Channel Bytes December 15, 2023 – RackWare launches channel program; MSP360 adds end-user restores to Managed Backup; Intel launches Core Ultra with NPU; and more

Staying informed is a constant challenge. There’s so much to do, and so little time. But we have you covered. Grab a coffee and take five while you nibble on these tidbits.

Intel releases Core Ultra and 5th Gen Xeon processors

During an event dubbed “AI Everywhere”, Intel this week announced its Intel Core Ultra mobile processor family that it said “ushers in the age of the AI PC.” The new processors contain not only a CPU and GPU, but an AI accelerator known as a neural processing unit (NPU). Boston Consulting Group predicts that AI PCs will comprise 80 per cent of the PC market by 2028.

Intel also announced its 5th Gen Xeon processor family, also including AI accelerators, which it said in a release, “deliver 21 per cent average performance gain for general compute performance and enable 36 per cent higher average performance per watt across a range of customer workloads. Customers following a typical five-year refresh cycle and upgrading from even older generations can reduce their TCO by up to 77 per cent.”

Further coverage will appear soon.

Syntax Systems achieves GROW with SAP designation in Canada, U.S.

Syntax Systems has announced it has achieved the Grow with SAP designation for the U.S. and Canada. It had previously achieved the designation in Germany.

The offering, a release stated, helps midsize companies adopt cloud ERP, providing products, best-practice support, adoption acceleration services, a community, and learning opportunities to help customers move to SAP S/4HANA Cloud, a public edition with speed, predictability, and continuous innovation. The designation also includes go-to-market readiness and competency status.

The company said its solutions for SAP technologies include upgrades, cloud hosting, application-managed services, and ongoing support to help midsize companies successfully migrate from SAP ECC to SAP Suite on SAP HANA and SAP S/4HANA.

Its newest application, available today, is Field Data Capture, a purpose-built mobile application that it said facilitates quick, accurate project reporting regardless of connectivity status. The app integrates with SAP Business ByDesign to provide a seamless experience.

RackWare launches new channel program

Hybrid cloud management platform vendor RackWare has announced that it has promoted Colby Calonica to vice president of global sales, channels and alliances, and has launched the PartnerConnect channel program.

The company said in a release that RackWare PartnerConnect helps IT solutions providers, managed service providers (MSPs) and value-added resellers (VARs) across North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region better serve customers and capitalize on the demand for simple, fast and cost-effective cloud migration and disaster recovery solutions, as more enterprises are moving workloads to and between clouds as a strategic business imperative.

“As enterprises continue to look for ways to increase agility and innovate to better serve their customers, cloud migration and disaster recovery have become a business imperative. As a result, our company has seen significantly increased demand, and much of this is coming through the channel,” said Bryan Gobbett, chief executive officer (CEO) at RackWare.

“As we expect this trend to continue, we are launching RackWare PartnerConnect and promoting Colby Calonica to VP of global sales, channels and alliances as a reflection of our commitment to long-term partner growth, innovation and enablement.”

The program offers channel organizations resources, including technical resources and training, sales support, marketing collateral and co-marketing opportunities with increasing incentives, rebates and benefits based on tiers. It offers three tiers: Silver, for entry-level partners; Gold, for intermediate partners; and Platinum, for top-tier partners.

Equinix to expand support for liquid cooling technologies

Digital infrastructure company Equinix has announced plans to expand support for advanced liquid cooling technologies—like direct-to-chip—to more than 100 of its International Business Exchange (IBX) data centres in more than 45 metros around the world, including those in Toronto, Calgary and Kamloops.

The company said this builds on its existing offering that supports liquid-to-air cooling, through in-rack heat exchangers, available at nearly every IBX today. This expansion, it said, will enable more businesses to use the most performant cooling technologies for the powerful, high-density hardware that supports compute-intensive workloads like artificial intelligence (AI).

“We have seen an increase in demand for data-intensive and high-compute applications like AI,” said Sean Graham, research director, cloud to edge datacentre trends at IDC. “The hardware required to run these new applications is pushing up densities inside data centres and can no longer be efficiently cooled by traditional techniques.

“We are seeing a growing demand for liquid-cooled solutions from enterprises, and it is essential that data centre providers, like Equinix, can support this next generation of cooling solutions.”

Coveo Generative Answering now generally available

Enterprise artificial intelligence (AI) platform provider Coveo has announced that, after several months of beta testing with selected customers, Coveo Relevance Generative Answering is generally available.

Earlier this year, Coveo launched the Relevance Generative Answering Design Partner Program, working with customers, including Informatica, Synopsys, VMware, Xero, and Zoom Communications. According to the company, early adopters found that self-service success improvements from Coveo Relevance Generative Answering could lead to a reduction of up to 25 per cent in the overall cost-to-serve for a typical large technology company.

Deployed on top of the Coveo AI Search Platform, Coveo Relevance Generative Answering generates answers to complex user queries within digital experiences by leveraging Large Language Models (LLMs) on top of the unified indexing and relevance functionality of Coveo’s platform.

The company said that that the enterprise-ready solution is content-agnostic, scalable, secure, traceable, and can provide accurate and relevant answering, and composite abstracts from multiple internal and external sources of content – meaning it is not limited to the content or knowledge base within existing systems.

MSP360 upgrades its Managed Backup Online offering

MSP360, a provider of backup and IT management offerings for managed services providers (MSPs) and IT departments, has introduced a new feature in its MSP360 Managed Backup Online Access.

Designed to minimize the need for time-intensive IT support tickets requesting backup data access and item-level restorations, the aim, the company said, is to free up MSPs, enabling them to concentrate higher-value tasks.

Called Online Access 2.0, the new capability allows end users to autonomously navigate through their backups using MSP360 Managed Backup and perform item-level restorations without requiring direct help from an MSP. It streamlines the process for end users, letting them easily download the necessary file(s) directly to their computers, saving time and effort.

“Considering the increasingly complex IT threat landscape, MSPs can’t afford to use their scarce resources on monotonous tasks,” said company CEO Brian Helwig. “By enabling MSPs to offer this option to end users, they can concentrate more on critical functions like threat prevention, detection, and remediation, as well as strategic planning and services that drive revenue.”

Picus launches new partner program that caters to MSSPs

Picus Security, the developer of Breach and Attack Simulation (BAS), this week announced the Picus Managed Security Services Provider (MSSP) Partner Program.

According to the firm, the new initiative provides the “flexibility MSSPs need to introduce automated validation services and generate new recurring revenues quickly. Designed for customers of varying levels of cyber maturity, the program features interval-based and continuous licensing options.

“With interval-based licensing, MSSPs can purchase credits that allow an entry cadence for validation assessments. Then, once customers are ready to advance their security program maturity and increase the frequency of assessments, they can easily switch to a continuous licensing model. The program means MSSPs can help customers to ‘crawl,’ ‘walk,’ and then ‘run’ with validation.”

In addition to real-world threat simulation, the Picus platform also offers asset and vulnerability discovery, attack path mapping, detection engineering as code, and AI-based threat profiling – capabilities that help MSSPs to manage customers’ threat exposure even more efficiently, the company said.

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Jim Love, Chief Content Officer, IT World Canada

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Lynn Greiner
Lynn Greiner
Lynn Greiner has been interpreting tech for businesses for over 20 years and has worked in the industry as well as writing about it, giving her a unique perspective into the issues companies face. She has both IT credentials and a business degree

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