SMB Nation Blog

Kony, Inc. announced today growth in the number of partners offering “ready to run” enterprise-grade applications on its business mobile app marketplace.

“Industry experts are predicting that the demand for mobile apps will dramatically increase for enterprise organizations in the next few years,” said Burley Kawasaki, senior vice president, products, Kony, Inc. “To meet this demand, enterprises are looking for ways to empower their businesses to rapidly deliver secure, enterprise-level mobile apps with great user experiences. Our goal is to provide a rich collection of pre-built apps and app models through the Kony Marketplace, which they can use to quickly build their mobile apps.”

Kony also released the Kony Sales app suite and Kony Modeler.

IT Solutions distributor Avnet Technology Solutions announced today its Avnet Services global business unit was named an HP Learning Partner.

Avnet solution providers can earn HP ExpertOne certification through Avnet Academy. Courses offered focus on technical areas required to support aspects of HP solution deployment, design, administration and management.

SAP SE unveiled today SAP Business Suite 4 SAP HANA, built on the SAP HANA platform and designed on the SAP Fiori user experience for mobile devices.

"Today SAP is redefining the concept of enterprise resource planning for the 21st century. SAP S/4HANA is about uniting software and people to build businesses that run real-time, networked and simple," said Bill McDermott, CEO of SAP. "When Hasso Plattner invented SAP HANA, we knew the day would come for SAP Business Suite to be reinvented for the digital age. At a moment when businesses around the world need to enter new markets and engage with their consumers in any channel, there's now an innovation platform designed to drive their growth. This is an historic day and we believe it marks the beginning of the end for the 20th century IT stack and all the complexity that came with it."

Schneider Electric introduced today the Advantage Max Data Center Health Check, a low-cost service contract option for SMB data centers.

“Schneider Electric is capitalizing on our existing strength in the DCIM space to help small- and medium-sized data centers and IT rooms access the same technology being utilized by some of the largest enterprise data centers globally. The goal is to provide a very cost effective way to analyze this space, which is experiencing increasingly high demands for availability, lower tolerance for downtime and the need to manage resources more effectively,” says Lance Bishop, Director, Professional Services, Schneider Electric. “This option to our Advantage Plus, Prime, and Ultra Service Contracts better positions managers to optimize overall data center operational efficiency, performance, and cost.”

Axcient, a cloud-based Recovery-as-a-service provider, announced today immediate availability of the newest version of its granular recovery for Microsoft Exchange offering.

“This upgrade to our granular recovery for Exchange solution allows Axcient to offer a powerfully simple solution for e-discovery that is unmatched in the market,” said Justin Moore, CEO at Axcient. “Our customers now have a more efficient and faster way to protect and recover their MS Exchange databases at a lower cost than alternatives in the market. With today’s announcement, we’re continuing our commitment to provide the industry’s most comprehensive Business Recovery Cloud solution, in order to protect IT infrastructure across organizations, no matter the size.”

Field Nation, a work platform that connects independent contractors and organizations, launched today its mobile app for Android-based systems.

“The new Field Nation app is faster and easier to navigate, from work order acceptance to completion and payment,” said Travis Emslander, Chief Technology Officer at Field Nation. “Now service providers can perform work order tasks in the field as they are completed and respond to new work opportunities in a timely way. Plus, organizations gain real-time visibility and faster response rates to existing and new work orders. It’s a win/win for providers and businesses using the Field Nation platform.”

AppRiver, an email messaging and Internet security solutions provider, announced today its selection as a finalist in the 2015 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service.

“In a world of off-shore call centers, detached IT Help and increasingly complicated solutions, AppRiver has given tech a name, a face, a personal touch- qualities that are increasingly rare in the Digital Age,” said James Wirth, director of support at AppRiver. “We try to create a positive customer experience from first contact to post-op support.”

Canada-based Decisive Technologies announced today it has further extended relationships with myriad industry companies, including Cisco, HP and VMware, which contributes to its position as one of Canada’s largest specialized Enterprise IT Infrastructure providers.

“It has been an interesting year to say the least,” Decisive Technologies President Mike Smith said. “The hard work and dedication of everyone at Decisive has been instrumental in growing this company into one of the largest specialty IT infrastructure companies in the nation. Our relentless and ongoing focus on building a tremendous team of specialists, one that has such extensive real-world experience solving real-world problems, is an investment that continues to deliver returns—both for us, and for our clients. Their pride and dedication in designing, building, and implementing enterprise solutions that help our clients grow their business is what will continue to separate us from our competition.”

Decisive underwent a full rebrand within the past few months, creating a communication infrastructure designed to better cater to its clients.

Voxox, a cloud-based rich communication service, announced today Cloud Phone Pro, a hosted VoIP solution designed to serve both SMBs and large businesses.

Cloud Phone Pro provides a fully-hosted solution that allows customers to replace existing phone service and continue use of the same devices.

Pivotal announced 2014 marked record growth worldwide in adoption and sales of Pivotal Cloud Foundry, booking about $40 million in software sales.

“2014 marked a new era of enterprise cloud innovation, driven by tremendous business demands on IT to deliver next generation consumer services and industrial technologies,” said James Watters, Pivotal Vice President Cloud Platform Group. “Cloud Foundry became the world's fastest growing open source product ever with companies in all major geographies and vertical markets moving to an open cloud platform.”

Digium, Inc. today announced Switchvox Rescue, a business continuity solution to protect Switchvox on-premises business phone system customers against unexpected phone system unavailability or failure.

