Top 20 Stories in September: IBM, Avant, Rackspace, T-Mobile, Ingram Micro, More
Layoffs continued. Rackspace's CEO is out. Ingram Micro makes the list twice. But what was the No.1 story?
October 6, 2022
![Top stories megaphone Top stories megaphone](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt10e444bce2d36aa8/blt5da04ad13ce8e986/652415168accf9561f2b4cc0/Top-Stories-Megaphone.jpg?width=700&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale)
Shutterstock
Amy Bailey, former senior vice president of marketing at Telarus, left the company to start her firm, Unusually Unusual Consulting. Her new venture focuses on event planning and content strategy. One of Bailey’s main goals is to work with suppliers who need to augment their marketing team.
Bailey told Channel Futures that, “when I started [at Telarus], it was me and three people on the marketing team, so we were scrappy. We all got a little bit of everything; it was kind of that startup feeling at that point. It has now grown into a very different, larger organization, which is great. But what I came to realize is, I missed the scrappiness. I missed that entrepreneurial side.”
Read more here about Bailey’s history in marketing and her goals for the future.
Kaseya is investing more in Datto and will continue to do so into 2023. It also is adopting Datto’s model for supporting MSPs.
Kaseya already has added 65 people in R&D and plans to add an additional 100 in the months ahead, Kaseya’s CEO Fred Voccola said.
“But us as a company, we’re going to make mistakes, but we’re going to do more things right than wrong,” Voccola said. “And our strategy is invest a ton of resources in … what we believe is needed to make MSPs successful.”
Learn more about how the company plans to double market development funds (MDF).
Customer demand for hybrid cloud is driving a new, closer relationship between Dell Technologies and Microsoft.
The pairing is a result of demand from clients for benefits of the public cloud in the data center, said Dell’s UK leader.
“We’re seeing a seismic shift in clients wanting to leverage the cloud-based services that they know and love in the public cloud for the hard and difficult workloads in the data center,” said Dayne Turbitt, SVP and general manager at Dell.
Read the article to find out how and why the vendors want to align.
In September, Vista Equity Partners submitted a proposal to acquire security awareness training provider KnowBe4, which became a public company in April of last year.
“In response to an inquiry from Vista, the [KnowBe4] board formed a special committee of the board, comprised solely of independent directors … to engage with Vista and take other actions that it deems appropriate, with the assistance of independent financial and legal advisors,” KnowBe4 said.
Rik Turner is principal analyst at Omdia, which shares a parent company with Channel Futures (Informa).
“If this deal comes to pass, it would mean the last security awareness training/cyber awareness training (SAT/CAT) vendor of the ‘big three’ generation that remained public had been acquired, either by private equity or by another vendor,” he said.
Find out who else Vista Equity Partners is acquiring.
Schneider Electric has agreed to buy the rest of U.K. software firm Aveva, in an acquisition worth nearly £9.5 billion (US $11 billion).
The French firm has owned 60% of Aveva since a £3 billion reverse takeover in 2017. The deal saw Schneider fold its software assets into the U.K. company.
Aveva, a FTSE 100 company, has more than 6,400 employees. Schneider Electric, which has about 4,000 U.K. staff, reportedly has no plans to change Aveva’s employee base. It also intends to keep it as a software business, maintaining its headquarters in Cambridge, U.K.
Get more from Christine Horton’s article about the deal.
In September, Ingram Micro launched Xvantage, its digital experience platform ecosystem, in the United States and Germany. The distribution giant plans to “go live” with the rest of world in early 2023.
It took the distribution giant only 15 months to introduce Xvantage into the marketplace. The company unveils feature updates every two weeks. A global real-time data mesh containing many years of operating and transactions data powers the Xvantage digital experience platform. It also has several proprietary engines which are enhanced by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning.
To learn how this platform benefits channel partners, read the article here.
Channel partners can earn margins when reselling or deploying IBM software via the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Marketplace. An initiative launched by the two companies aims to neutralize conflict between IBM channel partners and AWS.
“When we started thinking about how we want to engage with AWS, we wanted to do it in a very collaborative way with our resellers,” said David La Rose, general manager of IBM’s channel sales organization.
Discover how the new program aims to remove friction between channel partners and clients with enterprise commitments with AWS.
Six vendors occupy the top category in Gartner‘s latest SD-WAN Magic Quadrant.
The research firm unveiled its latest assessment of the SD-WAN market. VMware, Fortinet and Cisco landed at the farthest edge of the Leaders quadrant. Palo Alto Networks, Versa Networks and HPE also landed in that group. All six vendors finished in the Leaders category last year. The same went for 2020.
The study also showed an increasingly cloud-based, security-integrated future for SD-WAN. Most notably, Gartner predicted that half of SD-WAN deals will occur as part of a secure access service edge (SASE) platform by 2025.
View more trends from the Magic Quadrant report here.
IronNet initiated more layoffs in September, cutting nearly 90 employees, or 35% of its workforce, and co-CEO William Welch and CFO James Gerber are leaving the company.
The workforce reduction is part of a broader plan by IronNet to reduce overall expenses and preserve cash.
Read more from Edward Gately’s reporting about the workforce reduction.
