MarketLogic

Dell’s new XPS-17 is the first 17-inch version of the XPS in nearly a decade.

Dell is expanding its premium mobile computing line with the rollout of new XPS-15 and XPS-17 laptops.

The upgraded models with 15-inch and 17-inch displays were both long overdue for refreshes. While Dell upgrades its compact 13-inch XPS-13 at least once per year, the company left the 17-inch model for dead. Dell said its last XPS-17 came out nearly a10 years ago. Likewise, the company hasn’t released a major new XPS-15 system in five years.

Dell’s XPS is the high end of its consumer portfolio, but the vendor sells them through both retail and commercial channels. Targeted at content creators, given its starting price is well over $1,000, the XPS appeals to business users and executives.

The smaller XPS-13 is popular among traveling professionals since it is small and lightweight.. Now that most professionals work at home, it appears Dell is betting many may want heftier, more powerful systems.

Based on the specs and descriptions Dell revealed Wednesday, the new XPS-15 and XPS-17 laptops should deliver.

At the high end, Dell is billing its XPS-17 as its most powerful XPS laptop to date. It runs Intel’s 10th Generation Core processors and is available with up to 64GB of RAM and with NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 2060 graphics card and its Max-Q design.

The Dell XPS-17. The picture at the top of this page is the XPS-15.

“Packing this much performance into a laptop this size required unparalleled engineering ingenuity,” said Donnie Oliphant, Dell’s senior director of client solutions, in a presentation shared with media and analysts. “Under the hood, you’ll find a brand-new thermal design that allows more airflow and more performance to ensure you can tackle your most demanding workloads.”

New Dell XPS Laptop Specs

Set to ship this summer, the XPS-17 is just 19.5 mm thick and offers the portfolio’s hallmark razor thin bezels. A new design featuring dual opposite outlet fans to expand airflow lets it run up to 92 watts of power.

The XPS-17 is available with HDR displays, 500-nit panes, Dolby Vision and 4k resolution. Although it has a 17-inch display, Dell claims it is smaller than almost half (48%) of 15-inch laptops available today. It includes four USB-C Thunderbolt 3 ports, two DisplayPorts, a full-size SD card reader and a 3.5 mm headphone/microphone combo jack. Depending on configuration, the XPS-17 models can weigh between 4.65 and 5.5 pounds.

Meanwhile, the Dell XPS-15, available immediately, is also equipped with Intel’s 10th Generation Core processor and an option for NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 1650 Ti graphics accelerators. It is thinner than the XPS-17, measuring 18mm, and can support up to 55 watts of power. It starts at $1,299. Weighing more than four pounds, the XPS-15 comes with one USB-C 3.1 port with power delivery, a full-size SD card reader, 3.5-inch audio jack and two Thunderbolt 3 displays. The USB-C and Thunderbolt ports include DisplayPort support.

The new systems also support the recently upgraded Dell Mobile Connect tool, which integrates smartphones with Dell’s newer XPS models. It originally only worked with Android phones, but Dell recently added support for iOS devices as well. The software lets users dial and receive calls, handle texts, see notifications and move files between the phone and PC.

Dell is also offering software that will let partners or tech-savvy customers migrate older Windows PCs to the new systems.

The new Dell Migrate tool moves data and system settings from any Windows 8 PC to new Dell PCs. It specifically works with new XPS, Inspiron and Alienware systems. Available immediately, the tool costs $39.

Here are tips on recruiting and retaining CISOs.

Recruiting and retaining qualified CISOs and their lieutenants is challenging in the best of times. It’s even more difficult during a pandemic when the new work-from-home environment often impedes work relationships and dampens company loyalties.

A new report by Kudelski Security and its Client Advisory Council (CAC), a cybersecurity think tank, illuminates several skills to help identify prime new recruits or to develop in existing personnel to build and deepen the successor bench.

Among the report’s top findings:

CISOs should have a 50/50 balance of technical and soft skills like communication, relationship building and executive presence. But the report found this talent mix to be extremely rare.

In terms of key CISO skills, 82% of those interviewed say communications skills are critical. That compares to just 52% who believe hands-on technology experience is critical.

The highest percentage of respondents (29%) say governance, risk and compliance positions are the best pre-CISO role. But the report lists a wide range of previous jobs that can also lead to a CISO position.

To gain these insights, the researchers said they surveyed C-level and VP-level security leaders from companies. Those include Aaron’s, AES Corp., BKW, Blue Cross Blue Shield, BNP Paribas, Capital One, Technicolor, Urenco and Zebra Technologies.

Michael Zachman is CSO, Zebra Technologies, and one of the contributing Council members.

Zebra Technologies’ Michael Zachman

“Given the current challenges we face, CISOs and CSOs need to work both internally and externally to build a pipeline of new security leaders,” said Zachman.

While today’s pandemic environment might make recruiting and retaining security talent more challenging, it’s also making more trainable talent available.

Dismal Employment Numbers

According to Janco Associates, a management consulting firm, COVID-19 cost 102,300 IT pros their jobs in April alone.

“IT pros who do not have a job are finding it difficult to even find contract work,” said Victor Janulaitis, CEO of Janco.

Janco’s Victor Janulaitis

“Many companies are directing IT functions to facilitate the support of non-IT professionals with new and enhanced internet driven applications for telecommuters,” Janulaitis added. “The demand for contractor help in this effort was high initially, but now is nonexistent. All of this has put IT professionals the same state as the rest of the labor market.”

Companies can look to that pool of workers to develop more security talent, as IT professionals have experience in both technical and security work.

But this available talent pool will shrink some too. Janco predicts IT hiring will resume by the end of the year, but has cut its forecast for overall IT job market growth to just over 40,000 for 2020.

