Top 20 News Stories in April: Verizon, IBM Spinoff, Frontier, Proofpoint
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Posted on March 30 but flourishing in April on our site was the latest in a back-and-forth court battle between Zoom and RingCentral.
In this instance, the federal court sided with Zoom. It dissolved a temporary restraining order against Zoom and denied RingCentral’s motion for a preliminary injunction.
Zoom, in its lawsuit, says RingCentral breached an agreement and infringed on trademarks. The surging conferencing provider claims unfair competition and breach of contract. It wants RingCentral to top using its trademark, and for the company to turn over all profit and gains from the use of said trademarks.
Thoma Bravo, the private equity firm, was at it again. The firm that loves to gobble up technology companies was at it again.
But this time, it was no casual acquisition. Thoma Bravo said it would spend a whopping $12.3 billion on cybersecurity provider Proofpoint.
No doubt one thing that drew your extra attention was our reference to some concerns more than one MSP expressed on Reddit, the social platform.
“PE firms will eventually say ‘This isn’t enough’ and make further changes, collect their cash and exit. That’s how it works. Look at their portfolio,” one MSP owner wrote.
Learn more about the acquisition.
Speaking of MSPs and M&A, we polled members of our elite MSP 501 fraternity to find out what they think of private equity being so busy in the space. Man, did we get an earful.
We got responses ranging from “We think it is a massive, positive outcome for the sector” to “the sonsolidation … proves to be worrisome for some smaller MSPs.”
Read what they all had to say.
Here’s another one from late March that caught your attention throughout April.
Vertical Systems Group released its semiannual leaderboard ranking top SD-WAN providers by installed and billable carrier managed SD-WAN customer sites in the U.S.
AT&T took top honors, followed by Hughes and Verizon. See who else made the list.
Channel Futures launched a massive diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) effort, kicking it off in earnest with our first DE&I advisory board. The board is comprised of individuals from the telecom and IT channels who help shape strategies for business leaders who want to build more diverse and inclusive workplaces.
You wanted to learn who is at the forefront of promoting DE&I in the industry.
Still going strong from February is our article on the resignation of Alteryx chief revenue officer Dean Darwin.
One week after disparaging Chinese researchers on social media and the firestorm that followed, Darwin resigned from his post, one he only held for a few weeks.
“When is the US going to wake up and kick every Chinese researcher here on a visa out of the US and close this as an access to them?” he tweeted. He deleted his account soon after.
Channel Futures news editor James Anderson made some waves with his two-part series on consolidation in the telco channel.
Representatives from master agents were largely bullish on recent M&A, as you might expect, whether that be buying up each other or getting private investment.
“Eventually when you have that much success and the market continues to grow, you’re going to get the attention of outside investors and outside parties,” noted PlanetOne chief operating officer Chris Werpy. “This was going to happen.”
In the second part of his series, James got some reaction from subagents that wasn’t so glowing.
“Carrier consolidation, like airline consolidation, has created an end-user customer service gap that I think should have involved the FCC and FTC a long time ago,” said Christopher Scott, principal owner at StratoNet. “Today the answer is, ‘Oh yeah, we bought all those companies. So sit down, shut up and get up when we tell you,’” Scott said.
You were able to keep up to date in a big way on the newest and biggest updates to the channel’s most prominent partner programs via our roundup.
This edition featured changes at Dell, Spectrum Enterprise, Vonage, IBM, NetApp and more that could put more money in your pocket.
Our audience is compelled by what the world’s top MSPs have to say.
You’ll recall No. 18 on the countdown featured reactions on M&A from our MSP 501 community. At No. 12, we polled many of those same 501ers – and some others – to get their thoughts on security.
A prime topic of conversation was of course the massive SolarWinds hack from a few months ago. Several offered advice on how to keep it from happening again.
“The SolarWinds attack shocked many in the trade with a pandemic of its own,” said Dan Shapero, president and COO of TeamLogic. “Because of this, SOC services have become an essential part of the MSP toolkit. Exploited machines need to be quarantined immediately to minimize the damage. SOC is around-the-clock work and rapid response has never been more important.”
AvePoint, best known for managing Microsoft applications and services, expanded with its new Salesforce Cloud Backup. The company’s announcement came just a month after Salesforce revived the service that it retired.
Salesforce dumped its Data Recovery Service last summer, but changed its mind about that decision in March. That opened the door for AvePoint to step in and offer its new service.
In bringing it back, Salesforce acknowledged the service wasn’t wildly popular but customers liked knowing it was there in case of emergency.
Learn more about AvePoint’s Salesforce Cloud Backup.
Keeping up with the most important middlemen (and women) in the channel is a favorite pastime of our readers.
This edition of our quarterly master agent/distributor news roundup focused a lot on recent wheelings and dealings such as Telarus’ purchase of Chorus Communications and the giant Synnex-Tech Data merger.
We also got updates from what Ingram Micro, Avant, PlanetOne, Pax8 and more were doing in the first quarter of 2021.
It’s been months since IBM first said it would spin off its managed infrastructure services business. For the longest time, the company simply referred to it as “NewCo.”
Finally, last month, we learned that it would go by the moniker “Kyndryl.”
