Channel Conflict, Controversy: Mitel, NTT Layoffs, AWS Stumbles, Anti-Semitism, Kaseya Ransomware
There's never a dull moment in the channel.
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A number of high-ranking Mitel workers lost their jobs just before the holidays prompted by the company’s new partnership with RingCentral.
On LinkedIn, Richard Fry, national channel manager, announced his departure from Mitel just before Thanksgiving. Earl Stevenson soon after announced his departure. He was head of Mitel’s network operations center (NOC) and global incident management.
Both cited the RingCentral partnership as the reason for the layoffs.
Last month, RingCentral announced its strategic partnership with Mitel. The partnership will provide Mitel’s global customer base with a migration path to RingCentral’s Message Video Phone (MVP). That’s RingCentral’s cloud phone system.
Stevenson described the layoffs as “devastating.”
In addition, layoffs are impacting 151 NTT workers in North Carolina. The layoffs started Dec. 6.
Among the eliminated NTT positions are purchasing agents, inside client specialists, inside client managers, and credit and collections coordinators.
The controversy over the name “master agent” reached a peak this year. So the companies that carried that moniker got together to rename themselves “technology solutions brokerages.”
While they acknowledge it will take some time for widespread acceptance, they all say it was the right move. In addition to the negative connotations about race, many feel “master agent” never really accurately described the relationship they have with partners.
We gathered leaders from Intelisys, Telarus and TBI for a keynote panel at this fall’s Channel Partners Conference & Expo. Check out the video from the panel.
In July, Amr Awadallah, Google Cloud’s vice president of developer relations and the co-founder of Cloudera, found himself out of a job.
He faced accusations of misguided attempts to reconcile and renounce his own anti-Semitism, alongside toxic leadership.
The biggest reason appeared to boil down to a 15-chapter manifesto Awadallah posted on LinkedIn, and his references to it during an all-hands meeting. He also posted the essay on YouTube and Twitter.
In “We Are One!,” Awadallah, an Egyptian American who also calls himself a “proud Muslim with a touch of healthy agnosticism,” explains that he no longer hates Jews.
“Yes, I was anti-Semitic, even though I am a Semite, as this term broadly refers to the peoples who speak Semitic languages, such as Arabic and Hebrew, among others,” he wrote.
In August, as we watched vaccination conversations play out in the industry, a lot of attention focused on partners and vendors, particularly, what they’re doing in terms of COVID-19 mandates.
Are offices reopening to all? For those that do, should they require employees to get vaccinated?
“We are not requiring a mask; however, employees are encouraged to show proof of vaccination,” said Darren Crane, president of DLC Technology (No. 477 on the Channel Futures 2021 MSP 501).
On the flip side, some shops are against any sort of COVID-19 mandates.
“We are not in favor of heavy-handed government tactics to push private employers to mandate vaccines for employees,” said Peter Bybee, CEO of Security On-Demand (No. 11 on the Channel Futures 2021 MSP 501). “This is a matter of personal health choice, and we view this as government interference in personal freedom for citizens to make personal health decisions.”
In August, we reported AWS facing allegations of channel conflict, bullying and racial discrimination, while dealing with some significant personnel changes.
In terms of channel conflict, AWS moves quickly and pushes its people hard. A hyperfocus on innovation and customer experience can encourage missteps.
When it comes to potential discrimination, the tech world is not known as a paragon of diversity, equality and acceptance. AWS may be forced to lead on that front, should an investigation find the company has not given fair shrift to women and “underrepresented groups.”
And the installment of new top executives – in this case, Adam Selipsky replacing Andy Jassy – often results in staff shake-ups and attrition.
In August, we reported Microsoft hired AWS vet Charlie Bell. He had worked at AWS for 15 years. Moreover, he was widely expected to be the top candidate for the AWS CEO role after Jeff Bezos named Andy Jassy head of Amazon.
Just before the July 4th weekend, Kaseya was hit with a ransomware attack by the REvil ransomware gang.
The Kaseya VSA supply chain ransomware attack breached about 50 customers, and penetrated or directly impacted up to 1,500 downstream businesses. About 70%, or 35, of the customers impacted by the attack were MSPs.
Within an hour, the company shut down access to the software in question.
Fred Voccola, Kaseya’s CEO, called the attack “incredibly sophisticated.”
The company scrambled to help its customers recover. Spammers then targeted victims with phishing schemes and other malicious tactics.
Kaseya said it didn’t pay a ransom, adding it doesn’t negotiate with criminals.
The news then broke that the FBI withheld the Kaseya ransomware decryption key for nearly three weeks, leaving victims struggling to recover and stay afloat. It did so to disrupt REvil, but the operation failed.
In June, software pioneer John McAfee died of an apparent suicide just hours after a Spanish court ruled he could be extradited to the United States.
Prison officials said they found the 75-year-old McAfee hanging in his cell. Conspiracy theories began popping up everywhere similar to those that arose after Jeffrey Epstein’s death.
From prison in Barcelona in October 2020, McAfee asserted the following on Twitter: “I am content in here. I have friends. The food is good. All is well. Know that if I hang myself, a la Epstein, it will be no fault of mine.”
In addition, Newsweek and other outlets reported that after the news of McAfee’s death, someone posted “Q” on his Instagram account. The letters appears to refer to the QAnon movement and the so-called “dead man’s switch,” which, when activated, supposedly exposes nefarious government activities. McAfee rarely used Instagram and last posted there in October 2020 – and before that, November 2019. However, he noted in July 2019 that he was not the only person with access to the account.
Perhaps more telling were the tweets in the days leading up to McAfee’s death. A pinned tweet dated June 16 could be read as grandiose or despairing.
