Top 20 Stories in May: AWS Leader, Bullies, Michael Dell, SD-WAN Rankings
The big cloud providers. SD-WAN and CPaaS lists. Tech racism and bullying. But what was No. 1 in May?
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Our latest update to the ongoing battle over the federal JEDI contract just made it into our countdown.
We cited a report from the Wall Street Journal claiming that the Department of Defense’s Joint Enterprise Defense Initiative project could be dead. Apparently, lawmakers are tired of the legal battle between AWS and Microsoft.
The DoD reportedly is reviewing the situation, which began with applications and led to the contract being awarded to Microsoft. AWS cried foul, saying former President Donald Trump’s feud with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos contributed to the decision.
Keep up with the latest on what would be a huge contract, even for these mega cloud providers.
Colonial Pipeline. JBS Foods. Scripps Health. We covered those ransomware attacks and more in the past month.
But it was the Scripps attack that cracked our top 20 stories from May. Malicious hackers took Scripps Health’s computer network offline, significantly disrupting patient care.
The health care provider, based in San Diego, had to block patient access to its online portal. Patient care suffered further when the hospital had to postpone appointments and send some critical-care patients to other facilities.
May featured a lot of high-profile (mostly) virtual events. Rubrik Forward was one, kicking off with an announcement around new ransomware protection capabilities that focus on a simper, automated remediation for victims of attacks.
Rubrik’s cloud data management and protection platform already offered ransomware remediation, but now the company claims to offer it at great scale, helping companies recover from an attack more quickly.
Learn more about Rubrik and ransomware.
This one’s been hanging out on our countdown for a while, but at No. 17, is this its last stand?
Published way back in September, you clamored to see why Apple’s new iPads weren’t 5G-compatible. While they might not be quite as cutting-edge as their rival tablets, Apple doesn’t seem to be hurting too much in sales.
And besides, the latest iteration of the iPhone, which debuted shortly after, offer 5G connectivity.
Synnex and Tech Data made headlines earlier this year with the announcement of an explosive merger. Pending regulatory approval, the companies will form the largest technology distributor in the world.
But the story landing at No. 16 on our list for May is D&H Distributing positioning itself as a rival to the combined company.
Noting that its combined U.S. and Canada revenue now exceeds $5 billion, D&H claims to be the third-largest broadline distributor.
Communications platform as a service is red hot. You know it, and the researchers at IDC know it.
The firm released a list of leaders in CPaaS that include Twilio, Vonage, MessageBird, Sinch, Infobip and Bandwidth. In particular, IDC called out Twilio’s 55% revenue growth last year. Vonage grew its CPaaS segment by 35%.
Those were the “market leaders.” IDC touted 8×8, AT&T, Avaya, IntelePeer, ALE and Microsoft as “major players,” just a tick below market leaders.
Vonage defines CPaaS as a cloud-based platform that lets developers program the entire breadth of real-time, cloud-based communications platforms into their own applications. This gives customers the best experience available.
“We prevented a complete societal economic meltdown.”
Those were the bold words from Dell CEO Michael Dell, kicking off Dell Technologies World, talking about how the company’s investments in new technology and its customers helped keep them afloat during the pandemic.
Here’s the best of Dell’s keynote.
This one entered our countdown a few months ago and hasn’t left.
People are still talking about a Tweet from former Alteryx chief revenue officer Dean Darwin. He resigned a week after a firestorm that followed a since pulled-down tweet that read: “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?”
Darwin had only been on the job a few weeks.
Read our story about the controversy.
Our monthly recap of big mergers and acquisitions with channel implications once again cracked our top 20.
We looked back in particular at some moves affecting MSPs and agents. Dell, Upstack and Proofpoint were all featured prominently here.
IBM made a pair of newsworthy acquisitions.
One was Catalogic Software’s ECX copy data management business. For Catalogic, this means it can focus on its enterprise and cloud data protection and data security solutions.
IBM Storage and Catalogic have been business partners for several years.
The other acquisition is Big Blue’s purchase of Waeg, a top European Salesforce partner.
A pair of posts about the cloud giants got your attention in May.
First was our story on Microsoft inching closer to AWS in the cloud infrastructure services market. Synergy Research Group said AWS still has a clear lead, but that Microsoft just reached 20% share, to AWS’ 33%.
Then, IDC made the bold claim that Azure has actually caught AWS. But does that research hold water?
