The content team at the MSP Summit site tracks stories of interest to the managed services provider community. Anyone selling managed services or partnering with MSPs will want to know about these developing stories or catch up on stories they have missed. With the help of ChatGPT, Claude, and AI tools developed by our parent company Informa, we're tracking top stories based on web traffic, mentions, impressions, reposts, and social media engagement. All links are current as of Feb. 23.
Kaseya SVP to MSPs: Stop Thinking Like a Tech Firm
Kaseya SVP Greg Jones says MSPs must prioritize sales and marketing over technical identity — or risk being left behind as margins shrink and competition grows. Speaking at the vendor’s TruPeer EMEA event in London, Jones said sales and marketing continue to rank as one of the top challenges for MSPs. That’s mainly because most MSPs have technical backgrounds and continue to see themselves primarily as tech firms, a mindset that he believes is limiting their ability to scale. Read about it on Channel Dive.
Nvidia and Meta Expand GPU Partnership with Millions of AI Chips
Nvidia and Meta expanded their multiyear, multigenerational partnership as Nvidia will provide the social media giant with millions of its Blackwell and Rubin graphics processing units (GPUs), as well as its central processing units (CPUs) and networking offerings. The plan calls for Meta to use the products within its data centers for both training and running AI models. Read the Yahoo Finance story.
AWS Kiro 'User Error' Reflects Common AI Coding Review Gap
AWS Kiro was at the center of an eyebrow-raising report last week as it advanced its AI coding features. The agentic IDE, which emerged last year as a significant alternative to GitHub agents with specification-driven development, bolstered its support for existing applications with new features Feb. 18. Late the next day, the Financial Times published a report citing multiple anonymous company sources that internal users of AWS Kiro and Amazon Q had triggered at least two outages in production services over the last few months. TechTarget reported on the reactions.
Pure Storage Becomes Everpure, Acquires 1touch
In a move that signals the changing role of storage and data in today’s IT world, Pure Storage rebranded as Everpure. Pure Storage was a pioneer in solid-state storage but like many storage companies it has shifted its emphasis to data management. Everpure CEO Charlie Giancarlo said “our new identity represents our evolution from redefining storage to rethinking data management.” Everpure also has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire data intelligence and orchestration company 1touch that helps customers gain a unified view of its information. Read the Everpure press release.
SolarWinds Updates Partner Program with New Rewards, Training, and Marketing Tools
Under a revitalized partner program, SolarWinds will add sales incentives to its partner tiers that are based on channel-initiated growth and other metrics. SolarWinds is also creating a "rewards center" in North America as a pilot program to allow partner sellers to accrue points toward rewards, including cash and prizes. Read the ChannelE2E story.
Oracle Drops a Truckload of CX-Centric Generative AI Agents
Oracle released a bevy of AI agents for CX users in marketing, sales and service. Adding to a slew of agents Oracle released last fall, the latest release includes marketing agents such as Program Planning Agent, which defines the goals, audience, and core narratives for a campaign. The Program Brief Agent summarizes a potential campaign's objectives, target audiences, messages, content requirements and recommended tactics. The Buying Group Agent helps marketers more efficiently target buying groups, a common scenario in B2B settings -- where coordinated sales teams sell to a customer's buying team. Read the TechTarget story.
Data Sovereignty No Longer Just a Legal Concern
Data sovereignty has moved from solely a legal issue for customers to a wider opportunity that the channel can tap into as demand continues to increase. Geopolitical issues, concerns around the location of data from a legal and security perspective, and the pressure to provide increased access to AI tools have combined to make sovereignty one of the key issues in the cloud world. OVHcloud has been charting the changing dynamics for its partners and has seen an increased number reacting to customer demand for a sovereign solution. Read the Computer Weekly Microscope story.
Palo Alto Networks Shrugs off AI Worries Amid ‘Platformization’ Push
Palo Alto Networks is leaning on AI to bolster its defensive capabilities and drive growth in its core business and evolving partner ecosystem. Palo Alto made several key moves to shore up its position in just the last three months, completing its acquisition of identity management platform CyberArk for an estimated $25 billion, shelling out $3.35 billion for observability platform Chronosphere and integrating its Prisma AIRS AI security platform with IBM, Salesforce and several other AI agent vendors. It also revamped its partner program this month to “reward partners who deliver platform-centric security outcomes.” Read the Channel Dive story on Palo Alto’s platformization push.
Cisco Warns of AI’s Insecure ‘Connective Tissue’
In a new cloud security report, Cisco claimed the vulnerability of the “connective tissue” of the AI ecosystem — the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and other tools that let AI agents communicate — “has created a vast and often unmonitored attack surface” that makes it easier for hackers to use AI to launch cyberattacks. Cisco encouraged businesses to establish MCP security best practices, including closely monitoring AI agents’ activities and using APIs that offer AI models only the privileges they require. Read the Channel Dive story.