Microsoft and the Q4 Incentive: How Long Will This Go On?

As Microsoft shifts its revenue mix from on-premise to cloud, you might expect the transition to change the company's calendar emphasis on closing deals from the end of the fiscal year -- June for Microsoft -- to the beginning of the year a month later.

After all, an Office 365 contract signed on July 1 means 12 months of revenues for Microsoft, while a deal closed in May is only worth two months of subscriptions. More

Posted by Scott Bekker on May 17, 20170 comments


Kaseya Buys Cloud Management Tools Vendor

LAS VEGAS -- In its ongoing quest to provide more components of the managed service provider (MSP) tool stack and broaden the definition of that stack, Kaseya acquired Unigma, a maker of cloud management tools.

One of the pioneers of the remote management and monitoring (RMM) toolsets for MSPs, Kaseya has lately branched out into the professional services automation (PSA) tools market. While CEO Fred Voccola argues the traditional market of managing endpoints for SMBs remains a very strong business, he contends that the far greater opportunity lies in providing managed services to those customers around emerging technology areas. More

Posted by Scott Bekker on May 10, 20170 comments


Continuum MSPs Get Access to Auvik Networking Tools

Continuum's managed service provider partners will be able to manage customers' routers, switches and firewalls through a newly integrated third-party offering.

The Boston-based remote monitoring and management (RMM) tools provider first unveiled an agreement to bundle the networking technology from Auvik Networks during the Continuum Navigate 2016 conference last September. More

Posted by Scott Bekker on May 04, 20170 comments


Rhodes Leaving Rackspace, Cotten Named Interim CEO

Rackspace CEO Taylor Rhodes is leaving the company on May 16 to become CEO of an unnamed smaller company, and President Jeff Cotten is stepping up as interim CEO while the board of directors seeks a long-term replacement to lead the privately held San Antonio, Texas-based hosting giant.

Calling it a tough decision in a blog post Wednesday, Rhodes said, "I'm going to become the CEO of a smaller private company. It's based in another city. It does not compete with Rackspace. I'll be able to talk more specifically about it in a couple of weeks, but for now let me just say that it's about the size Rackspace was when I started here 10 years ago -- and it's growing about as rapidly. It's using cloud technologies to disrupt what has been a very low-tech industry. The company is going through growing pains and needs a CEO who has been through those challenges before." More

Posted by Scott Bekker on May 04, 20170 comments


After Putting Itself on the Block, Citrix Attracts Some Bids

At least three buyout firms are in the running to buy Citrix Systems Inc., according to a report.

"Private equity firms Bain Capital, Carlyle Group LP and Thoma Bravo are among bidders for cloud-services company Citrix Systems Inc., people familiar with the matter said," reported Bloomberg Technology this week. More

Posted by Scott Bekker on May 04, 20170 comments


ESW Capital Buys RoseASP

Microsoft Dynamics hosting pioneer Linda Rose is retiring from day-to-day operations after the sale of San Diego-based RoseASP Inc. to ESW Capital LLC.

Founded in 2000, RoseASP provides hosted Dynamics services, including Dynamics AX, GP, NAV, SL and CRM. More

Posted by Scott Bekker on May 03, 20170 comments


Singh Takes on CEO Role at Docker

Docker, the fast-growing, 4-year-old, flagship company of the open source container trend, is replacing its CEO with the seasoned technology executive who was already serving as its chairman for the last six months.

Steve Singh was named Tuesday as the CEO, adding the title to the chairman role he assumed in November. Singh was the founder and CEO of Concur, and later served in senior management roles and as an executive board member at SAP after the business software giant acquired Concur in 2014 for $8.3 billion. More

Posted by Scott Bekker on May 02, 20170 comments


Executive Moves at AvePoint, Intermedia, Datto, Teamatics

Several technology companies unveiled new hires and promotions associated with strategic moves on Tuesday.

AvePoint
AvePoint, which provides tools for migrating, managing and protecting Office 365 and SharePoint data, updated a raft of senior executive roles on Tuesday. More

Posted by Scott Bekker on May 02, 20170 comments


Riverbed's Push to the Cloud Is Both Buy and Build

Acquisitions and organic product development will both be part of the strategic mix as Riverbed Technology seeks to grow beyond its WAN optimization roots into a future in the software-defined era.

"We've done three acquisitions in the last 18 months, and we'll continue to do more," said Chairman and CEO Jerry M. Kennelly on Wednesday in a keynote at the Riverbed Partner Summit 2017 in Santa Barbara, Calif. More

Posted by Scott Bekker on April 28, 20170 comments


Intel Optane Memory Hits GA

The first of the Intel Optane memory modules designed to improve desktop PC performance are available Monday at computer component retailers.

The two add-in components are a 16GB memory module with an MSRP of $44 and a 32GB module with an MSRP of $77. More

Posted by Scott Bekker on April 24, 20170 comments


With Partner Kits, Citrix Aims To Expand Field Capacity

Citrix Systems this week rolled out a Services Delivery Program based on converting the experience and intellectual property of Citrix Consulting into packaged, repeatable offerings for partners serving midmarket customers or those operating in developing or under-served markets.

The core of the program is a set of Services Delivery Kits to allow any partner to ramp up a services portfolio in areas including infrastructure assessments, design, core build, issue resolution and pilot development. More

Posted by Scott Bekker on April 21, 20170 comments


Linux Containers Coming to a Windows Server Near You

Microsoft unveiled a new type of container this week at DockerCon 2017 -- a Linux container that runs on Windows Server 2016.

The move would break down a fundamental wall in deployment scenarios for containers to date. For now, Linux containers can only run on Linux host operating systems and Windows containers can only run on Windows host operating systems. While that's more of a problem for Windows, which is the newcomer to the container phenomenon, a key benefit of containers is portability. The easier it is to deploy a container regardless of the underlying infrastructure, the closer the ideal comes to being realized. More

Posted by Scott Bekker on April 20, 20170 comments