CDN Morning Briefing, August 13, 2020 – VMware layoffs, plus news from Pure Storage, Solarwinds, and more

To keep up with the firehose of news and press releases, we’ve decided to deliver some extra channel news to you on the side. Some of it is an extension of our own reporting on the channel that didn’t make its way into a story, while others might be content we’ve bookmarked for later reading and thought of sharing with you. We’re doing a similar thing at IT World Canada – check it out here. Missed last week’s CDN Morning Briefing? Read it here. Today’s CDN Morning Briefing is delivered by ITWC editorial director Alex Coop. 




What you need to know, right now

It’s what you need to know right now in the world of IT and tech – ’nuff said.

 

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While details around the number of people, business units or geographies affected are absent, VMware confirmed Wednesday it was laying off some employees this month. Multiple reports confirmed the job cuts this week. This marks the second time VMware has conducted layoffs in 2020.

Among the latest departures: Shawn Toldo, vice-president of VMware’s Worldwide Partner Organization, according to CRN.

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A Microsoft patch roundup

There were more than a dozen vulnerabilities rated as “critical” by Microsoft in its August security update, meaning, with little help from users, they could be exploited by malware to gain complete remote control of an affected system.

Behind only the second-largest patch in July 2020 (123 patches) and largest-ever in June 2020 (129 patches), the latest August release marks Microsoft’s third-largest Patch Tuesday update. This also brings the total number of security fixes for 2020 to 862, which is 11 more than Microsoft released in 2019.

Our thoughts are with your patch management teams.

 



In case you missed it

The recent news that we maybe didn’t get to yet, or it’s the news we’ve reported on and feel is worth resurfacing. Sometimes we’ll also feature awesome stories from other publications.

 

SonicWall is refreshing its enterprise and SMB firewall portfolios. The security firm says its enterprise NSsp 15700 and SMB TZ670 and TZ670 firewalls have received some important updates, and that it’s uniting the management of those firewalls with a common code in the new SonicOS 7.0, which also got a modern interface. The latest updates impact SonicWall’s high-end products, so don’t expect its lower-end portfolio to get a refresh until 2021.

The full Capture Cloud Platform (which combines security, management and analytics across the company’s portfolio of network, email, mobile and cloud security products) expansion includes:

  • New SonicOS 7.0
  • New SonicOSX 7.0 for Distributed Enterprises, Government Agencies & MSSPs
  • New SonicWall NSsp 15700 High-End Firewalls
  • New SonicWall NSv 270, 470 & 870 Virtual Firewalls
  • New SonicWall CSa 1000 with RTDMITM Technology
  • New SonicWall TZ570 & TZ670 Entry-Level Firewalls
  • New SonicWall Network Security Manager (NSM) 2.0

SonicWall says its NSsp 15700 firewall series is optimized for high-speed threat analysis for those super-demanding networks. The NSsp 15700 offers multi-instance capabilities and is capable of safeguarding millions of connections.

You can read more details here.

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SolarWinds CEO Kevin Thompson confirmed in an earning’s call Aug. 6 that the company wants to spin off its IT service management business, SolarWinds MSP, into a separate, publicly-traded company.

“I think if we move forward with this potential spin-off transaction, it will allow us to be more effective, which — with how we attack those markets and we allow them to mature, while we take advantage of the big opportunity we see in enterprise software, where we’re beginning to win a number of large deals, displacing some of the older competitors in IT management that still have large deployment in on-premise and hybrid environments,” Thompson said during the call.

He added a decision is expected to be made within the next 90-120 days. “If we decided to move forward, it’s going to be in the first half of next year before the spin-out could actually happen.”

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Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company says it will provide Videotron, a Quebec-based communications provider, with its SD-Branch solution. Videotron will use Aruba’s SD-Branch solution, including the Aruba 9000 Series Gateways, to enable an “improved version of its high-speed Guaranteed Internet Service.”

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Pure Storage announced a strategic partnership with Cohesity Aug. 12 to launch a jointly-engineered all-flash modern backup and recovery solution for rapid recovery and ransomware protection, and reuse of data.

The solution is called Pure FlashRecover, Powered by Cohesity. You can read more about the announcement here.

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Commvault’s Metallic SaaS data protection solution is available on the Microsoft Azure Marketplace. Azure entered its heavy metal phase late June after announcing a multi-year strategic partnership agreement to help customers get their hands on Commvault’s new SaaS solution, which includes three offerings that provide backup and recovery to the mid-market.

Commvault says this new phase of the collaboration builds on its longstanding use of Azure capabilities including application and data migration, long-term retention, and Azure Blob Storage for its scale, durability and security. The new agreement includes plans to build a SaaS offering of Metallic Cloud Storage on Azure Blob Storage and other deep product integrations with native Azure services.
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From Channel Daily News – Microsoft runs into trademark issues with its new low-code platform Dataflex [FULL STORY]

Soon after Microsoft announced the launch of the Dataflex low-code platform for Teams in late July, global application development software provider Data Access noted in a blog post that it already has “multiple, registered U.S. trademarks for the ‘DATAFLEX’ brand software based on the first use in commerce in 1981.”

The Microsoft Dataflex announcement was made on the company’s website, which now shows a 404 error.

“We were totally surprised by Microsoft’s use of our trademark for their new platform to easily build and deploy apps that they call ‘Microsoft Dataflex,’” Chip Casanave, president and chief executive officer of Data Access noted in a July 23 blog post.

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Reddit recap

The MSP subreddit community is growing rapidly. It’s also a chatty bunch. With more than 80,000 members as of today, it’s worth taking a look at what they have to say every once in a while. Here are the recent top posts. Click on the posts to view additional responses.

 

Anyone using Microsoft Universal Print? from r/msp

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Microsoft CVE-2020-1472 | Netlogon Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability from r/msp

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Jim Love, Chief Content Officer, IT World Canada

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Alex Coop
Alex Coophttp://www.itwc.ca
Former Editorial Director for IT World Canada and its sister publications.

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