Last year’s refocus on the channel saw Splunk more than double the size of their partner base. This year they are looking to drive further by enhancing the existing partner tracks and formalizing two new ones.
Fortinet now has 42 strategic vendor partnerships, which include many direct competitors, and these relationships are critical to their Security Fabric strategy.
Zoho CRM also enhances its Zia conversational AI for sales teams, with a voice capability, as well as other improvements its predictive AI and lead enrichment.
At their Fortinet Accelerate 2018 event in Las Vegas, Fortinet outlined their strategic vision to deal with the challenges of digital transformation, including rudimentary tagging which will – eventually – let customers set policies for new items on the network using business language.
Most employees think that being valued and recognized by their employer is critical, and technology is an important part of showing that appreciation.
Unified Service Intelligence is a less complex version of the core OpsRamp solution, will play in the midmarket as well as the enterprise, and is intended mainly to expose new prospects to the platform.
Commvault also announces Andy Vandeveld, most recently at Veeam, as Vice President of Worldwide Alliances, in a move that signals an increased focus on strategic alliances as a route to market rather than just technology integrations.
Network assessment tool maker RapidFire already does a good business in Canada, but thinks the Canadian market can be developed much more fully, and is making a major Northern push in 2018.
HyperGrid’s new version of HyperCloud adds new capabilities and services around workload placement, improves multi-tenancy further, and now provides support for Kubernetes as well as Docker.
Two of the new certifications, which also add a new Master level to the Dell EMC Proven Professional program, are available now, with the others coming in April and June. While partners will be eligible to complete them when they roll out, they will not immediately become part of the company’s partner program.
Palo Alto Networks next-gen firewall offerings are now available as a service on OPAQ’s platform, in one of only two strategic relationships that OPAQ has.
Nerdio’s focus is on their Nerdio for Azure offering, which led them to work with cloud and Microsoft- focused SherWeb.
A third enhancement, new SteelConnect support for LTE uplinks, is more of a niche feature in North America except in remote regions, although it is still sometimes used as a backup system.
The introduction of their Acuity platform last year has deepened Pivot3 presence in the enterprise, which has in turn led them to strengthen their technology partnerships which address this space.
A solution provider panel at the recent IGEL customer event discussed the evolution of the DaaS market and what they see as the opportunities – and pitfalls – for the channel.
Oracle introduced universal cloud credits for their IaaS and PaaS services last fall to both assist on-prem customers transition to the cloud and expand their market. Tech Data making the credits available on their StreamOne marketplace is designed to help here, and is likely to add new partners to Oracle’s channel.
Ivanti also completes the integration of their partner program, adding partners from the Shavlik and RES Software programs into the mix, and brings additional resources on board to work with partners.
Improvements to Palo Alto Networks’ Next-Generation Security Platform will extend inline, API-based and host based are protections for all three major public clouds.
Kimberly King, who now runs the Hitachi Vantara channel, indicated that the new program will be announced in April and will be rolled out in stages after that. She also noted that it will be very different from the existing Hitachi True North program.
The new Vena capabilities are designed to facilitate efficiency by integrating operational departments much more fully into the CPM process.
