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.
Commvault appoints Timchuk area vice president, Americas sales
Commvault, an enterprise data protection vendor for complex and mission-critical hybrid environments, this week announced that Allan Timchuk has joined the company as area vice president, Americas sales.
At Commvault, Timchuk will be responsible for the go-to-market strategy, customer engagements, and partner alignment in Canada and Latin America (LATAM). He will report to David Boyle, senior vice president, Americas sales.
Stark joins Granite Telecommunications in channel role
Granite Telecommunications, a provider of communications and technology offerings to multilocation businesses and government agencies, announced that channel veteran Eric Stark has joined the company as director of regional channel sales – west.
Reporting to Charlie Pagliazzo, vice president of channels, in his new role Stark will be responsible for Granite’s western region channel management team, overseeing partner acquisition, training, and revenue generation.
Blackberry and Adobe sign partnership deal
Blackberry and Adobe this week announced a partnership to deliver a secure forms offering for mobile users. The software initiative, which combines BlackBerry UEM and Adobe Experience Manager Forms, is designed for popular mobile device platforms, and meets the security standards required by regulated industries, the two companies said in a release.
In addition, the partnership agreement allows BlackBerry to resell Adobe Experience Manager Forms software.
Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Index released
This week, cloud software vendor Nutanix released its fifth annual Enterprise Cloud Index report, which revealed that the majority (60 per cent) of IT teams leverage more than one IT infrastructure, a trend that’s expected to intensify in the future, but struggle with visibility of data across environments, with only 40 per cent reporting complete visibility into where their data resides. In fact, it said that 94 per cent indicated that they’d benefit from having a single place to manage applications and data across diverse environments.
It also indicated that cloud cost control is a top IT management challenge, cited by 85 per cent of respondents, and with 34 per cent rating it a “significant” challenge. Specifically, application migration across clouds is currently a pain point for organizations, with 86 per cent of respondents agreeing that moving applications among environments can be complex and costly. Additionally, nearly half of respondents (46 per cent) plan to repatriate some applications to on-premises datacentres to mitigate cloud costs in the year ahead.
Another key finding was that nearly all (92 per cent) of respondents agree that sustainability is more important to their organization than it was a year ago. This shift in priorities is primarily driven by corporate Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) initiatives (63 per cent), supply chain disruptions (59 per cent), and customers’ purchasing decisions (48 per cent).
Microsoft to block traffic from unpatched Exchange servers
Microsoft has announced that it plans to first throttle, and then block, email sent to Exchange Online from unpatched and out of support Exchange servers. It says that it is enabling a transport-based enforcement system in Exchange Online that has three primary functions: reporting, throttling, and blocking. The system is designed to alert an admin about unsupported or unpatched Exchange servers in their on-premises environment that need remediation (upgrading or patching). The system also has throttling and blocking capabilities, so if a server is not remediated, mail flow from that server will be throttled (delayed) and eventually blocked.
“Microsoft uses the Zero Trust security model for its cloud services, which requires connecting devices and servers to be provably healthy and managed. Servers that are unsupported or remain unpatched are persistently vulnerable and cannot be trusted, and therefore email messages sent from them cannot be trusted. Persistently vulnerable servers significantly increase the risk of security breaches, malware, hacking, data exfiltration, and other attacks,” the company said in its announcement. It is starting with Exchange 2007 and will incrementally add other versions to the scheme. The announcement includes a table detailing how the throttling and blocking will proceed.
Aryaka announces managed SD-WAN/SASE for SMEs
This week, unified SASE solutions provider Aryaka announced enhanced SD-WAN and SASE (secure access service edge) offerings specifically designed to meet the needs of small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). With entry pricing of under US$150/site, Aryaka delivers a set of managed service capabilities, including application optimization, network security, multi-cloud connectivity, and cloud-based observability and control, all supported by lifecycle services management.
“Our tailored offerings provide a great revenue opportunity for our valued partners to expand into more markets and verticals. … We strongly believe this is a win-win-win for SMEs, channel partners and us,” said the company’s channel chief, Craig Patterson.
