CRN August 2022 - Issue 1413

ISSUE 1413 • AUGUST 2022

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TOP 100 EXECUTIVES PAGE 12

EMERGING VENDORS PAGE 26

FAST GROWTH 150 PAGE 40

Partners At A Crossroads Recent changes to Microsoft’s partner program—NCE and the upcoming Partner Capability Score—are rattling some solution providers in Microsoft’s 400,000-strong channel ecosystem. Is the tech giant listening? PAGE 6

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Computer Reseller News

August 2022

Columns 42 On The Record

By Robert Faletra

Features

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Partners At A Crossroads Recent changes to Microsoft’s partner program—NCE and the upcoming Partner Capability Score—are rattling some solution providers in Microsoft’s 400,000-strong channel ecosystem. Is the tech giant listening?

Top 100 Executives

Fast Growth 150

Our Fast Growth companies have not only survived but thrived as they stepped up to navigate the changes the past two years have ushered in.

Here’s who has been riding in the fast lane.

For reprints and plaque requests, please contact The YGS Group at 800.290.5460 or http://crnlicensing.com

CRN (ISSN 1539-7343), also known as Computer Reseller News, is published 14 times a year (February, April, June, August, October, December and 8 Special Issues) by The Channel Company, One Research Drive, Suite 410A, Westborough, MA 01581, and is free to qualified management personnel at companies involved in the reselling/distribution of computers/ networking systems, software and services. One-year subscription rates for all others in the United States are $209.00; Canada $234.00. Overseas air mail rates are: Europe $380.00; Mexico/South America $380.00; Africa $380.00; Asia/Australia $480.00. Please mail all subscription inquiries along with checks or money orders to The Channel Company, Dept: CRN Subscriptions, One Research Drive, Suite 410A, Westborough, MA 01581. For renewals or change of address, please include the mailing address label appearing on the front cover of the publication. Periodicals postage paid at Worcester, MA, (and additional offices, if applicable).

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Our No. 1 Most Influential Executive, HPE President and CEO Antonio Neri, has driven the company ‘further and faster’ into the Everything-as-a-Service model. See how he and our other honorees are making waves across the channel.

Emerging Vendors

With innovation at the core of their business, our 2022 Emerging Vendors are providing the spark across a wide range of technology segments. Check out the 136 savvy startups that are betting on solution providers to introduce their nextgeneration offerings to potential customers.

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1. Oracle Considered

$1B In Cuts, ‘Thousands’ Of Layoffs: Report

2. Hock Tan: Broadcom’s Plan For VMware As Tom Krause Departs

3. Google Cloud Star SADA Nabs VMware’s Sandy Hogan As New CRO

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Broadcom Software + VMware: Committed To VMware’s Partners Q. As you progress in the VMware acquisition, what have you learned about their partners?

A. The VMware partners are a valuable asset that we want to embrace. Their partner network is scaled, global and it works.

Q. How does VMware align with other parts of the Broadcom Software Group?

A. We see opportunities to create even more value for partners with existing

Broadcom Software solutions. Our cybersecurity and agile management solutions complement what partners are already doing with VMware technologies. We can reintroduce these solutions to a broader partner audience and create enhanced value for partners and the customers they serve.

Q. What have partners been asking?

A. With any transaction, stakeholders want to know, “How does this affect me?” For

partners, they want to know whether following close their existing relationship with VMware will change, whether we plan to adjust VMware’s go-to market strategy, and what our plans are for VMware’s product roadmap. For Broadcom, it makes business sense to support and embrace VMware’s partners to provide additional opportunities to sell our technologies. And while we may not have all the answers today, we will keep them informed of our post-closing plans.

Q. Is there a role that partners can play in Broadcom Software’s enterprise accounts?

A. Yes. While we have a direct sales model with Broadcom’s large enterprise accounts,

we want to ensure partners have an opportunity to work with us strategically and support those accounts, where both Broadcom and partners have relationships and footprints, and both can benefit. In particular, given the scale we will now have across the portfolio, it opens up new opportunities to engage with the channel to support and engage other customers. We’ll work through the best way to do this with VMware following close.

Q. How do you avoid changes that impact channel partners’ business?

A. VMware has the necessary scale and a wide product portfolio that will allow us to engage with and really embrace the channel. We want to build on these strengths and sustain the long-term relationships VMware has with its partners to provide customers of all sizes with choice and flexibility.

For more information on the pending transaction between Broadcom and VMware, please visit www.reimaginingsoftware.com

Hock Tan

President and CEO Broadcom Inc.

”

VMware has the necessary scale and a wide product portfolio that will allow us to engage with and really embrace the channel.

We want to build on these strengths and sustain the long-term relationships VMware has with its partners to provide customers of all sizes with choice and flexibility.

”

COVER STOR Y

Partners At A Crossroads Recent changes to Microsoft’s partner program—NCE and the upcoming Partner Capability Score—are rattling some solution providers in Microsoft’s 400,000-strong channel ecosystem.

Is the tech giant listening?

By Wade Tyler Millward

I

t only took one month for Guardian Computer President Jean Prejean to discover one of the biggest problems with Microsoft’s new rules for how customers buy and renew commercial software subscriptions with partners.

In April—one month after Microsoft began enforcing changes rolled out under its New Commerce Experience, or NCE, banner— Prejean brought on a new customer for her Metairie, La.-based MSP business.

