7 Channel People Making Waves This Week at Microsoft, Google Cloud, Keeper Security, More
From alleged trade secrets theft to efforts at damage control online, a lot happened this week.
July 22, 2022
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Former CIA engineer Joshua Schulte was convicted for leaking classified hacking tools and exploits dubbed “Vault 7” to WikiLeaks in 2016.
The Vault 7 leak revealed how the CIA hacked Apple and Android smartphones in overseas spying operations, and efforts to turn internet-connected televisions into listening devices.
Darren Guccione (pictured above) is CEO and co-founder of Keeper Security. He made waves for his assessment of how the federal government should respond to such leaks.
“The recent conviction of a former CIA software engineer points to the government’s need to protect against both insider and external threats,” he said. “Comprehensive visibility, security and control over the entire organization’s infrastructure is essential. A unified cybersecurity platform is imperative, especially in mission-critical operations that preserve national security.”
Learn more about the case here.
The competition is stiff, but it appears Microsoft Azure has edged out Amazon Web Services, according to new public cloud numbers from IDC. And Azure hasn’t only placed No. 1 with IDC. Flexera also put the cloud provider in its top spot.
IDC’s Rick Villars made waves assessing the future implications of these providers.
“For the next several years, leading cloud providers will play a critical role in helping enterprises navigate the current storms of disruption – inflation, supply chain and geopolitical tensions – but IT teams will also focus more on bringing greater financial accountability to the variable spend models of public cloud services,” Villars said.
Get more information about the IDC report here.
Google Cloud now holds the U.S. Department of Defense’s Impact Level 4 authorization for Google Workspace.
Will Grannis is CEO of Google Public Sector and made waves for emphasizing how big of a milestone this is for Google Cloud.
“This means all customers can be confident they are collaborating securely, without having to deploy a separate government cloud limited in its capacity to support customer needs at scale,” he wrote. “It also means that customers in highly regulated agencies and industries can operate seamlessly without having to incur additional cost and implementation complexity,” Grannis said.
What is Impact Level 4? Kelly Teal explains.
Multinational software company IGEL Technology is pushing back on allegations that it used stolen trade secrets to recruit its competitor’s employees, partners and customers.
The Germany-based thin client software provider has clashed with rival German vendor Unicon GmbH in court battles over the last year. Unicon, which initiated the proceedings, asserts that IGEL and its leadership illegally disseminated and leveraged Unicon’s trade secrets.
Unicon CEO Philipp Benkler made waves for his accusations that IGEL took data and documents that had been copied and removed from the company.
“We suspected that they might contain strictly confidential Unicon trade secrets. Since then, there have been indications that some of these documents have found their way to IGEL Technology,” he said.
Read more from James Anderson’s investigative reporting.
The data center colocation industry is witnessing increasing competition from existing and emerging industry players. Reporting from Edward Gately shows that there are several trends impacting data centers. This includes the pandemic, which was actually a net positive for data centers.
Dan Thompson is principal research analyst at S&P Global Market Intelligence. He made waves for his judgment about the pandemic’s influence on the industry.
“When all the workers got sent home, companies had to scramble to figure out how to support them and how to keep business moving forward. Colocation and other managed services were a way forward. At the same time, services offered by the hyperscalers (Amazon, Microsoft, Google, etc.) were also being heavily leveraged, which forced those companies to grow their infrastructure. This, too, had a positive impact on the wholesale end of the data center industry in that companies that had space in the large markets saw a lot of initial demand,” Thompson said.
Now that people are slowly heading back to the office, companies aren’t abandoning any of those platforms, he said.
Learn more from Gately’s reporting here.
In a post on GitHub, Datto founder and former CEO Austin McChord accused Kaseya of flipping the desk, as it were, claiming that the software giant is set to destroy the Datto dynamic. This was weeks after the Kaseya purchase of Datto closed, and months after the news was first public.
To put a stop to the swirling rumors, Kaseya addressed McChord’s comments in an internal email to Datto employees (or “our newest Kaseyans”).
Kathy Wagner is chief financial officer, Kaseya. She made waves for clamping down on “potential” misinformation.
“Over the weekend, there was some false information published on social media about your future at Kaseya,” Wagner wrote. “This information was ‘based’ on information from secondary sources, possibly derived from interpretation of what our CEO, Fred Voccola, said at several town halls this past week addressing our Datto employees. In light of the false statements that were posted online, I wanted to set the record straight on several facts.”
Link to Allison Francis’ story for more details surrounding that email.
Microsoft has a new face representing the partner ecosystem. Nicole Dezen is now chief partner officer (CPO), a new role at Microsoft. The selection of Dezen comes two months after Microsoft channel chief Rodney Clark unexpectedly left the company after 25 years.
As a result, Microsoft rethought its partner organization and the role of channel chief with a new and deeper approach to channel and ecosystem leadership and advocacy, officials said.
Dezen made waves for being the vanguard in this role.
“As chief partner officer, Nicole will have singular accountability for the commercial partner business. She will have a tremendous opportunity to lead, innovate and grow our mutual business with partners,” said Nick Parker, president of Microsoft’s industry partner and sales organization.
See what analysts had to say about Microsoft’s pivot.
Microsoft has a new face representing the partner ecosystem. Nicole Dezen is now chief partner officer (CPO), a new role at Microsoft. The selection of Dezen comes two months after Microsoft channel chief Rodney Clark unexpectedly left the company after 25 years.
As a result, Microsoft rethought its partner organization and the role of channel chief with a new and deeper approach to channel and ecosystem leadership and advocacy, officials said.
Dezen made waves for being the vanguard in this role.
“As chief partner officer, Nicole will have singular accountability for the commercial partner business. She will have a tremendous opportunity to lead, innovate and grow our mutual business with partners,” said Nick Parker, president of Microsoft’s industry partner and sales organization.
See what analysts had to say about Microsoft’s pivot.
Channel people at Microsoft, Google Cloud, Keeper Security and more are among the individuals making waves in the channel this week. Channel Futures’ Channel People Making Waves showcases those who have made an impact over the last seven days.
Controversy and damage control are the name of the game this week. Lawsuits abound, including the conviction of a former CIA engineer who leaked classified hacking tools to WikiLeaks. Another company in the channel is accused of stealing trade secrets. While over at Kaseya, a post on GitHub led to a fiery internal email from management.
There were less controversial stories that also made their mark. Microsoft rolled out its new position, chief partner officer, and officials announced the woman taking that role. Finally, Google Cloud received the U.S. Department of Defense’s Impact Level 4 authorization. What does that mean for the cloud provider?
Find out that and more in this week’s roundup in the slideshow above. You can find our last edition 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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