Channel People of the Week at TD Synnex, ScanSource, Zscaler

Channel partners working with Cisco are trying to determine the value and weight of the company's mega-merger with Splunk, a decision that will impact the company's cybersecurity portfolio as well as its growing AI investments.

That includes partners who provide networking and security products.

"That's going to drive such a high consumption of networking products and connectivity consumption," said Kristin Hill, Cisco practice leader for distributor ScanSource. " ... Those are all great revenue opportunities for the channel. Can we create the services and value-added offerings that drive outcomes at the pace that the market is going to consume these technologies? It's a great challenge for us to have right now."

Learn more about the Cisco deal and its implications for partners here.

Zscaler has embraced a new partner strategy designed to support its next phase of growth. Part of that phase will include looking beyond the channel and embracing a "partner ecosystem" approach.

“We believe the ecosystem approach is one that maximizes return on investment on value generation for the customer. If we have happy customers, we’ll have more business,” Blanca Galletero, VP of partners and alliances in EMEA for Zscaler, told Channel Futures.

Learn more about Zscaler's plans here.

TD Synnex CEO Richard Hume announced that he was stepping down from his role and that COO Patrick Zammit would fill his shoes.

“After more than 40 years as a part of the IT business partner ecosystem, I’ve decided it’s time to call it a career and retire from my role as CEO of TD Synnex later this year,” Hume wrote on LinkedIn. “It truly has been the greatest privilege of my professional career to serve in this role. I am humbled by, and grateful for, all the relationships, partnerships and friendships with so many incredible people across the channel and well beyond.

Hume will remain a member of the company's board of directors.

Learn more about Hume's departure here.

Channel Futures also interviewed Hume and Zammit after the announcement.

Two cyberattacks on CDK Global did significant damage to more than 15,000 auto dealerships across North America. The companies that use CDK Global's dealer management software were put into a near deadlock after attacks led to the software provider shutting down all of its systems.

The attack is illustrative of how successful cyberattacks can impact businesses in a chain reaction.

“Customers experience heightened risk when third-party vendors have expansive privileges to their operational environments," Jamie Moles, senior technical manager at ExtraHop, said. "Unfettered access leaves a clear pathway for attacks to have ripple effects across customer network environments, exposing their sensitive information and possibly impacting their daily operations. Intrusions on something as simple as an unmonitored VPN connection leaves an opening into otherwise trusted environments, acting as a gateway for threat actors to enact a takedown such as the one on CDK Global and its customers.”

Learn more about the CDK Global hack.

Channel Futures released its list of top threat intelligence providers, the cybersecurity vendors that help share pertinent information in the cybersecurity space and allow clients and analysts to act on it. The need for such companies has increased dramatically.

“Threat actors constantly change their infrastructure, malware and attack approaches, forcing organizations to keep up,” Brian Wrozek, principal analyst of security and risk at Forrester said. “Threat intelligence greatly improves decision making. This is especially important with time-sensitive tasks like incident response and threat hunting to minimize the impact. Insights into the tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) of threat actors and malware campaigns allows organizations to pinpoint their efforts. Threat intelligence facilitates more accurate vulnerability prioritization, so the most critical gaps are addressed first. Threat intelligence allows organizations to be more proactive by pursuing disruption actions like taking down a rogue domain before it can send phishing attacks or forcing a password change after discovering compromised credentials on the dark web.”

Find out who made Channel Futures' list of top threat intelligence providers.

Cloud services are big business for much of the 2024 Channel Futures MSP 501, with the vast majority reporting that they sell cloud storage, software-as-a-service or cloud backup. That's had a significant impact on their bottom line.

“What we saw in 2023 was the clients’ focus on efficiency and cost management,” Mark Nelson, VP of managed services for 3Cloud said. “In the previous few years, clients were in growth mode. I’m not saying they weren’t focused on costs, but maybe it wasn’t their top priority because of the velocity of the business. This last year a portion of our clients either had a tough year or they’re being pushed to find cost savings. So we spent a lot of time with clients on the spend-management program that's part of our core cloud managed service offering.”

Read more about how cloud services played out as part of the MSP 501.

A lot of IT clients represented in the MSP 501 have had to spend significant amounts of time trying to manage the implications of Broadcom's acquisition of VMware. These decisions have affected both the software decisions and the

“It’s ridiculous,” Tony Ferrigno, former SVP of service portfolio management at ATSG said. “They're holding customers over a barrel and customers are ticked off. We actually have a very big Nutanix take out of VMware, and so does Citrix and everybody else. When you're forced to do something, you may capitulate, but as soon as you have an alternative, you run. Some technologies like VMware [virtual desktop infrastructure] Horizon used to be free for some customers or integrated into product lines; now they’re not. It's just crazy. It’s a big market that we're attacking, actually.”

Learn more about how VMware and Broadcom's deal is affecting IT consumers.

A lot of IT clients represented in the MSP 501 have had to spend significant amounts of time trying to manage the implications of Broadcom's acquisition of VMware. These decisions have affected both the software decisions and the

“It’s ridiculous,” Tony Ferrigno, former SVP of service portfolio management at ATSG said. “They're holding customers over a barrel and customers are ticked off. We actually have a very big Nutanix take out of VMware, and so does Citrix and everybody else. When you're forced to do something, you may capitulate, but as soon as you have an alternative, you run. Some technologies like VMware [virtual desktop infrastructure] Horizon used to be free for some customers or integrated into product lines; now they’re not. It's just crazy. It’s a big market that we're attacking, actually.”

Learn more about how VMware and Broadcom's deal is affecting IT consumers.