“Regardless of how you choose to staff teams, it is important to identify employees with institutional knowledge, communication skills and some ambition for career growth who can become security leaders with the right training and mentorship,” said Zachman.

Scale Computing and Leostream are partnering to support organizations’ adoption of VDI solutions.

Recent world events leading into 2020 have reinforced many of your customers’ needs for more flexible computing options for their remote workers. Organizations around the world have been taking the necessary steps to support a distributed workforce for an indefinite future. Many organizations that had previously implemented virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solutions found themselves better prepared to support their workers remotely. Those that have not yet implemented VDI should now give it proper consideration.

Last quarter, Scale Computing, in cooperation with Leostream, introduced a work-from-home strategy using some VDI solution components that allowed IT administrators to quickly react to the immediate need to connect users remotely to their existing corporate workstations. Many of those who adopted that strategy are now taking a step back to look more strategically at how they may best support work-from-home employees in the future.

A full VDI solution done correctly requires forethought and planning. Now that most organizations have met their immediate needs in providing remote work options for employees, a closer look at VDI can be taken. Scale Computing is here to help. We have partnered with Leostream to provide VDI solutions to organizations of all sizes. Our experts are ready to help you understand how VDI can be deployed successfully and at a lower cost for nearly any size organization.

To help ease the transition from traditional desktop solutions to VDI, Scale Computing is currently offering a free hyperconverged infrastructure appliance with the purchase of three appliances of equal or greater value. This offer allows organizations to acquire a powerful, highly available, easy to deploy and easy to manage infrastructure for their VDI solution. In addition, Scale Computing is offering Leostream VDI licenses at a 25% discount on top of the free appliance offer. Our partners are welcome to make this same offer of a free appliance and the 25% discount on Leostream VDI licenses.

We believe lowering the acquisition cost of our VDI solution will make it easier for organizations to make the decision to adopt a VDI solution, but the real value is far beyond the discount we are currently offering. Our HC3 infrastructure solution lowers the total cost of the solution compared to competing virtualization technologies by being easier to deploy, easier to manage and easier to scale out when needed. VDI solutions have traditionally been complex to deploy and manage because of the underlying infrastructure required. Scale Computing HC3 simply makes it easier and more accessible for organizations of all sizes.

Not only can VDI on HC3 make remote working easier, but it can enhance data security by keeping sensitive data within the corporate network and not exposing the corporate network to employees’ private networks through VPN connections. BYOD support can provide flexible options for workers on the devices of their choice while maintaining data security for their desktop workloads.

This free appliance offer is available through June 30. We would like to talk to you at your convenience to understand how you can help your customers meet their needs with VDI. We welcome you to contact us at [email protected] or 877-722-5359.

If you prefer to research on your own first, you may like to start with one of the following resources from Scale Computing:

White Paper

Introduction to Virtual Desktop Infrastructure – VDI with Scale Computing HC3®

Webinar

HC3 and Leostream: VDI for the Rest of Us

Web Page

Scale Computing Partner: Leostream

This guest blog is part of a Channel Futures sponsorship

Also unveiled are new features for its hyperconverged infrastructure platform, including built-in disaster recovery.

Hired last year to run Nutanix’s Americas channel sales, Christian Alvarez will now lead the global Nutanix channel partner program.

Alvarez came to Nutanix from Juniper Networks, where he was worldwide head of channels and distribution. He worked for Juniper for four years.

As the new senior vice president of worldwide channels, Alvarez is in charge of the company’s channel community and strategy. That includes developing global sales and distribution programs for VARs, distributors, OEMs, global system integrators, telco partners and others.

Nutanix’s Christian Alvarez

Alvarez said he wants to lead Nutanix’s worldwide partner organization through its next phase of growth.

Alvarez joined Nutanix in September as vice president of channel sales for the Americas. Just five months later, the company named him interim head of worldwide partner sales. As the COVID-19 pandemic struck, he has helped partners and customers react to help their redistributed work-from-home users. He also led the development of a special financing program to help partners alleviate cash flow concerns during the crisis.

Chris Kaddaras is Nutanix’s executive vice president of worldwide sales. He’s all-in on Alvarez.

“Christian is an innovator and a strategic thinker, spearheading new offerings and contributing to collaboration across the organization,” said Kaddaras. “Christian is ideally suited to execute on our global mission to help both our partners and customers adapt to and enable virtual work.”

Until Nutanix hires a new Americas regional channel sales leader, Alvarez will continue to lead that effort as well.

Nutanix endured some growing pains in 2019. A year ago, the company saw its global channel chief leave after only 15 months on the job. In addition, its chief revenue officer also left after lower than expected revenue guidance was reported. Those developments came nine months after the company’s president departed to head a big data vendor.

Nutanix HCI Gets Platform Upgrades

Nutanix on Wednesday also announced several enhancements to its hyperconverged infrastructure platform, including built-in multisite disaster recovery tools. Also included is advanced automation for recovering applications and data, as well as support for synchronous replication for AHV workloads. And it also supports near-zero data loss with near sync replication for recovery point objective (RPO) times of 20 seconds.

The Nutanix platform’s ability to support multisite DR allows enterprises to recover faster from simultaneous data center failures. The synchronous replication of data between multiple locations now is natively supported on the Nutanix AHV hypervisor. AHV works with a wide range of critical workloads, including virtual desktop infrastructure, databases and general server virtualization.

Nutanix’s Greg Smith

The new built-in disaster recovery capabilities make things easier for partners and customers. So says Greg Smith, product marketing VP at Nutanix, told Channel Futures.

