7 Channel People Making Waves This Week at Okta, Zoom, Google Cloud, OpenText, More

Channel people at Okta, Zoom, Google Cloud, OpenText 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.) It’s also a recap of the most-read stories on our website.

This week we did a deep dive into AppDirect’s acquisition of TBI, which many have dubbed as “the worst kept secret in the channel.” The article was our No. 3 most-read story of the week as our senior news editor, James Anderson, features interviews with partners about their take on the acquisition.

However, the news was once again less about deals and more about layoffs. Eric Yuan, Zoom’s CEO, announced a reduction in headcount that would impact 15% of its staff. Maybe just as surprising is that Yuan will cut his salary by 98%. Our roundup also includes information about layoffs at OpenText, as well as that company’s monster acquisition of Micro Focus.

Google is investing $400 million in AI startup Anthropic in attempts to compete with Microsoft, which is investing billions of dollars in OpenAI’s ChatGPT. It still remains to be seen how these AI technologies will impact the channel on a broad scale.

And that’s a wrap. If you didn’t catch our previous edition, you can find it here.