“Switchvox Rescue offers customers an easy way to maintain communications continuity in the face of disaster,” said Adam Kramer, product manager for the Switchvox product line. “Digium’s Switchvox platform is unique in that the same core software is shared between the on-site and hosted versions. By adding our SIP Trunking services to the equation, we can offer a temporary, cloud-based recovery option in a way that is both reliable and effortless for our customers.”

Dell announced today release of Dell KACE K1000 Systems Management Appliance version 6.3, which includes increased functionality and visibility, as well as the addition of systems management support for Chromebook.

“With the proliferation of mobile and smart devices connected to corporate networks, it is imperative for organizations to make systems management a top priority,” said David Kloba, vice president and general manager of Endpoint Systems Management for Dell. “We’re redefining systems management by delivering a comprehensive, easy-to-deploy anypoint management solution for hundreds to tens of thousands of computers and devices, helping IT to significantly reduce costs.”

inhouseIT, an IT solutions and services provider based in California, announced today it is offering ShoreTel Sky solutions to customers, joining ShoreTel’s Enabled Tier of the Champion Partner Program—Cloud track. ShoreTel provides phone systems and unified communications solutions.

“Having been a ShoreTel Champion Partner for many years, we have never been more excited about this latest cloud solution.” said inhouseIT ShoreTel Practice Director, Toby Turko. “ShoreTel Sky is an end-to-end cloud phone system. The inherent flexibility allows companies to add unified communications, contact center capabilities, and CRM and ERP integrations as they need them. Our customers have been waiting for an amazing experience like ShoreTel Sky.”

ShoreTel’s partner programs are designed to educate solution providers on how to best deliver Shoretel products and services. 

Continuum, the channel-exclusive provider of fully-integrated managed IT services, announced today the launch of its “Company News” blog, which will spotlight its MSP partners and update the partner community on news, products and resources.

“At Continuum, we believe we’re only successful as long as our partners are successful, and that’s the power of great people,” said Jeanne Hopkins, Senior Vice President & CMO at Continuum. “We want to celebrate all of their big wins as well as help to educate our entire partner community to become more successful. In 2015, we continue our commitment of making a wide variety of educational resources available. Our new company blog is just one example of helping our partners to succeed with lots more resources to come this year.”

IBM announced availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.1 through its Power Development Platform, Innovation Centers and Client Centers.

IBM said it hopes the move will enable independent software developers, in-house client and open source developers.

NeoDeck Holdings Corp., a Puerto Rican provider of healthcare solutions, announced today a partnership with DataMotion, a SaaS and health information service provider. 

Through the partnership, NeoDeck will provide its customers with access to DataMotion’s portfolio of cloud-based encryption technology. Products including Secure Messaging and SecureMail will allow for clinical and non-clinical exchange of PHI while maintaining full compliance with HIPAA and HITECH.

Datapipe, which provides managed hybrid IT solutions for the enterprise, announced today its acquisition of GoGrid, a multi-cloud solution provider for Big Data deployments.

“GoGrid has made it easy for companies to stand up Big Data solutions quickly,” Datapipe CEO Robb Allen said. “Datapipe customers will achieve significant value from the speed at which we can now create new Big Data projects in the cloud. This acquisition advances Datapipe’s strategy to help our enterprise clients architect, deploy and manage multi-cloud hybrid IT solutions.”

CGL group, a subsidiary of Société Générale, chose to expand mobility resources through the use of Good  Technology's Good for Enterprise solution, which allowed it to launch a BYOD program and support use of BYOD and COPE devices to access resources.

"Good for Enterprise is the solution that meets all our criteria and can support future mobility development within the CGL group," said Bertrand Méens, systems security manager for the CGL group.

AT&T announced today it closed its $2.5 billion acquisition of Mexican wireless provider Iusacell and all of its wireless properties, which include licenses, network assets, retail stores and more than 9 million subscribers.

“The quick approval of this deal is one more example of why Mexico is an attractive place to invest,” Randall Stephenson, AT&T chairman and CEO, said. “We look forward to bringing more wireless competition to Mexico along with an improved mobile Internet experience for customers. Expanding and enhancing Iusacell’s mobile network to cover millions of additional consumers and businesses is our top priority.”

Unitrends today introduced the newest generation of the Recovery-Series family of purpose-built backup appliances. The 11 new models, with raw storage from 1 to 97 TB, offer flexibility and scalability to customers ranging from SMBs to corporations.

The use of tiered flash storage allows for improved backup performance and faster restore and recovery processes. Further improvements to the PBBAs, including upgrades to the CPU and advancements in RAID.

Centrify Corporation today announced new advantages for Managed Service Providers, including a new MSP channel program and MSP product enhancements to its Cloud Identity offerings. Its updates allow MSPs to use Centrify’s Identity-as-a-Service technology to address needs for single sign-on to SaaS apps.

“MSPs have historically provided remote monitoring and security management for on-premises PCs, servers, apps and network devices, but as their customers migrate to mobile and the cloud their clients’ IT management challenges are fundamentally changing as identity becomes the new perimeter,” said Gary Taggart, Senior Vice President of Sales at Centrify.  “With specific MSP product enhancements to Centrify’s IDaaS offering and a new MSP-oriented channel program, MSPs can now not only better secure their clients’ expanding SaaS and mobile deployments, but also delight their clients’ end users with single sign-on to thousands of SaaS applications such as Office 365, Google Apps, Concur and others.”

IP handset developer and manufacturer snom technology AG today announced appointment of Olivier Gerling as Chief Sales Officer. Gerling began his career at snom in 2009 as managing director of snom France.

