Top 20 Stories in July: Rackspace Job Cuts, Zoom-Five9, Microsoft, Lumen Sale
Also making the list: HPE's Zerto acquisition, top zero-trust providers and ransomware. But which was No. 1?
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It’s an understatement to say security is top of mind for many channel partners.
A story we posted on June 30 struck gold in July. As many of us were still closely following ransomware attacks on such things as the Colonial Pipeline, Armis released data from a study showing there’s still a lack of widespread awareness about ransomware.
The company discovered, of the 2,000 professionals in various industries around the U.S., a lot of end users aren’t paying attention to the major cyberattacks plaguing critical infrastructure across the country.
Knowledge is power, people.
Get caught up on the full story.
Speaking of security, one of the biggest acquisitions of the year, announced on June 2, continued to light up the information superhighway in July.
FireEye said it was selling its products business, including the FireEye name, to acquisition-hungry Symphony Technology Group (STG). The deal separates FireEye’s network, email, endpoint and cloud security products from Mandiant’s controls-agnostic software and services.
The separation aims to allow both organizations to accelerate growth investments.
We talked to FireEye’s product executive VP about the impact on partners.
Are you seeing a theme here? (Hint: security.)
Sophos detailed in a company blog how it and a company target by the REvil ransomware group were locked in “live combat” with the malicious hackers, who were seeking a multimillion-dollar payout from its midsize victim.
REvil ultimately failed to get money, but not before it encrypted data on unprotected devices, deleted online backups and more. It was quite a mess from which the company took a long time to recover.
Our story offers more detail on the attack and a Q&A featuring tips on avoiding and fighting ransomware.
M&A activity remains strong, as our story asking “Why is HPE buying Zerto?” caught your eye.
HPE, citing data as an organization’s “most valuable asset,” is shelling out $374 million for the cloud management and data protection provider.
Zerto, which has a primary focus on storage, helps users recover quickly from downtime, ransomware and other cyberattacks. It could also be a good fit because Zerto provisions its portfolio as a service, a transition HPE itself hopes to fully make by next year.
Oh, how the cloud wars are heating up.
Gartner’s latest numbers show the hyperscalers are all growing, but when you’ve been the market leader like Amazon Web Services, your dominant lead is likely to shrink.
The research firm says AWS’ infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) market share was down from 45% in 2019 to less than 41% in 2020. Microsoft, Alibaba, Google, Huawei and others are growing at a fast clip.
Overall, the infrastructure-as-a-service market was worth more than $64 billion in 2020, up from about $46 billion in 2019, Gartner said.
Check out our breakdown of Gartner’s numbers.
Even after death, our readers remain curious about the enigmatic John McAfee.
On our countdown for the second consecutive month, we delved into the software pioneer’s final social media quotes before his suicide in June.
“All power corrupts … Take care which power you allow a democracy to wield … ” he wrote.
He was about to be extradited to the U.S. from Spain on tax evasion charges. He had previously been held briefly in a prison in Central America on a murder charge.
Channel Futures is diving into the EMEA market big time, and whether you’re in the U.S. or across the pond, you are interested.
Case in point: Our Q&A with David Grant, CEO of distribution giant Westcon-Comstor.
Grant, whose company increased revenue by nearly 5% last year despite the pandemic, says the key for Westcon is “focusing on the customers, vendors, partners. If we get that right, the rest of it should look after itself.”
Read the other nuggets Grant had to offer.
If security is a hot topic in this countdown, so too is M&A.
Synnex-Tech Data. Remember that one? Probably the biggest transaction in the channel in 2021, our poll of MSPs on the topic back in March was still getting results in July.
For the most part, the MSP community seems pleased with the opportunities that such a tie-up will create. But not all.
“I’m not happy about it,” Mike Chaput, CEO of Endsight, told Channel Futures. “I rely on having multiple distributors to keep each other honest on service and pricing. We still have Ingram Micro, of course, but I see this as a negative transaction for the channel, creating more of a duopoly and reducing competition.”
Read what other partners had to say about the deal.
Microsoft kicked off its virtual Inspire event with new it plans to offer Windows 365 Cloud PC, a virtual desktop and application service. (It followed that up just this week by indeed making it available.)
One of several noteworthy unveilings at Inspire, the company also introduced new programs to accelerate migration to Azure. Another highlight: the cutting of transaction fees for use of its commercial marketplace.
All music to partners’ ears.
The heck with all this newfangled tech talk. The channel (and Channel Futures readers) still have a passion for traditional wireline.
