Monday Morning Impact – July 15

New Study: Tech Workers Willing to Pull Up Stakes if the Numbers are Right

Tech workers are willing to pack up and move for the right job, especially if it’s to an area with low cost of living, a desirable climate and shorter commute times, according to a new study released today by CompTIA, an industry trade association based in suburban Chicago.

Based on a survey of more than 900 IT professionals conducted in April, the association says 78 percent of tech workers would consider leaving their current city for a new job, citing affordability (60 percent) and local economy (56 percent) as the top two reasons for pulling a relo.

“It’s clear that tech talent is mobile—especially when lured by affordable housing, reduced traffic congestion and better weather,” said Nancy Hammervik, CompTIA’s executive vice president of industry relations. “Our findings should give confidence to cities outside of the traditional tech hubs and provide a blueprint for recruiting and retaining top talent, including younger workers who are looking to put down roots and buy a home.”

The numbers also suggest that slightly more than half of the respondents are less inclined to move to high-tax locations, and that long commute times can also be an inhibitor. More than 93 percent of women say job location is important with 55 percent saying it is very important. Only 43 percent of men say location is very important.

Channel Impact^®
While the data demonstrate a willingness to relocate for a new job, they also underscore that applicants will likely do their due diligence prior to committing to a new location.

CloudGenix Launches New Platform to Support Enterprise Remote Offices

CloudGenix, a San Jose-based SD-WAN vendor, has announced the launch of its CloudBlades platform for cloud-based branch connectivity. Leveraging this new platform, SD-WAN, security, voice, multi-cloud access, and operational tools can be delivered without additional hardware or software. Enterprises can instead deliver the entire branch as a cloud-service encompassing wide area networking, security, and Unified Communications as a Service.

The CloudBlades platform enables API based integration of the branch CPE directly with various cloud infrastructure services, as selected by the channel partner and customer. Represented vendors and service providers include Amazon, CheckPoint, Equinix, Fuze, Microsoft, PagerDuty, Palo Alto Networks, RingCentral, ServiceNow, Skype. Slack, Symantec, Zoom, and Zscaler.

Customers and partners also have the freedom to build their own custom CloudBlades through the company’s developer program. Plans for hack-a-thons in multiple cities worldwide are currently in development.

“As businesses take advantage of the tremendous opportunity at the branch, they need a new model for the delivery of infrastructure services,” said Kumar Ramachandran, founder and CEO at CloudGenix. “Our CloudBlades platform allows enterprises to reimagine what’s possible. Not only do customers get the agility and freedom to choose best-of-breed, they also get to take advantage of cloud-scale economics.”

Channel Impact^®
The new platform brings cloud-scale economics to the enterprise remote office with the ability to use virtually any WAN, cloud, or infrastructure service.

Elysium Analytics Launches Global Partner Program for Cybersecurity

Elysium Analytics, a Santa Clara-based cybersecurity analytics company, has rolled out a tiered global partner program covering technology, systems integration, consulting, and strategic partnerships. The value proposition focuses on the Elysium Analytics Cognitive Security Analytics platform, built on an open source technology stack.     

“Our cognitive cybersecurity monitoring and detection technology fills a void for medium to large-sized enterprises struggling to stay ahead of next-generation threats while drowning in false positives,” said Eric Warner, SVP of Global Sales and Marketing at Elysium Analytics. “Our new partner program creates an incredible opportunity to work jointly to solve an intractable and growing customer challenge.”

The company has also announced a technical partnership with Virginia-based Zoomdata to combine user and entity behavior analytics and machine learning with Zoomdata’s visualization and visual analytics. This is intended to help SOC analysts to detect and more clearly understand complex cybersecurity threats, such as polymorphic malware, and make appropriate decisions.

“We see tremendous interest in the cyber analytics market, which is desperate for real-time visibility and clarity of massive amounts of data,” said Russ Cosentino, co-founder and VP of channel sales at Zoomdata. “We see our technology partnership with Elysium Analytics as making a profound contribution to the market, improving security professionals’ day-to-day productivity and ability to detect and assess cyberthreats.”

Existing Elysium Analytics cloud partners include Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services.

Channel Impact^®
The channel program should help Elysium Analytics establish a more powerful market presence, whereas the partnership with Zoomdata is designed to combine Elysium’s detection capabilities with Zoomdata’s visualization technology, which interprets the threat data and delivers it in visual form.