“The US believes I have hidden crypto. I wish I did but it has dissolved through the many hands of Team McAfee (your belief is not required), and my remaining assets are all seized. My friends evaporated through fear of association. I have nothing. Yet, I regret nothing.”
More than 53 million T-Mobile customers were impacted by a data breach, which prompted two class-action lawsuits.
T-Mobile said it discovered another 5.3 million current customers and 667,000 former customers had their information stolen.
The private information compromised in the T-Mobile data breach included names, phone numbers, drivers’ licenses, government identification numbers, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, and T‐Mobile account PINs.
Allie Mellen, analyst of security and risk at Forrester, said T-Mobile left a gate wide open for attackers.
In addition, ongoing and previous T-Mobile customers filed two class-action lawsuits against the carrier in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington. Both lawsuits accuse T-Mobile of violating the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). Moreover, one of them accuses the carrier of violating the Washington State Consumer Protection Act.
In July, the Department of Defense (DoD) canceled the $10 billion JEDI cloud contract. AWS and Microsoft Azure had been locked in never-ending legal fights for the contract.
The DoD said due to evolving requirements, increased cloud conversancy and industry advances, the JEDI contract no longer meets its needs. The Department continues to have unmet cloud capability gaps. These needs have only advanced in recent years with efforts such as Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2) and the Artificial Intelligence and Data Acceleration (ADA) initiative.
AWS expected to win the JEDI project. However, the Pentagon instead awarded it to Microsoft. AWS blamed then-President Trump and his feelings toward former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Judges have sided with AWS, blocking Microsoft’s ability to start work on JEDI. The effort to upgrade the military’s systems to modern cloud computing then stalled.
When Julia White left Microsoft as corporate VP for Azure, server and developer tools marketing in January to become CMO and an executive board member at SAP, Microsoft tapped John “JG” Chirapurath to fill her role.
Chirapurath was a logical choice, given he led one of the group’s fastest growing businesses, Azure Data and AI. But six months later, Chirapurath followed White to SAP, which recruited him to become chief marketing and solutions officer for its Business Technology Platform (BTP).
“SAP is [in] the middle of a fantastic transformation,” he said. “The way you have to transform is with cloud, and cloud growth is really coming from the application end. And that’s what SAP does. It literally is the world’s largest business software company. And I just thought that the opportunity to really participate and continue my love for the space was at SAP.”
During last month’s OpenText World, OpenText launched its new “Bye Bye Blue” initiative, saying it’s time for everybody to drop IBM and choose it instead.
Mark Barrenechea, OpenText’s CEO and CTO, launched the company’s latest battle cry against IBM.
“When we look at our business network cloud and our content cloud, we are way ahead of FileNet and Sterling Commerce,” he said. “Let’s have the facts speak for themselves. We are in the upper right quadrant of Gartner for innovation in the CSP market. IBM has moved lower left. Any lower left and they wouldn’t even be on the chart. We’re talking about a technology platform to drive your future of growth.”
Second, OpenText has a public SaaS model and a full private cloud, Barrenechea said.
“IBM just carved out their private cloud offering to a company called Kyndryl,” he said. “There are no vowels in it so I’m not sure how to pronounce it. If you need a private cloud offering, you’re going to discontinue operations, you’re going to have to negotiate multiple multiple SLAs. With OpenText, we’ll stand up for one SLA and we’ll give you performance guarantees of what we’re doing.”
OpenText is offering a free migration assessment and “we’ll have you say bye bye blue in 90 days or less,” Barrenechea said.
During last month’s OpenText World, OpenText launched its new “Bye Bye Blue” initiative, saying it’s time for everybody to drop IBM and choose it instead.
Mark Barrenechea, OpenText’s CEO and CTO, launched the company’s latest battle cry against IBM.
“When we look at our business network cloud and our content cloud, we are way ahead of FileNet and Sterling Commerce,” he said. “Let’s have the facts speak for themselves. We are in the upper right quadrant of Gartner for innovation in the CSP market. IBM has moved lower left. Any lower left and they wouldn’t even be on the chart. We’re talking about a technology platform to drive your future of growth.”
Second, OpenText has a public SaaS model and a full private cloud, Barrenechea said.
“IBM just carved out their private cloud offering to a company called Kyndryl,” he said. “There are no vowels in it so I’m not sure how to pronounce it. If you need a private cloud offering, you’re going to discontinue operations, you’re going to have to negotiate multiple multiple SLAs. With OpenText, we’ll stand up for one SLA and we’ll give you performance guarantees of what we’re doing.”
OpenText is offering a free migration assessment and “we’ll have you say bye bye blue in 90 days or less,” Barrenechea said.
Forget Squid Game. There’s plenty of channel conflict and controversy involving Mitel, COVID-19 mandates, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Kaseya and more.
New hires, changing channel programs, security breaches and M&A are typical Channel Futures fare. But there also are plenty of eye-opening controversies that draw you to the watercooler. There have been quite a few since our last roundup of channel conflict and controversy in May.
Recent hubbub involves pre-holiday layoffs by Mitel and NTT, the controversy over the term “master agent,” and a Google Cloud VP losing his job over an antisemitism dust-up.
In addition, cyberattacks rocked Kaseya and T-Mobile, OpenText declared war on IBM and software pioneer John McAfee died in prison, sparking numerous conspiracy theories.
So kick back with some holiday nog and click through the slides above. Revisit the controversies and conflicts that have impacted the channel over the past several months.
Want to contact the author directly about this story? Have ideas for a follow-up article? Email Edward Gately or connect with him on LinkedIn. |
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