Channel Beat: Dell EMC Teams With Microsoft Azure For Hybrid Cloud Offering

Solution provider PCM claimed in court filings last month that it wouldn't have carried out its April 2015 acquisition of En Pointe if it had known the solution provider's true financial situation.

The El Segundo, Calif.-based company, No. 28 on the CRN Solution Provider 500, filed a lawsuit on April 11 alleging that En Pointe materially overstated the profitability of its business and that breaches by an En Pointe subsidiary have damaged PCM's goodwill with many customers.

PCM said the total damages exceed $57 million, or more than triple the company's 2016 net income. The first signs of trouble came in December 2016, when an En Pointe subsidiary filed a lawsuit against PCM in Delaware Superior Court for allegedly underpaying its agreed-upon earn-out payments.

PCM disclosed this lawsuit to the SEC in March 2017, and said it was assessing a number of counterclaims around intentional breaches of representations and warranties.

Dell EMC introduced a partnership with Microsoft under which channel partners will be able to build on-premises Microsoft Azure clouds using Dell EMC technology.

In an interview with CRN, Dell EMC senior vice president Peter Cutts, said that the new offering, called Dell EMC Cloud for Microsoft Azure Stack, is a turnkey platform for building a hybrid cloud offering with the same look, feel, and technology as the Microsoft Azure public cloud. Dell EMC is leveraging years of experience with delivering hybrid clouds including the ability to deliver the right services for on-premises and hybrid clouds, Cutts said.

Cutts also said that the Dell EMC Cloud for Microsoft Azure Stack targets solution providers and customers who use Microsoft technology. It will be a stand-alone offering combining Dell EMC hyper-converged infrastructure technology with Azure.

We'll hear a lot more from Dell EMC in the next few days as it kicks off its Dell EMC World conference next week in Las Vegas. Visit CRN.com/DellEMCWorld to follow all of our coverage.

Symantec has undertaken a major shakeup of its distributor relationships. The security software company has cut North American ties with Tech Data, around Symantec enterprise, and Arrow, around Blue Coat, while unlocking a broader portfolio for Ingram Micro, Synnex and Westcon-Comstor. Symantec is in the process of simplifying its distribution strategy following the August 2016 close of its Blue Coat acquisition.

Symantec said it is awarding distribution rights to either its enterprise security business (which includes the Blue Coat practice and part of Symantec), its legacy Symantec SMB business, or both sides of the company.

The 2017 Red Hat Summit was held this week in Boston, Mass. and concludes today.

The conference was spotlighted of the launch of five new products, centered on container technology. Red Hat's goal in launching these products is to enable enterprises to take advantage of containers and increase efficiency by aiding in the development and deployment of applications.

This week, Red Hat introduced OpenShift.io, a new online development environment for creating cloud-native container-based apps, designed specifically for the needs of development teams. Red Hat also introduced a container-native storage solution, which aims to make containerized applications more portable across different operating environments.

In addition, access to Amazon Web Services will now be natively integrated into Red Hat's OpenShift Container Platform, the companies said, through an expanded partnership between Red Hat and AWS.