“Business continuity is now more important than ever and, with this release, Nutanix partners will be able to deliver a native, comprehensive business continuity and disaster recovery solutions to their customers,” Smith told Channel Futures. “Before, customers looking to implement strong disaster recovery plans for critical applications had to deploy complex, often disparate technologies that demanded specialized, ongoing administration. Now, with the new capabilities in Nutanix HCI, AHV customers can deliver disaster recovery applications with significantly less complexity and without real-time management.”

Naveen Chhabra, analyst with Forrester Research, said the updates will allow a Nutanix channel partner to solve customer needs more easily.

“They can new confidently sell a single packaged solution,” said Chhabra. “Up until now, if a client needed data replication, they would have to rely on other companies. Now partners can sell one solution from one vendor.”

That is helpful for managed services providers (MSPs), particularly those who standardize on the Nutanix platform, he said.

“This makes a lot of sense. There will be fewer integration needs. And integrations break, and then things don’t work,” said Chhabra. “This simplifies that and removes those potential problems.”

Speculation is rampant that Apple could be the next big public cloud provider.

This early-in-the-week cloud news roundup highlights a range of activity. First, the question of a possible leap into the cloud game by one of Silicon Valley’s most vaunted companies. Then, a partnership featuring a Google Cloud-only MSP. We wrap with highlights from a China-based cloud computing vendor.

Apple Getting Into the Cloud Game?

Is Apple preparing to launch a cloud computing platform to go up against AWS, Azure and Google?

That’s the question posed over at tech site Protocol, which spotted a recent trend: Apple has hired several software engineers known for their expertise in containers and Kubernetes. Plus, the company has posted dozens of cloud-centric jobs over the past few months, as well as this week.

The new hires of note include Michael Crosby, who used to be at Docker and has proven integral to container development; Arun Gupta, who came from AWS and now leads Apple’s open-source efforts as senior engineering manager; Maksym Pavlenko, also from AWS, who now works as a software development engineer; and Francesc Campoy, from Google, who is working on Apple’s Kubernetes efforts as engineer manager – developer experience.

Apple may just be interested in supporting its applications and other services through its own private cloud platform, rather than continuing to use AWS and Azure. Or, it could be gearing up to compete for its share of world’s lucrative cloud revenue. And if so, that sounds like more opportunity for the channel.

Maven Wave Adds Snowflake’s Data Analytics to Portfolio

Managed service provider Maven Wave and cloud data warehousing vendor Snowflake have joined forces.

Todd Truesdell is managing director, data analytics at Maven Wave.

Maven Wave’s Todd Truesdell

“We view Snowflake as one of the go-to platforms for cloud data analytics,” said Truesdell.

The deal, of course, adds another revenue stream for Maven Wave. But the bigger picture is that teaming with Snowflake helps Maven Wave customers avoid cloud vendor lock-in, Truesdell told Channel Futures.

“Snowflake technology offers clients an alternative to the native cloud data analytics platform that the three major clouds provide,” Truesdell said.

Because Snowflake runs on AWS, Azure and Google Cloud (as of February), enterprises can reduce reliance on a single vendor, Truesdell said.

There’s more to the partnership as well.

“We also see ‘data exchanges’ having significant growth as more companies share their data with their other business partners,” Truesdell said. “Snowflake is on the forefront of this with its data exchange, which offers clients a mechanism for monetizing on their data with other business partners, suppliers and so on.”

Maven Wave says it’s the first Google Cloud partner to launch such a partnership with Snowflake. The MSP’s clients will get access to Snowflake’s training and support, as well as a certification program.

Katie Ecklund is director of SI partnerships, Americas at Snowflake.

“It’s the perfect fit, given Maven Wave’s deep expertise in Google Cloud and data analytics,” said Ecklund. “This partnership will elevate their ability to help enterprises realize the true value of their data.”

For its part, Snowflake achieved general availability on Google Cloud in February after months of initial legwork; that pairing combines Snowflake’s platform with Google Cloud’s AI, machine learning and analytics capabilities, the companies said. Snowflake already worked with AWS and Microsoft Azure. The company serves more than 3,000 users worldwide, including eight of the top 10 Fortune 500 firms.

Tencent Cloud Eyes Expansion in Japan

Tencent Cloud, part of China’s internet services behemoth Tencent holdings, aims to triple its sales in Japan this year, according to a Japan Times report.

This could bode well for the channel; Tencent distributes through resellers, consultants, developers and service providers.

Tencent has targeted Japan since last year but now wants to broaden its focus beyond gaming enterprises.

“We want to develop together in the fields where Japan leads the world, including games, cars and medical services,” Zhao Jiannan, managing director of Tencent Cloud for Northeast Asia, told Japan Times.

Such a strategy will more directly pit Tencent against AWS, Azure and Google. Indeed, recent statistics from Synergy Research Group show Tencent gaining significant traction in the cloud computing market. This may put more pressure on the vendors while also giving channel partners more options.

The new performance tier targets performance-intensive applications.

Scale Computing is out with a new class of HC3 appliances that target database analytics and high-density virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) deployments.

The vendor, which historically targets infrastructure for SMBs, and more recently edge computing, launched the new HC3250DF HCI appliance. It is designed for performance computing for enterprises and SMBs, from the core data center to the edge.

Craig Theriac is director of product management at Scale Computing.

Scale Computing’s Craig Theriac

“HC3 brings together four pillars. Those are simplicity, availability, scalability and affordability,” Theriac told Channel Futures.

Scale says the latest device can get up and running quickly. The integrated platform includes software, servers and storage. The HC3250DF is an all-NVMe device, the first in Scale Computing’s product line. And users don’t have to worry about VMware. The company relies on a KVM-based HyperCore hypervisor.

Expanding Portfolio

Like all Scale Computing HC3 appliances, the HC3250DF features intelligent automation for self-healing and high availability. This keeps clusters running through component and appliance failures. It also features integrated disaster recovery capabilities that protect data and workloads at remote sites for fast failover and recovery.

