8 Channel People Making Waves This Week at T-Mobile, Kaseya, Google Cloud, Atlassian, More
How much did Ryan Reynolds actually come away with from the T-Mobile-Mint Mobile deal?
March 17, 2023
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T-Mobile is acquiring Ka’ena Corp. and its three wireless subsidiaries, which have functioned as exclusive T-Mobile partners.
The self-styled “un-carrier” on Tuesday announced the acquisition of Ka’ena for 39% cash and 61% stock. That adds up to a maximum of $1.35 billion. The deal brings over online direct-to-consumer wireless provider Mint Mobile, mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) Ultra Mobile and wholesaler Plum.
T-Mobile described Mint and Ultra as “complementary” to its prepaid services. The latter include Metro by T-Mobile and Connect by T-Mobile.
Mike Sievert is CEO of T-Mobile.
“Mint has built an incredibly successful digital direct-to-consumer business that continues to deliver for customers on the un-carrier’s leading 5G network and now we are excited to use our scale and owners’ economics to help supercharge it – and Ultra Mobile – into the future,” Sievert said. He made waves when he said, “Over the long term, we’ll also benefit from applying the marketing formula Mint has become famous for across more parts of T-Mobile.”
Learn more about how much actor Ryan Reynolds, part owner of Mint mobile, plans to gain from the sale.
Channel partners appear to have escaped the Silicon Valley Bank collapse unscathed, thanks in part to vows from federal regulators to protect depositors. But the fall of the highly active venture capital lender presents a solemn warning to the channel about macroeconomic conditions and investment risks.
Silicon Valley Bank, regarded by some as the “bank of startups,” is back up and running after California regulators shut it down last week and handed it over to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). According to Fortune, one-half of all venture capital-backed startups had chosen the now FDIC-run Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) as their financial institution. Nearly 1,100 private equity and venture capital firms were storing their assets at SVB. And a great deal of those companies fell into the technology category. But for the MSP and agent partner communities, their supplier partners faced more of a threat from the bank’s collapse than from the actual partners.
Dante White recently founded Oppuous Technologies, a technology advisory firm and channel partner. He has avoided traditional funding methods like private equity and venture capital to scale his business. He’s made waves by diversifying his funding streams with “nontraditional” sources. That can include money from friends, family and crowdfunding.
“I’m in the middle of business funding myself right now. I’m in the middle of closing a pretty sizable debt instrument. I just hope and pray that the SVB thing doesn’t sideline that,” White told Channel Futures.
Learn how the SVB collapse could exacerbate the tightening of credit conditions.
New acquisitions and offerings from Aruba point to wider and more down-market opportunities for partners.
Aruba’s parent company, HPE, enjoyed a busy last month, announcing two acquisitions and its quarterly earnings. The Aruba edge networking division featured heavily in all of those announcements. HPE’s acquisition of mobile core network provider Athonet will ultimately lead to combined use cases with Aruba Wi-Fi offerings, as well as integration with the Aruba Central management platform. Moreover, Aruba executive vice president and general manager Phil Mottram made waves when he said the recent purchase of Axis Security would lead to a fully integrated secure access service edge (SASE) offering.
Learn how Aruba is looking to patch in features for particular data center use cases.
The best way to describe Fred Voccola, CEO of Kaseya, is colorful, unorthodox, an open book and, as a resident of Miami, someone who is comfortable weathering storms of all types. When his name comes up as a channel leader and influencer, those in tech immediately think of Voccola’s role in pulling off the unthinkable — a $6.2 billion buyout of Datto. It’s a deal that will go down in history as one of the most impactful for the MSP community.
“There just hasn’t been anything like that before,” said a former Kaseya executive.
Voccola has made waves throughout his career. Find out more about his background here in our Influencer profile.
Google Cloud on Tuesday launched a series of generative AI initiatives, and one of them will give startup AI partners some key support.
The move comes as the world’s third-largest public cloud provider plays catch-up to rival Microsoft Azure, which has found a generative AI hit in ChatGPT.
From getting more cloud credits to access to Google Cloud experts and community, Google Cloud is expanding a financial opportunity to a variety of partners as it pursues its generative AI ambitions.
