Top 20 Stories in March: Layoffs in Tech, Avaya's Bounce-Back, SASE Growth
Updates on Broadcom's VMware acquisition and some other big M&A also made it. But what was No. 1?
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While the number of industry layoffs cooled a bit in late February and into the middle of March, they started picking up again toward the end of the month.
Case in point: System integration giant Accenture said it would cut 19,000 jobs, or approximately 2.5% of its global workforce.
On the rose-colored glasses side, the company said despite the cuts, it has actually grown its workforce by 39,000 over the past year. Accenture said it issued the layoffs to “streamline our operations …”
Get the full scoop on Accenture’s cuts.
Now six months after our original story, readers are still flocking to learn about the newly formed Cloud Software Group.
Citrix was the biggest name to join CSG after private equity firms Vista Equity Partners and Evergreen Coast Capital bought it for $16.5 billion.
That deal was first announced more than a year ago but didn’t close until last October.
Learn more about how the acquisitions led to the formation of CSG.
The answer is yes, if you believe some in the tech advisor (agent) community.
We explored that question as part of a deep dive into the state of the agent market.
Independently held agents are weighing their ability to compete against the so-called superagents.
We’ll further the discussion at the upcoming Channel Partners Conference & Expo in the form of a “State of the Agent Market” panel on stage at the event.
Remember those old commercials? ‘When E.F. Hutton talks, people listen.” OK, I’m dating myself.
Anyway, the same seems to be true with Canalys analyst Jay McBain. His statistics and predictions always make channelites sit up and listen.
His latest effort stems from a presentation he gave at NerdioCon this year in Cancun, Mexico.
Read Jay McBain’s top trends for MSPs for the remainder of 2023.
The 2023 MSP 501 application period is now a little more than half over. You now have less than four weeks to submit your application, as the deadline is April 30.
As you can tell by this MSP 501 preview we published back on Feb. 16 cracking the top 20, many of your peers are already checking out how to apply.
Want to skip the explanation? Here’s a direct link to the online application. Be counted among the very best managed service providers in the entire world!
Mergers and acquisitions are part of a steady stream of news coverage on Channel Futures, and have been for some time, but that doesn’t mean you’re bored of them.
You didn’t hesitate to check out some of the biggest M&A activity from the prior month, including an investment firm’s purchase of Sumo Logic, Cox Communications’ acquisition of LogicWorks, and HPE’s Athonet buy.
Our monthly CF20 lists comprise one of our most popular segments on Channel Futures. This is where we poll top industry analysts to find out who are the most noteworthy providers in a particular technology.
Last month’s list centered around suppliers of threat intelligence. Among the standouts: CrowdStrike, Kaspersky and Flashpoint.
See who else made the list and why.
We uncovered a lot of interesting nuggets in our most recent quarterly survey of managed service providers.
Our MSP Market Pulse and Channel Sentiment Survey, perhaps most importantly, revealed that economic challenges haven’t shaken partners’ place as an indispensable resource for their customers.
The survey dug deep into MSPs’ recurring revenue, cloud spending, cybersecurity adoption and more.
Read all of the results here.
Secure access service edge (SASE), the technology that combines software-defined wide area networking with security, appears to have a very bright future — if the past is an indicator.
A Dell’Oro Group report last month revealed that SASE revenue grew more than 30% for the third consecutive year. Cisco led what Dell’Oro called a “crowded” SASE market in terms of revenue in 2022.
Zscaler was close behind Cisco. See who else ranked among the revenue share leaders.
Broadcom’s planned acquisition of VMware certainly hasn’t been smooth.
We reported on Feb. 28 how antitrust officials in the European Union planned to slap Broadcom with a warning for anticompetitive practices.
And despite CEO Hock Tan’s assurances that everything will be fine for customers and partners, we learned last week that Britain’s Competition and Market Authority is launching an in-depth inquiry that could last six months. Their concern is competition in the server market.
Unfortunately this is the part of the countdown where we hit a few more layoff stories. They’re among the most popular reads on Channel Futures.
In this case, it’s Wipro, the India-based IT consulting and business process service provider. Wipro is laying off 120 workers in Tampa, Florida. Most are processing agents. The rest are team leaders and a team manager.
The company calls it a “realignment of business needs.”
Bucking the trend that only negative news gets people’s attention is cloud company Snowflake. We told you how the cloud and analytics vendor said it plans to bring on more than 1,000 employees in its current fiscal year.
Despite other companies concerned about various economic pressures, Snowflake, in its earnings reported sees “the current hiring market as favorable.”
A zig to everyone else’s zag, if you will.
