20 Hot Products And Services Solution Providers Need To Know

Next-Gen Solutions

The best and the brightest vendors and solution providers came out in full force this week to The Channel Company's NexGen 2018 Conference and Expo in Anaheim, Calif., to share their insight and network with their peers.

CRN was on the scene at NexGen to round up some the hottest products on display. From security to cloud and much more, here are 20 forward-thinking offerings that solution providers should consider adding to their technology stacks.

8x8 VoIP Portfolio

Business VoIP provider 8x8 has gotten serious about its channel strategy. The San Jose, Calif.-based company is doing about 50 percent of its business through the channel today, and it really wants to get to 90 percent.

Solution providers interested in voice hould take a look at 8x8's portfolio of VoIP and collaboration products, including its contact center offerings. 8x8 in November acquired open-source videoconferencing provider Jitsi, and it has made investments in artificial intelligence and machine-learning technology via acquisition recently to bolster its product suite.

ADT Cybersecurity

ADT, a company best known for its home security offerings, has been in the cybersecurity business for eight years.

The company came to NexGen armed with its ADT IQ Platform, an offering that MSPs and end customers can use to take action on their security data. IQ Platform doesn’t require any hardware or agents, so it’s an easy sell for MSPs to make, the Boca Raton, Fla.-based company said. The offering pulls in information from flow data, which can detect anomalies and send that information to the MSP monitoring the customer's environment, or the end customer directly.

AppRiver

Email is among the most popular vectors of cyberattacks directed at small businesses.

AppRiver, Gulf Breeze, Fla., shared with solution providers at NexGen how its offering prevents hackers from executing successful phishing attacks, introducing ransomware onto their systems, and exposes conversation hacking.

Axcient's Rebranding

Axcient used NexGen to make sure MSPs know that the company, which last year merged with fellow data protection technology developer eFolder, is now known by the Axcient brand.

Kaitlyn Langer, community marketing manager for Denver-based Axcient, told CRN the company is also introducing its new Axcient Business Availability suite to its MSP partners. The suite includes applications that address business continuity, cloud-enabled file services, Office 365 data protection, VMware cloud data protection, and Axcient's own cloud that provides MSPs with an off-site protection capability, Langer said.

Blancco Disk Erasure

Blancco develops software that erases data on storage devices and provides an audit trail to prove that the data was indeed removed, said Christina Walker, global director of channel sales and programs for the Alpharetta, Ga.-based company. Blancco, working through a network of third-party vendors and channel partners, accounts for about 90 percent of the worldwide market for disk erasure as part of ITAD, or IT asset disposition, Walker told CRN.

Blancco is unique in that it not only can erase a complete disk and provide an audit trail, but also can erase specific files, Walker said. "We do end-of-life data," she said. "We can erase specific data points, and certify they are erased, but not impact the operating system or the rest of the data."

Buffalo Data Recovery

Buffalo Americas, Austin, Texas, used its presence at NexGen to tell solution providers about its new Buffalo Data Recovery service, as well has hold its annual giveaway of "ugly" Christmas sweaters and a copy of the lamp featured in the movie "A Christmas Story."

Bob Call, senior channel account manager (r.), said Buffalo Data Recovery, introduced in November, lets Buffalo customers who experience data loss or corruption send the device to Buffalo, which will then provide a quote to recover the data. If the customer accepts the quote, the data is recovered and the device sent back. If the customer does not accept the quote, the vendor will return the device at no charge, Call told CRN. Customers who have already used the service have typically just sent the impacted disk, he said.

Data corruption is not something customers will often experience, said Mark Green, Buffalo's inside channel account manager (l.). "With RAID, if you get to the point where data is corrupted, you probably ignored an issue too long," Green told CRN. "If a customer sees a red light flashing or hears strange noises, he should be calling us or our partner for help."

ConnectWise Emphasis On Security

Topher Barrow, product marketing manager at ConnectWise, the Tampa Bay, Fla., based professional services automation technology provider, said his company was touting the importance of security as a part of MSPs' offerings. The emphasis on security by ConnectWise comes in the wake of its acquisition early this month of security solution provider Sienna Group and its October investment in threat intelligence tool developer Perch Security, Barrow told CRN.

"We're really trying to get the end-to-end look at how security should be handled," he said.

Datto's Networking Push

Datto has over time transformed itself into a provider of networking technology thanks to its 2017 acquisition of Open Mesh, as well as into a leading professional services automation provider with its 2017 acquisition of Autotask, said Jason Pryce, sales engineer for business development at the Norwalk, Conn.-based company. "We provide MSPs with one throat to choke, and one billing process," Pryce told CRN. "We're always innovating."

Pryce said Datto was using NexGen as a way to get the message out to MSPs that the company wants to be a force in the networking market and has seen a lot of growth in its networking business since the Open Mesh acquisition.

EdgeWave Post Email Delivery Offering

San Diego-based security provider EdgeWave's offering can help MSPs monitor and send suspicious messages back to EdgeWave for further review. The offering gives MSPs direct access into inboxes, and if a malicious message is removed, users are notified. Once EdgeWave reviews the message through its threat detection system, it is either either released back to the user or quarantined.

If a malicious message is detected, the offering lets MSPs scan other employee inboxes to remove the threat before its accidentally opened. The offering also integrates with any third-party pre-delivery protection system that MSPs have in place today.

