It’s been a minute or two years since movies were a thing on weekends, but now they’re back. The spousal unit was amazed when she finally noticed during a commercial for The Batman that Robert Pattinson is now wearing the cowl and cape. “Who the $*%! thought that was a good idea?” she asked. We don’t know, but each and every newstip herein is a great idea, so enjoy.
News from the big kids. Remember your parents yelling at you to quit wasting your time playing video games? Microsoft just offered $68.7 billion to acquire Activision Blizzard and become the third-largest gaming company by revenue. Three billion people globally are active gamers today, and Microsoft will soon own some of the biggest names, like “Warcraft,” “Call of Duty,” and “Candy Crush.”
Hello to ServiceNow Impact, designed to accelerate the return on digital transformation investments. The AI-powered tool offers a “personalized digital experience” for recommendations, guidance, tech support, and tools.
Education computing become more mobile the last couple of years, and Acer has answered with two new laptops: the Acer TravelMate B3 and Acer TravelMate Spin B3. Both include Windows 11 SE, are optimized for educational settings, and both are built tough to survive student use.
Security news. Phishing scams rely on malicious domains and websites. Kaspersky’s Takedown Service works with its Digital Footprint to initiate domain takedown procedures all over the world. This service can be purchased independently of the Kaspersky Digital Footprint Intelligence subscription.
IGI CyberLabs and SecurityStudio partnered to offer customers in underserved markets simple yet credible security solutions. There’s a special focus on education at all levels, state/local governments, and non-profits.
The password management folks at NordPass Business have a new version of their flagship product for MSPs (pictured).
The new Check Point Quantum Lightspeed Firewall claims to be the fastest ever. Throughput is up to 800 Gbps for a single gateway and 3 Tbps per system, with an ultra-low latency of 3 microseconds while blocking a long list of nasties.
Juniper Networks took a step closer to its AI goals with the ability to fully deploy, configure, and operate its Session Smart Router (SSR) technology via the Mist cloud and AI engine. Plus, security capabilities were beefed up.
Other product news. A new player in resilient communications, SkyAMP, has launched a new patented unpowered wireless signal boosting technology, plus the SkyAMP Get AMPed Channel Partner Program.
SalesChain now integrates with ConnectWise, an advantage for office equipment dealers looking to expand into IT products and services. To further help those partners, SalesChain’s new MSP pricing tool pulls catalog data from Ingram Micro, TD Synnex, and Supplies Network, including pricing. And one more detail: SalesChain’s new “TCO Made Easy” tool helps calculate a customer’s total cost of ownership using real catalog data. These are available to SalesChain Platinum subscription holders.
Toshiba Global Commerce Solutions expanded ELERA, its unified commerce platform, with more than 45 native microservices such as low-code, no-code tools to develop and scale retail solutions, and ELERA IoT to integrate new IoT devices like cameras to speed checkout and reduce shrinkage.
Action1 now offers it’s RMM cloud tool free for organizations and MSPs with up to 100 endpoints. Free as in forever, not a trial.
Non-product vendor news. Pax8 rolled out a double-wide red carpet for Vice President of Global Vendor Alliances Mikki Meyer and Caroling Goles, vice president of digital sales strategy. But wait, there’s more! Pax8 signed a global agreement with SkyKick to offer partner MSPs its Cloud Manager application.
At Vade Secure, meanwhile, Severin Walker has signed on as director of provider products and services.
CloudBolt welcomes Brendan Dolan as chief financial officer.
The Alliance of Channel Women named its Big Impact Winner for Q4: Celeste Labrie, senior partner development manager at Telarus.
Managed services guru Karl Palachuk has been training MSPs since 2013. Now, however, he’s morphed his Great Little Seminar offering into IT Service Provider University. ITSPU certifications are available for technician, management, service management, sales, and front office/admin.
Rackspace will acquire Just Analytics, a provider of cloud-based data, analytics, and AI services based in Singapore.
