to government officials that the reductions are not permanent. In addition, a spokesperson told Channel Futures, furloughed U.S. staff, as well as staff outside the United States who voluntarily take unpaid leave, will maintain their benefits and employment status with Nutanix on leave.

Channel Futures had asked whether the furloughs impact Nutanix’s channel program or its channel strategy in general. A spokesperson did not directly answer the questions, saying instead that the company has “carefully scripted” its action to minimize customer – and, presumably, partner – impact. The spokesperson did say nothing about the new Nutanix Special Financial Assistance Program. It gives participating partners extended payment terms so they have more financial flexibility.

Salesforce Unveils Work.com As States Seek to Reopen

As more states reopen businesses amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, many executives are looking for data-centered guidance. Salesforce on Tuesday released Work.com to address this need, and views the channel as imperative to implementing it with customers.

Work.com acts as a resource center. It houses apps and modules that contain information from the nonprofit Business Roundtable, the University of California San Francisco, health and economic experts and government leaders, Salesforce said. Here’s a short overview of the product:

• Command Center: A hub that provides data about return-to-work readiness across locations, employees and visitors.
• Contact Tracing: Allows public and private sector leaders to manually trace health and relationship contacts. Salesforce said this will be done safely and privately. The module collects from people who are infected or may have been exposed to an infectious disease. It then creates maps of contacts and locations to monitor potential interactions and outbreak.
• Emergency Response Management: Lets public health organizations, government agencies and the private sector manage all types of emergencies.
• Employee Wellness: Enables leaders to gather the data needed to monitor and analyze employee and visitor health and wellness.
• Shift Management: Helps organizations plan for the eventual return of employees to the office through shift management that reduces office density.

Salesforce said several of its global strategic consulting partners already are rolling out Work.com. Accenture, Deloitte and PwC top that list. Meanwhile, Fusion Risk Management, Traction Guest and ComplianceQuest are building the first ISV solutions on the Salesforce platform to extend Work.com. Salesforce said those particular capabilities will support business continuity and risk management plans. They also will help users adapt supply chains, manage employees and visitors on-site, and more.

Google Cloud, Splunk Join Forces for Big Data

Google Cloud is teaming with Splunk to help organizations gain big data insights for IT, security, user behavior and more.

The companies’ combined capabilities will let users share data among applications and draw insights from data sets pulled from their cloud environments, according to Google Cloud.

Plans include native integrations with Google Cloud Security Command Center, Anthos and Stackdriver. Splunk will provide the data-insight capabilities, while Google Cloud will bring technology including artificial intelligence, machine learning, security, networking and data analytics to the table.

Splunk Cloud on Google Cloud remains in beta for early access customers.