COVID-19 dominates nearly all conversations and news sites, but companies continue to make announcements not related to the virus. Take a break from pandemic developments to learn what three cloud computing-centric providers are doing that impacts the channel now. Here’s how Rackspace, IBM and Zenoss are helping partners develop their business strategies to adapt to a changing world.

Rackspace’s EMEA Expansion Will ‘Address Dearth of Cloud Skills’

Rackspace’s recent expanded investment into the Middle East will bring more opportunity for channel partners.

Rackspace’s Lisa McLin

The company, a cloud computing and managed hosting provider, is “bringing additional local resources to help address the dearth of cloud skills in the Middle East,” Lisa McLin, vice president of alliances and channel chief at Rackspace, told Channel Futures.

Distributors, master agents, systems integrators and VARs in the region gain access to Rackspace’s services as a result. Rackspace teams with Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure, among some other cloud vendors. It manages the private and public deployments on behalf of end users.

George Pawlyszyn is leading Rackspace’s strategy in the Middle East and Africa as general manager.

“He is focused on providing trusted and unbiased expertise to migrate customers to the cloud securely, and enhance existing customers’ environment whilst working closely with partners,” McLin said.

Rackspace already boasted more than 500 customers in the Middle East. But, fueled by a multimillion dollar investment, it intends to add to that list. Rackspace has launched a hub in Dubai where it will house salespeople, professional services consultants and marketing personnel.

“The cloud market is growing significantly in the region and customers are increasingly requiring unbiased experts to support them on their cloud journey,” Martin Blackburn, Rackspace’s managing director, EMEA, said.

IBM Names New Cloud SVP

IBM’s new CEO has appointed a new head of cloud business as Big Blue pursues its intent of going up more powerfully against AWS, Google Cloud and Azure.

Arvind Krishna, who replaces CEO Virginia Rometty and who used to lead the company’s cloud computing division, on Monday said Howard Boville will take over as senior vice president of IBM Cloud on May 1.

IBM’s Howard Boville

Boville comes to IBM from Bank of America where he worked as chief technology officer. The two companies have been collaborating to build cloud platforms for the financial services sector.

Now, Boville will stand at the forefront of cloud strategy, with a particular focus on hybrid cloud. He will also oversee more than 60 cloud data centers across 19 countries and 18 availability zones across six regions, IBM said.

Zenoss Takes Cloud Zone Into EMEA

Zenoss Inc., which develops monitoring analytics software for visibility in cloud computing and other IT environments, recently debuted its cloud zone for the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region.

This means all U.S.-based Zenoss Cloud services now are available to EMEA from a dedicated instance in Frankfurt, Germany. Zenoss said it chose Frankfurt because the site offers the highest standards of data protection. And it complies with the German Bundesdatenschutzgesetz (BDSG), a federal data protection act.

“Zenoss Cloud has taken off domestically, and we’ve been experiencing increased demand for separate instances in other regions,” said Greg Stock, chairman and CEO of Zenoss. “We’re dedicated to serving our customers around the world, and this new zone will provide full-stack monitoring and AIOPs with the highest levels of data protection.”

Zenoss Cloud is a SaaS platform that, put simply, helps organizations ensure peak performance within their IT environments.

The Austin, Texas-headquartered company said it will follow the EMEA announcement as it builds more zones in other regions. The Zenoss Cloud EMEA zone is available now; the company said partners and customers already are using it.

Zenoss did not respond to Channel Futures’ inquiry for further insight into how the announcement will impact channel partners. The company’s strategic alliance partners include AWS, Accenture, Cisco, NTT Data and more. The company also has marketplace partners, offering its software through AWS, CenturyLink, Cisco, Rackspace and ServiceNow.