Monday Morning Impact – July 13

By Ken Presti, Senior Consultant, Channel Impact

IBM and Box Forge Global Partnership to Transform Work in the Cloud

IBM and Los Altos, Calif.-based Box have announced a global partnership to support cloud offers. The companies plan to integrate Box’s cloud content collaboration platform with IBM’s Analytic, social solutions, security technologies and the IBM Cloud. IBM also plans to enable builders and developers to integrate Box APIs into enterprise apps and web services.

“This partnership will transform the way work is done in industries and professions that shape our experience every day. The impact will be felt by experts and professionals in industries such as healthcare, financial services, law, and engineering who are overwhelmed by today’s digital data and seek better solutions to manage large volumes of information more intelligently and securely,” said Bob Picciano, senior vice president, IBM Analytics. “The integration of IBM and Box technologies, combined with our global cloud capabilities and the ability to enrich content with analytics, will help unlock actionable insights for use across the enterprise.”

The partnership will also draw upon the consultant offerings of IBM Global Business Services to help clients connect or integrate Box capabilities with existing data and systems.

In addition, the two companies plan to jointly develop content management solutions and incorporate Box technology into select IBM MobileFirst for iOS apps. IBM will also enable enterprise developers to integrate Box APIs on the IBM Bluemix developer cloud to help build content rich web and mobile apps.

Channel Impact
Alliances between companies large and small can often be a tricky proposition. It’s likely that channel opportunities will emerge through the forthcoming software development and related services.

Report: Rogue IT May Promote Closer Collaboration Among Business and IT

The practice of “rogue IT” may not be as rampant as some sources have claimed and in fact may be sparking closer collaboration among business and IT teams, according to new research by CompTIA, a suburban Chicago-based IT industry trade association.

“The complete side-stepping of IT has gone down,” said Seth Robinson, senior director of technology analysis at CompTIA. “It certainly appears that businesses have learned their lessons, based either on missteps that have made themselves or on information gathered from others.”

Keeping IT involved or working with them directly on technology projects are both ways to avoid the major threats associated with rogue IT: integration and security, Robinson added. “For as much technical savvy as business units may have, they are still not as well versed in these two areas as the IT department,” he said.

The report shows recognition that security is vital to an organization’s success and that it must be managed from a center of expertise. Business units show a clear preference for IT taking the lead on security issues.

Four in five IT pros surveyed are extremely or highly confident in their ability to apply technology to their employer’s business goals.

The CompTIA study is based on online surveys of 650 business and technology professionals at companies based in the United States. Surveys were conducted in April and May 2015. Survey results were augmented by in-depth interviews with 14 technology and business professionals.

Channel Impact
As business units come to better understand the dangers of “Rogue IT,” the jobs of channel partners who assist or deliver IT should become more straightforward, or at least fraught with fewer obstacles.

Xangati Launches Solution Provider Partner Program

Xangati, a Silicon Valley service assurance analytics and infrastructure performance management vendor, has rolled out a global Solution Provider (XSP) Program targeted at VARs, managed service providers (MSPs), systems integrators (SIs) and solution providers (SPs) supporting virtualized and hybrid-cloud infrastructure for enterprise and public sector customers.

The Xangati solution provides the ability to monitor, resolve and prevent live storm contention issues across silos, with deep data intelligence that helps optimize virtual applications and end-user quality of experience.

“We are empowering our partners to create services around Xangati and drive recurring revenue with easily consumed subscription-based pricing; with assessment services, implementation services, and managed services for data center and cloud transformation, XSP represents a top strategic initiative for Xangati,” said Atchison Frazer, the company’s marketing vice president. “Building profitable data-service businesses increases sticky relationships and keeps our partners at the heart of the customer solution by providing Xangati-driven service assurance.”

Xangati’s currently claims strategic partnerships with Cisco, Citrix, VMware, Dell and NetApp.

Channel Impact
While the market space is clearly pertinent to the partners, the value of the program will clearly be measured based on the program’s terms and execution.