Each week, MSSP Alert compiles a list of the top stories in the managed services market from our affiliate brand, ChannelE2E. These stories include vendor news, business stories, how-to content about building and selling your business, news about trends such as artificial intelligence, and more. Here’s this week’s round-up of news from ChannelE2E.
McChord, Fass Debut Slide BCDR for MSPs at Right of Boom
Ex-Datto founder Austin McChord and CPO and general counsel Michael Fass are back -- and they're bringing "the best BCDR ever" to MSPs.
At Right of Boom, the cybersecurity conference for managed services providers, held this week at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada, McChord and Fass took to the stage to announce their latest venture, Slide.tech.
McChord told the audience that, post-Datto, he and Fass both felt they had "unfinished business." For McChord, he couldn't quite retire, and after tinkering with some other technology and, along with Fass, becoming involved in Outsiders Fund and other pursuits, they both felt that something was still missing.
That something is Slide, a backup and disaster recovery appliance that is built on a cloud-first foundation, with all flash-based storage and native data encryption. The entry-level appliance is slightly larger than an Apple Mac Studio, can store up to 16 TB of data, and it's fast, McChord said -- fast enough to saturate a 10 GB network connection.
"The easiest way to think about it is that Slide is super, super fast. So much so that our entry-level appliance's CPU is 50% faster than a $13,000 data appliance," he said. "Not only that but because everything is flash-based, it means that the storage is about 100x faster than most BCDR [solutions] on the market. The cloud restores are instantaneous. All of our cloud hardware is brand new and all flash-based, which means it's really, really, really fast," he said.
How 25% U.S. Tariffs on Canada Could Impact MSPs
While the Trump administration’s threatened 25% tariffs on goods from Canada have been averted for now, they remain a possibility. That leaves MSPs and IT analysts wondering how the situation would affect the IT industry in both nations.
The 25% tariff on all goods from Canada, which was to be implemented earlier in February, was delayed from going into effect for 30 days after Canadian officials agreed to adopt new border protection measures, according to a recent BBC report.
For at least one Canadian MSP, the situation has inspired changes in how the company plans to do business with customers in the U.S.
”We are not curbing U.S. business – we are still happy to accept U.S. clients – but we have begun to curb many of our subscriptions to U.S.-based SaaS companies in favor of domestic and non-U.S. foreign alternatives,” Nelson Ford, the founder and principal of Ottawa, Ontario-based MSP Pilotcore Systems Inc., told ChannelE2E. “And this will not change in the foreseeable future despite the developments [recently]. I am not aware of the tariffs affecting services and, apart from office equipment, we do not buy products from the U.S. for business. We will stretch our existing equipment for several more years.”
Trend Micro is the Target of New Acquisition Talks: Report
Rumors are again circulating that cybersecurity vendor Trend Micro is being eyed for acquisition, six months after August 2024 rumors that the company was potentially exploring a sale.
In recent weeks, at least three private equity firms expressed interest in acquiring the well-known Japanese-based cybersecurity firm, according to a February 12 story by Reuters. Bain Capital, Advent International and EQT AB are among the private equity firms sniffing around Trend Micro, the story reported, based on information from people who are familiar with the matter.
“The buyout firms have expressed interest in taking Trend Micro private in recent weeks, the sources said, requesting anonymity as the deliberations are confidential,” the story said. “KKR is also an interested party, two of the sources said, adding that a deal is not guaranteed and Trend Micro could choose to remain independent.”
Trend Micro declined to answer several questions about the reported acquisition talks when asked by ChannelE2E. “We aren’t able to comment on rumors and speculation,” a spokesperson said via email.
