SonicWall is coming out of Dell's shadow at a flat-out sprint.
Late last year, Francisco Partners and Elliot Management completed the acquisition of Dell Software Group and spun out SonicWall as an independent company. Simultaneously on Nov. 1, SonicWall created the SonicWall SecureFirst Partner Program. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on June 28, 20170 comments
Editor's Note: The following text was generated using Dictate, Microsoft's new speech-to-text feature in Office. To read the original script, plus some useful resources, scroll toward the end.
microsoft has a new experimental add in for office called dictate it is supposed to improve the experience of talking to word, outlook and powerpoint rather than typing to enter text into a document
officially, microsoft called dictate a" project released through the microsoft garage, " and emerged from an annual microsoft hackathon and had one thousand five hundred microsoft employees using it in more than forty countries before the release on Wednesday. rather than write a usual blog post about dictate, I figured I'd download it, give it a spin and publish the results as a blog post. the traditionally typescript that I dictated from is included below so you can judge the results for yourself. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on June 22, 20170 comments
Redmond Channel Partner magazine caught up with Continuum CEO Michael George on Thursday, a day after the managed services provider tools vendor landed an acquisition by Thoma Bravo LLC. (See our story Wednesday for details.) What follows are excerpts from the conversation.
On whether and how long George will be staying on in the CEO role he's held since September 2011:
"I'm a part owner and I'm an investor. By sound mind and reason, I'd be a fool to leave prematurely [laughs]. This is a company that we've been building now for the last five years to get to this foundational point. As long as I'm the right CEO for the company, I intend to stay on." More
Posted by Scott Bekker on June 15, 20170 comments
Continuum, a major provider of tools for managed service providers (MSPs), is being acquired by private equity firm Thoma Bravo LLC.
The deal was announced Wednesday evening. Terms were not disclosed. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on June 14, 20170 comments
In an effort to build out its community of implementation partners, Salesforce.com is spinning up a $50 million fund to invest in systems integrators (SIs) and creating a parallel operation to support companies in that portfolio.
The San Francisco-based cloud CRM giant unveiled the SI Trailblazer Fund and the SI Trailblazer Alliance Initiative on Wednesday.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on June 01, 20170 comments
Microsoft on Thursday named the several hundred winners and finalists of its Partner of the Year Awards, which will be handed out next month when partners gather from around the world in Washington, D.C., for the Microsoft Inspire conference. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on June 01, 20170 comments
Ingram Micro partners are able to offer hardware-as-a-service and hardware-as-a-rental as part of a new program by the Irvine, Calif.-based distributor.
Ingram unveiled the Technology as a Service Program on Wednesday for qualifying Ingram Micro channel partners. The program expands on the $1.1 billion in credit the distributor has extended to U.S.-based channel partners over the last 14 months.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on June 01, 20170 comments
With a huge business built on providing software that ships with hardware produced by strategic ecosystem partners, Microsoft's own foray into hardware is a fraught affair.
The company's stated aim in designing its own hardware is to inspire hardware partners to leverage the full capabilities of Windows and other Microsoft platforms. When it works -- think the Microsoft Surface, Surface Book, HoloLens or Surface Pen -- the approach can spark new categories of popular devices from a range of vendors. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on May 31, 20170 comments
The Microsoft Inspire conference will be the first high-profile opportunity for partners to get a sense of Ron Huddleston, who as the head of the newly created One Commercial Partner organization plays an important role in how Microsoft allocates its resources for the channel.
Gavriella Schuster, corporate vice president of the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Group (WPG), unveiled the speaker lineup this week for Inspire, the July partner gathering previously known as the Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC).
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Posted by Scott Bekker on May 25, 20170 comments
Surface reseller partners were enthusiastic about elements of the lightly refreshed Surface Pro that Microsoft unveiled Tuesday morning at an event in Shanghai.
Panos Panay, corporate vice president for Microsoft Devices, unveiled the unnumbered Surface Pro, which delivers a number of mostly incremental improvements over the aging Surface Pro 4 that it replaces. The new Surface Pro is available to order now and will begin shipping June 15. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on May 23, 20170 comments
Dynamics is a historically tricky business for Microsoft's traditional infrastructure partners. Selling and implementing the business applications require a different skill set than what's required on the infrastructure side.
The way Microsoft is now packaging its new Dynamics 365 cloud service in the Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) business model makes the whole opportunity a lot more intriguing for partners who come from the Windows/Exchange/Office 365 side of the Microsoft Partner Network (MPN). More
Posted by Scott Bekker on May 22, 20170 comments
WannaCry (also known as WannaCrypt) is developing into a potentially transformative ransomware incident.
Ransomware is nothing new and IT experts, especially vendors in the security and backup and recovery sectors, have been running around with their hair on fire about it for a few years now. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on May 22, 20170 comments