StorageCraft Adds Intelligence to Backup with Gillware Buy

StorageCraft Technology Corp. is bolstering its business continuity platform with technology from a company in the Upper Midwest that prioritizes which data gets backed up.

"This is all about being smarter -- don't just store everything over and over again," said StorageCraft CTO Scott Barnes of the company's acquisition this week of Gillware Online Backup. With the deal, StorageCraft gets Gillware's file backup solution, its data analytics tool for determining what data to back up, a rules engine for prioritizing backups and about 15 employees. More

Posted by Scott Bekker on September 21, 20160 comments


Tech Data To Acquire Avnet Technology Solutions

With its $2.6 billion acquisition of the Technology Solutions portion of Avnet Inc., Tech Data Corp. would bolster its datacenter business and gain a toehold in the Asia-Pacific region.

The blockbuster distribution deal, announced Monday and involving a mix of $2.4 billion in cash and 2.785 million shares of Tech Data common stock, is expected to close in the first half of 2017. More

Posted by Scott Bekker on September 19, 20160 comments


Dell-EMC Channel Integration To Come in 2017

The long process of integrating the Dell and EMC partner programs will begin in earnest next year.

Dell on Wednesday announced completion of its acquisition of EMC Corp., creating a $74 billion, 140,000-employee giant called Dell Technologies that the company says is the world's largest privately controlled tech company. Businesses within Dell Technologies include Dell, Dell EMC (another new brand as of Wednesday), Pivotal, RSA, SecureWorks, Virtustream and VMware. More

Posted by Scott Bekker on September 07, 20160 comments


VMware Making Workstation, Fusion Upgrade Free

When VMware ships its new generation of desktop virtualization software next week, the upgrade will be free for many existing customers.

VMware plans a half-step incremental release of VMware Fusion and Fusion Pro, which run on Mac computers, and Workstation Player and Workstation Pro, which run on Windows and Linux. The main enhancement of the version 8.5 release of the Fusion line and the 12.5 releases for Workstation is the addition of support for Windows 10 Anniversary Edition and Windows Server 2016 within virtual machines. More

Posted by Scott Bekker on August 31, 20160 comments


D&H Ramps Up Credit to SMB Resellers

SMB-focused distributor D&H Distributing is expanding the amount of credit it offers to resellers by nearly 50 percent, the Harrisburg, Pa.-based company said Monday.

The expansion applies to D&H's Business Assurance program, which combines funding from D&H's vendor partners. The credit expansion applies to nearly 850 reseller customers, who have good credit standing with D&H and show growth potential. The credit lines can go up from $2,500 to $100,000, with typical increases of about $25,000 per reseller, the company said. More

Posted by Scott Bekker on August 29, 20160 comments


Follow Microsoft IT to Mostly Wireless Networking?

Over the next two years, the Microsoft IT department plans to convert more than two-thirds of Microsoft sites to completely wireless networking.

"In the grand scheme of things, we'll be cutting over 90 percent of our end-user network infrastructure," said David Lef, principal network architect at Microsoft IT, in a blog Q&A this month. More

Posted by Scott Bekker on August 25, 20160 comments


Microsoft Embraces LinuxCon

The détente between Microsoft and the open source community seemed to reach a new level this week at LinuxCon North America in Toronto.

The list of the show's sponsors itself (see below) seemed an inversion of the old order, with Microsoft in the top Diamond tier while more traditional Linux heavyweights Red Hat and SUSE occupied the next tier down. More

Posted by Scott Bekker on August 24, 20160 comments


With Genee Buy, Microsoft Gives Cortana a Little Sibling

A virtual assistant tuned for scheduling meetings through natural language in e-mail, SMS, Twitter or chat is the latest tuck-in acquisition by Microsoft as it continues to advance its Office 365 cloud productivity platform.

Microsoft on Monday announced a signed agreement to acquire Genee for an undisclosed sum. The San Francisco-area startup was founded in 2014 and had raised $1.45 million in first-round funding last August. Founders Ben Cheung and Charles Lee will join Microsoft. More

Posted by Scott Bekker on August 22, 20160 comments


Cisco To Lay Off 5,500

Cisco plans to eliminate about 7 percent of its global workforce in order to increase its focus on security, Internet of Things (IoT), collaboration, next-generation datacenter and cloud.

The networking giant announced the cuts as part of its first quarter earnings report on Wednesday evening. The restructuring to eliminate up to 5,500 positions will begin during the current financial quarter. More

Posted by Scott Bekker on August 18, 20160 comments


Pulseway Makes Formal Entry into MSP Market

After building up a sizable installed base of managed service providers (MSPs) with its mobility-focused remote monitoring and management product, Pulseway is making a formal push into the MSP market.

The 5-year-old Dublin, Ireland, based vendor this week launched Pulseway MSP specifically for managed service providers. More

Posted by Scott Bekker on August 17, 20160 comments


OwnBackup Ports Cloud-to-Cloud Backup Offering to Azure

Cloud-to-cloud backup vendor OwnBackup, a major player in the Salesforce.com AppExchange, this week announced it has added Microsoft Azure as a cloud-based backup target for Salesforce.com and other Force.com applications.

The SaaS-to-IaaS/PaaS backup solution was initially released last year with Amazon Web Services (AWS) as the target. OwnBackup, with offices in Fort Lee, N.J., and Herzliya Pituach, Israel, also offers cloud-to-cloud backup solutions for ServiceNow and corporate social media accounts. More

Posted by Scott Bekker on August 10, 20160 comments


BCM One Acquires CloudStrategies

BCM One Inc., a 25-year-old New York-based technology integrator, expanded its growing footprint of Microsoft services this week with the acquisition of CloudStrategies Group, one of Microsoft's first born-in-the-cloud partners.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. More

Posted by Scott Bekker on August 04, 20160 comments