CDN Morning Briefing, September 14, 2020 – Nutanix news, NVIDIA acquires ARM, Reddit talks restaurant IT

To keep up with the firehose of news and press releases, we’ve decided to deliver some extra channel news to you on the side. Some of it is an extension of our own reporting on the channel that didn’t make its way into a story, while others might be content we’ve bookmarked and thought of sharing with you. We’re doing a similar thing at IT World Canada –check it out here. Missed last week’s CDN Morning Briefing? Read it here. 




What you need to know right now

It’s what you need to know right now in the world of IT and tech – ’nuff said. (Often taken with a side of Hashtag Trending and Cyber Security Today)

 

A story about a CEO keeping the office open while asking employees to stay home catches fire, back to school challenges are aplenty, and Amazon gets caught inflating prices during the pandemic.

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Today’s podcast offers advice to firms on planning for cyber attacks, reports on the failings of cybersecurity companies, describes the ransomware attack on Artech and warns that email bomb threats have returned

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And the winner is …

The TikTok sweepstakes might be over. Oracle is set to become TikTok’s primary tech partner in the U.S., a source told the Wall Street Journal. It’s worth noting that back in April, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison told Forbes that President Trump has his support. “I don’t think he’s the devil—I support him and want him to do well.”  [Wall Street Journal]

Microsoft had this to say about the decision:

“We are confident our proposal would have been good for TikTok’s users, while protecting national security interests. To do this, we would have made significant changes to ensure the service met the highest standards for security, privacy, online safety, and combatting disinformation, and we made these principles clear in our August statement. We look forward to seeing how the service evolves in these important areas.”

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NVIDIA to acquire ARM

NVIDIA says it plans to acquire U.K. tech giant ARM from Softbank for $40 billion. The British company’s intellectual property helps power mobile device processors for companies including Apple, Samsung, and Qualcomm. In a Sept. 13 press release, Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA said the benefits of the acquisition are far-reaching.

“AI is the most powerful technology force of our time and has launched a new wave of computing. In the years ahead, trillions of computers running AI will create a new internet-of-things that is thousands of times larger than today’s internet-of-people. Our combination will create a company fabulously positioned for the age of AI.

“Simon Segars and his team at Arm have built an extraordinary company that is contributing to nearly every technology market in the world. Uniting NVIDIA’s AI computing capabilities with the vast ecosystem of Arm’s CPU, we can advance computing from the cloud, smartphones, PCs, self-driving cars and robotics, to edge IoT, and expand AI computing to every corner of the globe.

“This combination has tremendous benefits for both companies, our customers, and the industry. For Arm’s ecosystem, the combination will turbocharge Arm’s R&D capacity and expand its IP portfolio with NVIDIA’s world-leading GPU and AI technology.

“Arm will remain headquartered in Cambridge. We will expand on this great site and build a world-class AI research facility, supporting developments in healthcare, life sciences, robotics, self-driving cars and other fields. And, to attract researchers and scientists from the U.K. and around the world to conduct groundbreaking work, NVIDIA will build a state-of-the-art AI supercomputer, powered by Arm CPUs. Arm Cambridge will be a world-class technology center.”

Softbank is expected to maintain a less than 10 per cent ownership stake in NVIDIA.

Nvidia once had big ambitions to make CPUs for phones – it looks like this acquisition could change that. But NVIDIA’s primary focus will likely be the data centre.



In case you missed it

The recent channel news that we maybe didn’t get to yet, or it’s the news we’ve reported on and feel is worth resurfacing. Sometimes we’ll also feature awesome stories from other publications.

 

Nutanix, Microsoft partner around hybrid solution

On the heels of a recent partnership with AWS that made Nutanix Clusters available on a public cloud platform for the first time, Nutanix announced a partnership with Microsoft designed to emphasize the importance of its focus on hybrid cloud infrastructure. The Microsoft partnership will see Nutanix Clusters become available on Azure and the development of Nutanix-ready nodes on Azure to support Nutanix Clusters and services. Customers will also be able to deploy and manage Azure instances from Nutanix’s management interface.

Microsoft Azure customers will be able to subscribe to Nutanix Clusters from the Azure marketplace, allowing them to utilize their existing Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment (MACC) to purchase both Nutanix software and Azure Nutanix-Ready nodes. Nutanix customers will also be able to port their existing licenses to Nutanix.

The news also comes after the unveiling of a new Elevate partner program, which will replace the Nutanix Channel Charter that was implemented only two years ago.

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Ransomware says hello to Equinix  

Last week, BleepingComputer reported that Netwalker carried out the ransomware attack against data centre colocation behemoth Equinix and demanded a $4.5 million ransom to prevent the release of stolen data. In a blog post Sept. 13, Equinix said the investigation is “centred on information related to our internal business,” and that there’s still no visible impact on customers’ operations or the data on their equipment at Equinix.

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An update from Rola Dagher

Dell Technologies’ new global channel chief provided partners with a very brief update late last week. Weeks after announcing her exit as Cisco Canada’s president, Rola Dagher says she’s making her rounds to talk with “as many partners as possible.”

“I plan to use this time to listen and learn from you. And as I’m constantly looking to improve your experience with us, we’re staying true to the Dell Technologies Partner Program mantra – Simple. Predictable. Profitable. Technologies’ commitment to its partner community remains unchanged, from Michael to our Executive Leadership Team, and throughout our organization, we are all here to help you grow your business and be successful,” she wrote.

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Intel officially launches 11th Gen Tiger Lake mobile processors and Intel Evo design standard [Channel Daily News]

Intel officially releases Tiger Lake, its 11th generation mobile processor along with Intel Evo design standard.

 



Reddit recap

The MSP subreddit community is growing rapidly. It’s also a chatty bunch. With more than 80,000 members as of today, it’s worth taking a look at what they have to say every once in a while. Here are the recent top posts. Click on the posts to view additional responses.

 

Restaurant IT is… interesting. from msp

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Jim Love, Chief Content Officer, IT World Canada

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Alex Coop
Alex Coophttp://www.itwc.ca
Former Editorial Director for IT World Canada and its sister publications.

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