9 Channel People Making Waves This Week at Avaya, TBI, More
The people behind our most-read story struck a deal while valuing their company "extremely" low, according to a Forrester expert.
January 7, 2022
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The world is talking about Log4j vulnerabilities as they continue to pose a complex and high-risk situation for companies. Exploitation attempts and testing were on the rise in December.
Steve Povolny is head of advanced threat research and principal engineer at McAfee Enterprise. He made waves this week for finding the silver lining regarding the Log4j attacks.
Povolny said that the good news is this vulnerability gained global attention and discussion within hours of public acknowledgement. It has received more attention and awareness than any bug he’s seen in at least the last five years.
Povolny also pointed out that the public’s attention should be focused on forensics exercises and remediation that may be going on with now-patched systems for months to come.
“Organizations need to understand that even if they have secured their infrastructure from exploitation against the log4shell vulnerability, it is highly possible and perhaps likely that many of these components were silently breached, and effectively hidden,” he said.
Edward Gately’s article outlines what the experts have to say about Log4j.
Among the more popular stories of the week was the coverage of Matt Heron’s rise to Telarus’ regional vice president for Canada. Heron previously worked at Canada cable giant Shaw Communications where he played a key role in expanding Shaw Business’ national partner program.
“We are excited for Matt to bring his proven leadership in the channel to the Telarus team,” Telarus chief revenue officer Dan Foster told Channel Futures. “We’ve made great progress working with partners and it shows with a record level of bookings in 2021 for Telarus in Canada. Matt is ideally suited to continue the success we are seeing enabling partners with our cloud-first strategy.”
To learn more about Heron’s predecessor, read the story by James Anderson.
The dynamic duo of Grayson Throckmorton (right) and Hunter Owens (left) made the week’s list. Chicago-based technology services distributor TBI has expended its channel team to include the pair. Throckmorton will serve as VAR inside channel manager, recruiting and supporting MSPs and VARs. As channel manager, Owens will work with agents in Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma and Arkansas.
Read about TBI’s further expansion of personnel and markets.
It’s a big merger with Hollywood flare. Robert Herjavec (left), founder and CEO of Herjavec Group and star of ABC’s “Shark Tank,” and Gary Fish, founder and CEO of Fishtech Group, made waves this week for combining their companies into a mega MSSP. There was no word on the financial value of the deal, but Herjavec and Fish will each maintain significant equity in the new business.
See how the new firm will expand its operations overseas.
In 2019, Avaya formed a landmark industry partnership with RingCentral. However, sometimes the news isn’t just when it breaks. The real story is how the partnership has fared over the last two years.
Marci Allen is national partner managers director, North America for Avaya. She spoke with Channel Futures’ Craig Galbraith in a CPTV interview about what more has developed since the birth of the RingCentral partnership. Allen said this includes a dedicated team of partner development managers that help with everything from advertisement predictability to optimizing growth with Avaya.
Watch the Marci Allen interview.
It was a good week for Siemplify, an Israeli security orchestration, automation and response (SOAR) provider. The firm was acquired by Google Cloud for a reported $500 million.
Amos Stern is Siemplify’s CEO and co-founder. He said the acquisition marks an “important milestone in the Siemplify journey.” When he started the firm in 2015, SOAR as a category didn’t exist yet.
Now it’s a different story.
“We could not be more excited to join forces with Google Cloud to drive innovation and help many more security teams take their operations to a whole new level,” Stern said.
Google Cloud in August committed to investing $10 billion in cybersecurity over the next five years, he said.
Read more about the reaction to the deal.
What appears to be yet another failure for big retail to tackle managed services at scale was Channel Futures’ most-read story this week. ODP (Office Depot) is selling its CompuCom Systems subsidiary to an affiliate of Variant Equity in a transaction worth up to $305 million. That said, Office Depot acquired CompuCom for $1 billion in 2017. At the time, the acquisition highlighted Office Depot’s new strategic direction.
Anthony Scaglione is ODP’s chief financial officer. What was his spin regarding the new deal?
“This action represents an important step in continuing to align our business model and resources towards our core strategy. By enhancing our core focus, and leveraging our B2B assets and digital commerce platform, we are in an excellent position to maximize returns for our shareholders. We’re excited about completing this important step for our future and the increase in our share buyback authorization.”
Learn more from Forrester’s Jay McBain about his take on the acquisition.
What appears to be yet another failure for big retail to tackle managed services at scale was Channel Futures’ most-read story this week. ODP (Office Depot) is selling its CompuCom Systems subsidiary to an affiliate of Variant Equity in a transaction worth up to $305 million. That said, Office Depot acquired CompuCom for $1 billion in 2017. At the time, the acquisition highlighted Office Depot’s new strategic direction.
Anthony Scaglione is ODP’s chief financial officer. What was his spin regarding the new deal?
“This action represents an important step in continuing to align our business model and resources towards our core strategy. By enhancing our core focus, and leveraging our B2B assets and digital commerce platform, we are in an excellent position to maximize returns for our shareholders. We’re excited about completing this important step for our future and the increase in our share buyback authorization.”
Learn more from Forrester’s Jay McBain about his take on the acquisition.
There’s a flurry of channel news in any given week. Yet, some experts or executives make their mark on the Channel Futures’ audience more than others. This week is no exception.
In the slideshow above, we’ve highlighted the stories and people that captured our readers’ attention the most. We’re counting down our top seven stories of the week, as determined by you, the reader.
Hollywood influenced the channel, at least by association, when a “Shark Tank” star merged his company with another MSSP. Google Cloud snatched up an Israeli security company for a cool $500 million. And as Log4j vulnerabilities persist, Edward Gately’s ongoing reporting covers it.
Whether it was Office Depot selling its CompuCom Systems subsidiary or Avaya’s ongoing landmark industry partnership with RingCentral, nine individuals were the backbone of the stories this week, making waves in the channel community.
Click on the slideshow above to discover who they are and to see which stories you read the most the week of Jan. 3-7.
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