Top 20 Stories in August: AWS Cloud Slip?, Tech Layoffs, Intelisys-Avant Rivalry
Those stories plus Broadcom-VMware, top CCaaS providers and more. But what was No. 1 in August?
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Tech layoffs have been a dominant theme of our top 20 countdowns in 2023, but they weren’t quite as prevalent in August.
In fact, this article highlighting job cuts at Trellix, the security company formed via the combination of McAfee Enterprise and FireEye by acquirer Symphony Technology Group, landed on Channel Futures on July 7, but had enough steam to stick around for a second consecutive month.
We learned that the layoffs impacted an undisclosed amount of employees, while at least two high-level executives had left the company.
Omdia analyst Eric Parizo went as far to say that Trellix is “in trouble.”
AppDirect, the BSB subscription commerce provider, bought ADCom Solutions, a longtime AT&T partner focused on carrier and hardware-focused managed services.
The buyer was particularly interested in acquiring ADCom’s network operations center and VEEUE platform. VEEUE (visual end-to-end user experience) leverages ServiceNow and Zenoss to give partners a view into any device with an IP address.
Go here to learn more about what ADCom brings to AppDirect.
Our popular CF20 series struck gold again. You were eager to see which vendors the analysts we polled ranked as best in contact center as a service (CCaaS).
It probably comes as no surprise that NICE, RingCentral and Five9 were among those that made our list. But there were 17 more.
Vlad Shmunis (pictured) stepped aside from the chief executive role at the company he founded 20 years ago to become executive chairman of RingCentral.
Filling his shoes is Tarek Robbiati, who joins the UC giant from Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), where he was chief financial officer and EVP of finance.
Mo Katibeh, president and chief operating officer, is also stepping down, but will remain a special advisor and help with a “smooth transition.”
“My plan is to stay engaged with the company, while dedicating most of my time to innovation, product development and long-term strategy,” said Shmunis.
Read more about the C-suite transition here.
More layoffs land at No. 16 on our countdown. This time it’s Rapid7, the network security provider.
The company filed a restructuring plan with the SEC, noting that it will cut nearly 500 jobs. That’s 18% of its workforce.
Despite the negative news, Rapid7 leadership said they see strong results with channel partners and plan to “lean heavily” into their MSPs.
Learn about the change of focus at Rapid7 that could come about from the restructuring.
Noting that the move to AI will be “one of the most profound shifts we’ll see in our lifetime,” Google Cloud execs focused heavily on the emerging technology at their “Next” event last month in San Francisco. Channel Futures was there.
The No. 3 hyperscaler announced a series of updates and new platform capabilities at the event. Many of them are powered by generative AI advancements.
You can read about them here.
Might SentinelOne, the publicly traded cybersecurity provider, sell to cloud security startup Wiz?
It looked promising on Aug. 28 when we told you about a Reuters report, citing people familiar with the matter. Those sources said SentinelOne was considering its options, including a sale. It reportedly hired an investment bank to consider options with potential acquirers.
It’s an acquisition that analysts told Channel Futures “makes sense.” But curiously, a few days later, the two companies abruptly ended a mutual resell partnership. SentinelOne said it was due to “lack of performance.”
SentinelOne put an end to the weeklong drama when it said it would remain independent.
Another layoff article cracks the top 20, but this, like Trellix (No. 20 on the countdown), comes from a story we posted in July.
News about Cisco job cuts started to circulate on social media, but the IT giant assured us these tie back to the restructuring plan announced more than a year ago — not unexpected layoffs.
The divisions impacted by the most recent cuts include Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI), data center and collaboration/Webex units.
Keep up with the ongoing restructuring efforts at Cisco.
This edition of editor Edward Gately’s weekly “Gately Report” focused on cybersecurity giant Fortinet.
In this Q&A with Ken McCray, Fortinet’s VP of channel sales, we learned how in his first few months on the job he has paid special attention to creating “effective, efficient” relationships with partners.
