The week in Channel-land: New offices, new deals, new jobs and big plans

Short week, no probs - the channel has still been buzzing. We've had new vendor deals, new partner programs, exclusive interviews and news that a senior executive was moving to a rival distie...

We had a number of exclusive interviews, including Exeed's Justin Tye outlining the distributor's cloud plans – and the returns both it and its reselles are seeing – and Veeam's new channel ANZ channel boss Belinda Jurisic telling us her plans for the channel, including a stronger vertical focus.

Network and system integrator NSP also revealed to us its plans to launch a LogRhythm security-as-a-service offering in a move distributor Exclusive Networks and LogRhythm say opens up SIEM to the SMB market – and heralds the way of the future.

On the distributor front, Connector Systems extended its internet of things play, inking a deal with Lantronix to provide its secure data access and management solutions for IoT and information technology assets in a deal the distie says opens up a 'broad range of new business opportunities'.

Meanwhile Connector Systems' parent, Ingram Micro New Zealand, was signing its own deal, adding iOS consumer and business accessories vendor Studio Proper to its portfolio.

Also fleshing out their portfolio was MPA, which signed a distribution deal with security vendor Imperva which will see the first local support available for the vendor.

Security seemed to be a key theme for the week, with Menlo Security launching its SafeToClick Asia Pacific partner program, and Trend Micro's Peter Hewett giving us the lowdown on what the channel needs to know about cloud security while Frost - Sullivan was reporting big growth in the next generation firewall market.

Printers got a look in too, with Epson announcing it has racked up more than 20 million sales of its high-capacity ink tank inkjet printers and Brother celebrating at the 2017 iF Design Awards after taking top honours for the appearance, functionality and environmental performance of its printers, scanners and label makers.

Oracle announced it's establishing a Netsuite office in New Zealand to provide increased local support, while Platinum Equity, which acquired Staples earlier this year, was making more acquisitions, this time buying OfficeMax's ANZ business.

Globally, it was good news for Microsoft with Gartner reporting that Windows 10 adoptions are tracking faster than any other OS upgrades, as security and cloud spur enterprises to move to the operating system.

Meanwhile another Gartner report revealed government organisations are spending less than their private and public sector counterparts on digital initiatives, at just 21% versus 33%.  Yet another report from the analyst firm shows device spend might be on the down this year, but ASPs are up, while Datto gave us the inside goss on the State of the MSP.

Less positive was news from Veeam that a growing gap between demand and what IT can deliver is hindering digital transformation, according to its 2017 Availability Report. In an interview with ChannelLife, Veeam ANZ head of engineering, Nathan Steiner, outlined the reports key findings and what it means for the local market.

And it wouldn't be the channel without some job movements – this week we saw Wendy O'Keeffe, one-time Westcon Group ANZ boss and more recently Westcon-Comstor Asia Pacific VP, heading to rival Dicker Data as a non-executive director.

And with that, another week is done. We'll be back here next week, as always, for our first full week in three weeks, to bring you all the news on the local channel. Have a great weekend everyone!