You lined up to see who ranked highest in JD Power’s latest business wireline customer satisfaction numbers. (Spoiler alert: The big winner was AT&T.)
But you’ll want to see who else surged up the leaderboard and who slipped.
Controversy reared its head at Google Cloud. The company’s VP of developer relations, and co-founder of Cloudera, left after an anti-Semitism scandal broke.
Amr Awadallah was accused of a misguided attempt to reconcile statements he made about Jews and to renounce anti-Semitism. Toxic leadership was another claim thrown his way.
We linked to Awadallah’s 15-chapter manifesto from LinkedIn in the article we wrote on the controversy.
Quickly racking up eyeballs late in July was our newly dubbed quarterly “distribution roundup.”
This was a staple on Channel Partners Online before we merged that site with Channel Futures. Only then, we commonly referred to it as the “master agent” roundup, a term we have begun to eschew for multiple reasons as our James Anderson laid out in his series on changes in channel terminology.
Plus, this way, we can feature both the doings of traditional “master agents,” which we for now are referring to as “service distributors,” and traditional technology distributors that work with VARs and MSPs.
This edition featured big happenings at Ingram Micro, Pax8, Telarus and more.
Similar to our Microsoft Cloud PC story at No. 12, there’s been some movement on this one since our initial story broke.
We told you how Apollo Global Management was in talks to acquire Lumen’s consumer assets in certain U.S. states. Then, just this week, we learned the speculation would come to fruition.
Lumen Technologies said it would double down on its “core enterprise business ” by selling a large portion of its ILEC operations to Apollo.
You’ll want to know more about this $7.5 billion deal and how it impacts this company that is very active in the channel.
Saying it is zeroing in on the expanding multicloud opportunity, Rackspace said it would cut 10% of its workforce. The news came through an SEC filing.
The company wasn’t specific about which roles would be impacted. It has about 7,000 workers globally, and says it still has 700 open positions it is looking to fill.
Learn more about these cuts and their impact.
In some more blockbuster wheeling and dealing, Zoom dove headfirst into contact centers by saying it would buy Five9.
The conferencing provider’s CEO called the $14.7 billion-dollar deal a “no-brainer” so that Zoom can extend its exploding global communications network with a cloud-based contact center as a service.
We asked industry analysts to weigh in on this.
Didn’t think we were done with security yet, did ya?
When we ask the Channel Futures MSP 501 a question on a hot topic, they respond in droves.
This time, it was about the Kaseya VSA supply-chain ransomware attack that struck as everyone was headed peacefully into the Fourth of July holiday weekend. It breached about 50 customers, including three-dozen MSPs, and impacted up to 1,500 of their clients in one way or another.
We asked how this attack and others have changed the way they do business, and they gave us an earful.
Our popular “CF 20” series, where we ask analysts who they think are among the 20 top providers of a certain technology, remains one of our most popular.
In July, that technology was one of the most discussed security processes out there: zero-trust.
See whom the channel analysts pegged among this sector’s best.
Now in its second year, the Channel Futures NextGen 101, an MSP 501 list, recognizes MSPs and technology service providers for the groundbreaking solutions they offer customers.
We consider the NextGen 101 to hold great promise given the leading-edge IT and communications solutions they offer. This year’s winners — in many cases, major channel partners whose managed services revenue, as a percentage of total revenue, isn’t quite high enough to be considered for the 501 — were selected from applications received for the 2021 Channel Futures MSP 501.
Our wildly popular Channel People on the Move comes in at No. 2 again this month.
This edition features new hires and promotions at Intelisys, Dell, Riverbed, Comcast Business and a bevy of others that operate in the indirect channel.
And we already have another edition up since this one posted.
No. 1 for the second month in a row are the Channel Futures 2021 MSP 501 rankings. We knew when we released them in an easily digestible slideshow format that you would be eager to see them.
But that was in June. We didn’t realize that the fervor surrounding the rankings would continue so strongly into July. Not to mention, you’ve still been checking them out in the first week of August, too.
Start here with Nos. 1-25 and work way through the rest of the list. Congrats to these great MSPs!
No. 1 for the second month in a row are the Channel Futures 2021 MSP 501 rankings. We knew when we released them in an easily digestible slideshow format that you would be eager to see them.
But that was in June. We didn’t realize that the fervor surrounding the rankings would continue so strongly into July. Not to mention, you’ve still been checking them out in the first week of August, too.
Start here with Nos. 1-25 and work way through the rest of the list. Congrats to these great MSPs!
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.
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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