“Olivier’s extensive experience in sales and channel operations make him a natural fit for his new role,” snom CEO Markus Schmitt-Fumian said. “His understanding of creating effective sales programs and channels will help snom expand its global footprint as we roll out an exciting lineup of innovative VoIP products.”

Gerling will be responsible for working with Schmitt-Fumian to expand snom’s market presence and lead growth its core markets.

IBM today announced it topped the list of U.S. patents received yearly for a 22^nd consecutive year. With 7,534 patents in 2014—an average of 20 per day—IBM is the first company to surpass 7,000 patents within a year.

"IBM's continued investment in research and development is key to driving the transformation of our company, as we look to capture the emerging opportunities represented by cloud, big data and analytics, security, social and mobile," said Ginni Rometty, IBM's chairman, president and CEO. "IBM's patent leadership over more than two decades demonstrates our enduring commitment to the kind of fundamental R&D that can solve the most daunting challenges facing our clients and the world."

Cloud Security Alliance’s new survey, Cloud Adoption, Practices and Priorities Survey Report, surveyed more than 200 executives and IT managers in an aim to uncover how companies are currently approaching the cloud.

"As companies move data to the cloud, they are looking to put in place policies and processes so that employees can take advantage of cloud services that drive business growth without compromising the security, compliance, and governance of corporate data," CSA CEO Jim Reavis said. "We hope that this report provides companies with some good peer insight so that they can make better decisions to help confidently and responsibly accelerate the use of cloud services in their environment."

SMB Security-as-a-Service provider My Digital Shield announced today the addition of channel sales veteran Rick Green to its executive team as Executive Vice President of Channel Sales.

Green previously held technical, marketing and sales management positions at General Electric, Nortel Networks, Lucent, Alcatel, N.E.T. and Voice Carrier that add up to a combined 30 years of networking industry experience. He also has worked at various VARs, providing him with understanding of the partner side of the business.

"We are thrilled to have Rick come on board, given his extensive background in both sales and management," said Andrew Bagrin, founder and CEO of My Digital Shield. "The demand for cyber security solutions continues to become a priority for business owners and individuals alike, making now an opportune time for MDS to focus on growing our relationship among channel partners."

Schneider Electric announced today immediate availability of new models in its family of APC by Schneider Electric single-phase Smart-UPS On-Line uninterruptible power supplies. The new UPS models range from 5-10kVA of power. 

“In today’s increasingly connected world, disruption or loss of power to critical equipment translates into high costs and potential reputational damage for businesses,” said Michael Maiello, Sr. Vice President, Home and Business Networks, APC by Schneider Electric. “Our new unity power factor Smart-UPS On-Line models provide simple, convenient, flexible, and reliable power back up, allowing users to feel assured their important equipment and electronics will be protected when they need it most.”

Key features of the new models include up to 97 percent energy efficiency, hot-swappable batteries and switchable outlet groups.

Business and IT consulting provider PSC Group LLC announced today consultants John Head, Kathy Brown, Andrew Barickman, Brad Balassaitis and Mark Roden were selected as 2015 IBM ICS Champions.

The IBM Champion program awards individuals in the global technical community who help others to make best use of IBM solutions and services.

Cloud-based document and email management service NetDocuments announced today it acquired the Decisiv Email team and technology from Recommind.

"This is truly a case of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts," said Matt Duncan, CEO of NetDocuments. "Anyone in our industry who has seen or experienced Decisiv Email knows it's simply the most powerful email management solution in the market. The Australian-based team brings a wealth of industry knowledge that will complement NetDocuments' core service. We truly believe that combining Decisiv Email with NetDocuments will result in the most modern and intuitive matter-centric content management solution ever made available to the legal market."

Lenovo announced today its 2015 ThinkPad product portfolio, including the ThinkPad X1 Carbon, the ThinkVision X24 monitor and the ThinkPad Stack.

The new ThinkPad product portfolio was unveiled in celebration of 100 million units shipped and continued company growth. 

“It has been a genuine privilege to be an integral part of ThinkPad notebook success through one hundred million units,” said Brian Krzanich, Intel CEO. “The dedication and imagination of ThinkPad engineers over the years has produced some remarkable technological breakthroughs. As computing takes new forms and enables amazing new experiences, Intel is eager to see what Lenovo can come up with next.”

Networking equipment manufacturer Deciso B.V. announced today its open source firewall initiative, OPNsense, has been launched. OPNsense provides companies with a set of open, verifiable sources.

Companies can use OPNsense under a two-clause BSD license. All tools and sources on the OPNsense platform are available without special clauses and licensing costs.

"We put high value in the community around OPNsense," Deciso CTO Jos Schellevis said. "The OPNsense project wants to give users, developers and businesses a friendly, stable and transparent environment."

Seattle start-up Spreesy will help organizations capitalize on popularity of social media through its social commerce solution, which makes Instagram posts “shoppable.”

These shoppable posts are generated when a business connects Instagram accounts to Spreesy’s website and includes price and quantity options in the Instagram post caption.

DSTRUX, a self-destructing file-sharing platform, released today a free Android app on the Google Play Store.

The app allows users to maintain control of files or pictures they share, including the parties that receive the item and the length of viewing receivers have. Items sent on the DSTRUX platform can’t be forwarded, downloaded, printed, screen captured or altered without permission.

"Most people would know what I mean when I talk about that feeling of regret after sending a file, picture or message that you wish you could take back or destroy," says CEO and Founder of DSTRUX, Nathan Hecht. "DSTRUX is finally that solution. Now, for the first time, users are able to take back and destroy on command that file that they sent to someone and regretted whether it was immediately after sending it or at a later date."