Netrix acquired BTB Security, a cybersecurity and digital forensics company
To help move Nintex AssureSign into the insurance business, Nintex partnered with Insuresoft’s Diamond Platform.
LTE and 5G wireless network player Cradlepoint shook hands with Juniper Networks to improve 5G support in its campus and branch product portfolio.
The new QuickBooks Online reseller commercial model will let partners own the customer subscription billing relationship, among other service goodies.
Cybereason’s new Pay As You Grow program for lets its Elite and Premier MSSPs buy with a monthly fee based on usage.
Pure Storage revved up its partner program with enhancements that include flexibility in routes to market. it applies to cloud native and Kubernetes-based apps, and includes goodies for Elite partners.
Nerdio announced plans for a global sales expansion to the U.K., Canada, and Australia/New Zealand, along with the agenda to NerdioCon 2022, set for February 21-23, 2022, in Cancun.
This week’s stats ticker:
Having trouble getting or keeping technical people? Of course you are, according to The Next-Gen Managed Service Provider global research report from LogicMonitor. 600 MSP leaders in nine global markets discussed pressures from enterprise customers to deliver productivity gains and eliminate cyberattacks while moving to the cloud. 55% of enterprises are spending more with MSPs today compared to years past, but they and their MSPs struggle with outages while short of needed staff. 55% of MSPs had significant employee turnover in the last 12 months, and filling an empty job slot takes an average of five months. To help retention, 45% are offering flexible work hours, increased base salaries (42%), and remote or hybrid work models (40%). Their customers are investing in more IT training (52%), clouds (42%), networking (37%), and security compliance (36%). One solution, according to 95% of MSPs, is more automation of manual processes, 40% of which still needing a revamp.
WatchGuard’s latest quarterly Internet Security Report found the volume of malware and ransomware during Q3 of 2021 exceeded everything detected in 2020. Worse, malware per device was up for the first time during the pandemic. Nearly half of zero-day malware is delivered now via encrypted connections, with 47% coming over Transport Layer Security, a jump from 31.6%. The Americas remains the top target at 64.5%, although unique network exploits were down 21% there in Q3. 81% of attacks used one of the top 10 network attack signatures, with SQL injection retaining the spot it’s occupied atop the top ten list since Q2 2019. Scripting attacks are up 10% over 2020, which itself saw a 666% jump from the prior year.
The fourth global Enterprise Cloud Index (ECI) survey from Nutanix found companies love their hybrid multicloud computing options, and that deployment model is in the majority now, with 64% committed to that approach in the next three years. The challenge is complexity, as 87% wished there was simpler management across the mixed-cloud structures. Managing security worries 49%, as does data integration, and cost makes 43% nervous. 61% say they’re focusing on more flexible work setups because of the pandemic, and they realize the trend will continue. Application mobility is a top issue, with 91% moving one or more applications to a new IT environment over the past 12 months. Is it good that 72% of businesses see IT as more strategic than it was a year ago? Or more pressure?
The family that pees together… Ads for houses mention bedrooms, bathrooms, and garages as a matter of course, like 3/2/2 for three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a two-car garage. You must dig deeper to find the size of the bedrooms, whether the garage is attached or separate, and other important features.
Did you ever think you needed to ask how many toilets were in a bathroom? No? Maybe you should.
A home built in 1851 in South Milwaukee is listed as a 6/3/2.5, meaning six bedrooms (it’s 3,913 sq. ft.), and extra storage room in the separate two-car garage adding the half. It should be listed as a 6/3.4/2.5. Why the “.4” on the bathroom? There are four, yes, four toilets in one bathroom, with no partitions, cubicles, or curtains. It wasn’t an accident, because there are four sinks in the countertop on the wall opposite the four toilets. And if there weren’t enough privacy violations already, the mirrors above the sinks give a great view of the four adjacent toilets.
There’s friendly, overly friendly, and yuck. This is yuck priced at $450,000.
Photo: Jane DiChristopher Broker Associate with Mahler Sotheby’s International Realty in Milwaukee
