Monday Morning Impact – March 25

CompTIA: US Tech Sector Posts Job Gains in February

Despite generally weak hiring across much of the economy, the U.S. tech sector added an estimated 7,500 new jobs in February, according to an analysis by CompTIA, a suburban Chicago-based industry association.

Based on the association’s analysis of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, four of the tech sector’s five employment categories ended February in positive territory. New hiring in technology services, custom software development and computer systems design led the way in February expanding by an estimated 3,300 new hires.

Computer, electronic, and semiconductor products manufacturing employment increased by an estimated 2,500 positions, with more than half of the total (1,300 positions) in the sub-category of computer and peripheral equipment manufacturing. February also saw job gains in data processing, hosting and related services (+ 2,400), including search portals (+ 1,600). Employment in the telecommunications market was down an estimated 2,300 jobs last month, the fourth straight month of job losses.

“Tech employment continues to trend upward,” said Tim Herbert, senior vice president for research and market intelligence at CompTIA. “Beyond broad-based demand for core technical positions, job posting data indicates emerging tech roles are starting to make a meaningful contribution to tech employment gains,”

The unemployment rate for IT occupations stood as 2.3 percent in February, compared to 2.5 percent in February 2018. The U.S. unemployment rate declined by one-fifth of a point to 3.8 percent in February.

On the future hiring front, the number of employer job postings for core IT skills declined by nearly 40,000 positions from January to February. Software and application developers, computer user support specialists and computer systems engineers and architects held the top three positions.

Channel Impact^®
While industry hiring outpaces much of the economy, the decline in job postings signals a potential softening for the near future.

Tech Data Expands Portfolio of Consumption-Based IT Solutions

Tech Data has expanded its portfolio by adding the “Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) GreenLake Flex Capacity for Partners,” a suite of curated, consumption-based IT solutions. The offering enables partners to provide access to new technologies such as software-defined infrastructure, all-flash storage and private cloud under a pay-per-use model.

“Consumption-based solutions solve a real need in the marketplace for businesses to purchase what they need, when they need it,” said Brian Ellis, vice president, HPE Solutions at Tech Data. “In the case of HPE GreenLake, our inroads are a direct result of working closely with our partners to provide expert guidance and support in championing and monetizing the model.”

The Tech Data portfolio of consumption-based IT solutions stretches across the areas of cloud, analytics, IoT, security and data center, and several vendor lines. The Florida-based distributor also provides expertise and resources necessary for implementation and management of consumption-based offerings.

Channel Impact^®
Consumption-based business models are changing how technology is procured, as business leaders search for new approaches to reaching higher performance and try new technologies without overspending on unused capacity and provisioning. This alliance provides a means why which allied partners can more easily help their customers adopt a pay-as-you-go model.

Quest Partner Program Expands Focus for MSPs

Quest Software, a southern California-based software company specializing in global systems management, data protection and security, has rolled out new programs, incentives, and opportunities designed to attract Managed Service Providers.

Product lines targeted for the MSP program include QoreStor deduplication software-defined secondary storage for disaster recovery, NetVault Backup enterprise class data protection, Foglight for Virtualization, and Rapid Recovery for data backup and recovery.

“To address partner feedback, we’re evolving our Partner Circle program to deliver specific value to MSPs, who will now benefit from subscription-based licensing and pay-as-you-grow licensing models as well as ongoing business development and technical support to help drive their business growth,” said John O’Boyle, Director of Channel & Marketing at Quest.

MSPs leveraging the program can help customers optimize, manage and protect all machines across mixed hypervisor, hybrid or virtual environments. In addition, they can enable customers to seamlessly back up, replicate and recover to and from private and public clouds. Full systems, applications and data can also be recovered, and MSPs can use predictive cost analysis to migrate customers to the cloud with increased accuracy.

Program benefits include tiered discounts and rebate options, executive access, tech support, biz dev assistance, self-paced and instructor-led training, onboarding & deployment support, and visibility on a partner locator.

Quest claims a customer list of 130,000 companies across 100 countries, including 95% of the Fortune 500 and 90% of the Global 1000.

Channel Impact^®
The program enhancement extends the company’s go-to-market strategy to MSPs, providing data protection and endpoint management solutions supported by MSP-specific tiered discounts/rebates, subscription-based licensing and pay-as-you-grow models.