ClickSoftware Technologies Ltd. announced today it was awarded a position in the Leaders Quadrant of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Field Service Management. This is the fourth consecutive year ClickSoftware achieved a Leader position.

"Service organizations must consistently deliver unparalleled service experiences for their customers. This drives the ClickSoftware team to help these organizations make strategic service decisions to 'Master the Moment' when success is judged by their ability to complete the job the first time," said Dr. Moshe BenBassat, ClickSoftware's Founder and CEO. "The future of the world's largest companies will be determined by their ability to differentiate in service. In a world where social media shines a spotlight on the performance of every company, ClickSoftware empowers field workers to become a service company's best brand ambassadors."

 Polycom announced Polycom RealPresence Collaboration Server and Polycom RealPresence Distributed Media Application are the first video infrastructure solutions qualified for Microsoft Lync 2013.

“Video is on pace to become the preferred means of business communication over the next two years and unified communications solutions have never been more important to business success,” said Ted Colton, Group Vice President, Strategic Alliances at Polycom. “Polycom and Microsoft share the same vision that collaboration should be easy and natural to use. Polycom RealConnect for Microsoft Lync eliminates end-user frustration and helps facilitate more use of video by making it easier to receive a high-quality experience while preserving the familiarity of how to join a video call.”

Jabra announced it will move its North American Headquarters to Cross Point in Lowell, Mass. in Q2 2015 to support customers, employees and a growing brand.

"Jabra is outpacing industry growth and winning new customers in NA every day, therefore we felt it was time for our physical headquarters location to be the sort of focal point we need for showcasing our technology to customers and recruiting the best talent available," Jabra North America president Pete Fox said. "The move to Cross Point allows us to create a space that has everything we need in a headquarters facility, from a highly branded environment for our employees and guests to a Jabra Experience Center to demonstrate our intelligent audio solutions," Fox continued.

SoftServe , a software application development and consulting company, announced today substantial growth, including the addition of 500 employees and further worldwide expansion.

SoftServe increased its customer base by adding new clients such as Panasonic , Red Hat and PE International. It opened new development locations and sales offices in Europe, as well as relocating its U.S. headquarters to Austin, Texas.

NetSuite announced today it selected a new chief marketing officer, Fred Studer.

In his position at NetSuite, Studer will oversee worldwide marketing initiatives and work to increase awareness and use of Netsuite’s cloud-based business management software.

"Fred's broad experience in enterprise and consumer technology, his innovative approach to marketing and his incredible enthusiasm are an ideal fit as NetSuite continues to lead the way forward in the market for cloud-based business software," said NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson. "Being a passionate marketer myself, I am excited to be working with another marketer with such a creative and innovative flair."

Voxox today announced its SMS Solutions, an end-to-end wholesale offering, has extended its inbound SMS to delivery to Europe, adding U.K. telephone numbers and continuing to increase its outbound SMS service.

"SMS is a critical asset in streamlining communication between businesses and their customers,” said Bryan Hertz, CEO of Voxox. “We’ve seen great interest and growth in our wholesale SMS customer base, ranging from global consumer brands to major security and software companies. The unique combination of our fully redundant, carrier–grade network in the cloud, CLEC operations and award–winning service delivery platform has poised us for success in this arena.”

StorageCraft announced availability of the StorageCraft Plug-ins for VMWare and Microsoft System center, free for users of StorageCraft ShadowProtect.

The plug-in, used in conjunction with ShadowControl v2.5.1., monitors virtual machine backups and protection and can push-install a ShadowProtect agent to unprotected virtual machines.

Carbonite, Inc., a cloud and hybrid backup and recovery solutions provider, announced it will acquire MailStore, an email archiving solutions provider for SMBS. The acquisition is expected to close in Q4 2014.

"MailStore is a great fit for Carbonite, as both companies are committed to providing SMBs with powerful yet simple data protection solutions," Carbonite CEO Mohamad Ali said. "In addition to offering email archiving to businesses worldwide with MailStore's existing solutions, Carbonite will integrate MailStore's robust full-text search and indexing capabilities into our product portfolio to help our business customers better manage, understand and leverage their data."

GET IT Mobile announced today Richard Kerris, a former Apple and Lucasfilm executive, will join its executive team as the Chief Marketing Officer through GET IT’s  acquisition of Kinetic Minds.

"We started working with Kinetic Minds to tap into their marketing and communications expertise, expand our product direction and gain better insights into customer needs from a broader set of markets," GET IT Mobile CEO Christopher Tanner said. "Richard's deep reservoir of knowledge, experience, creativity and industry influence have proven to be invaluable to us as we rapidly grow. We're very excited about the significant role he will play in our future."

The acquisition of Kinetic Minds will continue to catalyze GET IT’s growing need for product marketing and client services expansion. Kevin Hague, who co-founded Kinetic Minds with Richard Kerris, will serve as a technical adviser for GET IT.

CodeLathe announced immediate availability of FileCloud for Amazon Web Services, which will allow customers to host FileCloud in the Amazon cloud infrastructure.

“In contrast to managed public cloud enterprise file share and sync offerings, FileCloud hosted on Amazon infrastructure provides the best of two worlds: the complete control, flexibility, data separation, and customization of FileCloud; and the scalability, resiliency of the AWS infrastructure,” CodeLathe Chief Executive Madhan Kanagavel said. “Further, FileCloud costs only $25/user/year, which is 20 percent of the price of other managed EFSS offerings.”