“We think about our technology, whether it’s on the services side or the product side, our partners have a great opportunity add their expertise, their knowledge on top of that and drive not only their financials, but contributing to Fortinet’s financials. It’s a good position to be in,” McCray told Channel Futures.
Dell makes the first of two appearances on our August top stories countdown.
The company said it would shake up its go-to-market strategy for storage partners. That strategy designates more than 99% of the company’s customers and potential customers as “partner-led” for storage sales.
The differences partners will note: Compensation for direct sales reps will increase when transacting storage sales through a partner. And Dell is quadrupling the number of storage Partner of Record-eligible resale accounts to increase predictability of engagement.
There’s more to know about the new strategy.
The intense rivalry between tech services distributors Intelisys and Avant scaled up another notch when the latter hired a fixture from the former’s channel community.
We’re talking about Mike Wolfington, now regional VP of sales in the West for Avant, which marks an even bigger move into Intelisys’ core territory for the Chicago-based TSD.
Wolfington told Channel Futures he likes the various resources Avant has invested in recently, most notably its Pathfinder sales consulting platform and its research practice.
Get the full scoop on Wolfington’s move to Avant.
It’s fair to say people have been talking about artificial intelligence — a lot. How it will impact the channel remains to be seen.
What we do know is that questions from partners to sales engineers are starting to make them “lose their minds.” Suffice it to say, partners are making a lot of queries about AI, particularly to their technology services distributors.
Determining AI’s channel impact probably starts with defining artificial intelligence.
“Every supplier in the portfolio says they have the best AI,” Select Communications president and CEO Jerry Goldman told Channel Futures. “You dig into it and say, ‘No, you don’t’ or ‘You’ve just relabeled, rebranded or redone what you’ve always done.'”
Take a deep dive into this compelling topic.
A lot has been made of the sales enablement tools offered by tech services distributor leaders Avant, Intelisys and Telarus in recent years. They all continue to develop them or expand what they’ve previously offered.
But are partners actually using them? A Channel Futures survey indicated that not as many are as you might expect.
That said, the TSDs offered some stats that counter that take. So Channel Futures took a hard look at the disparity.
Get more insight into the TSD tools debate.
“Partner-first” has been a buzzword of sorts for some time now, but a number of companies doing business in the channel say they’re doubling down on it — and it could really mean something.
Take Dell, for instance. We told you in a previous slide how the IT giant is focusing on improving business for storage partners; this article, which we published on Aug. 16, takes a more holistic look at the “partner-first” mantra across the Dell ecosystem.
Kenneth Fox, CEO of partner enablement software company Channel Mechanics, told Channel Futures that he’s buying into Dell’s commitment.
“The technology companies we partner with now have a very clear strategy to grow revenue and reach new customers through their partners,” he said.
Customers and partners flocked to Splunk .Conf23 to get the latest scoop on digital resilience, which was the prevailing theme of the event.
Splunk announced that for the first time its solutions will be available for purchase on the Microsoft Azure Marketplace. The companies will collaborate to enable joint customers to innovate, migrate, modernize and grow their environments with end-to-end cloud visibility.
Read about the other highlights from Splunk .Conf23.
No surprise to see Channel People on the Move, our most popular recurring segment, once again crack the top five.
Last month’s edition featured new hires and promotions at Telarus, Five9, Palo Alto Networks and more. Picture above: Oliver Tuszik of Cisco, who is moving on from his role as global channel leader to one more focused on EMEA.
Our weekly Gately Report, which also cracked this countdown at No. 12, shows up here at No. 4.
Our Edward Gately attended the big VMware Explore conference in Las Vegas last month. He came away with a big interview featuring Mark Chuang, VMware’s head of product marketing for cloud storage and data.
Chuang had keen insight into cybersecurity issues VMware is tackling.
“We’ve been on the journey for the last two years in terms fo helping customers deal with modern ransomware attacks, and specifically the types using fileless techniques,” said Chuang. “So here at Explore Vegas, we announced additional innovations on top of our existing ransomware-as-a-recovery service to continue to shorten the amount of downtime by accelerating recovery rates.”
