7 Channel People Making Waves This Week at Kaspersky, Oracle, Google Cloud, Intel, More
Our No. 1 story involves a layoff in waiting. It's anticipated to reduce headcount by 20% in some divisions of the company.
October 21, 2022
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In quarter three, global spend on IT and business services has pulled back on the reins a bit. The reason is pretty much what you’d expect — the economy’s precarious perch.
This is according to data from the Information Services Group (ISG) Index.
Amid these rising economic concerns, though, the volume of contracts signed in the quarter was at an all-time high. Bit of a head scratcher, but not altogether surprising.
Steve Hall is president of ISG and made waves for his assessment.
“Demand remains at an all-time high, but we are seeing some pullback in spending, as enterprises delay decision-making due to concerns about the economy,” Hall said. “Companies are still invested in ongoing digital transformation but are going slower for now.”
Get more of the business forecast from ISG for 2022 here.
The war in Ukraine has created challenges for Kaspersky because it’s based in Moscow. But the company says it has no ties to the Russian government.
It’s also helping businesses in Russia stay secure in the aftermath of U.S.-based cybersecurity firms pulling out of the country in response to the war. That’s according to Rob Cataldo, Kaspersky’s managing director of North America.
Cataldo made waves for his company’s stance toward the Russian government.
“We have to fight, as you might expect, because we’re originated there, although we have nothing to do with the Russian government itself,” he said. “In fact, we’ve produced many Russian-speaking advanced persistent threat (APT) reports that talk about all of the implications for those types of threats, what they did, what types of language they speak, etc. So we have nothing to do with the Russian state itself. Here, we have to fight certainly strong anti-Russian sentiments about anything Russian, which is completely understandable based on what’s happening.”
Learn more about Kaspersky’s assessment of professional cybercriminal gangs and their surge.
Verizon-exclusive mobility value-added resellers (VARs) are praising the company’s channel managers and lead-sharing activities.
The New York-based telecommunications giant unveiled results from its recent Channel Partner Experience Survey. Overall satisfaction ranged from 6-8.7 out of 10 depending on the partner program.
Connected Solutions Group (CSG) CEO Michael Pittman founded the company specifically to operate in the Mobility Co-Sell Program. Pittman made waves by saying that Verizon has done a good job maintaining the foundation of the program.
“My experience with other programs has not been that way. It has been very much blow-things-up-and-start-over-from-scratch seemingly every year. That makes it incredibly hard as a partner to build out your model and how you’re going to service these customers based on the terms of this partner program, only to have it completely … blown up and redone, and compensation changes and rules of engagement changes,” Pittman told Channel Futures.
Discover what partners had to say about how Verizon’s program has evolved and the opportunities facing the channel.
People were conferencing in full force during Oracle CloudWorld 2022. During the event, Larry Ellison made waves when he presented what he envisioned for the world: a place where multicloud infrastructure is open and clouds connect easily to one another.
“It’s an internet of clouds, if you will,” he said. “We think that’s where the world is going.”
Oracle and Microsoft Azure already have that capability — they announced it this past summer. But that’s just the beginning, if Ellison has his way.
“Taking a service and making it available on multiple clouds — that’s better than nothing,” Ellison said. “But a bigger idea would be, why don’t we just interconnect the clouds themselves?”
Ultimately, Ellison sees that happening. It’s just a question of when.
Find out here what other innovative things conference speakers had to say.
Google Cloud Next 2022 kicked off this month. Channel Futures previewed the conference, featuring the top eight announcements coming out of the event. This included Google Cloud ramping up its emphasis on cybersecurity and data protection.
They are doing so with new integrations and offerings via more than 20 partners. The efforts apply in different aspects and regions of cloud.
Let’s start with sovereignty, which is a big deal in Europe, especially. The Google Cloud Ready–Sovereign Solutions program will help customers identify partner applications validated as compatible with Google Cloud’s portfolio of Sovereign Solutions. These will include partner offerings from T-Systems in Germany and S3NS in France.
Sunil Potti, vice president, cloud security, at Google Cloud made waves when he explained why partners were instrumental in these efforts.
“Our partners play a critical role in keeping customers secure and compliant, whether enabling secure hybrid work, safeguarding critical infrastructure, or meeting stringent data residency requirements,” Potti said.
In addition, find out what’s new with zero trust, identity management and more at Google Cloud.
Sometimes it’s not what people say but how they say it that makes waves. Take Computacenter’s CEO Mike Norris, who has criticized the as-a-service business model, labelling it as, well, “sh**.”
Norris spoke at the Canalys Forum 2022 in Barcelona.
He said: “As a Microsoft shareholder, as-a-service is brilliant. As a vendor, as-a-service is brilliant. As a channel partner, as-a-service is pretty good. [For] a corporate customer, I think it’s sh**.”
He continued: “Anybody that thinks that as-a-service is great for customers, I think they’re smoking dope. I really do. I think they’re just on the wrong planet. It’s a factor. It’s great. We have to embrace it. The vendors want to do it. I’m not saying it’s not going to conquer the world. It’s [just] not very good for customers.”
Norris also pointed to the cost challenges around cloud, which you can read about here.
Intel is reportedly planning massive job cuts that could impact thousands of employees in response to the PC market slowdown. Some divisions, including Intel’s sales and marketing group, could see layoffs impacting about 20% of staff.
Pat Gelsinger, Intel’s CEO, made waves because he was frank. He said the results were “below the standards we have set for the company and our shareholders.”
“We must and will do better,” he said. “The sudden and rapid decline in economic activity was the largest driver. But the shortfall also reflects our own execution issues. We are being responsive to changing business conditions, working closely with our customers while remaining laser-focused on our strategy and long-term opportunities. We are embracing this challenging environment to accelerate our transformation.”
See what an analyst had to say here about Intel’s situation.
Intel is reportedly planning massive job cuts that could impact thousands of employees in response to the PC market slowdown. Some divisions, including Intel’s sales and marketing group, could see layoffs impacting about 20% of staff.
Pat Gelsinger, Intel’s CEO, made waves because he was frank. He said the results were “below the standards we have set for the company and our shareholders.”
“We must and will do better,” he said. “The sudden and rapid decline in economic activity was the largest driver. But the shortfall also reflects our own execution issues. We are being responsive to changing business conditions, working closely with our customers while remaining laser-focused on our strategy and long-term opportunities. We are embracing this challenging environment to accelerate our transformation.”
See what an analyst had to say here about Intel’s situation.
Channel people at Kaspersky, Oracle, Google Cloud, Intel and more are among the individuals making waves this week. Channel Futures’ Channel People Making Waves showcases those who have made an impact over the last seven days. (See our slideshow above.)
First up is Mike Norris, CEO of Computacenter. He spoke at the Canalys Forum 2022 in Barcelona and had some choice words. For example, he said that “anybody that thinks that as-as-service is great for customers, I think they’re smoking dope.” Norris wasn’t finished. His direct communication style was the likely reason this story was our No. 2 most-read story for the week.
It’s not surprising readers were interested in hearing from Oracle’s Larry Ellison, either. We covered his speech at the Oracle CloudWorld 2022 where he presented a vision for a world that included an internet of clouds. What does Ellison mean by that? Peruse our list to find out.
Finally, sovereignty is a big deal in Europe and the Google Cloud Ready-Sovereign Solutions program is prepared to help. The cloud giant has gone on record to say that partners play a critical role in keeping customers secure and compliant.
That’s a wrap. And, if you didn’t catch our previous edition, 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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