8 Channel People Making Waves This Week at Lumen, Accenture, Amazon, Canalys, More
Cisco led a “crowded” secure access service edge (SASE) market in terms of revenue in 2022, experts said.
March 24, 2023
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Lumen Technologies channel leaders say they are expanding headcount and resources to drive more channel-integrated deals.
Lumen has posted job openings in 24 areas it has identified as high-growth areas for its channel. For example, the company has built a team focused on helping partners sell complex solutions to large enterprise accounts.
“The partners are beginning to move up-market. They’re beginning to have more and more relationships at the Fortune 500 level,” said Dave Young, who recently started in a new role as senior vice president of midmarkets and indirect channel.
Young made waves when he said his role reflects a growing focus of the service provider on the midmarket. Lumen has evolved its midmarkets direct team into a national sales team and brought it closer to Lumen’s channel team, driven in part by the vision of newly appointed C-suite members.
Sara Seegers, regional vice president of indirect channel sales and opportunity management, said the company is emphasizing customer opportunities that weave together both IP and SASE offerings. She also said Lumen’s recently implemented agent activator incentive is opening doors with partners.
Learn why growth for Lumen is more than just adding headcount.
Upstack, the private equity-backed superagency, has tapped the leaders of one of the firms it acquired to head up customer experience.
J.R. Vernick and Darren Jones, who agreed to bring their company, RDS Solutions, into Upstack more than a year ago, will be executive vice presidents and co-heads of customer experience (CX) at the New York-based channel partner. In the eyes of Upstack leadership, the appointment demonstrates that Upstack is driving integration across the 27 agencies whose businesses it has purchased over the last two-and-a-half years.
To learn more from Vernick and Jones about their vision for their roles, catch their interview here.
The bar continues to rise for threat intelligence providers as their customers become overwhelmed with the volume of raw threat information.
Threat intelligence platforms consolidate and deduplicate intelligence information, and help analysts act on findings. Services may integrate threat intelligence with other aspects of security services. Those include managed security services or managed IT infrastructure.
Our latest CF List for the second time focuses on threat intelligence providers. Analysts with Omdia, Forrester and Frost & Sullivan weighed in on threat intelligence market trends and what it takes to be a successful threat intelligence provider.
Elvia Finalle is senior analyst of security operations at Omdia, which shares a parent company with Channel Futures (Informa).
“The definition of a successful security solution will continue to evolve as the work environment progresses and changes,” she said. “The abrupt move to remote work many industries experienced during the pandemic has shown that not only were companies not ready for many new cyber threats, but that they also needed to acquire a threat intelligence solution to facilitate understanding of their situation.”
Even with some portion of workers returning to work, a large portion of the workforce prefers to keep working remotely, Finalle said.
Learn more from the other analysts interviewed for the list as well.
At first it seemed Accenture was unscathed by the recent layoffs hitting the tech industry. And then Thursday hit. The company confirmed layoffs impacting 19,000 workers, or 2.5% of its global workforce to reduce costs.
Accenture announced the layoffs in its latest quarterly report with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The professional services company said its workforce grew by 39,000 over the past year.
Julie Sweet is Accenture’s chair and CEO. She made waves outlining the company’s plans.
“Our strong financial results this quarter again demonstrate that our ability to bring together industry, functional and technology expertise as well as managed services continues to differentiate us with our clients,” she said. “Our record bookings reflect the confidence and trust that our clients have in us to create value and help them transform at speed. We are also taking steps to lower our costs in fiscal year 2024 and beyond while continuing to invest in our business and our people to capture the significant growth opportunities ahead.”
Understand more here about Accenture’s voluntary attrition levels.
Amazon this week confirmed more layoffs impacting 9,000 workers, including many in Amazon Web Services (AWS). The internet giant in January initiated layoffs impacting 18,000 employees.
