Monday Morning Impact – July 20

Published On: July 20, 2020Categories: Buzz, Uncategorized

Tech Job Study Shows Mixed Results

While overall tech industry employment showed a slight decline of 5,600 jobs, three of five sectors experienced positive gains, according to analysis of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics by CompTIA, a suburban Chicago-based trade association.

Tech manufacturing led the way with a net increase of 7,300 jobs, covering both technical and non-technical positions.

“The latest employment data for tech was generally positive, with continuing signs of momentum,” said Tim Herbert, executive vice president for research and market intelligence at CompTIA. “While uncertainty is still a major concern, the forward-looking employer job posting figures suggest hiring will accelerate in areas such as software development, IT support, cloud infrastructure, cybersecurity, and certain emerging tech fields.”

In addition to tech manufacturing, the other industry sectors that experienced jobs gains for the month include data processing, hosting and related services (+ 5,600) and the other information services category, which includes search engines and portals (+ 2,200).

The IT services and custom software development segment lagged, with an estimated loss of 20,400 positions. The telecommunications sector also continued its downward slide, with a net loss of 300 jobs.

“Because the IT services and custom software development segment is dominated by small firms, they tend to be more sensitive to disruptions in customer spending,” said Herbert. “As the broad small business market recovers, we expect hiring will resume among IT services and customer software development firms.” 

The top industries for IT job postings in June included professional, scientific and technical services, finance and insurance, manufacturing, and information.

California, Texas, Colorado, New York, and Pennsylvania were the states with the highest month-over-month increase in IT job postings. At the metro level, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Boston had the largest increases from May to June.

The unemployment rate for IT occupations stood at 4.3% for June, compared to the national rate of 11.1%. 

Channel Impact®
While the results are truly mixed, the industry may be positioned for increased positive movement.

Cisco and AT&T Forge Partnership for Managed SD-WAN

AT&T has expanded its SD-WAN offering with a new service, based on Cisco technology, that includes natively integrated security capabilities to provide threat protection for branch offices.

The overall SD-WAN offering includes Cisco’s ISR and ASR routers and Enterprise Network Compute System (ENCS) managed through a cloud-based dashboard. Integrated security features include an application-aware enterprise firewall, intrusion prevention, URL filtering and advanced malware protection. 

“Successful network and digital transformation requires effective security management,” said Mo Katibeh, EVP and Chief Product & Platform Officer at AT&T Business. “AT&T SD-WAN with Cisco combines connectivity, SD-WAN and security, which allows businesses to expand and scale without worrying about the security of their branch locations.”

“As customers move their workloads to multiple clouds, they require fast, highly secure access to applications hosted anywhere, whether applications are hosted in the datacenter, public cloud or a private SaaS platform,” said Ravi Chandrasekaran, SVP of Cisco’s Intent-Based Networking Group.  “The new AT&T managed service based on Cisco Secure SD-WAN addresses this by providing businesses with the application optimization, integrated security and consistent intent-based networking policies for their hybrid, multicloud environments.”

AT&T can simplify the migration to SD-WAN by combining SD-WAN with AT&T WAN options, including AT&T Virtual Private Network MPLS service, Dedicated or Shared Internet or LTE.

Channel Impact®
Enterprises often turn to managed service providers to reduce the burden of provisioning, managing and troubleshooting services. Managed SD-WAN can help to lower costs, offer highly secure and direct access to private or public clouds, support multiple types of connectivity and improve control.

Vectra Updates AI Channel Program

Vectra AI, a San Jose-based network threat detection and response (NDR) vendor, has unveiled its upgraded global channel program with new training and expansion into the commercial market.

The Vectra global channel partner program now offers three categories based on the organization’s market approach: sell (resell Vectra); deliver services (deliver Vectra services with partner solutions); and manage services (implement Vectra as a managed service).

The program is further customized into tiers based on each partner’s level of commitment, ensuring they can design the program to fit their unique needs. Ambassador partners have demonstrated higher levels of capability and performance. Authorized partners are in the early stages of their relationship with Vectra and are expected to take part in the new sales accreditation and technical certification training.

Benefits include financial incentives, a partner portal, global training, partner tools, attack simulation, demo and virtual labs, global support, and marketing and go-to-market support.

Vectra’s Cognito platform is designed to accelerate threat detection and investigation using AI to enrich network metadata that is collected to support detection and investigation of known and unknown threats.

Channel Impact®
The revisions upgrade the overall program framework and increases investment in partner relationships.

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