IT management company ManageEngine today announced immediate availability of the Zoho Reports integration as an add-on module for ServiceDesk Plus.

The Zoho reports integration allows ServiceDesk users to analyze their IT service desk data and create reports and dashboards.

ReachLocal, Inc., which provides online marketing for SMBs, announced it added third-party campaign result measurement and multi-location alert and reporting capabilities to its ReachEdge total digital marketing system.

Third-party measurement results are displayed in one dashboard and can be sorted and filtered by source. Multi-location support allows companies to organize and route information, alerts, notifications and leads to specific locations and people.

Multi-location support is available immediately in the United States, and third-party measurement is available immediately in the United States, Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom.

Projector brand Epson today announced CRN Test Center named the PowerLite 4855WU the 2014 Product of the Year in the “Office Equipment” category.

The PowerLite 4855WU is designed to display high-resolution, color-rich content and delivers 4,000 lumens of color brightness and 4,000 lumens of white brightness.

Enterprise mobile engagement leader OpenMarket today announced business, customer and product milestones, including increasing numbers of enterprise customers across the retail, education, financial and marketing services industries.

OpenMarket anticipates sending two billion new mobile messages and adding nearly 500 short codes within the next year. It also added support for US long codes and expanded its two-way global SMS connectivity to more than 40 countries.

Emulex Corporation and Dynatrace recently announced fully-integrated solution NetPod, which combines Dynatrace’s Data Center analysis with Emulex’s EndaceProbe Intelligent Network Recorders.

“NetPod is the result of more than a year of collaboration between Emulex and Dynatrace, motivated by demand from mutual enterprise and service provider clients,” explained John Van Siclen, general manager, Dynatrace. “NetPod uniquely understands application logic and user behavior for the leading applications, databases and middleware. This integrated solution closes the gap between network and application teams, giving them a unified set of insights to manage their digital channels and infrastructure.”

NetPod is designed to provide network teams with high-fidelity network and application transaction-level visibility and long-term packet storage. It also enables performance, scalability and predictability optimization of applications in the data center.

NetPod will be available in Q1 2015 from select Emulex and Dynatrace partners, and will be demonstrated this week in booth 334 at the Gartner Data Center Conference.

Dell today announced more than 10,000 customers worldwide now use the Dell KACE Systems Management solutions.

"Dell KACE systems management solutions have an extremely fast-growing and loyal base of customers who appreciate how easily and affordably they can simplify critical systems management and improve endpoint security," said David Kloba, general manager for Endpoint Systems Management at Dell Software. "In our most recent customer satisfaction survey, 81 percent of those companies that evaluate ROI report their KACE appliance paid for itself within three months."

Dell also compiled customers’ top 10 reasons for choosing Kace:

IT management company ManageEngine yesterday announced the immediate availability of a sync agent for the latest version of ADSelfService Plus that automatically detects native password modifications of Windows accounts and synchronizes them with IT systems and applications.

This sync agent is designed to simplify the password-replacing process, reducing difficulty for end users and time for IT administrators.

Lenovo today announced availability of two new rack servers in its ThinkServer portfolio, the 1U ThinkServer RD350 and 2U ThinkServer RD450.

"Lenovo understands that while SMBs rely on servers as the backbone of their businesses, they also face unique infrastructure challenges such as small data centers and limited budgets,” said Bob Galush, vice president, High Volume Servers and Options. "Our next-generation RD350 and RD450 ThinkServers address these critical customer concerns by providing a balance of enterprise-class performance, flexibility and leadership reliability in a low-cost package."

Alcatel-Lucent’s Motive plans to introduce Motive Security Guardian, a virtualized security solution designed to protect service providers’ networks, M2M communications and mobile and home devices from malware.

Motive Security Guardian is intended to reduce the number of devices infected by alerting customers to malware threats on their devices and giving them step-by-step instructions to remove the threat.

Consulting firm MindStream Analytics this week announced availability of Planning XStream, a turnkey Oracle Planning Budgeting Cloud Solution.

"XStream is a breakthrough for our customers who want to take advantage of a quick yet robust deployment," said Alex Ladd, CEO of MindStream Analytics. "We can bring Enterprise caliber solutions to the market where it was, before now, cost-prohibitive."

StorageCraft Technology Corporation, backup and disaster recovery solution leader, and Connectwise, business management platform provider, announced earlier this week availability of a new integration module.

The module allows managed service providers (MSPs) to automate billing by mapping and synchronizing data from the StorageCraft MSP porta and StorageCraft Cloud Services with the Connectwise business management platform.

e-Management’s first CyberRx survey revealed 63 percent of small businesses surveyed were insecure about continuous monitoring (CM) efforts against cybersecurity threat. 

The respondents, attendees at the CyberMaryland conference, included CEOs, C-level executives and IT and cybersecurity professionals of businesses with fewer than 2,500 employees. Almost 70 percent of respondents worked at companies with less than 100 employees.

Though many respondents were insecure about CM, more than 60 percent provide periodic awareness training to ensure employees understand cyber threats and 45 percent said small businesses should be mandated to follow the NIST cybersecurity framework.

WatchGuard Technologies today announced its new next-generation firewall and unified threat management appliances engineered for SMBs and distributed enterprises.

The WatchGuard Firebox M400 and M500 appliances, based on Intel Pentium and Celeron processors, outperform rival solutions, with up to a 61 percent increase in overall performance and up to a 149 percent increase in HTTPS inspection.

Unitrends recently revealed Release 8.0, a solution that provides scalable protection for EMC and NetApp NAS arrays and extends Unitrends’ support for virtual environments.

