Acronis will unify its products into a single line on March 31 and roll out significant changes to its partner program throughout 2021, the company told partners Tuesday.
Founder Serguei Beloussov described the design goal of the licensing changes as "one policy, one user interface, one license from one vendor." Acronis is aiming to roll up security, e-mail security, file sync and share, management, notarization, backup and disaster recovery under the Acronis Cyber Protect license. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on February 02, 20210 comments
Microsoft experienced a lengthy technical glitch during CEO Satya Nadella's comments to financial analysts in the quarterly investor call on Tuesday.
A seven-minute, 40-second stretch of dead air started for at least some users watching the session on Microsoft Teams a little over three minutes into the call. Partway into the outage, Microsoft posted a message from its production studios reading, "We are experiencing technical difficulties. Please standby." More
Posted by Scott Bekker on January 26, 20210 comments
Microsoft this week announced Tyler Bryson as the replacement for the departing David Willis to run the company's U.S. channel operations.
Bryson is officially corporate vice president of the U.S. One Commercial Partner organization. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on January 21, 20210 comments
The PC market was on fire in the fourth quarter.
In its quarterly tracking of worldwide PC shipments, IDC reported preliminary numbers of 26.1 percent year-over-year growth to 91.6 million units. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on January 11, 20210 comments
In the holding pattern that is early 2021, Microsoft's priority guidance to partners for the new year is for more of the same.
Microsoft channel chief Gavriella Schuster detailed her view of partner priorities and opportunities this week in a blog post that largely echoed earlier guidance from Microsoft Inspire, the annual July partner conference that helps kick off Microsoft's fiscal year. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on January 07, 20210 comments
Microsoft U.S. Channel Chief David Willis announced Friday that he would be leaving Microsoft in January after 28 years at the company.
He didn't use the word "retire" in a blog post on the official U.S. Partner Blog, and some of his phrasing left open the possibility that he might emerge as an executive somewhere in the future. However, Willis suggested that his focus in the near future would be on family time, leisure activity, travel and volunteering. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on December 04, 20200 comments
Sirius Computer Solutions snapped up Boca Raton, Fla.-based solution provider Champion Solutions Group and Champion's cloud practice, MessageOps, which was one of the pioneering toolsets for Office 365.
With the acquisition, Sirius expands its national IT solutions integration business into the southeastern United States and strengthens its Microsoft cloud capabilities in both Microsoft/Office 365 and Microsoft Azure. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on December 02, 20200 comments
Microsoft released its first quarter earnings on Tuesday afternoon, reporting revenues of $37.2 billion and earnings of $1.82 per share. The company beat analyst expectations on the back of strong cloud growth.
However, the centerpiece of the Satya Nadella-led earnings call on Tuesday evening was the Microsoft Teams collaboration platform, which keeps surging to new highs due to COVID-19-related remote work. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on October 28, 20200 comments
The PC market boomed in the third quarter, with pandemic-related buying producing growth rates at levels not seen for a decade.
Market researchers from IDC, Gartner and Canalys all released their growth estimates this week. The three firms told similar stories -- heavy purchasing on the consumer side, robust activity around Chromebooks and education, and very strong growth in the United States. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on October 14, 20200 comments
Microsoft declared about two dozen products ready for general availability (GA) -- and thus production deployment -- this week during the Microsoft Ignite conference. The products ranged from elements of the high-profile Project Cortex to Azure SQL for edge deployments to major and minor components of Microsoft's three clouds.
A virtual event this year, Ignite kicked off on Tuesday morning with a keynote from CEO Satya Nadella and was scheduled to run through Thursday. Microsoft typically treats Ignite as a major launchpad for IT pro- and IT management-focused products and services across its enterprise portfolio with some developer, education and government tools and products thrown into the mix. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on September 22, 20200 comments
Microsoft on Tuesday launched an advanced specialization for Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD), giving partners access to a new badge that highlights expertise in the newly essential area of supporting remote workers.
Advanced specializations layer on top of competencies within the Microsoft Partner Network (MPN) as a way for partners to demonstrate Microsoft-sanctioned certification of their specialized skills. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on September 15, 20200 comments
Quest Software this week added to its already full quiver of Microsoft modernization tools with the acquisition of Binary Tree.
While Quest already had capabilities for migrating to Office 365 within its broad existing toolset, Binary Tree brings sophisticated tooling for second-generation cloud migrations -- handling the complex requirements of enterprise cloud-to-cloud migrations necessitated by M&A and other concerns in a maturing market. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on September 03, 20200 comments