And we're back!!! After taking a few years off, we've decided to bring back our weekly MSP News updates with analysis. And this time around, we're adding a podcast! That's right...for all those execs out there that are just too busy to sit and read the news, we're happy to read it to you! We'll even through in our analysis for free!
Every Friday, we'll provide you with a new podcast, full of all the relevant news in the IT Channel (as it pertains to managed services and cloud) along with in depth analysis from Charles Weaver, CEO of MSPAlliance. If you'd rather read, we'll also post the stories for you here. Now sit back, relax and let us read the news to you! Click on the player to listen to this week's podcast now!
FBI to Speak at MSPWorld Fall Conference
Security has always been a recurring theme at MSPWorld conferences. We figured, what better source for cyber crime and cyber security than the FBI. Special Agent E. Brent Watkins will be address MSPWorld delegates on Thursday October 16, 2014. Cyber crime threats, prevention, and the role MSPs play in helping protect organizations and individuals will be highlighted. There will also be a Q&A session so you won't want to miss this conference.
IBM/Lenovo Get US Federal Approval For Acquisition
IBM and Lenovo both got good news this past week when US Federal regulators approved the sale of the IBM System X division to Lenovo. This deal was not very publicized but did receive a great deal of scrutiny due to a number of factors, most notably that the US government currently has a number of System X equipment installed, which may have to be addressed once control of this division comes under a Chinese company.
The deal has considerable upside for both companies; IBM gets to offload another division allowing it to stay focused on the cloud and Lenovo get's a powerful server division to compliment its desktop acquisition (also from another IBM acquisition in 2004). I think we should expect to see some big things coming from both companies in the near future.
Microsoft Azure Has Outage
Azure, Microsoft's cloud computing platform, experienced a a service outage for approximately 5 hours this week. While not really a major story, unless you were one of those who were affected by Azure's service disruption, these types of public cloud outages really underscore the importance of keeping perspective when discussing cloud computing. We shouldn't be happy about it, by any means, but it does give yet another opportunity for MSPs to talk with their customers about the great variety of cloud computing offerings available to them.
