25 Sizzling Products To Check Out Right Now

Solutions Pavilion Bonanza

XChange Solution Provider 2017 is in the books. Each year, the XChange show floor plays host to the Solutions Pavilion, a platform for vendors to demo their latest wares.

Here we present 25 products from the show that couldn't be ignored, and may very well be a staple in your portfolio in the near future.

Acronis

Acronis sells hybrid cloud data protection through its backup, disaster recovery, and secure file sync and share solutions. Acronis' offerings are powered by the Acronis AnyData Engine to provide customers with easy and complete data protection of all files, applications and operating systems across any virtual, cloud and mobile environment.

On the channel side, Acronis offers backup cloud, disaster recovery service, storage and more for service providers.

Autotask

Autotask has expanded its bond with MSPs from selling its professional services automation tool to them to a more traditional resale relationship around its new file sync and share offering.

The vendor has gotten Autotask Workplace on the line card of more than 500 solution providers in just 18 months, according to Len DiCostanzo, senior vice president of community and business development.

MSPs traditionally have needed to be present to physically install file sync and share capabilities on each user's computer, which DiCostanzo said can take 20 to 30 minutes per desktop. But with Autotask Workplace, an MSP can automatically and remotely sync users' folders up to the cloud and back down to the desktop from a single central console.

"We're decommoditized a commodity product," DiCostanzo said.

Auvik Networks

Auvik Networks is laser-focused on helping MSPs automate networking tasks such as network topology and backing up the configuration of network firewalls and switches.

Auvik launched into the MSP space in 2015 and expects to grow from more than 400 MSP partners today to 1,000 MSP partners by the end of 2017, according to Alex Hoff, vice president of sales and product.

"We were told this couldn't be done, yet we did it," Hoff said.

Auvik is best suited for MSPs that have customers with 30 or more users in one or multiple locations, Hoff said, and enjoys product and billing integration with remote management and monitoring providers such as LabTech and Continuum.

Axiom

Axiom provides OEM-compatible transceivers, cable, storage, memory and fiber optics that work in Cisco, Dell and HP environments.

Axiom launched a partner portal last year and is evolving it into a full-blown partner program with lead generation, deal registration, training and digital marketing content, said Danielle Feith, director of marketing.

Some 200 of the 4,000 solution providers that purchase from Axiom have joined the partner program so far, Feith said, and the company hopes to add 50 partners each month.

Blancco Technologies

Blancco Technologies solves a gap in the marketplace for secure data erasure. As companies spread their data across more devices and servers, and those are then taken out of commission, moved on to new users, or face data governance regulations, Blancco helps make sure data is fully erased from the device or server. U.S. Channel Manager Greg Gillcrest said this approach helps prevent breaches of important information that is no longer needed, helps mitigate risk, and meet strict data regulations, including HIPAA and the upcoming EU GDPR regulations.

Broadview Networks

Broadview Networks' cloud-based meeting service OfficeSuite HD Meeting received a shot in the arm in late 2016 with new software enhancements including a revised user interface that is free to all existing and new customers.

The offering unifies high-definition video, audio and web conferencing into one platform for businesses of all sizes. The new interface seamlessly integrates the chat and participant lists, a floating host menu bar, refreshed icons and new options that include dual camera, remote support, breakout rooms, a whiteboard and closed captioning.

Brother International

Brother International showed off its state-of-the-art printers. Most recently, the company unveiled a new line, which includes seven printers within its L5000 and L6000 series, that focus on solving office workflow needs.

The company's workhorse series offers partners professional, high-volume printers that are engineered for business.

Buffalo Americas

Buffalo Americas unveiled the availability of the TeraStation 51210RH, a new addition to the company's TeraStation 5010 series providing storage optimized for data-intensive environments. The vendor said the new offering delivers enterprise performance storage at SMB price points.

The 51210RH features two native 10-GbE network ports and 12-bay rackmount chassis with storage capacity up to 96 TB. It was designed to support demanding storage requirements associated with simultaneous virtualized scenarios.

Cambium Networks

Wireless networking provider Cambium Networks highlighted its outdoor Wi-Fi offerings, which include the cnPilot Enterprise Outdoor Access Point series, a cost-effective wireless offering for enterprise and education customers, as well as industrial campuses, public Wi-Fi settings, and hospitality use cases.

