November's Top 20 Stories: Broadcom-VMware, AI in UCaaS, Google Cloud Shake-Up
Plus, images from the Channel Futures Leadership Summit, layoffs at Splunk and a major restructuring at Comcast Business.
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Microsoft held its annual Ignite event for a small group in Seattle, but also online, so we were able to glean from that some of the biggest channel-impacting news and put it all in one spot.
Among the announcements was a slew of news around Copilot, Microsoft's AI tool. And speaking of AI, it's getting intertwined with Azure. The event featured a preview of Microsoft's unified AI platform, Azure AI Studio.
The software giant's other big news from Ignite revolved around Windows and security.
Channel Futures' Kelly Teal broke it all down here.
Our monthly new and updated partner program roundup probably made this countdown because it was so jam-packed with big names doing business in the channel.
Take Citrix, for example, which told Channel Futures that it's increasing its investment in the channel. Then there was Zoom, which introduced an "AI-fueled" marketing tool that partners can use.
And Google Cloud said ISVs and system integrators it works with can now get up to 10 times more funding if they dabble in generative AI.
Read our full breakdown of November's new and updated partner programs, and you'll see why it cracked our top 20.
Channel Futures security editor Edward Gately, in his weekly Gately Report, featured Acronis in an interview our readers were quick to investigate.
James Abercrombie, CyberApp developer advocate with Acronis, talked to us at ConnectWise's IT Nation Connect event.
Acronis, which partners with ConnectWise, says it has already initiated various integrations where it "invested time to build this to make it a little bit better for the MSP community," Abercrombie said.
Read more about what Acronis is doing in the channel.
It surprised many in the channel to learn that Bronwyn Hastings (pictured) was leaving hyperscaler Google Cloud after two-and-a-half years as VP of ISV ecosystem and channels. Just a couple of days later we learned she had taken the job of SVP of partnerships at UiPath, the business automation platform.
Colleen Kapase, who has been the channel leader at cloud data storage vendor Snowflake for the past five years, is replacing her.
Get the full scoop on the transition at Google Cloud.
The Canalys North America Forum brought hundreds to Palm Desert, California, for the first-of-its-kind event in the U.S. (Informa owns both Canalys and Channel Futures.)
We covered the event from top to bottom, including a conversation with HPE CEO Antonio Neri, a panel of MSP industry experts, the future of artificial intelligence and more.
This article featured highlights from those interviews and panels, as well as an on-stage conversation with Dell's global channel leader, Canalys analysts Jay McBain and Alex Smith breaking down top industry trends, and much more.
The 2023 Channel Futures Leadership Summit brought the channel community to Miami Beach for the second annual event.
CFLS featured industry keynotes from IT titans such as Kaseya's Fred Voccola, conference education sessions touching on AI and other hot topics, and of course the expo hall and networking opportunities such as the Channel Futures MSP 501 gala that you've come to expect from our fall event.
We offered up our top takeaways and images from the show.
The third-quarter Channel Futures Market Outlook survey revealed some interesting developments in sales trends for technology advisors (agents).
It turns out that customers are increasingly willing to spend money on technology. And even though UC sales have slowed a bit overall, that optimism is somewhat rooted in how partners are rethinking their strategic emphasis on UCaaS in the face of price compression, market saturation and vendor sprawl.
Spending, say the partners, has sped up since the July 4 holiday after a slow start to 2023.
See the full results for tech advisors from the Channel Futures Q3 Market Outlook survey.
We chronicled how 500 Splunk employees in California will be out of work, as detailed by Splunk CEO Gary Steele in an SEC filing, as well as a letter to employees.
It's not related to the company's acquisition by Splunk, Steele said, but part of an ongoing effort to "align our resources and operating structure to deliver ongoing and incremental value for our customers."
Cisco's acquisition of Splunk, which the companies expect to close in the third quarter of 2024, will provide "leading security coverage from devices to applications to clouds," says Cisco.
Partners − not just vendors, distributors and developers − are tech disruptors, as we detailed in this article.
Consider the role partners play in nearly every step from presales to implementation and daily management, spanning SD-WAN, security, unified communications and more.
As InFlow Analysis' David Smith noted, partners play a particularly disruptive role in that they "help customers in the digital transformation process — that is to say the transition to new cloud-based solutions, such as Microsoft Teams and Zoom — while also helping integrate these new solutions with their existing systems and workflows."
We also polled some channel leaders to find out ways they think partners are disruptive.
If you're a regular visitor to Channel Futures, or what Stephen King might call a "Constant Reader," you noticed a big change early in November.
We revamped the look of our site with the promise of faster load speeds, easier access to all of the content you want, and more.
We detailed more reasons for our exciting upgrade and included a short video tour of the website in this article, which drew your interest.
We released the companies that made the Channel Futures MSP 501 the crown jewel of our awards programs, back in June. But you keep coming back for more.
Our slideshow featuring the top 50 of the world's best managed service providers once again cracked the top 10 in November.
You can also go here if you'd like to download the full list.
We didn't plan it this way — we promise!
