New Channel Offerings: IBM AI, Telarus, Ingram Micro, RingCentral, Teams, More
IBM launched generative AI of its own. Ingram Micro's new platform spells a big change for its cloud solutions.
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IBM‘s new WatsonX portfolio gives enterprises the option to bring generative AI into their applications.
The platform includes a studio for troubleshooting ML/AI models, a data store for AI workloads, and a governance offering.
An IBM executive said the offering differs from ChatGPT-like competitors in that it doesn’t deal with consumer use cases.
“We are attacking use cases that are predominant in the B2B world, customer service, digital labor, cybersecurity and IT automation,” he said. “I don’t really see anybody else in the market right now that’s trying to go after those use cases with foundation models and generative AI.”
Jeffrey Schwartz wrote about it at IBM Think.
Telarus bulked up its pre-sales consulting platform with a cloud module.
The SolutionVue tool helps technology advisor (agent) firms run discovery on prospective customers to guage their technology needs and identify potential vendors. The SolutionVue suite started with cybersecurity.
In a conversation with Channel Futures, Telarus co-founder and chief product officer Patrick Oborn explained how the tools will save time for Telarus’ sales engineers, who need to allocate their time as they help partners on a myriad of customer engagements, and position partners as more effective consultants to end custoemrs.
Read one partner’s perspective on how tools like SolutionVue can help technology advisors.
All aspects of Ingram Micro products and vendors, including cloud, will go into its new Xvantage platform.
The distributor said that Xvantage will contain a product platform and a cloud platform together. The Xvantage platform arrives as the Ingram Micro Cloud Marketplaces goes away as a standalone entity.
Ingram recently opened up Xvantage to vendors in the U.S., Canada and Germany.
Edward Gately has the scoop coming out of Ingram Micro Global Cloud and Innovation Summit (GCIS).
RingCentral deepened its Microsoft Teams integration.
RingCentral for Microsoft Teams 2.0 integrates all of RingCentral’s features into the Teams pane of glass, executives said. For Microsoft, the integration brings in RingCentral to provide advanced telephony capabilities and other communications features. RingCentral for Microsoft Teams includes telephony on all licenses.
Claudia Adrien wrote about the update.
Malwarebytes is helping MSPs protect their customers’ Chromebooks, Android and iOS devices from mobile threats.
The vendor’s OneView multitenant platform now monitors mobile phones and tablets. Previously it only monitored servers, workstations and laptops. Its modules include DNS filtering and managed detection and response (MDR).
Learn more about Malwarebyte’s mobile security play.
Juniper Networks launched a cloud-native network access control (NAC) and policy management suite.
Juniper Mist Access Assurance service provides uses cloud-hosted, microservices-based authentication.
Juniper also teamed up with ServiceNow to use ServiceNow’s Telecom Service Management and Order Management for Telecom offerings. That partnership will improve Juniper’s provisioning and monitoring for enterprise customers.
Read Juniper’s press releases about ServiceNow and Access Assurance.
Kyndryl is coupling its network services with Cloudflare‘s platform.
Kyndryl, the services unit that spun out of IBM, has been building different collaborations with Cloudflare over the last year. In this case, customers can get a managed internet service from the companies.
In addition, Kyndryl rolled out a managed SASE offering based on Fortinet’s platform.
Edward Gately has the scoop.
Pax8, which is getting lots of attention these days for its marketplace announcements, bulked up its security portfolio.
The cloud distributor and marketplace signed Keeper Security to its marketplace. An executive from the vendor said Keeper’s password management tool is the only FedRAMP authorized solution of its kind.
Jeff O’Heir covered the news.
Dell Technologies‘ service-based offerings now include public cloud storage software, client devices and compute.
The vendor enhanced the Apex portfolio, which it rolled out to the channel in 35 countries last year. Executives said the expansion allows partners to better meet customers according to their needs.
Dell also updated its PowerStore multicloud data backup offering.
Christine Horton wrote about the update and many other updates from Dell Technologies World.
N-able sought to speed up its disaster-recovery-as-a-service (DRaaS) offering with a new feature.
The vendor updated its Cove Data Protection BDR and archiving tool with a capability called Standby Image recovery. The goal of the new update is to allow to customers to be more flexible in where they recover their data. Standby Image allows the data to go to onsite devices as well as Azure.
N-able spun off from SolarWinds as a standalone, MSP-focused company in 2021.
Read about the new offering as well as N-able’s Q1 earnings in Jeff O’Heir’s article.
Cysurance is partnering with Kaseya to dole out more than $1.5 million in cyber insurance through MSPs.
Kaseya unveiled the partner behind its new Cyber Insurance Fast Track Program. The general manager of Kaseya’s security suite said insurance generally costs $10,000-$12,000 a year per $1 million of coverage, but Kaseya’s coverage will start about 20-30% lower.
Jeff O’Heir wrote about the new program.
Veeam is pushing hard for partners to move their customers to its Universal License (VUL) bundles.
That message comes about a year after the backup provider dropped its perpetual socket-based licenses. Executives argued that customers who move onto VUL churn half as often as those on the sockets.
Jeffrey Schwartz wrote all about Veeam.
Ooma gave its office phones new capabilities.
Ooma Office now includes call screening, which is said to help businesses avoid robocalls by asking callers to record their name. It also features a call leaderboard that managers would use to view how many calls employees are making and answering, as well as how long those calls are lasting.
See Ooman’s announcement.
Ooma gave its office phones new capabilities.
Ooma Office now includes call screening, which is said to help businesses avoid robocalls by asking callers to record their name. It also features a call leaderboard that managers would use to view how many calls employees are making and answering, as well as how long those calls are lasting.
See Ooman’s announcement.
Technology distributors Ingram Micro, Pax8 and Telarus have recently rolled out new channel products and services that partners can sell or leverage.
Channel Futures’ monthly recap of partner-facing offerings to sell typically centers on vendors. But the previous month saw an increasing number of distributors unveil software of their own that they believe will give more value to partners. Pax8’s marketplace in particular has dominated headlines this week, but other aggregators are touting new ways in which they are bringing vendors, partners and customers closer together.
Take for instance, Telarus, which added a new module to its consulting tool, designed to give partners a virtual sales engineer of sorts. There’s also Ingram Micro, which is promoting its new Xvantage platform as the future for its vendor partners.
Of course, the supplier community is rolling out all manner of technology products and services. On the cloud communications side, RingCentral deepened its Microsoft Teams integration. In network services, Juniper Networks turned to ServiceNow for bolstered provisioning and monitoring.
Of course, it’s not a 2023 story about new offerings if it doesn’t include generative AI, right? This month’s roundup includes IBM, which introduced three AI suites said to target enterprise use cases.
Go through the 13 images above to see 13 new channel products and services for partners to either sell or use themselves.
Also, check out the April edition of new channel products and services if you missed it.
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