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We’re pleased to share with you the Ultima Partner Pulse, bringing together the latest updates from some of the key partners we work with. If you have queries on any of the below or would like to discuss anything further, please contact your Account Manager or enquiries@ultima.com.
Microsoft
After 2 years completely remote, we’re pleased to announce that Microsoft have returned to in-person events, with a successful Envision that took place in London on 19th May, covering a broad array of topics including the UK economy and changes in the cyber security landscape all the way to the importance of sustainability from a commercial as well as ecological perspective and the situation in Ukraine. For anyone who couldn’t make it live but would like to catch up the content is available on demand here. More to follow soon, watch this space!
In line with the alarming increase in cyber threats over the past year Microsoft have created a new product category dubbed Microsoft Security Experts. Initially comprising of 3 new services (Microsoft Defender Experts for XDR, Microsoft Defender Experts for Hunting and Microsoft Security Services for Enterprise), these offerings are intended to support organisations with Security Operations Centres by providing a direct route to interface with Microsoft’s own security teams about specific incidents, attack vectors etc. and to receive specific recommendations to improve security and remediation instructions where required. For organisations without the scale to build out such teams, MSP partners such as Ultima will be able to democratise these benefits through their own Managed Service offerings, enabling SMB organisations to benefit from Microsoft’s scale without the cost and recruitment headaches of building out dedicated teams. Please speak to your Account Manager if you’d like to explore the options here.
Vmware
As you may have seen in the news, VMware have entered into an approximate $61 billion agreement to be acquired by Broadcom. The transaction is expected to close during Broadcom’s fiscal year 2023 (November 2022 – October 2023). This is an important milestone for both companies, Raghu Raghuram, CEO of VMware commented:
“Broadcom is one of the world’s largest technology companies and a leader in hardware infrastructure, data centre, and network innovation. Following the closing of the transaction, VMware will become the software platform and brand for Broadcom, incorporating Broadcom’s existing infrastructure and security software solutions as part of the VMware portfolio. We will provide enterprise customers an expanded suite of mission-critical solutions to accelerate innovation and address their most complex information technology infrastructure challenges. After the deal closes, the combined solutions will enable greater choice and flexibility for our customers to modernize, build, deploy, connect, and protect applications consistently, in a Multi-Cloud world.”
VMware’s ecosystem of partner relationships will continue to be a critical part of the Broadcom/VMware strategy and we are excited to continue our journey with you in the months to come. Until the acquisition is complete VMware will continue to run business as usual with our current and growing product portfolio, and the same level of service and support as we continue to serve you and your teams.
For more information on this acquisition, please read here.
HP Inc
HP has released their strong second quarter results for 2022, with a net revenue of $16.5 billion, up 3.9% (up 4.9% in constant currency) from the prior year period. HP saw its key growth businesses, which includes gaming, peripherals, Instant Ink, Workforce Solutions, Industrial Graphics and 3D, collectively grow double-digits, seeing a total revenue of $5.6bn in the first half of the year. The company also generated $0.4bn of free cash flow and returned $1.3bnn to shareholders through share repurchases and dividends, while non-GAAP EPS grew 16% year-over-year to $1.08. In Q2, total print revenue was $5bn, and personal systems revenue was $11.5billion.
During the quarter, HP entered into an agreement to acquire Poly in an all-cash transaction worth $3.3bn. HP will pay $40 per share at $1.7bn and take on Poly’s net debt.
HPE
Hewlett Packard Enterprise is excited to welcome you and your customers back to HPE Discover Las Vegas The Edge-To-Cloud Conference from the 28th – 30th of June 2022, with a celebration headlined by Janet Jackson. Join HPE experts, leading companies and industry luminaries to find out the latest insights in secure connectivity, hybrid cloud, AI and unified data analytics, HPE Discover 2022 is the best place to stay ahead of tends and technologies that will move your business forward, faster. More details and registration can be found here.
