Monday Morning Impact – October 16

Sirius to Acquire Forsythe Technology

Sirius Computer Solutions, Inc. announced it has reached a definitive agreement to acquire Forsythe Technology, Inc. The deal is scheduled to close in Q4 2017 and is subject to regulatory approval. Terms were not disclosed.

Sirius is a San Antonio, Texas-based integrator focused on the data center and related lines of business. Strategic solutions include cloud, analytics, mobility, security, and optimization. The company claims more than 5,000 enterprise, mid-market and government clients.

Founded in 1971, Forsythe is privately held and 100-percent employee-owned, with nearly 1,000 employees in 40 locations, and more than $1 billion in annual gross revenues. Forsythe comes to the table with a solid security solutions portfolio, along with data center, hosting and security services.

“This is an extremely exciting time for Sirius and our clients,” said Joe Mertens, president and CEO of Sirius. “Combining with Forsythe helps us expand the depth of our solutions and services offerings for our clients, specifically in security, risk management, and data center transformation.”

The combined company will employ over 3,000 employees in more than 70 offices nationwide, and have generated over $3 billion of revenue in the last twelve months.

In addition to Forsythe, Sirius has made six acquisitions since 2014, including Brightlight Consulting; Varrow, Inc., Avnet, Inc.’s digital solution services, Force 3, thinkASG and Continuum Security Solutions.

“Combining with Sirius allows us to expand our solutions and product offerings to best serve our long-standing customer base,” said Bill Brennan, president and CEO of Forsythe Technology. “We are extremely impressed with the reputation and credibility Sirius has built in the IT industry, and look forward to the expanded capabilities we will be able to bring to our clients as a result of this acquisition.”

Channel Impact^®
The acquisition increases scope and depth of bench for Sirius, both of which can be parlayed into expanded opportunities and higher revenues.

Kaseya Unveils Automated Microsoft Office 365 Billing and Security

Kaseya, a New York-based provider of management solutions for MSPs and mid-market enterprises, has announced added security measures and new enhancements to its unified cloud management platform.

The latest release of the company’s “Unigma” suite includes Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform and Amazon Web Services (AWS) billing integrations with professional services automation (PSA) solutions from Kaseya, ConnectWise and Autotask. Additionally, Unigma is now integrated with AuthAnvil for secure single sign-on via Kaseya’s identity and access management solution.

MSPs and other channel partners can integrate end-client accounts and set up billing, so that every month, client bills are automatically added to their PSA instance with the correct pricing, quantities and discounts.

This enhancement is designed to meet the requirements of Microsoft’s Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program and eliminate the manual reconciliation behind an MSP’s cloud services. In addition, Unigma is now enabled for Microsoft Azure Active Directory, using an OpenID-based single sign-on.

“It’s become clear that MSPs need to leverage public cloud infrastructure and services like Office 365 to properly manage their clients’ IT needs,” said Jim Lippie, general manager of cloud computing at Kaseya. “With that said, monitoring, managing and billing for cloud services can be time consuming for MSPs who are desperately trying to maximize margins in the changing IT services landscape. Unigma delivers the cloud automation every MSP needs to grow their top and bottom lines.”

Channel Impact^®
The solution will likely enable MSPs and other partners to more easily monitor and manage public cloud infrastructure; analyze and optimize costs; and, of course, gain the efficiencies of automated billing through customer usage reports.

Intel Rolls out IoT Onboarding Solution

Intel has announced the launch of a new solution designed to securely automate and bring IoT devices online within seconds, rather than hours. Marketed as the Intel Secure Device Onboard (Intel SDO), it is being offered to IoT platform providers as a service they can provide to customers who wish to onboard thousands of connected devices.

The solution allows devices to dynamically discover the customer’s IoT platform account at power-on for automatic registration. It offers a one-to-many, one-time enablement capability that can be integrated into almost any device or IoT platform, thereby eliminating the need to custom pre-load provisioning configurations for each IoT implementation.

It also leverages the Intel Enhanced Privacy ID to anonymously authenticate the device and establish an encrypted communication tunnel, thereby preventing hackers from tracing the device from factory to owner.

Intel SDO is now integrated with Wind River Helix Device Cloud, its device lifecycle management platform that enables IoT devices to securely connect, monitor, manage and service devices. With the integration of Intel SDO, Wind River’s latest release of Device Cloud includes zero touch onboarding designed to mitigate the risk of security attacks to a device, ensure privacy and deliver automation that reduces installation and onboarding time.

Channel Impact^®
This offering is expected to address one of the key obstacles to widespread IoT deployments: the time and resources spent on the process of secure provisioning.