Scale says the HC3250DF is an ideal application platform for core data center and edge computing use cases where IoT, ease-of-use, high availability and TCO matter. This includes retail, industrial, finance, remote office/back office and mobile platforms.

Scale Computing’s Scott Mann

“This device becomes a differentiator for our partners,” said Scott Mann, director North America channel at Scale Computing. “It is an exciting new technology with all-flash NVMe, offered at an affordable price point.”

Scale Computing is a channel-led company with more than 1,000 global partners.

The vendor recently rolled out a new partner portal and launched new training certification courses. The first phase of training is for a technical and sales certification. A second phase will begin next quarter. This will include more advanced technical and sales training.

The HC3250DF will be available next quarter.

Last June, Scale Computing announced the HE500 series of edge appliances. The company says that new edge family helps companies looking for reliable, easy-to-deploy and affordable infrastructure at the network’s edge.

Criminals with computer skills have plenty of incentive to offer their wares as a service.

During the last several years, software as a service (SaaS) has become the norm — and that goes for malware software, too. In fact, bad actors increasingly are using malware as a service.

When examined from an economic perspective, this trend makes perfect sense. Being able to lease malware gives wannabe malicious hackers a chance to make some money, even if they have almost no computer skills. They simply lease the malware from a cloud service, customize it, then set out to infect the world.

On the flip side, criminals with computer skills have plenty of incentive to offer their wares as a service.

This article originally appeared on Channel Futures’ sister site, IT Pro Today.

The most obvious incentive is that malware authors can potentially make more money through leasing their services to others rather than trying to spread an infection themselves. In most cases, malware authors simply take a cut from every ransom paid to someone who leases their service.

Leasing malware to others may also help to reduce the author’s risk of getting caught. Say a malware-as-a-service author poses as a legitimate security consultant and markets his or her wares as cybersecurity testing tools. That way, if authorities ever question the malware author, he or she has plausible deniability. After all, many vendors create security tools, and it’s not their fault if a customer uses a tool maliciously.

So if a cybercriminal has the computer skills to create an entire malware-as-a-service platform, why use those skills to develop malware? After all, there are plenty of other ways for a skilled software developer to make money.

Malware Pays Off

While some malware authors just want to watch the world burn, for most, it is a way to make money.  According to PayScale, the average software developer makes $71,150 per year.

Ransomware has the potential to be even more profitable. Consider, for example, that a 2019 ransomware attack against Virtual Care Providers demanded $14 million in bitcoin.. While this particular company did not pay the ransom, experts say the same Ryuk ransomware used in that attack earned about $3.7 million in the last five months of 2018.

Of course, if cybercriminals offer their ransomware as a service, then the original author is not collecting the full ransom. The customer leasing the ransomware presumably gets the lion’s share, while the author earns a small percentage as a commission.

So with that in mind, let’s pretend that one malware-as-a-service subscriber was responsible for collecting all $3.7 million in RYUK ransoms. Let’s also pretend that the person responsible for infecting all those systems had to pay a 10% commission to the ransomware author. That would mean the ransomware author would earn about $370,000 over five months.

This is far more money than the author could ever hope to make working a corporate job. In fact, $370,000 spread evenly over five months works out to $74,000 per month. That’s more than the entire average annual salary of a corporate software developer.

Of course, if someone has the skills necessary to build an entire malware-as-a-service platform, then that person is more than just a software developer. He or she also has a considerable amount of security knowledge. Even so, the person could probably make more money creating malware than working as a white hat security consultant.

Bug Bounties

In recent years, it has become fairly common for large tech companies to offer bug bounties. In other words, companies such as Microsoft and Facebook offer to pay hackers who can find security holes in their software. This gives the companies a chance to patch the holes before bad guys exploit them.

With that in mind, imagine that a gray hat hacker found a serious security flaw in a major online platform. While the tech company whose software is affected would likely be willing to pay for information about the vulnerability, the same information would probably be worth a lot more if sold to hackers on the black market.

Unfortunately, I don’t see the malware-as-a-service trend slowing down any time soon. Malware is just too financially rewarding for both the malware author and the wannabe hacker who subscribes to the service. The only good news is that companies are getting better at preventing infections since ransomware has become so prevalent.

Brien Posey is the vice president of research and development for Relevant Technologies. He writes technical content for a variety of publications and websites.

The IoT security company’s channel strategy kicked in from day one.

Ordr, an IoT security company, on Tuesday said it is expanding and formalizing its global partner program. In doing so, the company creates more ways for partners to make money with the channel-focused startup.

Founded in 2015 by former Aruba executives, Ordr early on understood the value of growing with partners.

Ordr’s Greg Murphy

“From the outset we knew we needed to be a channel-first company,” Greg Murphy, president and CEO, told Channel Futures. “I saw that from my years of work at Aruba. Getting the understanding of how channel partners give you breadth, but also bring the expertise to enable organizations to successfully absorb and use solutions such as ours.”

Murphy refers to the Ordr Systems Control Engine (SCE), an actionable AI-based systems control engine for the hyperconnected enterprise. Ordr SCE, which debuted last fall, identifies and classifies devices in the environment. It regulates device flow and behavior, and delivers closed loop security. And, Ordr SCE provides businesses with system utilization.

The IoT security company addresses the challenge of unmanaged IoT and OT devices connected in the enterprise. These devices include things such as building systems, connected medical devices, and manufacturing infrastructure. Also, many devices that are unfamiliar to the organization, they don’t know what to do with and have a hard time protecting them.

