The highlight of the multiple product announcement is the upgrading of the Cisco Mobility Express management software, to deliver true enterprise functionality at a small business price point.
The new series, a complete redesign rather than an upgrade of the series it replaces, is also priced at around half what similar switches used to go for, which Zyxel thinks will help it with small business customers.
HPE has announced the first major series of enhancements to the SMB-focused StoreVirtual 3200, which bring it up to the same capabilities of StoreVirtual systems higher in the market, and will make it much more attractive to partners.
Growth was good pretty much across all D&H segments, although notebooks, collaboration and video conference solutions, systems components, and even printers, all did exceptionally well.
Attendance at the D&H Toronto event was up significantly this year among both vendors and resellers, with the show floor having a high-number of gaming-focused companies pitching VARs for their business.
HPE’s strategy with its new offerings is to offer strong featured hybrid-flash and software-defined offerings to the entry level at a sub-$10k price where they haven’t played before.
Security-as-a-service provider My Digital Shield recently launched an assurance program to cover its small business customers in the event of a breach, with a major mobility initiative likely the next to roll out.
While its acquisition by fellow Czech-based security vendor Avast approaches, AVG continues business as usual, completing the final phase of its North American distribution strategy that was first announced months before the acquisition. The deal will also apply in Canada, but has not yet been implemented here.
SAP’s channel-focused product for the lower part of the SMB market brings in new functionality from the HANA platform to add the ability to forecast product demand.
The HPE ProLiant Easy Connect Managed Hybrid solution is a subscription based offering for small businesses and ROBO environments. But while American partners get access to it in a couple weeks, Canadian ones will have to wait a while – like until Q4.
Linksys continues a strategy it began by expanding captive portal from its flagship product to its entire wireless line, to beef up the entire portfolio at a time when small business demand for wireless is strong.
While Kaspersky is emphasizing the enterprise in its strategic objectives this year, it is also providing more segmented assistance to partners focusing on different parts of the market. This includes a new specialization which will see small business leads limited to partners who have secured it.
The addition of SSD support to the HPE MSA 1040 also enables software enhancements which have been available on the flagship MSA 2040, and removes much of the feature gap between the two models.
London, Ontario-based Tribe Medical Group moved to SAP Business One, version for SAP HANA last year, and have found its simplicity critical in helping them sell, keep staff, and control complexity.
Intuit’s 2015 Small Business App Study also finds Canadians are spending more on software to run their businesses than Americans, and plan to boost this in the future.
In what Sage is styling the first new approach to accounting since the invention of double-entry bookkeeping, Sage Live, which was developed in partnership with Salesforce and announced this spring, has now, indeed, gone Live. The catch is that it’s not live yet in Canada, but should be, fairly soon
Quietly launched last November to Dell’s top MSP partners, Dell is now looking to broaden out its turnkey, vertically focused CloudRunner, which is suitable for both experienced and newer MSPs.
Available to the Canadian channel through BlueStar, the new WindFall Duo provides hardware support for the new dual display checkouts which have begun to hit the market.
The new IT Essentials Toolkit, which handles virtualization, disk management and system optimization for servers and workstations, is a product many Paragon partners use themselves, but now it is also packaged in a SKU they can sell to their own customers.
At Citrix Synergy, Dell also announced new versions of two related software solutions, Dell Wyse Device Manager 5.5 and Foglight for Virtualization 8.2.
