ICYMI: Our Channel News Roundup for the Week of November 11th

Weird weather continues, as evidenced by the fact that cities in Tennessee and Arkansas have more snow this season than Anchorage, Alaska. Most of the northern half of the U.S. has a decent chance of snow on Thanksgiving. Let’s hope it warms up a little so we can put our Christmas decorations out before we cook the turkey. Once again, the weather distracted us from important newsbits, so let’s get current.

Wintel news. Sure they compete in CRM, Salesforce named Microsoft Azure as its public cloud provider for Salesforce Marketing Cloud anyway. More integration should lead to more productivity.

Since AI is just about everywhere, including the edge, Intel demonstrated some new hardware to help power that AI. The Intel Nervana Neural Network Processors (NNP) for training (NNP-T1000, pictured) and inference (NNP-I1000) are purpose-built AISCs for complex deep learning. There’s also the Intel Movidius Vision Processing Unit (VPU) for edge media, computer vision, and inference applications.

And speaking of Intel, they’ve rolled out the red carpet for a new member of the board of directors: James (Jim) J. Goetz, a partner at Sequoia Capital.

Cloud news. Amazon Web Services announced AWS Data Exchange, a new service to make third-party data in the cloud available. Over 2.2 million news stories, 14 billion healthcare transactions, 330 million global business records, and the like are available. No more waiting for data on physical media or organizing a secure FTP connection.

Such a segue: Databricks (data analytics) announced API integration with AWS Data Exchange. Access AWS Data Exchange via the Databricks Unified Data Analytics Platform.

Have a cloud consulting company or thinking about starting one? The Salesforce $50 million Consultant Trailblazer Fund may be your fairy godmother and/or rich uncle.

Juniper Networks’ data center customers should ask about the new Contrail Insights package, the latest addition to the Contrail Enterprise Multicloud tools. Real-time and historic visibility, troubleshooting analysis, and more.

Just released, Netwrix Auditor 9.9 for users of Office 365, VMware, and Active Directory secures data, detects unauthorized VMware login attempts, and protects cloud applications.

Avaya announced the availability of integration between its Avaya IX Contact Center and key Google Cloud Contact Center AI capabilities. Better automated and assisted experiences for those on the far end of the line.

M-Files Ground Link now integrates Salesforce with on-premises repositories like SharePoint, network folders, legacy ECM, and more.

Security news. Buy the new HP Spectre x360 13 (pictured) and find LogMeIn’s LastPass waiting in a Windows Start tile.

The newly turbocharged GravityZone from Bitdefender adds extra endpoint defense capabilities; better prevention, detection, and response; and help stopping network-based and fileless attacks.

Trend Micro announced its complete smart factory security solutions. Hello to the industrial firewall and intrusion prevention (IPS) system and Safe Lock TXOne edition. All to keep the expected 49 billion IoT devices in 2021 safe.

Kaspersky is moving its data storage and processing infrastructure to Switzerland from the United States and Canada. The company is also opening a Transparency Center in Latin America, exactly one years after opening its first one in Zurich.

Check Point’s Infinity architecture will now support IoT device firmware. Thanks to the acquisition of Cymplify, Check Point can now protect IoT devices like an IP camera, smart TV, elevator controller, and medical devices.

New Macs from Apple mean new updates from Jamf Protect to give enterprise security teams visibility into their macOS fleet, and block threats.

Siemplify (security orchestration, automation, and response) now integrates with the MITRE ATT&CK framework to pull insights into the Siemplify analyst workbench.

New teamup: Hardware from Zyxel and software from F-Secure coalesce into eHomeShield to keep hackers outside the home network.

Other product news. If you always look on the bright side of life, you should really like the now-available Epson BrightLink 1485Fi (pictured) and the soonly available BrightLink 1480Fi. 5,000 lumens of color and white brightness and a 20,000-hour laser light source (no lamps, so hooray).

When you sell tickets to your BrightLink movie theater, you’ll need the new Epson TM-T0III POS receipt printer.

Poly knows that sitting at a desk all day stifles creativity and collaboration, but how do you stay connected to your phone for that critical call? Use the new Poly Voyager 4200 or Voyager 5200 Office Series Bluetooth headset systems, that’s how.

Now that all the cool kids are doing IoT and AI at the edge, you might join them with the new Avnet MaaXBoard, a low-cost single board computer based on the NXP i.MX 8M applications processor.

Non-product vendor newsbits. WhiteHat Security rolled out the red carpet for Anthony Bettini (pictured) as its new chief technology officer.

Over at IGEL, co-CEO Jed Ayres and CEO and founder Heiko Gloge will now lead the nearly 400 worldwide employees.

Octonion brought in Vianney Airaud as chief revenue officer.

Acronis Cyber Protection solutions are now available through Ingram Micro thanks to a multi-year global distribution agreement.

Have you heard the chatter on a Slack channel about a new Slack Services Partner Program? True, now added to Slack’s Technology Partner Program.

Juniper Networks partners around the world can now get rolling with the Juniper Partner Advantage 2020 program to help support the growing opportunities of the AI-driven enterprise.

Speaking of getting smarter, the newest version of the CompTIA Cloud Essentials+ professional certification exam is now available.

The ASCII Group announced dates for the 2020 ASCII IT Success Summits:

• Long Beach, CA February 26 – 27
• Houston, TX March 25 – 26
• Washington, D.C. April 22 – 23
• Chicago, IL May 27 – 28
• Cincinnati, OH June 24 – 25
• Toronto, Canada July 29 – 30
• Atlantic City, NJ August 26 – 27
• Boston, MA September 24 – 25
• Orlando, FL October 21 – 22

And the speakers:

• Keynote Speaker – Frank Abagnale, Security Briefing: The Art of the Steal
• Bob Coppedge, Simplex-IT – The MSP Survival Guide to Co-Managed IT Services
• Corey Kirkendoll, 5K Technical Services – The Ultimate MSP Check List for Bulletproof Internal Security
• Dawn Sizer, 3rd Element Consulting – Going Vertical in Municipal Government and Law Enforcement is Not a Bidding War
• Shannon Mayer, The ASCII Group - How MSPs Can Drive New Business through Live Events
• Jerry Koutavas, The ASCII Group: MSP-Client Retention Strategy Study

This week’s stats ticker:

With all our earlier cloud news, this shouldn’t be a surprise: Gartner forecasts worldwide public cloud revenue to grow 17% in 2020. The “Worldwide Public Cloud Service Revenue Forecast” report expects revenue of $266.4 billion dollars in 2020, up from $227.8 billion in 2019. That total will grow to $354.6 billion by 2022. Cloud application services leads the ledger every year, growing from $85.7 billion in 2018 to $151.1 billion in 2022. Next is IaaS, followed by business process services (BPaaS). Even the lowest total adds up to some real money, as the cloud management and security services bucket expects to fill up with $17.6 billion in 2022.

A car with appeal. Next time you get pulled over by a state trooper, let’s hope you’re driving a car like Steve Braithwaite of Kalamazoo, Mich. Not a hipster Prius or mid-life crisis Corvette, but the Big Banana Car. Yep, a 23-foot bananamobile built on the frame of a 1993 Ford F-150 4X4 with a 1994-vintage 302 Mustang engine.

Pulled over at the beginning of his 1,400-mile trip down to Texas, not only did Braithwaite not get a ticket, the trooper wrapped a $20 bill around his license when he returned it as a seal of approval.

Braithwaite often appears at fairs and car shows and gives rides to kids. The license plate of the street-legal banana the state trooper ran before his $20 thumbs-up? SPLIT.