Unitrends Release 8.0 also introduces extended support for Network Data Management Protocol and physical and virtual recovery for Hyper-V virtual machines in minutes.

IBM today launched its new social collaboration offering, IBM Verse, which brings together myriad IBM platforms, innovations and ideas to integrate the ways employees connect daily.

IBM Verse brings together email, meetings, calendars, file sharing, instant messaging, social updates and video chats and is the first messaging system to enable users to pinpoint and retrieve specific information across various types of email content.

It has built-in analytics and learns employee preferences and priorities over time. IBM Verse clients will also have the future opportunity to embed a Watson feature, a predictive and visual analytics tool.

AT&T and Cisco are working to make conferencing accessible for business users through AT&T Conferencing with Cisco CMR Cloud, expected to be available in December 2014.

This offering will allow customers to activate conferences with voice, video and content sharing on most connected devices, simplifying business conferencing. The solution can be used in-office or on-the-go, eliminating the need for expensive, fixed equipment.

Voxox, a cloud-based rich communication semrvice, announced it ranked 224^th on Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500, which ranks the fastest growing technology, media, telecomunications, life sciences and clean technology companies in North America.

”We are honored to be recognized as one of Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500 companies and credit our success to the tireless efforts of our dedicated Voxox team,” said Bryan Hertz, co-founder and CEO of Voxox. “Voxox’s mission has always been to provide true unified communications for consumers and businesses, and we are proud to be recognized by such a prestigious organization for our hard work and growth over the past few years.”

Continuing its investment in its Ohio network and team, AT&T is seeking applicants to fill more than 120 jobs statewide. In the past 22 months, AT&T has filled more than 1,600 jobs in Ohio and has invested $1.6 billion in state wireless and wireline networks since 2011.

"Ohio's broadband network is one of the most important infrastructure components for our state's economy and for our residents' ability to prosper at work and at home," said State Senator Cliff Hite. "I'm excited to hear that AT&T continues to offer good-paying job openings with benefits throughout the Buckeye State, many of which are focused on the build-out of their broadband network."

RackWare announced RackWare Management Module (RMM) for Amazon Web Services (AWS) will be available Nov. 24.

RMM enables enterprises to move workloads from any source infrastructure to AWS. It offers hybrid scaling by automatically instantiating applications in AWS when demand spikes and dropping them back into the internal site as demand falls.

Continuum Veterans Foundation donated $50,000 for a second year to Hire Heroes USA, an organization that works to create job opportunities for U.S. veterans and their spouses and lower the veteran unemployment rate.

Continuum established the Continuum Veterans Foundation in 2012, and its donation to Hire Heroes USA helped 101 veterans obtain employment in civilian jobs, more than double Continuum’s goal.

Netsuite Inc., a provider of cloud-based financials, ERP and omnichannel commerce software suites, announced Ciber UK, part of IT consulting company Ciber, joined its solution provider program.

Ciber UK joined the program to deliver NetSuite solutions to customers in B2B and B2C ecommerce, SRP, and professional services automation.

Stage2Data, Canadian cloud solution provider, will participate in “Strategies for Managing Education and Research Data” Nov. 12, Orion Networks’ event intended to connect data management practitioners with real-world experience.

Jacques Swanepoel, Stage2Data CTO, will take part in the Q&A panel.

RF Technologies Inc., a provider of RFID healthcare safety and security solutions, announced it has partnered with EnGenius Technologies as a value added reseller of the EnGenius DuraFon PRO phone solution.

The EnGenius DuraFon is ideal for staff in senior and assisted living communities, functioning as a pager, walkie-talkie and phone with a range diameter of 250,000 square feet.

IT hardware integration provider Red River was named Philanthropic Partner of the Year for Dell’s 2015 fiscal year as part of Dell’s PartnerDirect channel program.

“Red River is incredibly honored to receive this recognition from Dell for the ongoing community activism and direct support that our company, and entire employee base, has provided through its dedicated philanthropic arm, Red River Technology Foundation,” said Rick Bolduc, CEO of Red River. “Dell technology has been instrumental in helping us fulfill our dual mandate and mission of encouraging students in the STEM fields and supporting U.S. military veterans transitioning to civilian life.”

Avidian announced it expanded its mobile support to all applications that support Microsoft Outlook synchronization. It enables remote employees to use any Outlook-compatible app on mobile app marketplaces and securely extends Prophet CRM interoperability to any mobile device.

Cloud-based rich communication service Voxox announced its Cloud Phone won the Best Android—IT or Business Tool category of the 2014 Tabby Awards/Business competition.

”We are honored to see Cloud Phone take home a Tabby Award in this prestigious annual competition highlighting business and productivity applications,” said Bryan Hertz, co-founder and CEO of Voxox. “The Cloud Phone web app was designed to help small businesses with growing communications needs. This award is a great honor and testament to Cloud Phone’s usability and rich functionality.”

Trend Micro Incorporated’s annual security predictions report, “Trend Micro Security Predictions for 2015 and Beyond: The Invisible Becomes Visible,” highlights a forecast of increased targeted attacks as hackers find success worldwide in non-traditional countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia. The report also details seven other cybersecurity threats.

A MarketsandMarkets report estimated the total value of the Voice over LTE market will grow at a CAGR of 64.4 percent from 2014 to 2020.

The report shows high potential growth in the voice over IP multimedia subsystem (VoIMS) and Circuit Switched Fallback (CSFB), as VoIMS and CSFB technologies currently have the highest share of the APAC market.

