This week’s IT news features a cloud war brewing between Amazon and Google, a CompTIA report that says you could be making more money and major partner program overhauls from Cisco and AMD.
Cisco overhauls partner program
Cisco Systems unveiled significant changes to its global partner program at its Global Partner Summit in Las Vegas. Going forward more Cisco partners will be pushed to sell cloud and managed services and to target customers beyond IT. The Next-Generation Cisco Channel Partner Program includes numerous changes to the company’s partner certification structure – many of which address managed services and cloud. Additionally, Cisco's various deal registration programs, including the Cisco Opportunity Incentive Program and Teaming Incentive Program, are being consolidated into a single initiative.
Other changes ushered in by the new program include:
- Gold partners have to sell at least four Cisco cloud or managed services offerings (a minimum of one of each)
- Gold partners are also required to have a staff member achieve the new Cisco Business Value Practitioner certification, a new certification also announced at Partner Summit that changes the focus of the sales process from IT to lines of business.
- The Silver designation will be eliminated.
- Premier partners will have to sell at least one Cisco cloud or managed services offering and must also hold either a Cisco Express or Advanced Architecture Specialization.
- There will be no changes to Select Partners.
- There is also a series of new technical specializations
Gold and Premier partners will have between 16 and 24 months to meet the new requirements under. There are no changes to partners at the Select status.
Price war brews between cloud giants Google and Amazon
Google fired the first shots in a price war with Amazon by slashing prices for many of its cloud services and rolling out a new consumption-based billing model that offers deep volume discounts. According to the company the cuts, ranging from 32 to 85 percent, are the result of falling hardware component costs. Google is simply passing the savings along to customers. The move instantly catapulted Google into player status in the market for computing resources delivered as services over the Internet, a space dominated 
by Amazon Web Services. Amazon responded just a day later with its own series of price cuts. As of April 1, AWS will cut Elastic Compute Cloud pricing by 10 to 40 percent. The price of Simple Storage Service will fall by an average of 51 percent – cuts will range from 35 to 65 percent depending on the level of service. Amazon's Relational Database Service will be 28 percent cheaper on average, the price of ElastiCache will drop an average of 34 percent, and Elastic MapReduce will be available for 27 to 61 percent less depending on the instance type.
HP increases partner support with new marketing programs
Hewlett-Packard is offering to help drive significant pipeline growth for solution partners with a series of new marketing initiatives. The foundation of the new program, announced at HP’s Global Partner Conference, is a demand generation marketing program that will automatically direct leads directly to partners. Under the present system HP sales reps pass the leads to partners. According to HP, the company passed along more than 100,000 opportunities valued at more than $14 billion to partners in the last fiscal year. These leads were generated by marketing campaigns across all HP business units. HP also is rolling out a co-marketing zone for partners that contains all HP marketing assets including collateral, templates, direct marketing campaigns, ads and banners. HP partners will be able to customize those assets with their own brands and information, effectively tapping into HP’s tremendous marketing force. HP partners can get more information from their HP Partner Business Managers.
Kaseya acknowledges securoty hole
Kaseya has publicly acknowledged a security vulnerability in its Virtual System Administrator product. The RMM vendor posted a new product vulnerability note on March 24 and urged users to immediately download and install the patches released on March 17. According to Kaseya, customers have been targeted by malware that mines Windows-based PCs for the digital currency Litecoin – in some cases successfully. In addition to patch installation, Kaseya advised users to audit all Windows end points. Kasaya reported that the Litecoin mining malware is a process running “SoftwareUpdate.exe,” version 1.0.0.0, and the file description is “Apple Software Update.” There is legitimate Appple software usng other version numbers so note the affected version to avoid false positives. Kaseya partners can find detailed removal instructions in its Knowledge Base and can file a ticket with the help desk using the keyword LCCLEAN.
CompTIA report: MSPs leaving money on the table
According to CompTIA’s "Third Annual Trends in Managed Services" study, MSPs are not making as much money as they could be. The reason? Market education. Or rather, the lack of it. While many companies use MSPs and report both a high degree of satisfaction with the services provided and with the prices they pay for them, they rarely allow an MSP to manage their entire IT portfolio. They hold back at least in part, because they don’t understand how an MSP can meet all their IT needs. The report advices MSPs to eliminate this disconnect through better communication with their customers by listening to their needs, understanding how they use technology, gain a better understanding of how tech is applied in specific verticals and promote your industry-specific knowledge.
SOTI Unveils New Partner Program
SOTI Inc. unveiled a new channel program aimed at helping partners expand their mobility businesses. The Altitude Partner Program offers a multi-tiered approach, a new program for on-boarding, additional support services, RFP services, new training programs and a new partner portal. According to the company, the industry is at the tail end of BYOD 1.0 and taking basic BYOD implementation to the next level – mobility workflow management. The new channel program is designed to help service providers find opportunities to sell the next stage of mobility services. According to the company, SOTI’s channel business grew 45 percent year-on-year and it will continue to dedicate 70 percent of its overall business to its channel partners.
AMD overhauls partner program for the 1st time in five years
Sunnyvale, Calif.-based chip maker AMD has revamped its partner program for the first time in five years, rewarding partners for evangelizing AMD products and helping the company compete with Intel in new markets. AMD has gradually moved beyond its CPU roots and added APUs, HSA features and Radeon R-Series GPUs. The new program will benefit partners who help AMD push beyond its traditional PC system builder market. One of the changes is the addition of the Hero Builder designation for Elite-level partners. Obtaining the Hero Builder badge will unlock access to additional benefits, such as early access to select AMD technology.