In addition, more layoffs are likely as Amazon continues its workforce analysis.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy detailed the latest layoffs in a message to Amazon employees. They are impacting AWS, the People eXperience and Technology (PXT) group, advertising, and its Twitch live streaming service. The layoffs will happen over the next few weeks.
“For several years leading up to this one, most of our businesses added a significant amount of headcount,” Jassy said. “This made sense given what was happening in our businesses and the economy as a whole. However, given the uncertain economy in which we reside, and the uncertainty that exists in the near future, we have chosen to be more streamlined in our costs and headcount…”
What’s the status of public cloud spending? Find out more here.
Cisco led a “crowded” secure access service edge (SASE) market in terms of revenue in 2022, according to a Dell’Oro Group report.
Cisco had 17% of SASE revenue share in the research firm’s latest SASE & SD-WAN report. However, the industry is growing as a whole, and Zscaler only trailed Cisco by a single percentage point. The overall SASE market grew 34% year-over-year in revenue in 2022, according to Dell’Oro.
Mauricio Sanchez, Dell’Oro’s research director for network security and SASE and SD-WAN, made waves when he said it was the third consecutive year SASE revenue growth topped 30%.
“The pandemic-fueled need to modernize the network and security architecture for branch offices and hybrid users continued,” Sanchez said.
Discover why single-vendor SASE solutions recently grew faster.
The future is very bright for managed service providers (MSPs), according to Canalys. Canalys analyst Jay McBain presented his top trends and opportunities – and warnings – to MSPs at the recent NerdioCon 2023.
He made waves, noting that last year, businesses and governments globally spent $4.5 trillion on technology. Of that figure, services comprised two-thirds. The managed services market alone was worth $387 billion in 2022 — a figure greater than McBain was anticipating.
“A couple of years ago, I would have said this is a $200 billion market. It’s a solid, double-digit growing business. We’re in the right industry,” he told MSPs. “Software is eating the world; every other company in 27 industries is becoming a tech company. This is the right place to be this decade.”
In addition, learn from McBain why marketplaces are the fastest growing route to market in the world.
The future is very bright for managed service providers (MSPs), according to Canalys. Canalys analyst Jay McBain presented his top trends and opportunities – and warnings – to MSPs at the recent NerdioCon 2023.
He made waves, noting that last year, businesses and governments globally spent $4.5 trillion on technology. Of that figure, services comprised two-thirds. The managed services market alone was worth $387 billion in 2022 — a figure greater than McBain was anticipating.
“A couple of years ago, I would have said this is a $200 billion market. It’s a solid, double-digit growing business. We’re in the right industry,” he told MSPs. “Software is eating the world; every other company in 27 industries is becoming a tech company. This is the right place to be this decade.”
In addition, learn from McBain why marketplaces are the fastest growing route to market in the world.
This week’s Channel Futures People Making Waves features executives and experts at Lumen, Accenture, Amazon, Canalys and more. Our weekly list highlights the people behind the top-performing, most-read stories of the week.
First up is Accenture. The company seemed not to be impacted by the tech layoffs affecting so many large firms. Then this week the shoe dropped. The company laid off 19,000 workers, or 2.5% of its global workforce. Learn from CEO Julie Sweet what this means moving forward for the massive tech organization.
The editors at Channel Futures enjoy compiling lists. They take complicated information and boil it down to the essentials. This includes our latest CF List, where analysts at Omdia, Forrester and Frost & Sullivan weigh in on threat intelligence market trends. If you’re paying attention to the ins and outs of hybrid work, this list is for you.
Finally, it’s a great time to be an MSP, according to Canalys’ Jay McBain. In 2022 alone, he said the managed services market was worth $387 billion. “It’s a solid, double-digit growing business.” It’s good tech news in this season of weekly upheaval.
See our slideshow above for the eight wave-makers from Lumen, Accenture and more. If you didn’t catch our last segment, you can find it here.
Want to contact the author directly about this story? Have ideas for a follow-up article? Email Claudia Adrien or connect with her on LinkedIn. |
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