Scality today announced availability of its open-source REST Block Driver, software deployable on Linux-based servers. The driver exposes a block device to applications, with REST-based, CDMI-compliant transport to backend storage and supports basic connectivity to the Scality RING storage platform.

SIOS Technology Corp. today announced it will showcase its SAN and SANLess clustering software for SQL Server in booth 408 at PASS Summit 2014 in Seattle, Wash.

SIOS is sponsoring the PASS the Bacon breakfast held Nov. 6 at 6:45 a.m., the PASS to Prizes game Nov. 4-6 and will raffle and give away gift cards.

PASS Summit 2014 is the world’s largest annual conference for Microsoft SQL Server and BI professionals, with more than 2,000 companies worldwide sending employees to receive training, tips and make connections with other industry professionals.

Level 3 Communications, Inc. today announced it completed acquisition of tw telecom, combining the companies to provide a comprehensive product portfolio to enterprise, government and carrier customers worldwide.

"Level 3 is helping customers migrate to the next wave of technology," Level 3 president and CEO Jeff Storey said. "We know our customers' needs are changing, and by bringing together these two great, customer-focused companies, we are taking the next step in the evolution of Level 3 and bringing us closer to realizing our vision of being the trusted connection to the networked world.”

SaaS provider AppRiver announced this week it’s joined the Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider Program. Through the program, AppRiver owns the customer lifestyle, giving partners opportunities to sell Office 365 subscription, own the entire billing process and directly manage support.

“AppRiver’s channel partners advocated strongly for just such a program that would allow them to maintain and control their customer relationships,” said Scott Paul, senior director of sales operations with AppRiver. “We were fortunate to be one of just a few companies worldwide to pilot that two-tier program and the results have been phenomenal. It’s exciting that more partners will now be able to take advantage of it.”

Zultys, Inc., a provider of IP phone systems and unified communications systems, released Zultys Cloud Services, a cloud-based IP phone system, unified communications system, contact center and SIP trunk services solution.

It’s based on the enterprise-class MX series of IP phone systems, versatile enough to be deployed for all business sizes, and provides the same features.

Seattle-based Thursday Market launched its social referral network for service professionals earlier recently, giving consumers the ability to search for service business referrals from friends and neighbors and service professionals the chance to engage friends and neighbors of satisfied customers.

Zendesk, Inc. today launched its Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys, built to enable organizations to gather and analyze customer feedback from the same customer service platform they use to interact with customers.

NPS can measure an organization’s customer loyalty over time proactively, instead of measuring satisfaction only after specific interactions.

Digium today announced its Digium Cloud Services offering, Digium SIP Trunking, will be available tomorrow in the contiguous United States. Digium SIP Trunking offers reliable, inexpensive and simple-to-deploy VoIP connectivity for Switchvox, Asterisk, and any IP-enabled phone system.

Digium now has a complete solution, acting as a provider for phones, PBX and telephony service. Its SIP Trunking is available in metered or unlimited plans, and it offers nationwide DIDs, 911 enabled DIDs, and toll-free DIDs along with potential to port local and toll-free numbers from other carriers.

Unitrends today announced Q3 was its 23^rd consecutive quarter of growth, with growth driven by channel momentum, industry-leading technology deployments and effective customer support.

“We’ve maintained an unwavering commitment to delivering simple and affordable enterprise-class data protection offerings backed by an unrivaled customer support team,” said Mike Coney, Unitrends’ president and CEO. “This winning formula has propelled us to tremendous success in recent years, and we’ll continue to make it the foundation of our business model as we enter the next stage of corporate growth.”

GFI Software today announced immediate availability of GFI WebMonitor 2015, a complete redesign that enables IT administrators to control access, scan Internet traffic with three anti-virus engines, and unify policy configuration and management. All aspects of its user interface have layout and performance updates.

Cloud-based rich communication service Voxox announced its Cloud Phone, a virtual PBX service, was named the Best Mobile Utility category winner at the 2014 Silicon Valley Business App Awards.

Voxox’s Cloud Phone has set the standard for innovation and creativity in the mobile utility app world," said Vikas Sharan, CEO, SVBA Awards. "This award is a testament to the skill, ingenuity, and vision of its creators."

invisibleCRM announced Chatter Enterprise for Outlook, an integrated solution Salesforce.com Chatter users can access and manage within Outlook, will be available in Q4 2014.

Chatter increased overall sales productivity by more than 36 percent, Salesforce reports, and leveraging the impact of Chatter through Outlook serves to streamline and boost networking capabilities.

Dell today announced its partners ranked network, mobile and cloud security as the top threats facing their customers in a recent survey.

The 120 randomly selected partners are attending the first Dell Security Peak Performance Conference in Florida.

Partners said network, mobile and cloud security are the three most common concerns they hear from customers, and BYOD, selected by 59 percent of respondents, led the partners’ ranking as one of the top two threats of concern to their customers.

Lenovo today expanded its end-to-end enterprise solutions portfolio with the announcement of new thin clients.

The new ThinkCentre Tiny-in-One attaches to the M73 or M53 clients, giving users cost-effective options for future upgrades without a need to replace the display.

AirTight Networks today announced the launch of mobile web app AirTight Nano and social Wi-Fi integration option WeChat, both to be demonstrated at Wi-Fi Global Congress Oct. 9-10.

"At AirTight we believe in leveling the playing field for companies of any size,” said David King, chairman and CEO of AirTight Networks. “This means making our enterprise-grade wireless platform and software applications for Wi-Fi cloud management, social engagement, analytics and security the mo

IP solutions developer and producer snom technology AG announced it has appointed Finance Director Guido Wohlers as Chief Financial Officer. Wohlers has worked at snom for 12 years and brings experience and understanding as Finance Director to his new position.

