Top 20 Stories in July: Rackspace Job Cuts, Zoom-Five9, Microsoft, Lumen Sale

We’ve been pleased to see the coming together of the telecom and IT channels the last few months. In April, we had our own little merger — Channel Partners Online and Channel Futures. And the top 20 stories from July in this countdown reflect what’s popular in all corners of the channel.

While we’re not shocked to see an old favorite, Channel People on the Move, near the top, there were some surprises. The 2021 Channel Futures MSP 501 rankings, which readers flocked to in June, stayed hot in July. Also, a pair of developing stories on this list made significant progressions. For instance, Lumen sold ILEC assets to Apollo Global Management just a few weeks after we reported “talks” were underway. And Microsoft made headlines by making Windows 365 Cloud PC available one month after introducing it.

Moreover, as cybersecurity makes national headlines, you’ll find no fewer than five security-related stories in July’s top 20. Mergers and acquisitions, always a hot topic, get five mentions here as well. Finally, when we report on job cuts, the story almost always makes our list. Rackspace cutting 10% of its workforce qualified.

Maybe you would like to participate in selecting articles for such countdowns as our top 20 stories in July. It’s easy. Just continue to visit our website! We rank the articles based on a combination of online traffic and performance in our e-newsletters. You can sign up for those here. If you’ve been busy and missed June’s top stories, they are here.

We are quite eager for you to see which story was No. 1 in July. Take a walk through our slideshow above to find out.