Channel Investment

Eric Berkman, a channel veteran with ties to Cisco, OpenDNX and Citrix, joined Ordr as senior director of worldwide channel in October. Berkman is responsible for expanding the company’s global, and invitation-only, partner program.

“We want to work and focus on partners that can bring best-of-breed capabilities and expertise with our solution.” said Berkman. “A lot of times, channel programs are one-size-fits-all. We’re a dynamic startup organization with a channel-first model and our partner program has a lot of flexible choices.”

What that means is doing what’s best for the partners. So the program supports referral selling, authorized resellers, assessment partners and MSPs.

Strategic growth of the partner program is in terms of regions and verticals. In North America, Ordr is building pipeline with between 20 and 40 partners in a given quarter.

Partner Fit

The IoT security company is interested in partners that have made investments in cybersecurity, as well as strong networking experts.

“Partners with strong networking expertise with companies like HPE, Juniper or Cisco absolutely understand how the network is being asked to do more from a security context. They also have more visibility and awareness that more devices are being asked to traverse the network they’re managing and maintaining — and what that means to them,” said Berkman.

Additionally, Ordr looks for partners who have made investments in verticals such as industrial IoT and health care infrastructure, where there are a lot of IoT devices. Ordr industry solutions include health care, hospitality, enterprise, government, tech manufacturing, retail and transportation.

Ordr offers partners ongoing technical and sales training, joint solution development and selling, multivendor infrastructure integrations and field marketing support. Channel support also includes plug-and-play demo kits, joint sales and marketing, account protection and referral compensation. Additionally, the program offers a chance for partners to become Ordr professional services subcontractors.

Assessment Partners

What is an assessment partner?

According to Berkman, some partners are doing assessments around network segmentation specific to IoT using Ordr technology in that process. Other partners focus on an IoT message around discovery.

“That looks at the IoT devices a company has today and how they’re forecasting growth for the next 24-36 months. Also, they’re having a conversation about beginning the process of taking inventory and how to start protecting and maximizing the devices in the environment,” he explained.

Ordr makes its software available so partners can wrap it into their service offerings. Assessment is often the first phase of giving a customer visibility into what they haven’t seen before.

“The assessment of risk leads to a strategy conversation about products a customer needs and how to operationally implement that strategy,” said Murphy. ‘That’s a real value-added service for partners to bring.”

Partners need to know that Ordr understands the need to work with existing security and network infrastructure tools.

“As we are grabbing information across the network in a passive, agentless manner, we use machine learning to understand what the device is doing. When we integrate with the switch, firewalls and network access control tools – made by Aruba, Cisco, etc. – we’re automatically building and generating policies that those tools operate in. Those policies get ingested into the existing infrastructure. We utilize the existing daily tools of the organization,” said Berkman.

The company also has integrations into ServiceNow and Nuvolo.

The goal is to accelerate HPE becoming an edge-to-cloud platform-as-a-service company.

HPE CEO Antonio Neri on Tuesday unveiled his view of a post-pandemic world that includes all business groups report directly to his office.

Neri says this shift in HPE’s executive committee is critical as it accelerates its transformation to an edge-to-cloud platform-as-a-service company.

HPE’s Antonio Neri

“In the new world that is emerging, business continuity will depend on technology that advances IT resiliency, empowers remote workforces, and creates new experiences. Through the power of technology, we can reinvigorate customer engagement and help organizations reimagine their business models. HPE has a very important role to play in all of this, and it’s critical that we accelerate our pivot to becoming the edge-to-cloud-as-a-service company,” Neri wrote in a blog.

Neri’s announcement includes changes in business group leadership, labs, a technology road map and software leadership, sales and operations leadership, and global function leadership.

Breaking Down the Reorganization

The seven business group leaders will now report directly to HPE CEO Antonio Neri. They include: Tom Black, storage; Pradeep Kumar, Pointnext technology service; Neil MacDonald, compute; Keerti Melkote, intelligent edge; Irv Rothman, HPE Financial Services; Pete Ungaro, high-performance computing and mission-critical solutions; and, Keith White, who leads the new GreenLake cloud services business group.

Labs, technology road map and software leadership are seeing the creation of a new dual role that embraces innovation and design, and development of HPE’s software-defined portfolio. The company appointed Kumar Sreekanti, HPE chief technology officer and head of software. Mark Potter, chief technology officer, who also manages Hewlett Packard Labs, will retire this summer.

Sales and operations leadership — Heiko Meyer leads sales as chief sales officer, and Pat Collins, who leads global operations, including supply chain, will report to Neri.

HPE’s five global function leaders will continue to report to the CEO as part of the company’s executive committee. They include: Jim Jackson, chief marketing officer; Alan May, chief people officer; Tarek Robbiati, chief financial officer; John Schultz, chief legal and administrative officer and head of HPE’s transformation office; and Jennifer Temple, chief communications officer.

Procuring hardware, virtualization software and operating systems from a variety of different sources is a daunting and complicated task. But there’s a more efficient way to source the technology that modern business needs. Managed service providers (MSPs) can neutralize procurement pain with all-OEM offerings that deliver hardware, virtualization, operating systems and database as a single solution.

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Makes it easier to focus on strategic business goals

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Security bumps up business and revenue gains for MSPs.

The Kaseya MSP Benchmark Survey 2020, released Tuesday, takes a deep dive into the business of being an MSP.. And, what rises to the top among six key findings, is the prominence of security and compliance.

Nearly three in four (73%) MSPs gained revenue providing security services. And almost three in five (59%) increased revenue by offering backup and disaster recovery. At the same time, as IT compliance requirements increase, more businesses struggle to meet those requirements. Two-thirds of MSPs report their clients can’t meet compliance requirements. And, for the past two years, about one-third of MSPs have seen the need for compliance services increase.

