What were some of last week's big news stories impacting solution providers? Here are five that will interest partners of SAP, Cisco, Avnet and GE Digital, and highlight a key acquisition within the channel.  

15,000 – Approximate number of channel partners in SAP's PartnerEdge program (although less than half – about 7,000 – are active, according to Rodolpho Cardenuto, president of SAP global channels and general business). Under the new Referral Option within PartnerEdge, solution providers earn a finder's fee for cloud software sales leads they bring to SAP. The fees are 10 percent of a deal's value in the U.S., 5 percent in some other countries.

2 percent to 4 percent – Projected year-over-year revenue decline for Cisco after it released its second-quarter fiscal 2017 results. CEO Chuck Robbins linked the projected drop to a slowdown in service provider spending as companies watch how the U.S. and global political landscapes will change following the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States.

475 – Number of employees of Cleveland-based Park Place Technologies after its acquisition of Ardent Support Technologies, of Dover, N.H., announced last week. Ardent, which provides third-party maintenance for data center hardware, has been a strategic partner of Park Place for several years and brings "depth" to Park Place's 6,500 customers across 90 countries, according to Park Place COO Chris Adams.

$3,500 to $7,000 – Per-month cost range for a solution provider that wants to sign up for a managed security service launched by Phoenix-based distributor Avnet. The service, Recon, is aimed at boosting partner margins and making solution providers stickier with end users in health care and retail. Avnet says Recon will make it easy for partners to provide SMB and midmarket customers with intrusion detection, vulnerability assessments, and security incident and event management (SIEM). The exact cost will depend on the complexity of a solution provider's end-user environments.

$915 million – Price that GE Digital paid to acquire field service management company ServiceMax. GE Digital said the deal will give it more services options for the Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) market and help it commercialize applications for automating and digitizing heavy-duty machinery on GE's Predix platform. Andy Sivaraman, senior vice president at Paramus, N.J.-based GE partner ITC Infotech, said the acquisition would be essential for GE Digital to build out its Industrial IoT product portfolio.