Top 20 Channel Stories in March: Telarus, Synnex-Tech Data, Microsoft Hack
Mergers and acquisitions play a big part in our top stories countdown.
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Our countdown kicks off with a couple of newsworthy personnel moves in the channel.
Gavriella Schuster’s reign as Microsoft channel chief ended when the company replaced her with Rodney Clark, whose background was in mixed reality and IoT.
This story no doubt would have ranked higher in March, but the news only broke on the next to last day of the month.
Learn more about Schuster’s plans for the future and how industry insiders think Clark will fare in his new role.
It was a coup of sorts for 8×8, which snapped up its new chief marketing officer from rival RingCentral.
A recognized leader in cloud, 8×8 says Amritesh Chaudhuri has taken cloud and contact center solutions to both enterprises and SMBs.
Get the full scoop on Chaudhuri and what his colleagues are saying about him.
MSPs are at a turning point.
That’s the theme of a guest column by Digital Defense‘s Bob Layton. The pandemic, the rapid move to subscription-based services and the SolarWinds hack have made it a historic year.
Layton offers advice for these partners who must act now.
We told you about some nasty ransomware making its way around tech companies.
Sierra Wireless took a big hit, as many of its systems, including its main website, were down for days. The company, active in the channel, discovered the attack on March 20. Its IT and operations teams had to work around the clock to implement countermeasures.
Sierra Wireless, an IoT solution provider, had to stop production at its manufacturing sites for a while.
We explored how this attack and others are stoking fears in the industry.
The shift to remote work has made more companies vulnerable to cyberattacks.
Are you and your customers overlooking some threat protection measures that could impact your business? And perhaps more importantly, your customers’?
If you ask the cybersecurity vendors we talked to, the answer is a resounding yes. We compiled a number of them here.
Former VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger made headlines when he took the top job at Intel.
He wasted no time laying out a bunch of priorities for the company’s “Engineering the Future” growth plan. It’s an ambitious plan that revolves around its IDM 2.0 strategy.
We broke it all down into nine takeaways that you need to know for your business.
SentinelOne is one of the latest in a growing number of cybersecurity companies going public. Its goal is to raise $100 million.
We thought there were several things you should know about the IPO. Six, in fact.
This industry dove deep into the cloud years ago, so you’d think most partners would know most everything they need to know about cloud sales. Turns out, that’s far from the truth.
We took a long, hard look at some under-the-radar cloud opportunities that you’re probably missing. There are some products and sales tips here that could make you some big bucks.
More personnel moves here.
You’re watching IBM’s IT infrastructure spinoff, for now dubbed “NewCo,” carefully. That includes who’s going to be running it.
Two of those people are Elly Keinan, group president, and Maria Bartolome Winans, chief marketing officer. Both are tech industry veterans and experience IBM’ers.
Get to know more about them and NewCo’s direction.
Speaking of new hires and promotions, those of you familiar with our countdowns on Channel Partners Online know our recurring Channel People on the Move segment never gets left off.
This one from March, highlighting personnel moves in February, included Meredith Caram of JS Group (pictured above).
We just this week published a jumbo edition of moves in the IT and telecom channel. It’s here.
SD-WAN remains red hot in the channel, so it’s no surprise that Dell’Oro Group’s latest market share report was hot also.
We told you how the research firm, in its quarterly report, named Cisco, VMware, Fortinet, Versa and HPE as the top vendors.
Consolidation, Dell’Oro noted, played a big role in the latest results. The company cited HPE’s purchase of Silver Peak as an example.
Get the full breakdown of the numbers here.
Can’t we all just get along? In the case of Zoom and RingCentral, the answer is no.
It started when Zoom alleged unfair competition by RingCentral under the California Business and Professionals Code. The latest development: Just this week, a federal court dissolved a temporary restraining order against Zoom. The order had allowed RingCentral to continue selling Zoom services to new customers under the companies’ agreement.
Zoom has been trying to terminate its agreement with RingCentral since last summer.
Read more about the ongoing saga.
It turns out Brexit is having a huge impact on the IT channel in the U.K.
Delays of vendor shipments, price increases and a strain on distribution are just a few of the issues.
Our Christine Horton did a deep dive and came up with some more.