Kaseya’s Jim Lippie

“The emphasis on cybersecurity services, in this year’s report, didn’t surprise me. This continues to be a hot button issue for MSPs and their customers,” Jim Lippie, general manager cloud computing and senior vice president partner development at Kaseya, told Channel Futures. “However, I’m surprised that only 83% of MSPs offer antivirus and antimalware solutions. I would expect this to be closer to 100%. Also, only 66% of MSPs perform password resets — again, I would expect this to be closer to 100%.”

In the 2020 survey results, 83% of MSPs offered antivirus and antimalware, just 3% higher than the 2019 survey results revealed. While two in three (66%) MSPs in this year’s survey provide password resets/self-service/password management, 62% reported doing so in last year’s report.

Compliance an Opportunity

This year’s report shows that MSPs are beginning to understand the burgeoning opportunity around compliance. In fact, 90% of high-growth MSPs have added four or five new services to their portfolios, at least one of which is compliance. A high-growth MSP is defined as having an average MRR growth greater than 20%.

“California this past year came out with its Consumer Privacy Act. New York came out with SHIELD [Act] and, we believe, that over the next two to three years, many states will have their own data privacy laws that small businesses will have to be compliant with,” said Lippie. “At this point, not enough MSPs are offering compliance. I suspect that next year we’re going to see more MSPs offering compliance services to their customers.”

The Kaseya MSP benchmark survey is based on feedback from 1,300 MSP firms. Survey-takers were from the Americas (76%), EMEA (16%) and APAC (9%). Two-thirds of MSPs describe themselves as “general purpose,” while 17% describe themselves as MSSPs. Ten percent of respondents selected “network and data center focused” and “specialized by market vertical” descriptions.

In terms of size, MSPs surveyed employ from fewer than 10 up to more than 100 employees. Also measured by endpoints managed, MSPs managed from as few as 1-100 nodes to more than 15,000.

Key Themes

Here are the six key themes in this year’s survey results. They highlight MSP business challenges, concerns, risks and opportunities.

Top MSP client needs and concerns. Security is the top concern, particularly among small businesses. Nearly one in three (29%) respondents cited meeting security risks as the top IT need for their clients. Another 14% listed cybersecurity services as a top need.

Security and backup services raise revenue. Security, and backup and disaster recovery, play a big part in MSP revenue increases.

A strong need for compliance. Compliance is an area of opportunity for MSPs.

Expanded service offerings. The lion’s share (almost 90%) of MSPs see expansion of services as critical to their business. MSPs with average MRR growth greater than 20% added four to five new services to their portfolios in the past two years.

Cloud support has its ups and downs.

MSPs recognize the importance of integration between their core applications to help drive more efficient business operations. Almost 70% of respondents said that integration between their core applications is very important. In addition, 81% said that that this integration could help drive better bottom-line profit for their firms.

A Closer Look at Cloud

Lippie added some perspective to the cloud support ups and downs. What the survey data show is that …

Security Orchestration, Automation and Response (SOAR) is increasingly critical to more efficiently collecting threat data and responding to low-level threats without human assistance. But that’s not all. Hear from Stephan Tallent, Fortinet’s Senior Director of MSSP & Service Enablement, how SOAR also helps channel organizations:

Address staffing and skills shortages

Tackle data silos and department silos

Streamline operational processes

Much of the activity, although not all, ties to the COVID-19 pandemic and brings opportunity to partners.

Rackspace and Microsoft are making separate moves with their cloud approaches, and both benefit partners. Rackspace’s strategy has evolved out of a need to help during the COVID-19 pandemic. And while Microsoft’s new initiative looks ahead five years, it also offers immediate economic assistance as the coronavirus has shut down businesses worldwide.

Rackspace, Partners Helping Business

Rackspace partners are rolling out free technology as enterprises navigate the coronavirus pandemic.

Lisa McLin, Rackspace’s channel chief, said the managed cloud computing company is doing its part to help during COVID-19. To that end, Rackspace has invested $10 million so it may provide OpenStack Public Cloud hosting resources at no cost to organizations helping with COVID-19 response efforts. The offer covers the next six months.

Rackspace also is letting MSPs, VARs and other partners deploy Microsoft Teams to Office 365 users, for free, for six months “so business stays afloat,” McLin told Channel Futures.

Rackspace’s Lisa McLin

“Microsoft Teams and our OpenStack are the two tools that our partners have to help customers,” McLin said. “There’s no commission, but it’s a way of finding free opportunities. Partners are looking at long-term relationships and this is the goodwill they provide.”

Other products, however, are still a revenue-generator for partners. Those include Microsoft’s Work Anywhere platform, data center management, and cloud optimization and performance. Partners are especially seeing success with the latter two services, McLin said.

“The pandemic is pushing customers into the cloud faster than predicted,” she said. “Cost-cutting measures are key topics we’re hearing quite a bit.”

Organizations are looking to a mix of public and private clouds, McLin said. That shouldn’t surprise partners. Hybrid cloud is outpacing public- or private-cloud-only configurations.

For now, the Rackspace professional services team is helping partners conduct all implementation work remotely.

As for partner enablement during COVID-19, Rackspace has developed additional training sessions and webinars, all delivered over the internet. The materials include identifiers that indicate a customer makes the right fit for a certain product, as well as “battlecards” describing the value proposition of each service.

“As we continue to make sure the solutions that we’re focusing on service our customers, we will always have partners top of mind as well,” McLin said. “We don’t know what COVID will continue to look like and what customers will need. So when that happens, we’ll make sure we pull in resellers and partners and give them opportunities to serve their customers.”

Microsoft to Add Cloud Data Center Region, More, in Italy

Following on its plan to invest heavily in Mexico, particularly through cloud technology, Microsoft now plans to do the same in Italy.