Learn more about Snowflake’s decision that runs counter to what many other companies are doing.
Avaya, the customer experience and cloud giant, said it has reduced its debt by more than 75%, the last major milestone of its restructuring.
Avaya filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in February, the second time in six years. But it appears this time, the process might be a much quicker one for the company.
Avaya will be backed by its existing lenders going forward.
CEO Alan Masarek says the restructuring plan should provide financial flexibility to accelerate Avaya’s investment in its cloud communications portfolio.
Go in-depth on Avaya’s recovery.
ChatGPT and other generative artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives are the rage these days, so it’s no surprise that Google Cloud is funding startups in this area.
The third-largest hyperscaler might find this as a way to paly catch-up to rival Microsoft Azure, which is integrating ChatGPT into its Bing search engine.
Partner opportunity could lie provisioning apps and services around these capabilities. To wit, Google Cloud recently introduced Built with Google Cloud AI, training and co-marketing support that target independent software vendors.
Yes, layoffs again. This one is out of Australia, where software company Atlassian announced a round of cuts impacting 5% of its workforce worldwide. That’s roughly 500 jobs.
Teams impacted include talent acquisition, program management, research and insights, and more.
Atlassian cited a “rebalancing of roles we need across Atlassian first and foremost.”
Take a closer look at Atlassian’s layoffs.
Kyndryl, which just spun off from IBM a year-and-a-half ago, joined the parade of layoffs in the first quarter of the year.
The infrastructure service provider claimed the cuts only represent a “small percentage” of its 90,000-strong global workforce.
Kyndryl made the decision to become “more efficient and competitive.”
Some displaced workers took to TheLayoff.com to express their displeasure, with one saying “IBM let [Kyndryl] go for a reason, and the No. 1 cost is always the flesh and bone.”
Read what else laid-off employees had to say.
Next up was Microsoft trying to explain why it was cutting workers. The 150 getting the axe in its Azure division — announced in our story in February, and still drawing eyeballs in March — are just a small part of the 10,000 losing their jobs worldwide.
Microsoft told the SEC in January all of the layoffs would be done by the end of its 2023 fiscal third quarter, which was March 31.
Again, we recapped some of the comments posted on social media.
Our most popular recurring segment in March featured new hires and promotions at HPE, Intelisys, Pax8 (Rob Rae pictured), Ooma, Rackspace, BCN, Broadvoice and more.
We explored the steady stream of copper-based POTS and TDM price hikes and service decommissions that customers and partners were reporting in March.
Technology advisors (agents) told us they had seen rates for these legacy technologies increase drastically on existing customer contracts. One incumbent local exchance carrier (ILEC) raised all business flat-line rates to more than $1,000 per month for a POTS customer.
One analyst told us the price hikes reflect the FCC allowing carriers to embrace market-based pricing for copper services.
Learn what else we discovered and how it’s impacting the partner community.
Our most-read article of March was an aggregation of all the most-talked about articles over the past several months.
We consider our semiannual look at conflict and controversy in the channel to be the equivalent of “watercooler talk.”
This edition featured a look back at Avaya filing bankruptcy for the second time in six years, the large number of layoffs impacting companies doing business in the channel, a number of high-profile channel execs who have departed their longtime employers, and much more.
Our most-read article of March was an aggregation of all the most-talked about articles over the past several months.
We consider our semiannual look at conflict and controversy in the channel to be the equivalent of “watercooler talk.”
This edition featured a look back at Avaya filing bankruptcy for the second time in six years, the large number of layoffs impacting companies doing business in the channel, a number of high-profile channel execs who have departed their longtime employers, and much more.
Just when we thought layoffs in tech were letting up, March “roared out” like a lion.
Job cuts at Kyndryl, Microsoft, Accenture and more cracked our list of top-read stories in March. But so did this article about a company that’s hiring, so it’s not all bad news.
Also on the good news front is what started as bad news. Avaya has greatly reduced its debt and should be coming out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection soon; this time, much more quickly than its previous bout with Chapter 11 six years ago.
Broadcom‘s VMware acquisition continues to draw your interest. Every regulatory action that delays the process pushes its closing date back several months.
MSPs, we have some research that landed in our top 20. At NerdioCon, Canalys analyst Jay McBain unveiled some of his top trends for managed service providers. And Channel Futures’ own survey of MSPs revealed some interesting factoids.
Our slideshow above counts down layoffs in tech and the rest of Channel Futures’ top 20 most-read stories in March. Get in on the act — sign up for our newsletters and you can influence what makes the list! We also consider online pageviews.
Miss last month’s countdown? 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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