What’s in a name? Read the article we wrote on it and you’ll have a better perspective.
We’ve mentioned our family of elite MSPs, members of our MSP 501 community, a couple of times in this countdown.
They get their own spot here at No. 8. With now just a couple of weeks until the deadlne to apply for the 2021 list, partners have flocked to our MSP 501 page to get information.
Each year, the MSP 501 ranking recognizes the world’s top MSPs, culminating in a celebration at our fall event, which this year will be live and in-person once again! Get information on the Channel Partners Conference & Expo Homecoming show here.
Want to apply for the MSP 501? Here’s the application.
Another topic that has received plenty of attention so far in our countdown is M&A. It, too, gets its own spot at No. 7.
As with the master/distributor roundup mentioned earlier in our top 20, the Synnex-Tech Data merger was a big focus in this edition of our monthly recap of channel-impacting M&A.
But there was plenty other acquisition activity you might’ve missed, including activity involving RingCentral, Datto and more big channel players.
You got a kick out of this one, and so did we.
We showed you a collection of photos from channel events over the past 20 years. They included images from the Channel Partners Conference & Expo, as well as individual company events.
Few could stand up, however, to PlanetOne CEO Ted Schuman dressed as Willy Wonka. No doubt some of you were in the audience for that one.
SD-WAN has been a hot topic for some time now, but we got an amazing response to our webinar that mixed it with the health care vertical.
Typically slow at adopting next-gen tech, hospitals and clinics exploded onto the scene, particularly as the COVID-19 pandemic gripped the nation and the world.
The opportunity to sell SD-WAN services to health care organizations has never been better.
Missed it? No worries. It’s available on demand.
Verizon has been a little quieter than usual in the channel lately, but that all changed with our Q&A featuring channel chief Wendy Taccetta.
On the job for just a few months, Taccetta made some waves by telling us that both direct and indirect teams can get their piece of the pie.
“The Verizon sales team and the partner can go and win. And we shouldn’t be in a place where the partner feels like they’re in conflict. They shouldn’t feel as if we are fighting against them; they should feel like they’re at the table as a partner,” Taccetta told Channel Futures.
See what else she had to say that impacts Verizon partners.
One of the most popular topics on our site over the past year has been Frontier Communications‘ chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Things were no different in April when you clamored to read our article on how the company would finally emerge from this dubious distinction.
It finally happened on April 30; it was our story from April 16 telling you that it was about to happen that garnered the most attention.
“Frontier is ready to set a new course as a revitalized public company,” said John Stratton, incoming executive chairman of the board. “Through the restructuring process, the Company has stabilized its business and recapitalized its balance sheet, while making significant progress on the early stages of implementing our initial fiber expansion plan.”
Our fourth annual list, making its debut on Channel Futures, was a big hit with agents, VARs and MSPs alike.
We polled some top channel analysts to find out which companies should be considered the best in UCaaS. It turns out that it was hard to narrow down the list.
“No one is saying, ‘Oh the market stinks; we’re losing money and we don’t know if we’re going to make it,” said Jon Arnold of J Arnold & Associates. “And we talk to a lot of companies.”
Upstart Zoom made it. So did 8×8. RingCentral is there too. See which 17 other companies cracked it.
Our recurring feature — every month for 10 years and counting on Channel Partners Online — proved to be a massive hit in its Channel Futures premiere.
Packed with new hires and promotions in both the telecom and IT channels, you gobbled this up like a kid eating candy on Halloween.
This edition featured Rick Ribas, Fusion Connect’s new channel chief, and about four dozen other movers and shakers in the channel. Personnel changes at 8×8, Microsoft, TBI, Telarus and more also caught your eye.
We’ve already published a more recent edition since then. You can stay up to speed with that here.
Our recurring feature — every month for 10 years and counting on Channel Partners Online — proved to be a massive hit in its Channel Futures premiere.
Packed with new hires and promotions in both the telecom and IT channels, you gobbled this up like a kid eating candy on Halloween.
This edition featured Rick Ribas, Fusion Connect’s new channel chief, and about four dozen other movers and shakers in the channel. Personnel changes at 8×8, Microsoft, TBI, Telarus and more also caught your eye.
We’ve already published a more recent edition since then. You can stay up to speed with that here.
Thanks to you, loyal reader, for making the merge of Channel Partners Online and Channel Futures a rousing success. You flocked to see tons of fresh content; the 20 articles featured in our countdown here represent the top channel news in April.
We figured we shouldn’t wait any longer in the month to get you your top stories countdown fix!
The Channel Futures team kept you going better than your daily buzz of caffeine. Among the highlights: We broke out our annual list of 20 top UCaaS providers, which made its Channel Futures debut. Also, our Q&A with Verizon’s (fairly) new channel chief featured a discussion around channel conflict. IBM’s new managed infrastructure services spinoff got an official name. And you were very interested to read the wide-ranging opinions the MSP community had on recent M&A activity.
We didn’t pluck our top 20 news stories in April out of thin air. We review our online traffic and combine it with popularity of these articles in our daily and weekly newsletters. You can pick your favorite from this list and get signed up now! Then, you can influence what makes next month’s countdown.
So what was No. 1? Check out our countdown above to find out.
Miss last month’s top stories? 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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