Monday Morning Impact – July 25

CompTIA: Tech Jobs Growth Exceeds Expectations

Tech industry hiring remains on an upward trajectory, countering reports of layoffs according to analysis by CompTIA, an industry trade association based in suburban Chicago.

Technology companies added 20,300 net new workers in June, the 19th consecutive month of employment growth, based on CompTIA’s analysis of data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

Tech sector employment for the first half of 2022 is tracking 59% ahead of the same period last year. Companies across the economy added 160,000 core technology workers in June. The unemployment rate for tech occupations fell back to 1.8%, compared to the overall national unemployment rate of 3.6%. Employer job postings for new tech hiring totaled 505,663 last month, up 62% from June 2021.

“The stronger than expected job gains reaffirm the critical role of tech across every sector and every business in the economy,” said Tim Herbert, chief research officer at CompTIA. “It also highlights the limitations in projecting company-specific hiring practices to the broader tech workforce.”

Employer hiring intent was strong across several industry sectors, led by professional, scientific and technical services, finance and insurance, manufacturing, information, retail trade, health care and social assistance and public administration. Job postings for software developers and engineers led the list of the most in-demand positions, followed by IT support specialists, IT project managers, cybersecurity professionals and network engineers and architects.

New hiring in the IT services and custom software development occupation category paced June’s job growth in the tech sector. Other occupational categories experiencing employment growth include data processing, hosting/related services, search engines, computer and electronic products manufacturing, and telecommunications.

Channel Impact^®
The metrics show solid employment gains and reaffirm tech’s essential role in powering the nation’s economy.

IBM Targets Market Opportunity for Data Observability with Databand.ai Acquisition

IBM has acquired Databand.ai, a Tel Aviv-based provider of data observability software designed to help organizations address issues with their data, including errors, pipeline failures and poor quality.

Data observability uses historical trends to compute statistics about data workloads and data pipelines directly at the source, determining if they are working, and pinpointing where any problems may exist. This acquisition is expected to unlock more resources for Databand.ai to expand its observability capabilities for broader integrations across more of the open source and commercial solutions that power the modern data stack. The software can be run either as-a-Service or as a self-hosted software subscription. By using Databand.ai with IBM Observability by Instana APM and IBM Watson Studio, IBM expects to more effectively address the full spectrum of observability across IT operations.

“Our clients are data-driven enterprises who rely on high-quality, trustworthy data to power their mission-critical processes,” said Daniel Hernandez, General Manager for Data and AI, IBM. “When they don’t have access to the data they need in any given moment, their business can grind to a halt,”

“You can’t protect what you can’t see, and when the data platform is ineffective, everyone is impacted –including customers,” said Josh Benamram, Co-Founder and CEO of Databand.ai. “Joining IBM will help us scale our software and significantly accelerate our ability to meet the evolving needs of enterprise clients.”

Databand.ai is IBM’s fifth acquisition in 2022 as the company continues to bolster its hybrid cloud and AI skills and capabilities. IBM has acquired more than 25 companies since Arvind Krishna became CEO in April 2020.

The acquisition closed on June 27, 2022. Financial details were not disclosed.

Channel Impact^®
The acquisition extends IBM’s position in observability to the full stack of capabilities for IT — across infrastructure, applications, data and machine learning, adding new opportunities for allied partners.

Nerdio Launches Revamped MSP Partner Program

Chicago-based Nerdio, which augments the deployment of virtual desktops in Microsoft Azure, has rolled out new tier structures and benefits for its partner program supporting MSPs and other organizations serving the SMB channel.

“We are investing heavily to make transitioning to Microsoft Azure the obvious choice for MSPs and their clients,” said Joseph Landes, the company’s Chief Revenue Officer and Co-founder. “With the advancements Microsoft is making around cloud technologies and programs, it is an invigorating time to be part of the Microsoft ecosystem.”

Under the updated program, partners receive product discounts of 25%-75%, based on tier; access to partner managers to assist with pre-sales; engineering support; various sales tools; and MDF.

Partners can buy into a tier above their qualified tier by meeting the required spend limit to increase the amount of internal use licenses, license discounts, engineer deployments, and certifications.

The company plans to announce program changes specific to enterprise partners toward the end of this calendar year.

Nerdio Manager for Enterprise is a packaged Azure application that runs in users’ own tenant. Nerdio Manager for MSP supports MSPs in deployment, management, and optimization of virtual desktop environments in Microsoft Azure through multi-tenant management.

Channel Impact^®
The changes are intended to equip service providers with the tools, education, and resources needed to succeed with Microsoft Azure and its virtual desktop services.