Nuzoo week in review

Channels Ecosystem Landscape report

We saw this week that the number of companies offering solutions that enable brands to more effectively manage their channel ecosystems continues to grow.

In its first Channels Ecosystem Landscape report, Canalys lists 223 different companies with combined annual sales of $3.9 billion.

The market for channel ecosystem enabling products is expected to continue to rise, wrote Jay McBain, Canalys’s chief analyst – channels, partnerships & ecosystems. Canalys expects the channel software market will reach $8.9 billion in revenue by 2027. The research currently excludes China, India, and parts of SE Asia as Canalys continues to examine the markets and to apply its global research methodology, the company said.

In his last annual review of the Channel Software Tech Stack, McBain counted 183 companies offering channel programme supporting solutions.

Cohesity’s new CEO

Data management company Cohesity has appointed Sanjay Poonen as its new CEO and president. He will also be joining the company’s Board of Directors.

In his previous role as chief operations officer (COO) at VMware, Poonen helped double the company’s revenue from US$6 billion to US$12 billion and coordinated key partnerships with Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, Google and Oracle. In addition, he led the company’s security and end-user computing businesses and spearheaded the acquisition of AirWatch and Carbon Black. As the president of SAP, Poonen oversaw SAP’s Applications, Industries and Platforms, and helped double revenue from US$10 billion to US$20 billion, reported Channel Daily News.

For Mohit Aron, the former CEO and now founder and chief technology and product officer of Cohesity, the appointment of Poonen, with his experience at VMware, is an opportunity to transform the data management industry, “offering new value in security, simplicity, scale, efficiency, and much more.”

Pax 8’s acquisition

Cloud marketplace provider Pax8 is buying Umbrellar, a Microsoft cloud solutions provider. Umbrellar offers cloud managed services, migration, advisory services and cloud procurement for more than 1,000 New Zealand businesses.

The acquisition enables Pax8 to expand to New Zealand. This empowers its fast-growing partner base to accelerate digital transformation locally and globally, said Channel Futures.

“As we continue to expand into the APAC region, the Umbrellar acquisition will be key to our growth in the New Zealand market,” said Pax8 CEO, John Street. “Together, our technology, people and resources will enable businesses in the APAC region to modernize, digitally transform and fuel growth with cloud solutions.”

Headquartered in Auckland, New Zealand, Umbrellar’s mission is to deliver the “technology for tomorrow’s world” to its partners. It does that through professional services and its procurement platform. The company was named Microsoft NZ Partner of the Year in 2019.

Universities’ cyber vulnerabilities

Proofpoint has released new research that has found that the top universities in Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom are lagging on basic cybersecurity measures, subjecting students, staff and stakeholders to higher risks of email-based impersonation attacks.

Proofpoint’s research found that 97 percent of the top ten universities across each country are not taking appropriate measures to proactively block attackers from spoofing their email domains, increasing the risk of email fraud. According to the analysis, universities in the United States are most at risk with the poorest levels of protection, followed by the United Kingdom, then Australia.

“Higher education institutions hold masses of sensitive personal and financial data, perhaps more so than any industry outside healthcare," says Steve Moros, senior director, Advanced Technology Group, Asia Pacific and Japan at Proofpoint.

“This, unfortunately, makes these institutions a highly attractive target for cyber criminals. The pandemic and rapid shift to remote learning has further heightened the cybersecurity challenges for tertiary education institutions and opened them up to significant risks from malicious email-based cyberattacks, such as phishing,” he said.

You can see all the findings at Channel Life Australia.