Since the MSP 501 list came in at No. 10, it's only fitting that our photos from the MSP 501 gala at the 2023 Channel Futures Leadership Summit in Miami Beach landed at No. 9.
The biggest party in the channel featured hundreds of MSP reps and their colleagues in one ballroom, as well as our special award winners getting their time to shine on stage.
See who took home hardware in our image gallery.
We combined red-hot AI with stalwart technologies that are always big in the channel — unified communications and contact center software. The result was a list of 20 companies that are tops in UCaaS and CCaaS, and incorporate artificial intelligence into their tech.
It was the first breakdown of its kind for our popular CF20 series that combines Channel Futures research with opinions of top industry analysts to come up with the very best vendors in the business.
Microsoft, Zoom, RingCentral and Cisco all made our list. See who else did and why.
From time to time, a "classic" Channel Futures article cracks the top 20, for an inexplicable reason, but this one takes the cake. Call it a "history flashback."
Coming in at No. 7 is Kelly Teal's write-up on AT&T wrapping its acquisition of Verizon Wireless assets in 18 states. We published this one way back in 2010.
The background: When Verizon bought Alltel in 2008, regulators said the carrier had to sell properties in mostly rural areas around the country. AT&T swept in and nabbed the 1.6 million subscribers in those areas. The purchase price was nearly $2.4 billion.
Read about how it all went down. Your peers are, apparently.
Our monthly wrap of mergers and acquisitions impacting the channel lands at No. 6, most likely due to some of the big names involved in wheeling and dealing over the previous month, not to mention the channel's thirst for M&A news.
Mitel closed its purchase of Unify, boosting its unified communications prowess. Palo Alto Networks bought Dig Security. In another security deal, Proofpoint bought Tessian.
See who else bought whom in our latest roundup.
What's on the horizon for technology in 2024? Gartner always seems to be on the cutting edge.
The research firm unveiled its annual top 10 list at its IT Symposium/Xpo last month in Orlando.
First and foremost, Gartner analysts predict that worldwide IT spending will grow 8% in 2024. That includes investment in AI, but the impact of spending on generative AI might not be felt until 2025.
You won't find it surprising to learn that many of Gartner's trends revolve around artificial intelligence. See them here.
It never fails: You like to see pictures of peers and colleagues.
That's why our pics from the 2023 Channel Futures Leadership Summit expo hall landed at No. 4. We snapped photos of all the booths and the people manning them and meeting with partners.
Here's where you can see people you know.
Did someone say photos?
That's right. Our popular recurring monthly feature, Channel People on the Move, continues its streak of making our countdown.
This edition featured new hires and promotions at AT&T, TD Synnex, Dell, AireSpring, Cisco and more.
News of restructuring at Comcast Business, and the accompanying announcement that longtime channel leader Craig Schlagbaum would retire at the end of the year, came as a shock to many.
Along with the restructuring came the news that hundreds of Comcast Business employees would be laid off. This impacts members of the legacy Comcast channel team and those on the Masergy team, which Comcast acquired two years ago.
With Schlagbuam headed out, Matthew Fassnacht, national VP at Comcast Business Enterprise Solutions, will serve as interim channel leader.
Here's our initial news story. Then check out our follow-up with additional details and our look back at Schlagbaum's Comcast legacy.
A whopping year-and-a-half after Broadcom first announced its intent to buy VMware for $61 billion, the second-largest acquisition in the history of tech, the deal finally got the last of its regulatory approvals and closed.
Our coverage of Broadcom-VMware has lit up the internet, with the most interest revolving around the potential future for VMware employees. Turns out, it's not great for all.
Immediately after the acquisition cleared its final hurdles, reports of layoffs began pouring in. The number, as we've reported, is now in the thousands and continues to grow.
We will continue to follow the impact the deal has on the channel.
A whopping year-and-a-half after Broadcom first announced its intent to buy VMware for $61 billion, the second-largest acquisition in the history of tech, the deal finally got the last of its regulatory approvals and closed.
Our coverage of Broadcom-VMware has lit up the internet, with the most interest revolving around the potential future for VMware employees. Turns out, it's not great for all.
Immediately after the acquisition cleared its final hurdles, reports of layoffs began pouring in. The number, as we've reported, is now in the thousands and continues to grow.
We will continue to follow the impact the deal has on the channel.
When news broke of a major restructuring and layoffs at Comcast Business, it shook up the channel. It meant hundreds of layoffs across Comcast and Masergy, which the cableco bought in 2021.
It probably comes as little surprise that the changes at Comcast landed in our top 20 stories countdown for November. So did layoffs at Splunk, which the company says are unrelated to its pending acquisition by Cisco.
The grim news doesn't stop there. While much of the industry for the most part was pleased to see Broadcom (finally) closing on its 18-month process of acquiring VMware, the layoffs started piling up.
But it wasn't all tough news in November. The channel celebrated gathering at the Channel Futures Leadership Summit in Miami Beach. You were eager to see photos from the event.
That's just a sampling of what you'll see in our slideshow above featuring the top 20 stories from last month. We compile them by combining online pageview numbers with results from our Channel Futures newsletters. Sign up for those here.
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