Top 20 Stories in January: Broadcom-VMware, 8x8 Layoffs, More
From industry predictions to the scourge of layoffs, we present January's top 20 channel stories. What was No. 1?
![Top stories in January 2024 (channel) Top stories in January 2024 (channel)](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt10e444bce2d36aa8/blt83015a0ae5016d35/6523fcebc39fc86019dd622a/Top-Stories-Sign.jpg?width=700&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale)
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Our popular monthly CF20 series, where we identify 20 companies making waves in a particular technology or business model, kicks off another top 20 list.
Last month it was communications platform as a service (CPaaS). The analysts we polled put the likes of Vonage, RingCentral and Cisco on the list, but also some niche players.
Avaya removed the interim title from head of U.S. channel sales for Chris Dickson, the longtime industry veteran. Dickson was formally promoted to VP of U.S. channels at the cloud-based UCaaS, CCaaS and customer experience solutions provider.
![Avaya's Chris Dickson Avaya's Chris Dickson](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt10e444bce2d36aa8/bltc0b340a20173d752/6596f9084d8ced040a341295/Dickson_Chris_Avaya_2024.jpg?width=700&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale)
Avaya's Chris Dickson
His previous role at Avaya was senior director, heading up the company's national partner team.
Dickson told Channel Futures that his focus will be on growth, including "more partners selling more Avaya solutions, more frequently."
What's on tap for technology advisors (agents) in 2024? We went straight to the source to find out.
Channel Futures asked sources at partner companies, distributors and suppliers what they think the channel should be watching in 2024.
Among the highlights: adoption of new internal systems, an acceleration of CCaaS AI use cases, a spike in copper replacement and more.
Find out what else your peers, vendors and distis are predicting.
New benefits have arrived for partners in the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program.
The packages, which include in-demand product, support and advisory benefits, complement the already existing solutions partner designations and specializations that Microsoft says help partners grow with the company.
Partners in what Microsoft calls its "major markets" have access to these packages now. They will rollout elsewhere by the end of March.
Get more specifics on what's available.
Channel Futures senior editor James Anderson offered up this profile of ARG CEO Greg Praske, a longtime member of the technology advisor (agent) channel, who said he was hanging it up and calling it a career.
His brother, Steve, ARG's president, also is retiring.
Praske told Channel Futures that after running ARG for more than 30 years, he's handing the torch to "the next generation."
Learn about who will succeed the Praskes and get some insight into their long success.
You wanted to keep up with the most cutting-edge changes to industry partner programs last month.
TD Synnex, for one, launched a program to add value for partners who want to sell and service Microsoft Copilot.
Barracuda Networks launched a global partner program that rewards partners for "total sales contribution."
Picus Security introduced a new program for MSSPs.
You can learn about all of these and more in our roundup.
The start of a new year is the start of new beginnings. It's a time when we peer into our crystal balls and take note of some trends for the year ahead.
That's what the Channel Futures research team did in January, and you were interested in what the future might hold.
According to Devan Adams, principal analyst for Omdia's channel research and consulting practice (part of Informa Tech, Channel Futures' parent company), we should be eyeballing channel partner program enhancements, increase marketplace adoption, practical artificial intelligence and much more.
Just in time for the kickoff of the 2024 Channel Futures MSP 501 application, you decided to take a look and see who ranked on last year's most prestigious list of managed service providers worldwide.
You can go here to learn all about submitting an application and joining the ranks of the MSP 501 this year.
You could pull in some new sources of revenue if you sell some of these hot new products and services unleashed by industry heavy-hitters.
You flocked to learn about a new CCaaS offer from Talkdesk, new features and integrations on Zoom's contact center platform, and AI that Cisco and AppDirect layers into their existing offerings.
We close every year by naming the top 20 channel leaders in a variety of categories.
Here, we identified 20 of the most important leaders at the traditional distributors, technology services distributors (formerly master agents) and some niche distis you might not know.
They hailed from Intelisys, D&H, Pax8 and more.
Here's the first in a series of layoffs stories in our top 20 countdown. Last year, the first quarter featured a flurry of job cuts in technology that surrounded economic uncertainty, but then the announcements tailed off around midyear. Let's hope that's the case again in 2024.
Here, we're talking about LiveVox, the cloud contact center platform. These don't come as a huge surprise considering the company was just acquired by NICE, and redundancies often follow.
That said, Tom Issler, national partner sales channel leader was taken aback a bit, writing on LinkedIn: "How quickly things can change! With NICE acquiring LiveVox, I fell victim to a downsizing effort alongside many of my talented coworkers."
No word from NICE/LiveVox how many people lost their jobs, but former employees called them "widespread." One member of the marketing team of 40 said only three survived the cuts.
Google Cloud made a bold statement that the other hyperscalers no doubt will watch when it eliminated the costs associated with leaving its cloud computing services.
Cloud egress fees have long been a concern for both channel partners and end users. That's in part because the price of leaving a cloud platform skyrockets when one accounts for data transfer expenses, which for a long time businesses didn't know what to expect.
Read the full recap in Kelly Teal's cloud roundup.
Cloud Software Group (CSG), exactly one year after announcing similar job cuts, said it's letting go of a whopping 12% of its workforce.