Cambium is a channel-only wireless provider, and its line of outdoor wireless offerings are available through its partners today.

ClearDB

ClearDB, a database-as-a-service provider, promoted its database service for provisioning and managing MySQL database assets -- DBaaS. DBaaS is available as a multitenant and single-tenant service, and it runs on all major cloud platforms including Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services and Google.

To get started, partners can work with ClearDB through a reseller model. Solution providers can also sell DBaaS via a white-label model and wrap managed services around ClearDB's offering.

Extreme Networks

Extreme Networks revealed its plan to launch a new low-end switching line for small and midsize businesses.

In early April, Extreme will launch its new 200 ExtremeSwitching Series. The new series consist of a total of six Layer 2, Gigabit switches and six Layer 3 switches that contain 12-, 24- and 48-port options. The switches can be managed on-premise or in the cloud.

"For the first time in many years, Extreme is moving into the SMB space and delivering low-cost PoE and non-PoE stackable and non-stackable switches," said Gordon Mackintosh, senior director of worldwide partner program and sales business development for Extreme, in an interview with CRN.

Global Capacity

Network service provider Global Capacity showed off its One Marketplace portal that partners can use to connect their end customers' locations to service provider networks and, ultimately, to their traffic destinations, including data centers, remote offices and cloud platforms.

Global Capacity buys and aggregates networks from cable companies, internet service providers and fiber companies and physically interconnects and supports the networks to simplify connectivity for channel partners and end customers. Solution providers can use the One Marketplace portal -- which can also be accessed via a mobile app --to piece together a cost-effective connectivity solution for end customers and place orders through Global Capacity.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Blaine Raddon, director of worldwide partner development at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, turned heads by unveiling HPE's ProLiant Easy Connect Managed Hybrid Server.

"This is the appliance that we're going to give you to build your services off of to save money and build better solutions," said Raddon.

"You're going to stack cloud services on top of it, maybe [Microsoft] Office 365, [Microsoft] Azure, back-end recovery … there's a lot of things you can build around this. This just becomes a base platform that you can build on." The new SMB-focused server appliance includes a managed services software platform from software maker Zynstra aimed at delivering an on-premise subscription-based service for delivering hybrid cloud.

Info X

Info X is a small, niche distributor of storage and server connectivity products focusing on 15 product lines and specializing in Broadcom's Emulex and LSI offerings.

The distributor differentiates itself from large broadline distributors with its level of service, according to Wendy DeRing, director of marketing and business development.

Half of Info X's sales team previously held positions in pre-sales or post-sales technical support, DeRing said, and is therefore able to answer highly specific questions and provide price quotes within 15 minutes. Info X has more than 2,000 channel partners, DeRing said, most of which are based in the U.S. Solution providers receive rewards for every dollar they spend with Info X, according to DeRing.

Intel

Intel showed off its embedded, data center and business client solid-state drive products, including the SSD 750 series and the DC 53610 series.

Coming in at a 2.5-inch form-factor option, the series pushes the small-form-factor boundaries. These SSD products are available through Intel partners including Velocity Micro, Puget Systems and Maingear.

Meanwhile, the DC 53610 series helps partners target data center applications with Intel Xeon processors and supports the NVMe storage interface standard. Intel said these SSDs enable up to six times faster data transfer speeds than 6-Gbps SATA SSDs.

Mimecast

Mimecast expanded its email security offering with the launch of Mimecast Internal Email Protect solution, part of the Targeted Threat Protection service portfolio, adding capabilities to detect and remediate email threats that start from an internal email source. Achmad Chadran, product marketing manager, archiving, said the new offering helps protect companies against attacks already within the domain, including from compromised credentials, carelessness or rogue insiders. The offering is available as a subscription add-on to the company's existing email portfolio, he said.

OnRamp

OnRamp operates enterprise-class data centers to deploy hybrid computing offerings for computing capacity, managed hosting and co-location services. OnRamp offers HIPAA- and PCI-compliant hosting, as well as compliant disaster recovery and co-location disaster recovery. The company also offers managed hosting for private clouds and managed servers, as well as cloud-delivered services like managed backup and firewalls.

The company also works with referral and reseller partners – referral partners can refer qualified customers and earn paid commission as a lump sum or in recurring revenue, while resellers can integrate OnRamp's data center services into their product sets and receive monthly discounts based on their total spend.

