The week that was – August 24, 2014

element aimed at helping channel partners increase their closure rates with better opportunity and sales process management. The new addition to the Autotask suite provides enhanced visibility into the sales pipeline, right from prospect identification through to deal completion. Additionally, the tool provides key analytics and intelligence. According to Jake Carroll, Autotask’s vice president of strategic account sales, the new solution will take a lot of the guesswork out of the sales process. Through process standardization, sales organizations will be able to gather and apply intelligence that will not only help provide more internal structure and identify opportunities, but also deliver better prospect qualification so sales staff can concentrate their attention and energy on the best prospects. The new tool will be included in the Autotask Ultimate Bundle or can be added on separately.

Bluebeam invests in Marketing support for Partners

Pasadena, Calif.-based Bluebeam Software has been investing in Marketing and Sales resources to help support channel partners pushing its document collaboration tools into highly technical verticals like manufacturing and oil and gas. Bluebeam’s Revu 12.5 competes against the likes of Adobe Acrobat and other PDF creation tools. The company has quadrupled its marketing staff from one to four people, adding much needed bandwidth that will make it possible to provide partners with vertically tailored pitches and promotional materials. The added strength is already making itself apparent on the industry conference circuit, where Bluebeam is now able to raise its profile. Bluebeam attended 60 events by the end of the first quarter, demonstrating its technology, answering questions and recruiting channel partners, equaling the entirety of its 2013 travel schedule. Currently Bluebeam takes in about 40 percent of its revenue through the channel, but says it would like to see that number closer to the 70 percent range.

IDC: SDN reaching market adoption threshold

According to new research from IT analysis firm IDC, software-defined networking (SDN) is rapidly approaching an inflection point where it will become mainstream technology. IDC forecasts released last week have the global SDN market – which combines physical network infrastructure, controller and network virtualization software, SDN network security services and SDN-related professional services – growing from $960 million in 2014 to more than $8 billion by 2018. That’s a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 89.4 percent! Moreover, while large cloud services providers have been the early adopters, IDC expects its SDN to see similar traction in the enterprise segment. And it’s news that will have the likes of Cisco and VMware salivating as they have already made significant investments in SDN – VMware with its NSX software overlay platform, and Cisco with the Application Centric Infrastructure.

VMware acquires CloudVolumes

Speaking of VMware, the Palo Alto, CA-based virtualization vendor acquired CloudVolumes, a startup that specializes in delivering virtual applications to desktops. According to a blog post by Kit Colbert, CTO of End-User Computing at VMware, app delivery is often "challenging and cumbersome." CloudVolumes has developed technology which addresses the numerous glitches that crop up by splitting a Windows instance into separate pieces to which apps can be installed with ease and speed. If is delivers as advertised, the CloudVolumes technology – which is applicable in both virtual and physical environments – will make it possible for technicians to add new or upgraded apps on the fly on running desktops obviating the need to schedule a service outage to perform system upgrades. VMware plans to integrate the new technology with its Horizon desktop virtualization platform. The financials of the deal were not but VMware said in a press release that the transaction will not be material to its financial performance. To date CloudVolumes, which was established in 2011, has raised $4.4 million through two funding rounds.