The Redmond, Washington-based software giant said late last week it will funnel $1.5 billion over five years in Italy. The money will fund access to local cloud services, create a new data center region in Milan so enterprises may use Microsoft Azure and its tools, launch smart-working programs and more.

This is the second iteration of Microsoft and Italy’s “Ambizione Italia”; the company and the country first started working together two years ago.

Microsoft on May 8 cited joint research conducted by Politecnico di Milano School of Management and Microsoft Italia. That research indicates the new data center region may generate more than 10,000 job-related opportunities. It also could help create an estimated $9 billion in direct and indirect business impact by the end of 2024. The forecast encompassed data center construction and operations as well as opportunities for businesses and the technology ecosystem.

Microsoft’s investment announcement comes as Italy emerges from COVID-19-imposed lockdown restrictions. The country remains the hardest hit by the virus in Europe.

“In this time of change, it is important to create private and public collaboration and join forces among companies,” said Silvia Candiani, general manager, Microsoft Italy. “This plan creates a platform for growth for millions of Italians. The new data center region will provide intelligent and secure services, and we will continue to partner with our customers to reimagine their business models, creating more innovative companies.”

Channel partners will be key to helping bring much of the strategy to fruition, Microsoft said.

Teradici partner RFX connected artists to workstations from their homes.

When COVID-19 forced Hollywood studios to shutter, visual effects studio Crafty Apes rushed to give its graphic artists remote connectivity.

The crisis affected all of Crafty Apes’ 150 visual effects editors, who work on high-end post-production projects. The company‘s recent credits include Birds of Prey, Hustlers, Jumanji: The Next Level, Star Trek: Picard and The Way Back.

Since Crafty Apes formed in 2011, editors and artists have typically performed their postproduction tasks at one of its studios. The main studio is near Los Angeles, but Crafty Apes also operates facilities in Atlanta, New York City and Vancouver. In early March, Crafty Apes expanded to Baton Rouge, and it plans to add a studio in New Mexico.

As offices started shutting down in March, like all other nonessential businesses, film production ground to a halt. But Crafty Apes had plenty of film and animation content already in the queue that was ready for post-production.

Enabling the visual effects studio’s employees to work from home was important to keep the pipeline of releases on schedule.

Crafty Apes called on RFX to come up with a practical way for its artists to remotely access their workstations. RFX, a hardware, software and services provider also based in the L.A. area, is Crafty Apes’ longtime technology provider and adviser.

State of Panic

RFX’s Prashant Buyyala

“As the coronavirus started hitting, a lot of the studios were in a state of panic,” said Prashant Buyyala. Buyyala leads technology initiatives at RFX.

Establishing remote access for graphic artists has unique requirements. It is more complex than setting up office workers to share documents or connect to customer service systems.

Crafty Apes’ artists use workstations that run compute-intensive software such as Nuke, Houdini, Autodesk Maya and Adobe Photoshop. And of course, visual content can amount to gigabytes, or even terabytes of data.

“There are severe constraints around the security implications of it, Buyyala explained.

“There are also workflow issues with regard to the large datasets that they’re working with. Some people just wanted to move the workstations home, then have the employees connect over a VPN. But that doesn’t work very well. So we really started quickly mobilizing our teams to try and take a look at the various technology solutions out there.”

Considering Various VDI Options

Because of those issues, RFX decided the best approach was to provide remote access via VDI. Buyyala said his team considered several VDI options. Among them were HP’s Remote Graphics Software (RGS), TGX’s Remote Visual Solution and Teradici’s Cloud Access Software.

RFX decided to use 10ZiG thin clients with Teradici’s Cloud Access Software.

Crafty Apes’ Aleks Siekiewicz gets ready for another day of visual effects work at Crafty Apes.

“It is the kind of software that works with media and entertainment clients,” said Cliff Edson, RFX’s general manager. “They can’t just get on and do Zoom, because of the amount of information that’s going back and forth.”

It helped that the visual effects studio already had an internal VDI platform based on Teradici’s PC over IP protocol.

“Since they were already using PC over IP in the office and for their remote branches, they were able to just extend that network to the home users,” said Ziad Lammam, Teradici’s VP of product marketing.

RFX provisioned all 150 artists within a week by letting them install …

More people are working from home. That’s leading to continued growth for AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure.

Enabling employees to work from home isn’t the only right move organizations have made due to COVID-19. Many are also reaping the benefits of migrating to the cloud during the pandemic. As you might expect, the top public cloud providers are among those that are benefiting.

Amazon, Microsoft and Google all described significant growth in their recently released financial earnings reports. Google says its first-quarter cloud revenue was close to $2.8 billion, up 52% over the year-ago quarter. Revenue for Microsoft’s intelligent cloud group, which includes Azure, was $12.3 billion. That’s a 27% year-over-year gain. Amazon reported cloud revenue of $10.2 billion, up 33%.

Synergy Research’s John Dinsdale

“While COVID-19 is having a devastating impact on communities and economies around the world, indications are that it is having a mildly positive impact on the cloud infrastructure services market,” said John Dinsdale, a chief analyst at Synergy Research Group. “For sure the pandemic is causing some issues for cloud providers, but in uncertain times the public cloud is providing flexibility and a safe haven for enterprises that are struggling to maintain normal operations.”

This article originally appeared on Channel Futures’ sister site, IT Pro Today.

The three top public cloud providers grew revenue last quarter, but they also added new regions and services.

Microsoft Azure Surges Forward

During Microsoft‘s earning call, CEO Satya Nadella boasted that, with new regions added in Mexico and Spain in the first quarter, Microsoft Azure now has more data center regions than any other cloud provider.