Egenera

Egenera presented MSPs with an alternative to the major public cloud platforms with its Xterity Cloud Services product.

The Boxborough, Mass.-based company is looking to bring aboard solution providers with expertise serving small and midsize businesses with a managed private cloud that fits the needs of small offices.

Fortinet

Fortinet's solutions for managed security service providers were on display at NexGen, including its cloud-based Fortinet Security Fabric.

The cloud access security broker solution offers public cloud integrations and SD-WAN capabilities.

Fortinet, Sunnyvale, Calif., also discussed with MSSPs attending NexGen its FortiGuard threat intelligence service.

ID Agent's Dark Web ID

Dark web monitoring and identity theft provider ID Agent is a 100 percent channel-focused company that has created a Software-as-a-Service alerting platform, Dark Web ID, that MSPs can use to scan the dark web on behalf of their clients.

Dark Web ID is a multitenant solution that MSPs can brand that displays all the customers they are monitoring in one interface. The offering pulls in emails, passwords and personally identifiable information that may have landed on the dark web. It can indicate which category of information, such as Social Security numbers and dates of birth, were exposed. Dark Web ID also lets businesses monitor up to five personal email addresses —mostly for C-level executives—that means an extra level of protection for them and more "stickiness" for the MSP, according to the Bowie, Md.-based company.

IntelePeer's New CPaaS Features

Cloud communications provider IntelePeer talked to partners at NexGen about its Atmosphere Communications Platform as a Service applications.

Specifically, the San Mateo, Calif.-based provider highlighted several new features of the Atmosphere portfolio, including Smartflows, which lets partners and end users build custom, integrated channel communications workflows; Engage, a capability for creating and managing omni-channel campaigns with pre-built templates; and Insights, which lets users make better business decisions through enriched customer interaction data.

Intermedia Unite

UCaaS provider Intermedia took to NexGen to showcase its unified communications platform, Unite.

The Unite platform is a business-class, cloud-based phone system that includes voice, videoconferencing, screen sharing, disaster recovery and a fully integrated mobile client. Mountain View, Calif.-based Intermedia, a channel-focused player, strives to make partnering as easy as possible with two different selling models; an agent model, and a white-labeled model for MSPs.

Parallels

The Bellevue, Wash.-based vendor, which specializes in cross-platform operating system virtualization, talked about its Parallels Service Provider Program with potential partners looking to capitalize on the shift from on-premises to the cloud.

On display was the Parallels Remote Application Server for streamlining application delivery to remote users.

Pax8's Security Push

Ryan Walsh, chief channel officer at Pax8, a Greenwood Village, Colo.-based developer of a platform for easily on-boarding new MSP customers and services, said his company is making a big push on the security side of the business.

"Security is a good place to get started when building a stack of technologies for customers," Walsh told CRN. "It's a low-hanging fruit. When you look at what products the market is adopting, after Office 365 security is number one."

Security should provide MSPs with an easy way to offer a layered defense to clients, Walsh said. He said Pax8's distribution platform now includes companies like Ironscales, a Tel Aviv, Israel-based provider of what he called the only technology that looks for phishing attacks via emails after the emails have been stored. It uses artificial intelligence and crowd sourcing so that if an email is classified as a phishing attack, it can actually go back into the email system, find every instance of an end user who received that email, and clean it out, he said.

SparkCognition

SparkCognition highlighted for MSPs attending NexGen its artificial intelligence-based endpoint protection product, DeepArmor, which detects advanced threats without performance impact.

The Austin, Texas-based company launched its partner program for MSPs earlier this year, providing them with sales enablement resources, staff support, sales incentives, and integrations with tools for remote monitoring and management and professional services automation.

StorageCraft Expands Data Protection

A new line of data protection software products and hardware appliances was featured at the StorageCraft Technology booth. Lee Bender, senior director of business development for the Draper, Utah-based vendor, showed CRN the company's new product line, introduced just a few months ago. That line consists of ShadowXafe, a data protection software offering for protecting data on physical and cloud environments, and OneXafe, a hardware appliance for data protection. ShadowXafe and OneXafe can also be combined into a converged platform managed by StorageCraft's OneSystem software, Bender said.

Looking forward, StorageCraft is planning to make its data protection technology more MSP-friendly, as well as expand from its VMware focus to Microsoft Hyper-V, he said.

Wasabi's First Formal Channel Program

Wasabi Technologies is a Boston-based developer of cloud-based data management technology it says can store customers' data in its cloud six times faster than can be done with Amazon S3 while charging only one-fifth of S3's price. At NexGen, Jennifer Kula, vice president of alliances and channels (r.), and Laurie Mitchel, senior director of partner marketing, introduced MSPs to Wasabi’s first formal channel program,.

The new program includes specific benefits for MSPs who either purchase Wasabi via distributors or direct from the vendor, as well as for referral partners, Kula told CRN. The program also gives partners the option of offering the technology with the Wasabi brand or on a private-label basis, she said.

"We are looking forward to making the channel a real engine to help us grow," she said.

Webroot

Webroot, Broomfield, Colo., showcased at NexGen how MSPs could take advantage of its portfolio of cybersecurity tools to protect customers from the proliferating number of rapidly evolving cyberthreats they face.

Those Webroot offerings span endpoint protection, DNS protection with content and URL filtering, and its BrightCloud threat intelligence platform.