Does the Thycotic-Centrify merger threaten CyberArk’s privileged access management (PAM) market lead? That’s the question we posed in our examination of this tie-up.
“Centrify has certainly been an innovator with its more cloud-first approach rather than starting life on customers’ premises,” Omdia’s Rik Turner told us, speculating that CyberArk has a new, bigger rival. “Thycotic’s approach might be summed up as … a kind of ‘good enough’ PAM product that is designed to meet the needs of a significant part of the market.”
He posted a picture of himself as a woman on National Women’s Day. The comments he made that went along with it didn’t sit well with the transgender channel community.
Scott Millar of U.K.-based IT Rockstars replied to criticism in a Facebook community by writing, “Guys please respect my wished to identify the way I want.” It didn’t go over so well. Nor did his response to one community member who identifies as transgender: “Tomorrow I will be identifying as a potato – please respect my wishes.”
Millar told us he didn’t mean any harm and called it a “joke gone wrong.”
Read more about the controversy that developed.
A giant cyberattack on Microsoft’s on-premises Exchange business email software impacted hundreds of thousands of business globally. The malicious hack allowed access to email accounts and installed malware to increase the bad actors’ dwell time inside the system.
Microsoft attributes the attack to a group considered to be state-sponsored and operating out of China. Its impact will be long-lasting.
Government organizations were particularly susceptible as they’re often slow to migrate to the cloud per regulations.
Read more about what we uncovered.
Here’s a post from February that was still going strong in March.
Dean Darwin resigned from his job as Alteryx’s chief revenue officer after only a few weeks on the job. His resignation came after a tweet on his Twitter account that encouraged the government to “wake up and kick every Chinese researcher here on a visa out of the U.S. …”
It sparked outrage online, including from Alteryx employees who were critical of the company for a perceived slow response to the issue.
Read what the critics were saying.
Two distribution giants are getting together, and the channel has plenty to say about it.
Synnex and Tech Data are merging to become the world’s largest force in distribution, what they’re calling a $57 billion behemoth.
We had a number of stories on this topic that were all popular, but it was our survey of MSPs, some of which weren’t as excited as the rest of the industry, that got the most attention.
Also in the M&A realm, master agent Telarus said it was buying fellow master Chorus Communications. Chorus’ president and VP will make the move to Telarus as senior partner development managers.
“Chorus had many options regarding the future, and Telarus stood out from the crowd in terms of resources and support,” said Chorus VP Rob Molinaro.
It’s just the latest in a string of significant mergers and acquisitions in the agent channel.
Learn more about this M&A news.
You want to be a 501er?
That’s what we’re asking until May 24 when our application period closes.
We opened up applications for one of the tech industry’s most prestigious awards in March and you’ve responded, flocking to our application in droves. It’s there that you can show you belong on this amazing list.
We answer just about every question you could ask about the application process here.
You want to be a 501er?
That’s what we ’re asking until May 24 when our application period closes.
We opened up applications for one of the tech industry’s most prestigious awards in March and you’ve responded, flocking to our application in droves. It’s there that you can show you belong on this amazing list.
We answer just about every question you could ask about the application process here.
In another milestone that marks the coming together of Channel Partners Online and Channel Futures, we bring you our top 20 stories from March.
A top 12 countdown has been a staple on Channel Partners Online every month for several years. But now, as one site dedicated to the entire IT and telecom channel community, we’re bigger and better.
In this case, we’ve combined March’s top stories from Channel Futures and the now-historic Channel Partners Online into one. How do we determine our top stories? We don’t; you do! We base it on online traffic numbers and performance in our daily and weekly newsletters. You can sign up for those here.
Not to give too much away, but here you’ll find a big focus on mergers and acquisitions. Telarus buying Chorus Communications, for instance, was red hot on Channel Partners Online in March. Channel Futures readers were equally as interested in the massive Synnex-Tech Data distribution deal.
There was plenty of controversy as well. RingCentral and Zoom are battling it out in a courtroom. And an MSP made a joke that didn’t set well with the transgender community.
Those are just a few of the headlines making a stop in our top stories countdown for March. Next month, we’ll have the luxury of pulling every story in our countdown from Channel Futures, the new home for the entire telecom and IT community.
Which story was No. 1? Take a stroll through our slideshow above.
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