7 Channel People Making Waves at IBM, Trend Micro, Check Point, More
Microsoft unveiled one of its priciest acquisitions.
March 11, 2022
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Microsoft completed its acquisition of Nuance Communications, the provider of AI-based speech recognition software, for $19.7 billion.
Microsoft believes Nuance will have the most significant impact on health care, where Nuance’s speech recognition technology is popular, Microsoft signaled.
Scott Guthrie, executive VP of Microsoft’s Cloud + AI group, made waves for giving us hope about the promise of affordable health care.
“The combination of Nuance’s deep vertical AI expertise, and the richness of Microsoft’s industry cloud offerings will deliver more affordable, effective and accessible health care for all,” he said.
Learn how Microsoft’s acquisition of Nuance will also enhance Microsoft’s efforts to create more intelligent contact centers.
There’s been a tidal wave of private equity (PE) money pouring into EMEA.
In 2021, more than one-third of all technology exits in Europe were private equity-funded investors rather than corporate acquirers. According to tech-focused investment bank ICON Corporate Finance, that’s an increase of 38% on 2020, and almost three times as much as in 2015.
Mike Kiersey is director, global technology, EMEA, at Boomi. He agrees that after a period of quiet, enforced by widespread economic disruption and uncertainty, M&A activity is on the rise. Kiersey made waves for confirming what many already know.
“Many solution providers will be turning to private equity to keep their business afloat, whilst others will be buying to complement and expand their tech stack,” he said.
Learn why EMEA PE firms are making investments in TSBs.
Less than 20% of employees working in tech are women. And it’s clear that talented women are missing out on tech positions because of ingrained bias during the recruitment process.
Amanda Richardson is CEO of CoderPad. She made waves for speaking out against this discrimination during International Women’s Day.
“Every day I’m proud of the progress the tech industry has made to create a more inclusive and diverse community,” she said. “And every day I continue to see how much further we need to go … Take time to get educated on the inequality that exists. Fight discrimination in and out of the workplace. It will take all of us to break the bias. Women can’t do it alone.”
Click here to read more about diversity in tech.
IBM is re-establishing its relationship with Computacenter to pursue more joint customers.
A factor in IBM’s decision to reinvest in its partner relationships is a switch-up in its channel engagement. In 2020 it announced it was to invest $1 billion in its channel. At the time it said its partner ecosystem was core to its growth strategy.
Andrew Wilcock is IBM VP for ecosystems, UK&I. He made waves for asking the right questions of partners.
“The question is, how do we make sure we put the right skills in front of the right partners to enable us to drive growth?” Wilcock said. “How do we work together with the right skills and the right technical capability to deliver that value to the client? What is in it for both sides?”
Read Christine Horton’s article to learn more about the rekindling of the relationship between IBM and Computacenter.
Cybersecurity providers like Check Point Software Technologies, Sophos, Trend Micro and more are on high alert as the Russia-Ukraine war further unfolds.
Jon Clay, Trend Micro’s vice president of threat intelligence, made waves for his humanitarian efforts.
Trend Micro is desperately trying “to support citizens, customers and partners in Ukraine,” Clay said.
“We do have employees located within Ukraine and are doing everything we can to support them,” he said. “Our solution/protection operations are cloud-based and not located within this country. And so these are not being affected by the current situation.”
Trend Micro research and threat hunters continue to monitor the company’s global threat intelligence for any indications of new attacks or threats that are associated with this situation, Clay said.
Read Edward Gately’s article to learn more about the cybersecurity efforts of these companies during the Russia-Ukraine war.
Vendors now face growing complexity when they’re designing their channel programs because the channel ecosystem is evolving rapidly.
Stefanie Hammond is head sales and marketing nerd at N-able. She made waves for explaining how N-able has accomplished a restructuring.
“At N-able, we’ve gone back to our roots. The focus is on developing and growing our partner community. The MSP institute, the Head Nerd team and the partner success managers are all non-commission-based programs at N-able. Our main objective here isn’t to make sales, it’s to get involved in the partner community and learn about the issues they are facing so we can help them grow as a business. This enables sales — which is the goal — but not the immediate objective.”
Read Christine Horton’s article to learn how the past two years have seen dramatic changes in what customers expect.
Our No. 1 most-read story of the week is about ABI Research’s list of 5G telco cloud-native platforms. VMware and Red Hat are at the top of new rankings.
Kangrui Ling is industry analyst at ABI Research and he made waves for noting that CSPs are looking to enable cloud-native 5G capabilities through the deployment of a horizontal platform. The platform can span their entire network from the core to RAN to edge.
“Some of the key criteria that CSPs look for include the ability to build a multivendor network, avoiding vendor lock-in. As the 5G SBA value proposition revolves around providing services on-demand through microservices and cloud-native principles, flexibility, agility, and scalability become major factors CSPs look out for when choosing a platform,” Ling said.
To read more about the top innovators on the list, click here.
Our No. 1 most-read story of the week is about ABI Research’s list of 5G telco cloud-native platforms. VMware and Red Hat are at the top of new rankings.
Kangrui Ling is industry analyst at ABI Research and he made waves for noting that CSPs are looking to enable cloud-native 5G capabilities through the deployment of a horizontal platform. The platform can span their entire network from the core to RAN to edge.
“Some of the key criteria that CSPs look for include the ability to build a multivendor network, avoiding vendor lock-in. As the 5G SBA value proposition revolves around providing services on-demand through microservices and cloud-native principles, flexibility, agility, and scalability become major factors CSPs look out for when choosing a platform,” Ling said.
To read more about the top innovators on the list, click here.
Our weekly Channel People Making Waves counts down the top stories of the past seven days. We highlight the individuals behind the stories, this week featuring IBM, Trend Micro, Check Point and more.
Microsoft completed one of its most expensive acquisitions to date. The software it acquired will have a significant impact on health care, Microsoft a spokesperson said. Learn what Scott Guthrie, executive VP of Microsoft’s Cloud + AI group, had to say about the buy.
We also looked again at M&A activity, this time in the EMEA. Despite widespread economic disruption and uncertainty, M&A activity is on the rise. Private equity-funded investors rather than corporate acquirers are funding business in Europe.
The Russia-Ukraine war is still atop the global headlines. Beyond humanitarian assistance, several tech companies are doubling down on their cybersecurity capabilities to thwart potential threats from Russia. We profile those companies.
See our slideshow above to catch up on the biggest news of the week from Trend Micro, IBM and more; then, in case you didn’t catch last week’s roundup, you can find it here.
Want to contact the author directly about this story? Have ideas for a follow-up article? Email Claudia Adrien or connect with her on LinkedIn. |
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