On the 1st of June HPE announced their reported results for their fiscal 2022 second quarter, ending 30th April. Antonio Neri, president and CEO of HPE commented:
“Persistent demand let to another quarter of significant order growth and higher revenue for HPE, underscoring the accelating interest customer have in out unique edge-to-cloud portfolio and HPE GreenLake platform.”
Main highlights from HPE:
• Orders rose 20% from the same period last year – including a 107% increase in as-a-service orders.
• Total revenues increased 1.5% year-over-year to $6.7 billion.
• Sustained a non-GAAP gross profit margin of 34.2%.
HPE had now had four quarters in a row of orders growth above 20%, providing they have persistent demand from their customers for their differentiated edge-to-cloud offerings. For the full press release read here.
Palo Alto Networks
Palo Alto Networks has urged the industry to move to Zero Trust Network Access 2.0 (ZTNA 2.0) — the foundation for a new era of secure access. ZTNA was developed as a replacement for virtual private networks (VPNs) when it became clear that most VPNs did not adequately scale and were overly permissive, but the first-generation ZTNA products (ZTNA 1.0) are too trusting and can put customers at significant risk. ZTNA 2.0 solves these problems by removing implicit trust to help ensure organizations are properly secured.
“This is a critical time for cybersecurity. We are in an era of unprecedented cyberattacks, and the past two years have dramatically changed work — for many, work is now an activity, not a place. This means that securing employees and the applications they need is both harder and more important,” said Nir Zuk, founder and chief technology officer at Palo Alto Networks.
“Zero trust has been embraced as the solution — and it is absolutely the right approach! Unfortunately, not every solution with Zero Trust in its name can be trusted. ZTNA 1.0 — for example — falls short.”
For modern organizations where hybrid work and distributed applications are the norm, ZTNA 1.0 has several limitations. It is overly permissive in granting access to applications because it can’t control access to sub-applications or particular functions. Additionally, there is no monitoring of changes in user, application, or device behaviour, and it can’t detect or prevent malware or lateral movement across connections. ZTNA 1.0 also cannot protect all enterprise data.
Nutanix
Nutanix have announced revenues in the company’s Q3 of fiscal 2020 ended April 30 were $404 million, up 17 percent year-on-year, beating the company’s own forecasts of between $395 million to $400 million. It reported a net loss of $111.6 million, versus a net loss of $123.6 million in the year ago period. President and CEO Rajiv Ramaswami said during an earnings call:
“Our third quarter reflected continued solid execution, demonstrating strong year-over-year top and bottom line improvement. “Late in the third quarter, we saw an unexpected impact from challenges that limited our upside in the quarter and affected our outlook for the fourth quarter. Increased supply chain delays with our hardware partners account for the significant majority of the impact to our outlook, and higher-than-expected sales rep attrition in the third quarter was also a factor. We don’t believe these challenges reflect any change in demand for our hybrid multicloud platform, and we remain focused on mitigating the impact of these issues and continuing to execute on the opportunity in front of us.”
Full FY22 revenues are now forecast to be $1.55 billion, an 11.2 percent year-on-year increase. Nutanix had predicted a revenue range of $1.625 billion to $1.63 billion three months ago.
Mimecast
Mimecast announced at the back end of 2021 that they were to be acquired by Private Equity Firm Permira for $5.8 Billion, this has now been completed as of the 19th of May 2022. As a result of this, Mimecast has been acquired by and become a wholly-owned Magnesium Bidco Limited.
Business success remains Mimecast’s top priority and, as a private company, they will continue to work relentlessly to strengthen our customers’ and the world’s cyber resilience and security. With Permira’s resources and network, Mimecast will be better positioned than ever to invest in products and technology and deliver innovations that matter to your business. You can expect to continue to work with the extraordinary team of Mimecasters you know and trust. There is no change to your contract or your Mimecast Representative.