Cloud Software Group is the privately held company that owns Citrix and Tibco, as well as other business units related to the acquisitions of those companies.
CSG's CEO said the cuts are mostly in operations, security and IT, but the company is "working with partners who will rehire many of those individuals to continue providing outsources services to Cloud Software Group."
More layoffs at No. 7, unfortunately. These come from UC, contact center and cloud provider 8x8.
Channel Futures learned about the job cuts impacting the company's sales leadership. Among them were Michael Keeler, head of North America sales; Keely Ross, regional vice president of enterprise sales; and Mark Bautista, vice president of sales. The entire contact center overlay team also got the axe, according to our sources.
8x8 didn't comment on individual layofs, but did say they impacted only 30 people and "were intended to better align 8x8's sales and marketing organizations with our go-to-market strategies."
Our recurring monthly segment featuring new hires and promotions in the channel lands at No. 6 this month.
This edition, including CDI's Emmy Galet, featured moves at Lumen, Pax8, 8x8, Microsoft and more. And we just last week unleashed a new edition likely to land in next month's top 20 countdown.
A new operating model and organizational structure means Xerox partners should see more opportunities to increase their sales and revenue.
So says new chief channel and partner officers Jacques-Edouard Gueden, who told Channel Futures that "it was important for us to make our company easier to do business with, improving the experience for our network of global partners and their customers."
He further said that Xerox will focus on helping partners get ahead with document and form digitization, as well as workflow automation. Moving upstream into digital services will be critical to help partners capture new revenue streams and drive more value for their clients, making them more indispensable as partners.
Partners who work with security provider Carbon Black naturally expressed some concerns after parent company VMware was gobbled up by Broadcom last fall, particularly since Broadcom announced it would eliminate the traditional VMware partner program (more to come in later slides).
But Carbon Black did its best to assuage those fears, sending a letter to its partners, assuring them that the Carbon Black partner program isn't going anywhere.
Furthermore, we reported that Broadcom intends to sell the VMware end-user computing and Carbon Black businesses.
So while some uncertainty remains, soon it won't be as part of the Broadcom family.
“We understand that there is a lot of uncertainty at this time and want to assure all of Carbon Black’s trusted partners that the status of our partnerships are not in question," said Jason Rolleston, Carbon Black VP and general manager. "The Carbon Black partner program will continue and you are an integral part of it."
HPE kicked off the year with a bang, saying it's buying Juniper Networks, pending regulatory approval, for $14 billion.
We started off by polling a number of partners and distributors based in EMEA. Most weren't surprised at the news and viewed it as mostly positive, with one partner saying, “It bolsters [HPE's] own networking capabilities and by extension allows its channel partners to strengthen our competitiveness for larger-scale deals and extends our AI portfolio and overall customer proposition.”
It further raises the stakes in a rivalry with Cisco.
We also took you inside the landmark deal by getting reaction from the CEOs of HPE and Juniper.
The last of our layoff stories for the month involves CDW, the IT products and services giant.
The company isn't commenting on the cuts, but partners notified us of the layoffs and many employees took to TheLayoff.com to spout off about them. Some were dismayed by what they said was a lack of communication from CDW.
No word on a specific number of job eliminations this time around. We reported on roughly 600-700 CDW layoffs in April 2023 after the company's CEO cited its first quarter of that year as "a period of intensifying economic uncertainty."
As for an underlying reason behind these latest layoffs, CDW has remained quiet.
Broadcom's acquisition of VMware maintained its stranglehold on the No. 1 position on our countdown. It was No. 1 overall in our top stories countdown for all of 2023 as well.
January's top Broadcom-VMware article was our look at how partners and rival vendors were reacting to Broadcom axing the traditional VMware partner program. Most were a bit dazed and confused.
As a result, many of those same rivals started touting their own programs a little more as alternatives. We showcased a number of them.
This saga isn't going away anytime soon.
Broadcom's acquisition of VMware maintained its stranglehold on the No. 1 position on our countdown. It was No. 1 overall in our top stories countdown for all of 2023 as well.
January's top Broadcom-VMware article was our look at how partners and rival vendors were reacting to Broadcom axing the traditional VMware partner program. Most were a bit dazed and confused.
As a result, many of those same rivals started touting their own programs a little more as alternatives. We showcased a number of them.
This saga isn't going away anytime soon.
January got off to a hot start on Channel Futures as you, our loyal audience, returned with a vengeance after the holidays to get caught up on anything you missed and what you should expect for the new year.
Looking forward was one theme, as you dove headfirst into your peers' predictions for the technology advisor channel in 2024, as well as what our colleagues at Omdia expect to see over the next several months throughout the channel.
Meantime, vendors at companies doing business in the channel also were looking forward, but not to the benefit of their employees, particularly those in sales − including many in the channel − who got pink slips to start 2024. No fewer than four articles about job cuts cracked our top 20 this month.
Also popular on Channel Futures in January were the ongoing saga over Broadcom axing VMware's partner program and the recently announced HPE acquisition of Juniper Networks that will have huge ramifications for our industry.
Be sure to sign up for our Channel Futures newsletters. We combine the top-performing articles from those with online traffic overall to determine what's represented in our monthly top 20 stories countdown.
What was No. 1 for January? See our slideshow above to find out.
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