This has certainly been an interesting week, one that we all hope we never see the likes of again. On the other hand, all those with experience in remote client support, personal VPNs, and telecommuting need sunglasses to deal with the spotlight.
Cloud News. It’s a mashup we hoped would happen: VMware and Kubernetes. VMware Cloud Foundation 4 and the newly expanded VMware Tanzu portfolio support traditional VM-based and container-based applications. Also involved? Tanzu Kubernetes Grid and VMware vSphere 7 to help developer productivity.
Hello to Netwrix Data Classification 5.5.2. Expect more secure documents thanks to Microsoft Information Protection and safer stored documents on corporate Google Drive instances.
Just because you’re working at home doesn’t mean you can skip meetings. 8×8 announced expanded capabilities for the free, standalone version of 8×8 Video Meetings (pictured). Coverage includes more than 125 countries and the number of users has tripled, as has the registered user base for the system. But wait, there’s more! 8×8 also launched 8×8 X Series and 8×8 Contact Center in Canada. That means 8x8x X Series is available just about everywhere globally.
Companies love their SD-WANs thanks to improved performance and security. Now mobile users can benefit, thanks to the new MetTel SD-M cloud service. Get actionable insight and better control performance, lower costs, and higher security for your mobile users across multiple carriers.
Other product news. D-Link pulled the curtain on a batch of Wi-Fi mesh routers and extenders, including MU-MIMO support. The units also support Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa to deliver flexible and affordable products to consumers. The deets:
AC1750 MU-MIMO WiFi Gigabit Router (DIR-1750-US, pictured)
- Dual-Band speeds up to 450Mbps (2.4GHz) + 1300Mbps (5GHz)
- Four external high-gain antennas for expanded coverage
AC1900 MU-MIMO Gigabit WiFi Router (DIR-1950-US)
- Advanced Dual-Band speeds up to 600 Mbps (2.4GHz) + 1300Mbps (5GHz)
- Four external high-gain antennas for expanded coverage
AC2600 MU-MIMO Gigabit WiFi Router (DIR-2640-US)
- Dynamic Dual-Band speeds up to 800Mbps (2.4GHz) + 1733 Mbps (5GHz)
- Four external high-gain antennas for expanded coverage
- Dual USB ports (3.0 & 2.0)
AC3000 MU-MIMO Gigabit WiFi Router (DIR-3040-US)
- Ultra-fast Tri-Band speeds up to 400 Mbps (2.4GHz) + 866 Mbps (5GHz) + 1733 Mbps (5GHz)
- Six external high-gain antennas for expanded coverage
- Dual USB ports (3.0 & 2.0)
Containers everywhere! Hewlett Packard Enterprise says the previously-announced HPE Container Platform is out and about now. Supports both cloud-native and non-cloud-native applications using 100% open source Kubernetes. Faster, lower cost, fewer layers, increased density per hardware platform, and more goodies included.
AVANT Communications and Zoom Video Communications shook hands so they can offer a video-first unified communications platform. Available through AVANT’s network of partners.
Speaking of shaking hands and partnering, Atlassian said TeamViewer now integrates with both the server and cloud versions of Jira Software, Jira Core, and Jira Service Desk.
As edge computing demands increase, so does heat. Say hello to the Schneider Electric Uniflair rack-mounted cooling unit. Officially the Uniflair Rack Mounted Cooling 3.5kW, DX solution takes the cooling gear off the floor and is a good option for the type of micro-data centers popping up.
Privileged access management player CyberArk just revved up CyberArk Alero to extend zero-trust network access to remote workers. Remote work is up 44% over the last five years and may zoom higher quickly.
Speaking of zero-trust networking, NetFoundry’s software-only edge and IoT networking product supports micro-segmented networking with low latency for edge and IoT applications.
Need help making money? That’s OK, we all do. Perhaps the newest version of Model N’s AI-enabled cloud revenue management tools can help. Includes deal management and intelligence, revenue and price intelligence, and rebate management.
Non-product vendor news. Security awareness training company KnowBe4 just ordered new business cards for two executives. Lars Letonoff and Krish Venkataraan (pictured), chief revenue officer and chief financial officer respectively, are now taking on the role of co-presidents.
Cloud control company Rubrik announced Dan Rogers as president. He’ll lead Rubrik’s product, marketing, and go-to-market strategy.
