Vivanti debuts as a bootstrapped cloud consultancy, while SADA and Unisys acquire cloud services firms to broaden their portfolios; more IT channel news.
The cloud professional services sector this week saw the debut of a privately funded company as well as acquisitions targeting international expansion and application modernization services.
Vivanti, a cloud consultancy with headquarters in New York, has opened its doors with the financial backing of Tony Nicol, who sold his previous consulting firm, Servian, to global integrator Cognizant in April 2021. Servian, based in Sydney, pursued cloud, data analytics, AI, digital services and experience design.
Tony Nicol
Vivanti will follow a similar path, focusing on cloud data services, DevOps, AI, digital customer engagement, analytics and data management. The company offers consulting and managed services on cloud platforms including Snowflake, HashiCorp, Google Cloud, AWS, Azure and IBM Cloud.
The company's executive team includes Nicol, who is chairman; Mike Walker, founding partner and CEO; and James Hunt, founding member and principal consultant. The company aims to become a 1,000-person network of consultants.
"We will grow through a combination of aggressive hiring campaigns and acquisitions," said Lachlan James, chief marketing officer at Vivanti.
In acquisition news, SADA, a business and technology consultancy based in Los Angeles, purchased ByteWave Digital, a Google Cloud Premier Partner with operations in India. ByteWave is the first acquisition in SADA's 21-year history.
The acquired firm will be renamed SADA India and operate as a wholly owned subsidiary. SADA's other international businesses include a Global Delivery Center in Yerevan, Armenia, and wholly owned subsidiaries in Canada and Ireland.
SADA's headquarters office will absorb ByteWave's U.S. office in Orange County, Calif., a SADA spokesman said.
Unisys Corp., meanwhile, has acquired CompuGain, a Herndon, Va., cloud services company. The $87.3 million transaction provides Unisys with resources in application modernization, cloud-native agile application development and cloud data management. CompuGain employs more than 400 engineers, cloud architects and developers.
The acquired firm generated $58 million in revenue for the 12-month period ended Sept. 30, 2021, a 12% year-over-year increase. CompuGain is an AWS Advanced Consulting Partner.
We will grow through a combination of aggressive hiring campaigns and acquisitions.
Lachlan JamesChief marketing officer, Vivanti
EY to build $1B ServiceNow business
EY aims to create a $1 billion business with ServiceNow by 2025 under an expanded relationship with the SaaS provider. The alliance will develop offerings for finance and tax services as well as other enterprise operations, simplifying reporting, documenting and approval processes, the company said.
Paul Webb, EY global alliance leader for ServiceNow, said the companies will address traditional back-office workflows, which often involve multiple technologies, myriad documentation and duplicative information and tasks.
EY plans to use ServiceNow Customer Workflows and Creator Workflows to automate its managed services for tax outsourcing, payroll outsourcing and wealth management. The automated workflows will replace manually intensive, repetitive activities and provide easy-to-use user interfaces, Webb said. ServiceNow partners, in general, seek to improve customers' digital workflows through the company's SaaS platform.
In addition, EY said it will train neurodivergent people for technology roles such as developers, testing analysts and consultants, establishing a ServiceNow Neurodiversity Delivery Center.
Mixed reviews for MSSPs
A Mitre Engenuity survey has good news and bad news for managed security services providers.
On the plus side, 68% of the IT security professionals surveyed said they use MSSPs and managed detection and response (MDR) providers to fill security gaps. Businesses, however, seem to place more trust in their own security personnel. Seventy-eight percent of the respondents expressed confidence in their in-house security operations centers, while 53% said they had confidence in the people staffing service providers.
Mitre Engenuity is a technology foundation and subsidiary of Mitre Corp., a research and development organization with operations in McLean, Va., and Bedford, Mass. Mitre Engenuity commissioned Cybersecurity Insiders to conduct the MSSP survey.
Other news
Kyndryl, a managed infrastructure services provider in New York, signed customer deals with Etihad Airways and Viewpointe, a content services technology provider. For Etihad, Kyndryl will select cloud platforms to modernize the airline's IT infrastructure. The multi-year agreement's scope also includes workload migration and management. The Viewpointe deal, also a multi-year arrangement, will involve migrating the company's private cloud to Microsoft Azure. Kyndryl tapped Microsoft as its first cloud partner shortly after spinning out of IBM in November 2021. The company also has a strategic partnership with Google Cloud.
Accenture has acquired Zestgroup, a services firm in the Netherlands that focuses on net carbon-zero projects and procurement of renewables. The deal is part of a broader trend of professional services companies developing sustainability consulting services.
Authomize, an authorization security management vendor in Tel Aviv, Israel, launched a partner ecosystem program. The Authomize Together program works with companies such as solution providers, MSPs, technology partners and systems integrators. The company will initially support North American partners but will expand into additional geographies in 2022. Program features include training, support and sales tools.
Qumu, an enterprise video technology provider in Minneapolis, launched a channel program for reseller, technology alliance and referral partners. The program offers sales support, a partner portal and training, among other components. Qumu's partners include GovSmart and TD Synnex.
D&H Distributing is partnering with solution provider World Wide Technology. The companies have been collaborating during the pandemic, delivering more than 100,000 mobile computing devices to K-12 market.
Ingram Micro has inked a distribution agreement with PTC Inc., which supplies industrial IoT, augmented reality, product lifecycle management and CAD products.
RSM US, an audit, tax and consulting services firm in Chicago, has joined KnowledgeLake's partner program. The arrangement lets RSM tap KnowledgeLake's document classification and data extraction tools for use with public sector organizations and manufacturing companies.
AllCloud, a cloud professional services provider in Denver, has gained Snowflake's premier partner status. AllCloud acquired Snowflake and AWS skills in its July 2021 purchase of Integress, a data analytics company.
Softchoice, an MSP in Toronto, has obtained the Cisco Advanced Customer Experience specialization. The company is one of two Cisco partners in North America to have this specialization in the U.S. and Canada, according to Softchoice. Cisco unveiled its Customer Experience specialization in 2018 to recognize partners shifting from reselling to software and services.
BeyondTrust, a privileged access management company in Atlanta, has appointed Rob Spee as senior vice president of global channels. He joined the company from OutSystems, where he was regional vice president of Americas Channels.
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Tony Nicol