Learn more about those innovations by reading our Q&A.
Put this one in the shocker column.
We learned in a Channel Futures exclusive that John DeLozier, president of ScanSource’s modern communications and cloud division (Intelisys), was no longer with the company. Also out was Chandler Legarreta, Intelisys‘ VP of sales.
No word yet where DeLozier, one of the best-known leaders in the channel, will next put up his shingle.
Get the full story on news that stunned the industry on Aug. 23.
King of cloud … I’ll always be … king of cloud.
(Apologies for an aside above from The Police.)
But will AWS always be king of cloud? That was a question we posed that exploded on the internet last month.
We broke down the earnings reports of the parent companies of the three major hyperscalers — AWS, Azure and Google Cloud. While the companies don’t break out their cloud numbers, Synergy Research noted that AWS still holds 32-34% of global market share, but that Microsoft, Google — and even Oracle — are making significant inroads on the Seattle-based giant’s lead.
See what else went into the firm’s findings.
Let us let you in on a little insider baseball here at Channel Futures.
As a single article, our No. 2 story that you just read about — “Is AWS Still King of Cloud” — brought in the most traffic to Channel Futures in August.
However, a combination of several articles on Broadcom’s pending acquisition of VMware, most notably this one on rumors about layoffs at VMware as the deal approaches closing this fall, were enough to make it to the top spot.
Business Insider first reported on the potential layoffs, which the publication said could impact a “huge” number of people.
While Broadcom was relatively quiet on this topic, the reports indicated that the cuts would supposedly target non-engineers.
Read Channel Futures’ analysis of the Broadcom-VMware news.
Let us let you in on a little insider baseball here at Channel Futures.
As a single article, our No. 2 story that you just read about — “Is AWS Still King of Cloud” — brought in the most traffic to Channel Futures in August.
However, a combination of several articles on Broadcom’s pending acquisition of VMware, most notably this one on rumors about layoffs at VMware as the deal approaches closing this fall, were enough to make it to the top spot.
Business Insider first reported on the potential layoffs, which the publication said could impact a “huge” number of people.
While Broadcom was relatively quiet on this topic, the reports indicated that the cuts would supposedly target non-engineers.
Read Channel Futures’ analysis of the Broadcom-VMware news.
Personnel shake-ups at Intelisys and Avant were among the watercooler talk that cracked Channel Futures’ top stories countdown for August.
It came as a shock to most when we revealed that well-known channel fixture John DeLozier was out as president at Intelisys. Furthermore, the rivalry between the ScanSource tech services distributor and Avant Communications only heated up when the latter hired a channel leader away from the former.
Elsewhere, our poll of analysts to determine the top contact-center-as-a-service (CCaaS) providers was on fire. See the slideshow above to see where it ranked in our monthly top stories countdown.
When (only) three articles about layoffs appear among our top stories, it’s actually a good thing. That’s because stories about job cuts typically draw more attention than almost anything else.
Something else that draws attention on a regular basis?: the cloud wars. We’re talking about hyperscalers AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. Nothing will stop you from checking out who’s in the lead and who’s gaining on whom.
The ongoing saga over Broadcom’s pending $61 billion acquisition of VMware continued to hold you at rapt attention in August. While it finally appears the tie-up will get the go-ahead, not all news surrounding it is rosy.
Those are just some of the 20 top stories that appear in this month’s countdown of the most-read articles on Channel Futures. We’d love for your “vote” to count — all you have to do is read your favorite articles on CF and subscribe to our newsletters. Results from those, combined with the most-trafficked articles on our website, determine what makes the slideshow above.
Go here to sign up for our newsletters once you’ve taking a stroll through August’s top stories. If you missed last month’s edition, it’s here.
Want to contact the author directly about this story? Have ideas for a follow-up article? Email Craig Galbraith or connect with him on LinkedIn. |
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