Monday Morning Impact – July 11

SolarWinds: Hybrid IT Acceleration Has Increased Network Complexity

SolarWinds, an Austin, Texas-based IT management software vendor, has released a new report that says the acceleration of hybrid IT has increased network complexity for most organizations and caused several worrisome challenges for IT professionals.

According to “The SolarWinds IT Trends Report 2022—Getting IT Right: Managing Hybrid IT Complexity,” hybrid and remote work have amplified the impact of distributed and complex IT environments. Running workloads and applications across both cloud and on-premises infrastructure can be challenging, and many organizations are increasingly experiencing—and ultimately hindered by—these pain points.

The new SolarWinds report also found tech professionals feel less confident in their organization’s ability to manage IT. While more than half (54%) of tech pro respondents state they leverage monitoring strategies to manage this complexity, 49% revealed they lack visibility into the majority of their organization’s apps and infrastructure. This lack of visibility impacts their ability to conduct anomaly detection, easy root-cause analysis, and other critical processes to ensure the availability, performance, and security of business-critical applications.

“Operational complexity prevents organizations from capitalizing on their technology-driven transformation and investments and delivering benefits for end users,” said Sudhakar Ramakrishna, president and CEO, SolarWinds. “As organizations look beyond the pandemic, they must re-examine their investments from the past few years. Part of that requires organizations to have visibility into their IT environments to understand what’s working and not working, and where to prioritize their efforts to achieve the ROI targeted in their planned projects.”

The continued expanse of hybrid IT is driving increased levels of IT management complexity, but tech pros feel a lack of confidence in how best to manage it. Nearly half of tech pros respondents (49%) confirmed the acceleration of hybrid IT has increased the complexity of their organization’s IT management, particularly driven by fragmentation between legacy technologies and new technologies (43%), increased technology requirements from multiple departments (42%), and new tools and/or technologies (38%).

More than a third of respondents (36%) admitted they weren’t fully equipped to manage complexity and felt only somewhat confident. Only 8% of tech pro respondents said they felt extremely confident. An additional 4% weren’t confident at all. Large enterprises experienced the lowest level of confidence, with only 47% of respondents saying they’re confident and 36% saying they’re somewhat confident. Visibility is a particular area of concern. With the increased shift to complex, hybrid IT environments, technology professionals say they have limited visibility into their networks, apps, and infrastructure.

Three-quarters (75%) of tech pro respondents state their organization has prioritized adopting a hybrid IT strategy for their technology environment within the next three years.

The findings are based on a survey fielded in March 2022, which yielded responses from 237 technology practitioners, managers, directors, and senior executives in the U.S. and Canada from public- and private-sector small, mid-size, and enterprise organizations. Regions included North America, Australia, France, Germany, Japan, Singapore, the Middle East, and the United Kingdom, with 1,138 respondents across all geographies combined.

Channel Impact^®
The continued shift to hybrid IT drives increased levels of IT management complexity, and tech pros feel a lack of confidence in how to best manage it. This is clearly an environment in which channel partners can step up to add value.

Telarus Announces the Acquisition of TCG

Telarus, a Utah-based technology services broker specializing in cloud, unified communications, contact center, network services, cybersecurity, IoT, and mobility, has announced an agreement to acquire Florida-based TCG, a brokerage of advanced network, unified communications, and mobile internet access solutions.

“We are excited to welcome TCG’s employees and technology advisors to the Telarus family,” commented Adam Edwards, CEO of Telarus. “Dan Pirigyi and his leadership team have a legacy of methodically growing the business and helping their partners achieve their goals, especially related to Network, UCaaS, and Cybersecurity – three areas of strategic growth and continued investment for us.”

The combined organization will offer its network of global independent advisors unparalleled access to technical expertise, supplier support, increased vendor options, proprietary engineering software tools, and educational opportunities.

“The synergy between our two companies is pretty amazing,” added Dan Pirigyi, president of TCG and now the SVP of Strategic Partners at Telarus. “When you look at culture, supplier portfolios, and our respective partner support structures, it is clear just how complimentary our companies are.”

TCG, located in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, was founded in 1991, boasting more than 6,000 nationwide partners and 20 channel managers positioned across the country.

Channel Impact^®
The acquisition is expected to yield channel synergies that neither company could accomplish independently.

New Relic Launches Partner Stack to Accelerate Partner Program

New Relic, a San Francisco-based data platform company, has rolled out “New Relic Partner Stack,” an enhanced training and certification program targeting cloud providers, channel partners, managed service providers, and technology partners. Benefits include eligibility for co-marketing opportunities, deal registration, margin and renewal discounts, product trials sales tools, technical support, observability campaigns, and support from partner development managers and partner engineers.

“New Relic’s vast partner ecosystem is leveraging observability to accelerate customers’ most important business initiatives, including cloud adoption, application modernization and digital customer experience. The New Relic Partner Stack brings new opportunities for our partners to put observability in the hands of every engineer, every day, at every stage of the software lifecycle,” said Riya Shanmugam, GVP, Global Alliances and Channels at New Relic. “We are delighted to see partners leaning in and advancing through program tiers for increased commercial, marketing, and go-to-market benefits, opening up additional revenue opportunities and investment from New Relic.”

“Channel partners, cloud providers, and technology partners are a key pillar of New Relic’s growth strategy,” added New Relic CEO Bill Staples. “We’re committed to developing a rich global partner ecosystem and have made significant investments in our partner organization to drive our partners’ growth and fuel New Relic’s global expansion and growth now and in the future.”

The company has also announced a strategic partnership with Microsoft featuring enhanced integrations with Microsoft Azure, as well as integrations and related features with Akamai, Atlassian, BitBucket, CircleCI, Netlify, Postman, Redis, Wayscript, and Zebrium. The New Relic catalog now offers more than 470 integrations with cloud services, open-source tools, and enterprise technologies, contributed and maintained by the community.

A Partner Advisory Board has also been added.

Channel Impact^®
The improvements are expected to provide New Relic’s global partner ecosystem with comprehensive training and accreditation programs, co-marketing, go-to-market, and sales resources, helping partners to expand sales and technical expertise, drive customer momentum, and unlock new revenue streams.