OpenText is acquiring British rival Micro Focus, which has a poor growth outlook and has struggled with profitability since reporting a $3 billion loss in 2020, according to analysts.
Micro Focus is one of the world’s largest enterprise software providers that serves thousands of organizations globally.
The $6 billion deal should close in the first quarter of 2023.
Learn why experts say that the acquisition of Micro Focus is a smart move by OpenText.
Attendees trained hard and played hard at the Avant Special Forces Summit in Austin, Texas, in September. And that combination of effort and celebration is connected to the movement partners are making up-market and up the stack.
The agent space has long been associated with SMB and midmarket telecommunications. But declarations from Avant staff and vendors, and anecdotes from partners weave a picture of a partner model that has gained credibility in the eyes of the CIO community.
James Anderson’s piece tackles how that credibility has evolved.
Nextiva is upping its investment in partners with the appointment of Hilary Gadda as head of partner development.
Gadda, who recently departed from TPx Communications, will build and oversee the cloud communications and digital workspace provider’s partner onboarding and development group.
Discover why Gadda thinks Nextiva is setting itself apart from the large crowd of UCaaS providers.
T-Mobile is shedding its wireline business to Cogent Communications to focus on its more profitable wireless business.
After all the math is done, the deal adds up to a whopping $1 cost for Cogent. Moreover, T-Mobile will shoulder a $1 billion charge on the transaction. The deal should close in the second half of 2023. The agreement marks a conclusion of sorts to T-Mobile’s 2020 acquisition of Sprint.
Read more about the sale details here.
The Channel Futures MSP is the world’s largest and most comprehensive survey and ranking of pure-play managed service providers and IT companies that provide managed services in the technology industry. Every year, partners around the world submit applications for a chance to be named a Channel Futures MSP 501 winner. The data collected in the application process fuels Channel Futures’ editorial coverage of the key market trends, challenges and opportunities in the MSP space.
And now you can download the complete list of providers here.
Ingram Micro, the world’s largest distributor, has confidentially filed for a proposed U.S. initial public offering (IPO).
The company submitted a draft registration statement on Form S-1 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) relating to the proposed IPO of its common stock. The number of shares to be offered and the price range for the proposed offering have not yet been determined.
The IPO should take place after the SEC completes its review process, subject to market and other conditions.
Edward Gately’s reporting goes through the fiscal history of the company. You can find that information here.
Riya Shanmugam, group vice president of global alliances and channels at New Relic, discusses her experience with imposter syndrome throughout her career in an editorial for Channel Futures.
She writes: “Imposter syndrome has a negative reputation for a reason. Getting trapped in feelings of anxiety and inadequacy can hinder your growth and prevent you from showing why you were hired in the first place.”
Learn how Shanmugam overcame her challenges and earned her seat at the executive table.
Kevin Jones is out as Rackspace CEO.
The Texas-based cloud computing managed service provider replaced Jones with Amar Maletira, previously president and chief financial officer since November 2020.
Jones held the Rackspace CEO role for almost four years. As of Sept. 26, he was working as an operating advisor with Apollo Global Management, which bought Rackspace in 2016 for $4.3 billion and took the company public once again in 2020. Given Rackspace’s ups and downs over the past year under Jones’ leadership, the powers that be apparently determined it was time for a change.
Read more about the realignment happening at Rackspace.
It’s one of the more popular monthly segments at Channel Futures. Channel People on the Move, which showcases the individuals hired by companies in the channel, was our No.3 most-read story last month. We featured people who got positions at Verizon, AWS, GoTo, Ingram Micro, Intelisys and more.
Scroll through the slideshow to find some familiar faces.
It’s no secret that Avaya faces some serious financial challenges now, and in the year ahead. Understanding what the company is going through also provides lessons for other UCaaS firms in the channel. Avaya is a global company, which is why articles we’ve published about it have drawn significant interest. This includes one we reported on regarding recent layoffs and another piece, a Q&A with both the company’s CEO and channel leader.
Our No. 1 story of the month … drumroll, please … is our DE&I 101. This year’s 101 honorees come from throughout the information and communication technology channel. Representing multicultural backgrounds, they all work to promote diversity, equity and inclusion in the channel. If you haven’t looked at the list to find out who in the channel shines, now’s the time.
Our No. 1 story of the month … drumroll, please … is our DE&I 101. This year’s 101 honorees come from throughout the information and communication technology channel. Representing multicultural backgrounds, they all work to promote diversity, equity and inclusion in the channel. If you haven’t looked at the list to find out who in the channel shines, now’s the time.
The top channel stories from September feature a good mix of articles, from an executive combating imposter syndrome to T-Mobile shedding its wireline business for what amounts to … $1.
There were many reasons to get excited for colleagues in the channel, too. One veteran marketing executive left her previous role at a tech services distributor to start her own firm. She named it after a country music song.
In contrast to the more positive stories, layoffs continued throughout the channel. It seems these mirror the layoffs occurring in the tech industry as a whole. And readers are interested in our coverage of this topic, often viewing these articles above others.
But we aren’t the ones who select the top 20 — you do. We aggregate results of most-read stories from our website and our newsletters. You can sign up for those here.
In the meantime, see our top 20 countdown for September in the slideshow above. What was No. 1? And if you missed last month’s countdown, it’s here.
About the Author(s)
You May Also Like