Item 1:
Deloitte acquired most of the assets of Day1 Solutions Inc., a cloud consulting firm to provide deeper cloud expertise. CIO Magazine explains, "Deloitte needs Day1 for the same reason Accenture needs Genfour, Genpact needs Rage Frameworks and Infosys needs Panaya. The problem for Deloitte and for every traditional services company is that their clients do not believe they have the digital skills to lead the digital transformation journey the clients want their business to undertake."
Think about that yourself. Do you provide proof of your digital chops to your clients? Would they be comfortable coming to you for cloud migration plans or strategy or advice?
Item 2:
The Lookout Breach Report: "With over 1.45 billion compromised accounts, emails, social security numbers, dates of birth, and other data types, March was the biggest month for exposed data this year." Yes Cyber-Security is indeed needed. I personally am tired of all my data being hacked from companies that don't protect it.
A 451 Research survey on Security Pain Points and Concerns showed that "User Behavior is a top concern across companies of all sizes - while other issues such as Endpoint Security present a bigger problem for smaller companies. In contrast, Cloud Security and Data Loss/Theft pose a greater threat for very large organizations."
Item 3 is SD-WAN announcements
Coredial and Cincinnati Bell are the latest Velocloud wins. I find it funny that Zero Outages re-branded as the first SD-WAN company at their mostly unmanned booth.
Windstream is wholesaling SD-WAN now. Probably Velocloud. At this rate SD-WAN is already a commodity and Cisco/ADTRAN need to be afraid. The CPE isn't coming from them any more. It isn't being distributed by Tech Data either!
Westcon-Comstor Adds Viptela's SD-WAN Portfolio
Item 4: M&A:
After buying Hunt Telecom and Uniti Fiber scoops up pure-play fiber company, Southern Light to move itself away from just being dependent on Windstream. UNITI also bought Tower Cloud and PEG. Maybe Alpheus or FiberLight will be next.
Item 5: More M&A:
Broadvoice bought a company to add in analytics and user experience. "XBP's core strengths is in deep reporting and analytics integration, enabling customers to better understand user behavior. For example, tools like Advertising Analytics allow users to measure and follow through on outreach campaigns, from local to nationwide. Other tools like voice recording on-demand and voice-to-text conversion provide solid, searchable data that enhance successful client relationships."