Paychex, Inc. today introduced its newly expanded service offering, software-as-a-service platform Paychex Flex, as well as mobile app Paychex Time.

Cloud-based Paychex Flex adapts to the needs of human capital management spectrum users and delivers access to payroll, HR and benefits information.

IBM recently introduced a new range of systems designed to handle extensive computational data more efficiently than comparable systems; IBM’s new systems handle computational data at almost 20 percent better price/performance than competitor's processor-based systems. .

New IBM technologies are integrating member technologies from the OpenPOWER Foundation , including NVIDIA’s GPU accelerator technology.

Rebit, Inc. today announced availability of Rebit Unlimited, a backup solution for home and SMB users that combines unlimited cloud service with Rebit’s comprehensive local backup.

“Rebit has built a reputation for delivering ridiculously simple, yet powerful backup solutions for home and small business users,” commented Paul Guerin, CEO, Rebit Inc. “Rebit Unlimited extends this commitment to our customers by combining all of the advanced functionality of Rebit6 with unlimited cloud storage at a great price! Rebit Unlimited is simply the most comprehensive, cost-effective, and simple-to-use backup solution available in the market today.”

As part of Verizon’s commitment to the ConnectED initiative, Verizon has launched an expansion of its Verizon Innovative Learning Schools program that will implement schoolwide 1-to-1 mobile technology learning environments.

Nonprofit Digital Promise will provide 5,000 students at eight schools with personal tablets, donated by Verizon, that have 24/7 Internet access, enhancing the students’ studies in the classroom and at home.

Actiontec Electronics today announced ScreenBeam Mini2, its compact, sub-$40 HDMI adapter, is now available through Tiger Direct.

The adapter allows consumers to connect devices to HDMI ports on projectors and HDTVs. It’s compatible with WiDi-ready and Wi-Fi Certified Miracast devices.

Cloud-based IT management software provider Kaseya today announced availability of Release 8 of its product portfolio, which builds on Kaseya’s core IT, cloud and remote management solutions as well as its acquisition of Scorpion Software.

“We have been aggressively innovating and acquiring selectively to build the world’s leading IT management and security solution,” said Yogesh Gupta, president and CEO of Kaseya. “Organizations and MSPs today need to continually enhance their capabilities for security and compliance in order to meet increasing threats and regulatory requirements. Kaseya Release 8 further extends our commitment to address modern IT management challenges for our MSP and enterprise IT customers with a strong focus on security so customers can deliver higher quality and more secure IT services.” 

Voxox today announced the promotion of Joann Farrar to the role of VP, agent channel, Joe Schiavone to the role of VP, dealer channel, and Tad Nikolich to the role of SVP business sales.

D&H Distributing announced it redesigned and improved www.dandh.com to improve customer experience.

Specific improvements include new drop down menus, customizable Watch Lists, discontinued item notifications, an enhanced notification center and the availability to browse product categories from any page through the navigation menu.

Spiceworks today debuted the Spiceworks App center and formalized its developer program.

The App Center will allow IT professionals to find, research and purchase free and for-fee apps and cloud services directly from Spiceworks. By formalizing its developer program, independent developers and technology brands including Microsoft, Lenovo and IBM will be able to offer free and paid applications to IT professionals within the network.

“Millions of IT professionals already rely on Spiceworks for the technical information, peer feedback and vendor connections they need to make an informed purchasing decision,” said Scott Abel, co-founder and CEO of Spiceworks. “The new App Center takes the Spiceworks experience one step further by streamlining how 6 million IT professionals research, buy and use IT apps and cloud services.”

New, free apps will be available later this year and paid application support will begin in Q1 2015.

Additional App Center information is available here, and more information about Spiceworks’ developer program can be found here.

SMB technology provider GoDaddy collaborated with Microsoft Corp. to create Get Online Today, an offering intended to help SMBs worldwide start, maintain and grow their online presence.

For $1/month for the first year, the Get Online Today offering includes: a custom domain name; subscription to GoDaddy’s Website Builder, including hosting for the business’ website; Microsoft Office 365 from GoDaddy; $50 credit for Bing Ads; and GoDaddy 24/7 phone support.

Continuum , the sole channel-exclusive provider of fully integrated managed solutions, launched private forum Collaborate to allow its 3,500 MSP partners to connect, share and learn.

Collaborate offers more support features than Continuum’s current partner support portal in an effort to educate partners and equip them with resources so they can compete effectively for business.

The Cloud Security Alliance today released Cloud Usage: Risks and Opportunities. Survey results from IT and security professionals worldwide indicate they perceive their organization has significantly fewer apps running in the cloud than reported by vendors and researchers.

Dell has shown significant growth in software offerings and revenue through its PartnerDirect partner program. Channel partners and Dell Software have embraced the opportunity, securing partners associated rebates with the sale of Dell products and substantial deal registration and revenue growth—with deal registration up 61 percent and revenue growth up 15 percent year over year—for Dell.

snom technology AG  today introduced its new lineup of IP-based cordless DECT products, expected to improve coverage, reliability and features.

The snom M65 IP DECT phone and M700 multi-cell base station will be released in October, and the M5 DECT repeater will be released later this year.

“Our M65 DECT phone and M700 base station represents a new generation of feature-rich mobility for business users,” said Tom Ostrander, Director of North American Channel Sales. “These new products offer expanded range, and more features and flexibility for administrators to easily increase the number of users while maintaining performance.”