ZeroStack technology significantly reduces both private cloud deployment time and costs as well as the cost of operations by putting the user work flows and operations in the cloud, while the infrastructure and software to manage it are on prem. They are also selling entirely through channel partners.
Making SteelFusion a hybrid cloud solution should significantly expand partner opportunities, including the ability to sell it as a managed service.
Kaspersky Lab’s colourful CEO stated at the company’s 2016 North American Partner Conference that while cybersecurity is presently in the Dark Ages, a Golden Age is on the horizon for the commercial market, with a key new industrial control security solution coming from Kaspersky later this year.
Kaspersky is counselling its channel to take advantage of the increased market opportunities in the enterprise, both to build new business and expand the company’s brand awareness with major new logos. They are also emphasizing that partners need to be more aggressive in delivering security expertise beyond licenses and support.
The Kaspersky Anti Targeted Attack [KATA] Platform is a premium multilayered solution aimed at stopping the most dangerous targeted threats, while the company also announced a series of new services, including penetration testing, cybersecurity training and threat intelligence sharing.
While Kaspersky is emphasizing the enterprise in its strategic objectives this year, it is also providing more segmented assistance to partners focusing on different parts of the market. This includes a new specialization which will see small business leads limited to partners who have secured it.
Logitech and Intel are looking to provide a reliable low cost conferencing offering for organizations that use PC-based video conferences.
The bundle enhances interoperability between Fortinet’s FortiGate Network Security Platform and the HPE Security Logger products, and will initially be piloted exclusively through Arrow to a limited number of partners, before being opened up later this year.
PernixData has dealt direct with its channel in the past, but believes the time is right to take on distribution to accelerate sales of its software that improves the efficiency of storage in virtualized environments.
Some new incent programs have gone live, and other partner offerings announced at Dell World last October are now available.
Avaya’s program changes give more partners ways to make more money, but also step up the requirement to have happy, satisfied customers.
The new service combines one sandbox Dell has used internally, and being productized for the first time, with two licensed third party sandboxes, on the principle that modern threats that try and evade sandboxes won’t be able to evade three different ones at the same time.
In addition to CommandCenter, which greatly simplifies the provisioning of new customers, Xirrus is also announcing enhancements to their MSP program to improve benefits.
Dell believes its configure-to-order embedded PCs will do well in a market dominated by smaller manufacturers doing custom orders, and whose machines lack the software, manageability and support options Dell can offer.
Tegile’s IntelliFlash HD storage array uses Tegile’s hybrid architecture, but with two types of flash, one layer being very dense and the other very fast. Tegile also announced a new entry level all-flash array, the T3550.
VAR Dynamics completes a major restructuring with a name change to highlight the company’s focus on its platform rather than the services on top, and to illustrate that the company’s base has also moved beyond VARs to include other types of partners.
Gigamon enhances the security platform at the core of their growing security business, while continuing to increase and develop the security-focused part of their channel. They will also be implementing a Gigamon Professional Services program in Q2.
Lantronix says the cost to enterprise management of their wireless stacks, together with the greater difficulty of updating obsolete embedded technology, makes customers ready for a cutting edge 5G (802.11ac) Wi-Fi connectivity solution for the Internet of Things.
Risk intelligence solution Agiliance pulls an Oracle, rebranding itself after its RiskVision product. RiskVision has done most of its business direct in the past, but is aggressively looking to change that, looking to add VAR, solution provider and MSSP partners.
Mellanox thinks the Nutanix partnership can let Mellanox do for networking what Nutanix has already done for storage and compute – make it invisible. They also think it can grow their Ethernet switch business from the single digits to the neighborhood of their market leadership in Ethernet adapters.
