SupportBots launched a free trial period in February so MSPs can test them and provide feedback. For now, their main functionality is booking customers with available technicians, but the plan is to eventually do much more than that.
The addition of cloud visibility into the Managed Detection and Response service responds to the user vulnerability to issues like phishing and data exfiltration, and presents a strong new opportunity for partners.
Salesforce looks to improve its support of partners, as it looks to grow its consultant base tenfold over the next several years to meet projected demand.
The new offering complements Masergy’s established Unified Communication as a Service solution, and may also prompt some customers using that solution to switch to this one.
Sage sees the new offering, which is likely to be sold primarily, though not exclusively for the X3 platform, as a strong opportunity for channel partners.
In the last year, Montreal-based Nubik has both been deepening its relationship with Salesforce, and aggressively expanding into new markets.
Stantive, which had a long relationship with Salesforce as a customer before becoming a business partner during the past decade, is now building out its own channel for its CMS solution and seeing strong results.
Salesforce has implemented new programmatic initiatives for partners, including the final architect solutions and Salesforce DX. The big change, updating the company’s infrastructure to effectively serve its growing army of partners, is underway, but is a long term project.
Salesforce is now calling its ISV partners App Innovation partners, and explained in some detail why new conceptions of customer value make the distinction important.
The new enhancements come from the internal work of Salesforce Einstein, on the AI side, and the recent acquisition of collaboration vendor Quip.
Sage continued on the more channel-friendly course laid down last year after Stephen Kelly took over as CEO, and while the strategy itself is not new, the company believes it made some major steps this year towards meeting its goals.
At Sage Summit, Sage has outlined to partners a much more detailed roadmap than it has ever done before, in order to get the partners to understand fully where things are going, to buy into the changes, and engage closely with Sage on them.
The on-prem specialist announces it will make a belated entry into the cloud backup space, to allow existing partners to get both their on-prem and cloud products from a single vendor, and to expand their partner base among MSPs.
BlackBerry leverages the WatchDox security technology it acquired last year into three related offerings, BlackBerry Email Protector, BlackBerry for Salesforce, and an enhanced Outlook plug-in for version management in collaboration.
New partner initiatives the company is working on include deepening technical and product training in their face-to-face training programs, and developing the concept of being trusted advisors together with partners to their joint clients.
Intel Security’s channel chief tells partners the company will focus incentives around its new platform approach, winning new customers and expanding business with existing customers.
Significant enhancements to Sales Cloud and a new field Service component for Service Cloud will be available in new Lightning versions available this spring, in Salesforce’s second quarter.
New Salesforce certifications are scheduled for March and April, while both the self-service Trailhead modules and the face-to-face Partner Fast Forward continue to progress to schedule.
Sage sees the tighter integration with Microsoft platform as good news for Sage partners, and for Microsoft partners looking to benefit from Sage Live’s innovation.
Salesforce introduced many exciting new solutions at Dreamforce, but for specifically partner-focused announcements, the big ones were all about training. And there were a lot of them.
