Monday Morning Impact – May 11

Study: Tech Industry Less Impacted by Covid-19 than Most Other Industries

DHI Group, Inc., parent company of the employment resource website, “Dice,” has released a report suggesting that the tech industry has fared better than most other industries amid the Coronavirus pandemic.

First quarter tech job postings saw significant increases when compared to Q1 of 2019, with both established and emerging tech hubs growing due to the tech industry being more insulated from the effects of COVID-19 than other industries such as retail, food, hospitality and tourism. In early April 2020, job posting data appears to be softening, but not to a magnitude that is out of the trailing twelve-month average range. Only four of the top tech hubs (Boston, MA: -6%; Columbus, OH: -5%; Atlanta, GA: -4%; New York, NY: -1%) saw a reduction in jobs posted in March 2020 compared to February 2020. The majority of tech hubs showed month-over-month increases from February through March, including Raleigh, NC: +28%, San Diego, CA: +23%, and Arlington, VA: +20%.

However, the pandemic is affecting many of tech’s top occupations. Software developers (-8%) and network engineers (-3%) roles both saw a decline in postings from February to March 2020, likely due to employers deprioritizing new development projects and shifting focus to stability and adoption of work-from-home status. Occupations like cybersecurity engineer (+20%), systems engineer (+11%) and systems administrator (+7%) have all increased significantly in the last two months, as employers focus on scaling infrastructure, ensuring security for remote employees and maintaining core platforms.

Channel Impact^®
While job postings in certain locations have softened in recent weeks, businesses are still looking for talented technologists who can maintain IT capabilities throughout the remote work environment.

Ingram Micro Offers Terms at 90-Days Same as Cash

Ingram Micro has announced two new financial services offerings intended to help channel partners to more effectively manage their cash flow. Additional Flexible Funding Helps Channel Partners Manage and Maximize Cash Flow.

Available immediately, Ingram Micro’s 90-Day Same as Cash is expected to stimulate sales by enabling customers, purchasing through partners, to lease or pay cash for new technology purchasing after 90 days. The distributor is also adding more time to terms with its Bakers Dozen, which extends a typical 12-month financing deal to 13 payments at no additional charge.

In addition, Ingram Micro financing terms for the new Future Funds program have been lowered from 1.5% to 1 % of the total purchase price. Introduced last month, Ingram Micro’s Future Funds program offers interest only payments for six months and then at month seven presents the customer with a choice to pay off the balance or finance the balance for an additional 12 to 60 months.

“In today’s uncertain times, every effort—big or small—that helps move business forward and keeps people connected and working safely and securely counts,” said Kirk Robinson, senior vice president and U.S. Chief Country Executive of Ingram Micro.

Since announcing the new services in March 2020 and extending more than $110 million in additional credit to channel partners, Ingram Micro has seen a spike in demand for its financial services.

Channel Impact^®
The new Ingram Micro services come at a time when channel partners and their customers are more likely to need flexible financing.

MobileIron and Adeya Announce Strategic Partnership for Encrypted Voice

MobileIron, a Mountain View, California company focused on zero trust enterprise security, has announced a new partnership with Adeya, a secure collaboration vendor, to provide end-to-end encrypted real-time voice and video calls, conference calls, SMS, instant messages, group chats and file exchanges on any device.

In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, the use of consumer collaboration apps has exposed security flaws related to backend data sharing with third parties.

Under the alliance, customers can deploy Adeya’s encrypted communication, collaboration and file-sharing solution through MobileIron’s unified endpoint management (UEM) platform. IT administrators can meet advanced compliance requirements by containing the Adeya app on any device with MobileIron and add a layer of additional protection with MobileIron’s Tunnel per-app VPN.

“We’re excited to partner with Adeya to help organizations secure their mobile collaboration with a military-grade solution designed for the enterprise,” said Ahmed Shah, VP of Business Development at MobileIron. “With our joint solution, employees can collaborate in real-time, sharing files on any device, while promoting compliance and securing corporate data.”

“Remote work has become ubiquitous in the Coronavirus era, and our strategic partnership allows organizations to quickly and easily respond to the growing cyber threats to their digital workplaces, during this extraordinary time,” said Samir Khosla, Chairman at Adeya.

The two companies are offering a free trial until the 15th of June.

Channel Impact^®
The companies have integrated their technologies to address the recent surge in remote working and the market need for encrypted collaboration solutions.