Azure‘s cloud footprint also extends to the edge, another area where Nadella sees Microsoft differentiating from its public cloud peers. On March 26, Microsoft announced the acquisition of Affirmed Networks, which helps operators deploy and maintain 5G networks and services.

“Azure Edge Zones extends Azure to the network edge, connecting directly with the carriers’ 5G network to enable immersive real-time experiences that require ultralow latency,” Nadella said.

Google Cloud Platform

Microsoft wasn’t the only cloud provider opening new regions in the first quarter. On March 4, Google announced that it is building out four new regions: in Toronto; Delhi, India; Doha, Qatar; and Melbourne, Australia.

Google was also busy during the quarter rolling out new services for its cloud users. Among them is the Cloud Memorystore, which is an in-memory data store service. The Google Cloud Data Catalog also hit a major milestone during the quarter, exiting beta and becoming generally available.

Google’s Shekhar Bapat

“Google Cloud Data Catalog is a fully managed and scalable metadata management service. It can help your organization quickly discover, understand and manage all your data from one simple interface,” Shekhar Bapat, product manager for Google Cloud Data Catalog, wrote in a blog. “Accessible from within the Google Cloud console, Data Catalog allows immediate access to data discovery without requiring any upfront setup.”

AWS Continues to Lead

Amazon Web Services was also active in the quarter, announcing the opening of new regions in Milan, Italy, and Cape Town, South Africa. In addition, Amazon announced plans to launch new regions in Indonesia, Japan and Spain.

In terms of new services, AWS announced general availability of its Amazon Keyspaces cloud database service. The Amazon Augmented Artificial Intelligence (Amazon A2I) service also hit general availability, providing organizations with a service to enable the human review of machine learning predictions. In addition, AWS announced Amazon AppFlow, a new service that helps organizations move data across applications.

Brian Olsavsky is Amazon’s chief financial officer. During the company’s earnings call, he highlighted Amazon’s efforts to help with COVID-19 research and continuity efforts.

“AWS has created data lakes to assist health care workers, researchers, scientists and public health officials working to understand and fight the coronavirus,” Olsavsky said. “Many of our AWS products are helping in the government response to the crisis, and are there for customers who are seeing their own demand spikes, companies enabling video conferencing, remote learning and online health services, for example.”

An editor and a channel expert walk into a bar and talk security over drinks.

When it comes to the managed security landscape, few MSSPs can claim the expertise that Jason Ingalls, CEO of Louisiana-based Ingalls Information Security, regularly displays on Channel Futures. In this installment of our talk show, It’s 501 Somewhere, Ingalls talks about how the security landscape has shifted amid the coronavirus and the resulting work-from-home paradigm shift.

Ingalls Infosec’s Jason Ingalls

Ingalls is a fan of “the power of three.” In this virtual chat, he lays out details of what he sees as the foundation of any good security solution: availability, confidentiality and integrity. These tenets serve as the baseline for any remote work safeguards for IT companies. They, he feels, qualify as an essential business today.

As for Ingalls? Attending Mardi Gras back in March certainly brought on mixed feelings. But Louisianans are no strangers to surviving disaster.

“When you live in Louisiana,” says Ingalls, “you know how to take a hit.”

Click on the video above to see how he does it.

If you want to be a part of the 2020 MSP 501, make sure you apply by May 31, 2020. To be entered in a raffle to win free consultations with Gary Pica and other consultants, apply by May 15!

Protecting your customers’ IT infrastructure from evolving threats must be a top priority, for both their businesses and yours.

Cyberattacks and other evolving threats continue to dominate the headlines. But many companies fail to allocate the resources necessary or don’t have the budget to fortify their infrastructure. As a result, companies that have not implemented a multi-layered security strategy become an attractive target to cybercriminals. Without a holistic security strategy in place, these companies are likely to experience significant financial, reputational and legal repercussions.

Protecting your customers’ IT infrastructure from evolving threats must be a top priority, for both their businesses and yours. To help your customers quickly obtain an optimal security posture to avoid serious repercussions, partners must be able to swiftly identify and recommend trusted technology solutions. To address this issue, we created our Solutions Product Inventory (SPI) Tool. This tool helps our partners quickly position new security solutions for their customers. As a global resource, it can be leveraged by partners to build solutions on the fly with their customers due to its ability to search by vendor, product, category, sub-category, MSP readiness and geographic region.

Here are three ways our SPI Tool can help your business protect customers from evolving threats by addressing their current security challenges with reliable security solutions:

Establish yourself as an expert: Earning your customer’s trust requires you to not only demonstrate and share your knowledge of the security landscape, but also to be honest with them about the inevitability of an attack. Understand and validate their concerns and show them how you can ably address them.

Build trust: Your customers rely on you to be their trusted advisor, guiding them to the best resources, solutions and products available to protect their business’ IT infrastructure. That trust requires that you show them you thoroughly understand the threat landscape. It means understanding their business goals and how their business might be impacted by an attack—and showing them how you can help them mount a defense.

Our Tech Data Security experts have thoroughly vetted our vendor portfolio to ensure our partners have access to the most trusted technology solutions available on the market. These technology solutions will help equip your customers with the tools they need to successfully combat sophisticated cyberattacks.

Become top of mind: While meeting with your customer, you will be able to use our SPI Tool to pull up a comprehensive library of common security issues, along with corresponding solutions and services available to them. This kind of tool:

Helps you to educate your organization—and your customer—about security issues and available options that might work in their environment

Cuts the time needed to package a solution for your customer, enabling faster deployment and increased revenue

Allows you to quickly pinpoint opportunities, solutions and services to offer your customers

Schedule a demo today to see how our SPI Tool can help you propose new security solutions to solve your customer’s most critical security needs.

This guest blog is part of a Channel Futures sponsorship.