Articles by Mark Cox

Hardware

Curvature, DataCore announce disruptive partnership

August 27, 2015 Mark Cox Comments Off on Curvature, DataCore announce disruptive partnership
DataCore’s software disaggregates software from the underlying hardware, letting Curvature provide customers with cheaper hardware and maintenance contracts, and freeing customers from the need to have short hardware refresh cycles to be compliant with maintenance contracts that provide software upgrades.

Distribution

Imation signs on Arrow to distribute Nexsan in North America

August 27, 2015 Mark Cox Comments Off on Imation signs on Arrow to distribute Nexsan in North America
The Arrow deal broadens the Nexsan distribution network, and is also intended to transition more Nexsan resellers to Tier Two distribution, away from the direct Tier One model Nexsan used before it was acquired.

Managed Services

Hosted services firm VAR Dynamics to trim pricing to partners

August 26, 2015 Mark Cox Comments Off on Hosted services firm VAR Dynamics to trim pricing to partners
New pricing, which takes effect September 1, is only for the P13 platform, the company’s newest, and is designed in part as an incent to get partners on older platforms to move their customers to the newest one.

Data Centre

Nutanix targets service provider market with new FlexPrice purchasing program

August 26, 2015 Mark Cox Comments Off on Nutanix targets service provider market with new FlexPrice purchasing program
Nutanix is making a major initiative targeting service provider customers, which sees it introduce a program that lets them pay for their infrastructure by subscription, as they are paid themselves.

Cloud

Canadian small businesses getting more mobile, spending more on software

August 25, 2015 Mark Cox Comments Off on Canadian small businesses getting more mobile, spending more on software
Intuit’s 2015 Small Business App Study also finds Canadians are spending more on software to run their businesses than Americans, and plan to boost this in the future.

Security

Are you compromising your business security?

August 25, 2015 Mark Cox Comments Off on Are you compromising your business security?
Dell Security explains why even smaller businesses need next-generation firewalls today, and why older traditional firewalls no longer cut it.

Mobility

Xirrus addresses both bleeding edge and low-cost segments with two product launches

August 25, 2015 Mark Cox Comments Off on Xirrus addresses both bleeding edge and low-cost segments with two product launches
Xirrus brings its 802.11ac Wave 2 Wi-Fi solution, to market, and launches its new low-cost 802.11ac Wi-Fi access points, which replace, and are cheaper than, older 802.11n APs.

Managed Services

SolarWinds N-able to offer MSPs choice of new IT Services Management Platform

August 24, 2015 Mark Cox Comments Off on SolarWinds N-able to offer MSPs choice of new IT Services Management Platform
The company says it acquired a cloud based services management platform to provide a simpler and low cost pure play offering to the partners who want it, and that their partnerships with the major PSA vendors will continue.

Opinion/Editorial

Seagate purchase of Dot Hill has minimal channel implications

August 24, 2015 Mark Cox Comments Off on Seagate purchase of Dot Hill has minimal channel implications
Seagate’s acquisition of Dot Hill last week is intriguing in several ways, but for the channel, it’s pretty much a non-issue. Seagate’s focus is on Dot Hill’s OEM business, and their branded channel business, which had already been outsourced to Quantum, is unlikely to be affected at all.

Data Centre

Dell brings Datacenter Scalable Solutions business out of stealth

August 24, 2015 Mark Cox Comments Off on Dell brings Datacenter Scalable Solutions business out of stealth
Dell says there will be incremental opportunities for channel partners in its newly announced DSS business, which targets the area just below the hyperscale vendors and will see branded DSS products on the market later this fall.