StorageCraft promoted Andy Zollo to head of global sales, up from his previous post as head of sales in EMEA and APAC.
Malwarebytes brought in Adam Hyder to be its new senior vice president of engineering.
Network security and policy management company FireMon added Charles Gold as chief marketing officer.
Secure information player OpenText just acquired XMedius and it’s 50,000 installations of secure information exchange. The all-cash acquisition is worth around $75 million.
Cloud data services company NetApp acquired Talon Storage, a player in software-defined storage solutions, including its Talon FAST software.
NinjaRMM hopes to expand its customer base of over 4,000 customers with the additional funding it just received from private equity investor Summit Partners. Summit holds a minority stake.
To improve endpoint security with some special AI sauce, Lenovo struck a deal with SentinelOne. The autonomous endpoint protection from SentinelOne will fold into Lenovo’s ThinkShield security offerings.
Jenne has been tagged as a master agent for Avaya Cloud Office.
PlanetOne added Spring Business as one of its preferred providers. PlanetOne is the first master agent to sign such a deal as Spring grows its partner channel.
Speaking of partner programs, the BlackBerry Cylance North American Partner Program just got juiced up as well. The three levels are gold, platinum, and emerald. MSSPs will be ramped and billing within 30 days of joining the program, BlackBerry says.
Students and career-switchers should look at the new My IT Path program from CompTIA. The free resource includes step-by-step guidance on planning a career in IT. To help the noobs and experienced alike, CompTIA also created the Advancing Tech and Diversity Community, pulling four earlier groups into one.
Cloud Girls announces new leaders for 2020, its 10th year. They include Tatiana Sebby of 8×8, Natalia Botti of CloudGenix, Jess Bryar of Masergy, Khali Henderson of BuzzTheory, Angela Hogaboom of Ocular, Michelle Hyde of Hyde Group, Amy Kramer of NTT America, Tamara Prazak of AppGate, Raj Varma of Xoriant, Lorraine Bassett of Amazon Web Services, Allison Bergamo of Pax8, Marcia Dempster of Armor Cloud Security, Stephanie Minasian of Epson America, Jo Peterson of Clarify 360, Lacy Rondon of Rackspace, Michelle Ruyle of Intelisys, and Jeanine Sicinski of RapidScale.
This week’s stats ticker:
IDC’s Worldwide Black Book Live Edition for February 2020 shows that the Covid-19 virus is dropping expected hardware spending levels already. On the low end, IT spending could grow only 1% compared to the original forecast of 4% growth. These and other projections are expected to trend down in the next few weeks. February spending growth will likely be 4.3% rather than the 5% anticipated back in January. Worldwide IT spending growth originally predicted at 5% is likely to drop to 3% in March. Extending the crisis in China beyond Q2 could drop the growth prediction to about 1%.
CompTIA’s “”Trends in Managed Services“” report says that two-thirds of MSPs expect to expand their service portfolio over the next year. This comes on top of two years of solid to excellent results for 85% of MSPs. Looking forward, expect solid (40%) or excellent (44%) performance to continue. Center stage? Cybersecurity. Tech area zooming up? Managed IoT services, attracting the interests of MSPs looking to diversify and expand. 400 tech businesses across the United States were surveyed for the report.
Open source organization Eclipse Foundation released its first annual IoT Commercial Adoption survey, one of the first of its kind. 366 individuals from a wide range of industries and organizations were surveyed last fall. First of all, IoT is real and growing, if not as fast as the hype. Just under 40% are deploying IoT solutions now and 22% plan to start within two years. Sometimes only toes are being dipped as 30% of organizations are spending less than $100K in the next year. But 40% plan to increase IoT spending in the next fiscal year. And, as with many other technologies today, hybrid cloud leads the way for IoT deployments. AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform are the leaders.
Want that toilet paper badly? Prove it. Nobody confuses Covid-19 with a comedy show. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have a little fun no matter the situation.
In this case, Chapman’s Funland in Bridlington, East Yorkshire, England, decided to gamify the rush on toilet paper. Yes, disaster preppers are grabbing as much TP as possible recently. So owner Eddy Chapman replaced the toys inside his claw machines with toilet paper rolls.
Eddy reports people laughed, which was the idea. And good news travels fast. Bob Braddick of Ho Barts Amusement Arcade in Devon, England, replaced all the toys in his claw machine with soap and hand sanitizer.