Panda Security

Panda Security is looking to push further into the North American market with its Adaptive Defense and Adaptive Defense 360 cloud-based EDR offering, Director of Channel Sales and Marketing David Singleton said. The offering includes capabilities for next-generation endpoint security, endpoint detection and response, and malware intelligence. Singleton said the platform differentiates itself by being cloud-based, offered as a subscription service and by blocking threats before they are executed, instead of rewinding after the fact. Singleton said a updated version is coming in June, with technology updates and APIs.

PC Matic

PC Pitstop takes a different type of approach when it comes to its PC Matic offering for endpoint security, detecting malware using a whitelisting approach that lets through approved content, instead of a blacklisting approach used by many other vendors. Instead of trying to remediate after the fact, the company said it can stop attacks like ransomware from even entering the environment. The company started offering the product to partners last year and has since been expanding its approach to the channel for its PC Matic Pro and PC Matic MSP offerings, rolling out a new partner program and incentives through distribution.

RapidFire Tools

RapidFire Tools rolled out an update to its IT assessment tool, adding capabilities to fully automate the assessment process for customers, including automated scanning, report generation and automatic delivery. Mark Winter, vice president of sales, said the update allows MSPs to put together a service plan for different types of customers and produce automated assessments in a centralized way, saving them time and delivery. The tool also allows for the automatic creation of a management plan and PSA tickets for any issues or areas for improvement found. Altogether, this allows MSPs to show their value to customers around network and security offerings, as well as keep an ongoing cadence with customers, he said. "It just takes it to the whole next level," Winter said.

SherWeb

SherWeb, a Canadian cloud hosted service provider, has been ramping up its focus on Microsoft and working to more tightly align itself with products like Microsoft Office 365, Azure and Dynamics CRM.

As businesses move more applications into the cloud, SherWeb wants to help partners grab more cloud selling opportunities around popular services that their customers are already using today, like Dynamics and Office 365.

With more than 5,000 partners today, SherWeb is actively looking to bring on new partners in 2017.

SolarWinds MSP

SolarWinds MSP has made great progress in making the best-of-breed features from the legacy N-Able and LogicNow platforms available to all partners, according to JP Jauvin, senior vice president of worldwide sales, support and customer operations.

The remote management and monitoring (RMM) powerhouse was formed last year when N-Able and LogicNow came together.

Since the acquisition closed, Jauvin said LogicNow's file folder backup and service management capabilities have been extended to N-Able's legacy customer base, providing MSPs with a solid strategy for managing backup and protecting their clients.

Jauvin said SolarWinds MSP is also integrating an automation studio that allows MSP to leverage a library of automation policies rather than having to create a script for a single customer or single platform.

Star2Star

Star2Star Communications recently launched three new models of the company's flagship StarBox Cloud Communications Manager. The StarBox 6000 supports up to 500 extensions at a single location with 250 simultaneous calls, while the StarBox 2500 supports 250 extensions with 50 simultaneous calls at a location.

The StarBox 1000 supports 45 extensions at a single location with up to 15 simultaneous calls.

All of the new models provide features including integration monitoring and remote management, flexible networking configuration with dual WAN ports for automatic failover, always-on call recording and low power consumption.

Vertiv

Vertiv's SmartCabinet is a turnkey edge offering that features supporting infrastructure to deploy IT at various branches. This cabinet offering enables customers to quickly and easily deploy a comprehensive data center infrastructure offering and keep infrastructure on pace with equipment changes. Customers can also reduce their energy consumption compared to data center products with conventional design and reduce the costs of adding new equipment.

Vertiv also offers integrated infrastructure in a self-contained lineup, through its SmartRow product, and integrated infrastructure using row-based building blocks with its SmartAisle product.

Zyxel Networking Solutions

Zyxel Networking Solutions has offerings for consumers, businesses customers and service providers. The networking vendor shared a few of its customer success stories within hospitality, event management and public Wi-Fi.

For small to midsize businesses, Zyxel's Next-Gen USG Series of access point controllers offers business anti-malware protection and centralized Wi-Fi management. Zyxel also offers a cloud-managed series of wired and wireless devices, along with its Nebula Control Center for centralized management of networks of any size.