Consultancies, managed service providers, system integrators and similar partners can advise customers about generative AI and how to implement it, Kevin Ichhpurani, corporate vice president at Google Cloud, wrote in a blog.
“They will play an equally essential role applying new generative AI capabilities to solve industry-specific challenges and helping enterprises build generative AI into their products and everyday business processes,” Ichhpurani wrote, referring to firms including Accenture, Deloitte and McKinsey.
Google Cloud’s generative AI initiative spans a variety of domains. Find out here where they apply.
Australian software company Atlassian has announced a round of layoffs affecting 5% of its workforce, or about 500 employees, according to a blog by the company’s CEOs.
The teams impacted include talent acquisition, program management, and research and insights, among others.
“We want to be clear these decisions are not a reflection of our teammates’ work. Every single person has made contributions that have changed our company for the better and will leave a lasting impact on their peers and teams,” CEOs Michael Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar said. “This is about rebalancing the roles we need across Atlassian first and foremost.”
A month ago, the company reorganized to “better reflect operating in a changing and difficult macroeconomic environment,” the men said.
Find out more about the layoff and others happening in the industry here.
Customers and their partners are seeing a steady stream of price hikes and service decommissions as incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs) make a “backward retreat” from copper-based POTS and TDM.
Technology advisors say they’ve seen plain old telephone service (POTS) and time division multiplexing (TDM) rates increase drastically on existing customer contracts. In one case, the ILEC increased all business flat-rate lines to more than $1,000 per month for a POTS customer.
Ryan Rostvold, vice president of product at Nitel, reports ILEC customers seeing rate hikes of 300-500% percent on TDM services. And POTS has seen similar numbers, he said. However, he made waves when he noted that the alternative to price increases has been shutoffs.
“We have experienced both carriers saying the service is ending and providing relatively short notice for clients when the service is ending on POTS and TDM services, as well as rate hikes,” Rostvold told Channel Futures.
Learn more about the cost of copper.
Customers and their partners are seeing a steady stream of price hikes and service decommissions as incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs) make a “backward retreat” from copper-based POTS and TDM.
Technology advisors say they’ve seen plain old telephone service (POTS) and time division multiplexing (TDM) rates increase drastically on existing customer contracts. In one case, the ILEC increased all business flat-rate lines to more than $1,000 per month for a POTS customer.
Ryan Rostvold, vice president of product at Nitel, reports ILEC customers seeing rate hikes of 300-500% percent on TDM services. And POTS has seen similar numbers, he said. However, he made waves when he noted that the alternative to price increases has been shutoffs.
“We have experienced both carriers saying the service is ending and providing relatively short notice for clients when the service is ending on POTS and TDM services, as well as rate hikes,” Rostvold told Channel Futures.
Learn more about the cost of copper.
Individuals at T-Mobile, Kaseya, Google Cloud, Atlassian and more made our channel people making waves list this week. Our roundup is comprised of the most-read stories that appear on our website. As a publication we then highlight the individuals that are most prolific in the articles.
That includes Mike Sievert, CEO of T-Mobile, which scooped up Mint Mobile for nearly $1.4 billion. People have spent much time discussing actor Ryan Reynolds’ involvement in the deal. But Sievert is truly pulling the strings here.
When it comes to an unsung hero, look no further than Dante White, founder of Oppuous Technologies. In regard to the Silicon Valley Bank crisis, White told our reporter that he’s avoided traditional funding methods like private equity and venture capital to scale his business. He’s embracing nontraditional sources of financing – such as family and crowdfunding – to diversify his funding streams,
“I’m in the middle of business funding myself right now. I’m in the middle of closing a pretty sizable debt instrument. I just hope and pray that the SVB thing doesn’t sideline that,” White told Channel Futures.
Finally, if you think you know Fred Voccola, CEO at Kaseya, you may want to review our feature story about the man. What’s behind his success? Find out more about the CEO we named as Influencer of the year.
See our slideshow above for the eight wave-makers from T-Mobile, Kaseya and more. If you didn’t catch our last segment, 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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