According to the weather boffins, February is the snowiest month of the year in Kansas City. Good thing the Super Bowl is being played in Miami, where the average temperature in February is in the 70s. And if that makes you happy, just think how excited you’ll be when we catch up with all the news bits we missed this week.
Stuff involving products. Kaseya Fusion melds together two critical management tools: PSA and RMM. Even better, Fusion mashes them into a smartphone. The Kaseya Fusion Mobile App (pictured) includes Kaseya BMS (PSA), and Kaseya VSA (RMM).
Oracle’s NetSuite 2020 Release 1 adds a long list of new functionality for a range of vertical industries. Updates are in modules for Intelligent Cash Management, Continuous Employee Engagement, Autonomous Supply Chain, Optimizing Project Lifestyles, and Financial and Operational Excellence.
Keeping certificates straight is a good thing. Sectigo has now integrated Microsoft Azure Key Vault with Sectigo Certificate Manager. Available today for one-stop issuance and management of publicly trusted and private keys.
Industrial IoT is now an important part of every enterprise’s toolkit, so it’s no surprise more IIoT support now comes from major players. Hey, look, Cisco just introduced an IoT security architecture that gives enhanced visibility across both IT and OT environments.
IoT devices can never have too much security. Hello to DigiCert’s two new PKI tools: IoT Device Manager and Enterprise PKI Manager. Welcome to end-to-end centralized user and device certificate management.
Use Amazon EC2? Then check out SIOS AppKeeper from SIOS Technology, an out-of-the box solution to respond to outages on EC2 instances. They call it intelligent application availability.
Like Windows Virtual Desktop? Like Linux clients? Then you might like Linux client support for Microsoft Windows Virtual Desktop from IGEL. Microsoft announced a push in this direction last November and the IGEL OS has it ready to test now.
The Winter ‘20 release of 8x8 Contact Center includes better compliance support, more outbound campaign tools, and live monitoring of interactions.
Think PoE is good but a little slower on the network than you like? Then check out the new EnGenius Cloud multi-gig switches. The first two, ECS2512FP and ECS2512, are the first of many switches that will be released in 2020 addressing a wide variety of use cases. Faster PoE++ switching with link speed auto-detect.
Stuff not involving products. eSentire just appointed Charles “C.J.” Spallitta (pictured) as its new chief product officer. His to-do list includes vision, strategy, and execution for the entire product portfolio.
CloudJumper welcomes Brad Rowland as executive board advisor.
International MSP Logicalis US ordered a couple of new business cards recently. Vince DeLuca will transition from CEO of Logicalis US to chief customer experience and service transformation officer for the Logicalis Group. Jonathan Groves will take over as CEO of Logicalis US starting March 1.
TPx Communications rolled out the red carpet for Steve Farmiloe, who takes over as director of channel sales for the western region on February 1.
Secure web and application player Ericom Software announced that three cybersecurity industry veterans have joined its leadership team. Howdy to Vice President of Business Development Simon Moran, Director of Channels, Americas, Michael Santacross, and Director of Channels, EMEA, Matthew Howes.
Red Box, a dedicated voice specialist in England (not the RedBox DVD kiosk at your grocery store), just signed the papers to select Ingram Micro as a distributor for Red Box Voice in North America.
A recent Kaspersky survey found that cyber threat intelligence analyst is one of the most difficult openings to fill. Until you find all the right people, perhaps the Kaspersky and EclecticIQ Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP) can provide a source of actionable and relevant context on cyberthreats.
SMB customers of Amazon Web Services may find plenty to like in the new partnership between Rackspace Service Blocks and Alert Logic to protect apps and data.
ATEN Technology does quite a bit a Pro AV as well as a wide variety of KVM tools. Now it uses both product lines for the ATEN and Bosch Digital Congress Network (DCN) Conference System to build and support modern video meetings.
Avaya shook hands on a partnership with Noble Systems to enhance Avaya IX Contact Center applications with new toolsets and data analytics solutions for intelligent automation of processes to improve customer contact strategies.
Check Point announced the launch of its new global partner program to better align its channel teams. Deeper collaboration will give partners access to expert support and resources. There’s also a new “Elite” tier.
SMB cybersecurity player Netsurion announced a significant channel partner expansion. Growth path calls for them to become a master MSSP, helped by signing up twice as many partners in 2019 than the year before.
This week’s stats ticker:
IDC released its Worldwide Quarterly Tablet Tracker, and the tablet market shrank 1.5% year over year. The fourth quarter decline was only 0.6%; 43.5 million units shipped globally. The yearly ship total was 144 million units. Apple stayed in the lead and grew 22.7% year over year in the fourth quarter. Samsung’s total shipments declined but the company remained in second place. Huawei and Amazon’s shipment totals both declined in the quarter year over year (2.8% and 29% respectively). Lenovo was the only other vendor in the top five to grow year over year in the quarter, but its share of total quarterly sales was only 5.8% with 2.3 million units. For the full year, Lenovo’s year over year growth was 8.3% over 2018’s numbers.
Safety first, Wienermobile Hotdoggers. A giant hotdog on wheels always gets attention, but it’s supposed to be positive attention. The Oscar Mayer Wienermobile wound up on the wrong side of the law recently in Wisconsin.
One Wienermobile driver, known collectively as Hotdoggers, violated the Wisconsin “Move Over Law” and was stopped by a Waukesha County sheriff. When drivers see an emergency vehicle of some kind with flashing lights on, the law says they must either move out of the lane next to the emergency vehicle or slow way down.
Perhaps because a 27-foot hot dog doesn’t handle like a Porsche, the unnamed driver did NOT follow the rules, and got stopped. The sheriff let the Hotdogger off with a warning. If someone hadn’t put a photo up on Facebook, nobody would have been the wiser.
Lesson? Hotdoggers should hotdog safely.
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About the Author
JAMES E. GASKIN is a ChannelPro contributing editor and former reseller based in Dallas.