Dell
Dell has unleashed a host of new cyber security offerings during its Technologies World event in Las Vegas the other week, including new cloud experiences, an expanded SaaS ecosystem and offerings to help customer manage and protect applications across data centres and multi-cloud environments. Making cyber security protection continues to be an increasing priority for Dell with global information security and risk management end user spending set to increase in 2022.
Dell have also revealed new ransomware offerings with AWS and Microsoft Azure as well as a new cyber security Apex-as-a-Service.
Cisco
Cisco are excited to announced that on the 14th of June the Meraki cloud-management platform and the Cisco Catalyst network products will converge, essentially this means that customers will be able to benefit from cloud monitoring for some of the newest Catalyst 9K switches using the Meraki dashboard. Later on this year customers will also be able to use cloud management for the Catalyst 9300 deployments.
Citrix
Citrix have announced a re-brand of their Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service, with the new and improved ‘Citrix DaaS’. Citrix DaaS modernises IT with a secure, easy-to-manage cloud solution to quickly deliver apps or desktops from any cloud or datacentre worldwide. With Citrix DaaS, organisations can enable secure hybrid work, leveraging the cost benefits of a managed solution while delivering the corporate security, IT agility, and end-user productivity that business demands.
In other news, Citrix announced the end-of-sale for Citrix Endpoint Management (formerly XenMobile). Existing CEM customers will continue to receive support and updates in-line with the published support lifecycle, however new sales of the product will cease from 1st July 2022. Any customers who may wish to evaluate alternative solutions for Endpoint Management can contact their account manager to discuss transition options.
AWS
For the last 10 years, the global cloud community has come together at re:Invest to meet, get inspired and rethink what’s possible. Amazon Web Services have confirmed their dates for this year’s conference in Las Vegas, the 28th November – 2nd of December. Join their global cloud community and learn the latest from AWS leaders, and what is new and next for AWS partners. Register here.
Veeam
Veeam is phasing out the “perpetual CPU Socket based licensing” in favour of a workload instance-based model called “Veeam Universal Licenses VUL”. From July 1st 2022 it will not be possible to procure CPU socket licenses. Veeam CPU licenses can be migrated to VUL, the newer VUL model is designed to future proof your solution, making it more flexible, for public cloud VMs, physical servers, enterprise applications and NAS file shares.
Read more about Per Socket License end of sale here.
In addition to that, Veeam has also announced the following software support end dates:
• Veeam Backup & Replication v9.5 – ended in January 2022
• Veeam Backup & Replication v10.0 – ends in February 2023
• Veeam One v9.5 – ended in January 2022
• Veeam One v10.0 – ends in February 2023
• Veeam Backup for Nutanix AHV v2.0 – ends in March 2023
• Veeam Agent for MS Windows v3.0 – ended in January 2022
• Veeam Agent for MS Windows v4.0 – ends in February 2023
• Veeam Agent for Linux v3.0 – ended in January 2022
• Veeam Agent for Linux v4.0 – ends in February 2023
• Veeam Agent for Oracle Solaris v2.0 – ends in June 2023
• Veeam Agent for IBM AIX v2.0 – ends in September 2023
• Veeam Backup for M365 v3.0 – ends in April 2022
• Veeam Backup for M365 v4.0 – ends in November 2022
Read more about Veeam’s Product Lifecycle Support end dates here. To avoid the risk of not receiving support from Veeam please contact Ultima so we can advise you for the most effective way to upgrade your solution.
Hitachi
Hitachi launched ‘Lumada Inspection Insights’ this month, its end-to-end portfolio of digital solutions for the inspection, monitoring, and optimization of critical assets. Pioneered by Hitachi Energy and Hitachi Vantara, Lumada Inspection Insights enables customers to automate asset inspection, support sustainability goals, improve physical security, and reduce risks and impacts related to storms or fires by using powerful artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze photographs and video, including LiDAR, thermal and satellite imagery.