Speaking of the big cloud providers, we got a one-on-one with Carolee Gearhart, channel chief at Google Cloud Platform.
She credited Google Cloud and its partner community for responding quickly and with expertise during the COVID-19 pandemic to help migrate customers to the cloud.
“Beyond the number, I’m so proud of the way our partner ecosystem responded to support customers,” Gearhart told us.
We sat down with new Equinix channel chief Jules Johnston for a compelling Q&A.
Johnston, a five-year veteran of the data center services provider, became the company’s first formal channel chief. Equinix is initiating an integrated partner sales and partner program team.
Johnston previously was VP of Americas partner sales.
“As we launch new products and services, it’s very important that we have a partner-sensing feedback mechanism globally,” Johnston told us.
Here’s what else she said.
The fourth annual installment of our “20 Top SD-WAN Providers You Should Know” featured some big names and some you might be less familiar with.
We once again polled analysts in the business who closely follow this technology.
Aryaka made the list. So did Cato Networks. AT&T and Cisco also cracked it. Find out who else did.
Every six months, we recap some of the biggest conflicts and controversies making headlines in the channel.
From cases of race-based bullying (see next slide) to layoffs, bankruptcies and lawsuits, we get you caught up on what we used to know as “watercooler talk” before so many of us started working from home.
This edition featured a spat between Zoom and RingCentral, the massive SolarWinds hack and more.
A story we published in late May caught fire in June.
A follow-up to our original story on an egregious case of workplace racism and bullying, the alleged victim of said bullying filed a $9.3 million (U.S.) damage claim against Exertis, the U.K.-based distributor.
He says colleagues referred to him as an “Arab shoe bomber” who was working for Isis.
Read more about the damages claim, and how Exertis is responding to the scandal.
Frontier Communications‘ bankruptcy has been a hot topic for more than a year now, from the day it filed for chapter 11 in 2020 to the day it emerged at the end of April.
So it’s not surprising that this article from late April, finally signaling the end of the saga, ranked this high in our top 20.
Might this be a harbinger of things to come?
A lot of you spent the month looking for any info you could about the Channel Futures MSP 501 program ahead of the May 24 application deadline. Just wait till we spend a full week unveiling the 2021 list, June 21-25.
No one will be shocked if the 501 rises to the top of our next list.
You were curious to learn about Amazon Web Services (AWS)’ new marketplace head. It’s Stephen Orban, who took over for David McCann. McCann led the business unit for seven years.
Orban, too, is an AWS vet. He has worked for the cloud giant since 2014. His most recent role was general manager of AWS Data Exchange and AWS Control Services.
Orban has a strategy in place.
Just two months after the merger of Channel Futures and Channel Partners Online, we might have an “Oprah” on our hands.
Remember how Oprah famously removed herself from consideration for the Daytime Emmy for best talk show host after winning several years in a row? If Channel People on the Move continues to dominate, that might happen here.
In this edition, you learned all about new hires and promotions at AT&T, Datto, Tech Data, TBI and more. Pictured above is Scott Forbush of Upstack.
Just two months after the merger of Channel Futures and Channel Partners Online, we might have an “Oprah” on our hands.
Remember how Oprah famously removed herself from consideration for the Daytime Emmy for best talk show host after winning several years in a row? If Channel People on the Move continues to dominate, that might happen here.
In this edition, you learned all about new hires and promotions at AT&T, Datto, Tech Data, TBI and more. Pictured above is Scott Forbush of Upstack.
Is the eighth day of the month too late to publish a list of top 20 stories from the previous month? We hope not.
Our monthly countdown is once again packed with channel goodness, this time from May. As usual, this is your list, as we select the news and articles that get the most traffic. We also weigh the success of these top 20 stories in our weekly newsletter. (Sign up for that here.)
This edition features a couple of posts that continue to be “hot reads.” One is a racist tweet that led to a CRO jumping ship after six weeks on the job. Another is “outrage” over Apple’s latest iPads failing to feature 5G connectivity. There’s also Frontier’s emergence from bankruptcy, which remains a big topic of discussion.
But most are brand-new to the countdown and are very channel-centric. For instance, take AWS’ new marketplace leader, and our one-on-one with Google Cloud’s channel chief.
Then there’s a breakdown of top CPaaS companies and our list of 20 top SD-WAN providers.
Which story was No. 1? Check out our slideshow above to find out. Then, if you missed last month’s top 20 stories, go 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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