What should have been a purely celebratory occasion for Guardian Computer, a member of CRN’s 2022 MSP 500, came with a catch.

Because the customer had already signed an annual commitment with its former MSP under NCE—and because, under NCE, Microsoft does not allow partners to transfer licenses after seven days—Prejean was forced to work with the old provider.

“There is nothing we can do,” Prejean told CRN in an interview. “It’s hard to tell a new client, ‘Hey, but you’ve got to still deal with your old MSP for another 10 months.’ … Sometimes, there is bad blood in there.”

In the end, Prejean and her staff of 13 employees promised to provide support to the new customer while the old MSP collects revenue until the contract ends next year.

“We’re a Microsoft shop,” she said. “We wouldn’t be who we

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are without Microsoft. And some of these changes have been disheartening.”

Prejean is among the hundreds of thousands of partners that now have to decide how to adjust to the new costs and requirements of doing business with Microsoft.

There’s no question that the partner program changes Microsoft is making are taking their toll.

Microsoft said in its most recent earnings call that “partner transition work” had a negative effect on growth with small- and midsize-business customers.

During the question-and-answer portion of the call Microsoft CFO Amy Hood said that the company saw “some weakness in new deals, particularly in the SMB segments,” noting that licenses aimed at SMB customers are primarily sold through partners.

“We’ll keep executing that through partners. We’re in the middle of that transition we talked about last quarter, and we’re still working on it,” she said during the call.

The changes Microsoft is making are some of the biggest to hit Microsoft partners since the Microsoft Certified Solution Provider program launched 30 years ago.

The diversity and size of Microsoft’s program can be an asset—400,000 partners with a mix of partners less than half Guardian’s size and partners exponentially larger with hundreds of employees pulling in tens of billions of dollars in revenue.

But that diversity makes it hard for programwide changes organization. Her role is considered “much broader than channel to satisfy all partner sizes and business models—and former chief,” according to Microsoft. It “focuses on Microsoft’s entire Microsoft channel employees tell CRN that businesses such as commercial partner business—encompassing all different types Prejean’s represent most of the partner program population. of partners and relationships.”

CRN has reached out to Microsoft for comment on this article During Microsoft’s annual Inspire partner-focused event— but the company would not make members of its channel team held online July 19 and 20—Dezen said that Microsoft’s co-sell available. program has seen $33.8 billion in annual contracted value and Twenty-three percent of 160 Microsoft partners polled by CRN 35 percent revenue growth since its launch in fiscal year 2018. in July said they are more dissatisfied with Microsoft as a partner “From the beginning, Microsoft has been a partner-first comthan they were a year ago. An additional 4 percent, meanwhile, pany,” Dezen said during Inspire. said they were significantly more dissatisfied than a year ago.

“Our ability to co-sell together is what makes our partners—plus Furthermore, 27 percent of partners polled by CRN said they Microsoft—the most powerful asset in the industry,” she added. are dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with the new partner program Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella said during Inrequirements, NCE and changes in partner incentives. spire that partners help “make small businesses more productive, “Microsoft has dramatinonprofits more effeccally increased the diffitive, multinationals more ‘The MSPs, a lot of us, are relatively culty in doing business competitive [and] governwith them,” said one ments more efficient, imsmall. So I think it’s maybe hard for partner participating in proving health care and [Microsoft] to hear the feedback the survey. “Ease of doing educational outcomes business with Microsoft is and creating economic because we’re just a bunch of little non-existent at this point. opportunity and creating fish. But if you add us up, I’m sure [I’ve] grown very tired jobs. That’s what makes we make a difference.’ and frustrated with their this partner ecosystem never-ending, confusing so unique.”

— Jean Prejean, President, Guardian Computer partner program changes, Although Prejean and clunky partner systems, partners of Guardian multiple portals [and] lack of being able to speak to real people.” Computer’s size bring in fewer dollars individually, that long “I don’t like the change from the CSP program to the NCE tail is a revenue generator for Microsoft and helps the Redmond, program. It was a win for Microsoft and a loss for partners,” said Wash.-based company bring its software to Main Street when another surveyed partner. larger consultants prove too pricey and lack a local presence.

“The change in requirements for partners to the ‘point’ system “The MSPs, a lot of us, are relatively small,” Prejean said. is too much with not enough time to meet them,” said yet another “So I think it’s maybe hard for [Microsoft] to hear the feedback partner. “Microsoft seems to assume we can have engineering because we’re just a bunch of little fish. But if you add us up, resources stop their normal job function and focus solely on the I’m sure we make a difference.” new requirements.”

But Microsoft’s partners also benefit from the tech giant, as Nadella indicated during Inspire.

Microsoft’s Relationship With Partners “For every dollar in revenue we generate, partners who build Microsoft’s channel leadership itself, meanwhile, has gone differentiated software solutions on the Microsoft Cloud generate through change. Former channel chief Rodney Clark—who also $10 more,” the CEO said. held the title of corporate vice president of channel sales— Prejean and other Microsoft partners who spoke with CRN said decamped for Johnson Controls in May. they don’t want to leave Microsoft, a leader in the productivity His role has been split into two, according to a Microsoft state- applications market with popular apps such as Word, Excel and ment to CRN. Instead of a channel chief, Microsoft now has a vice Teams. Google is considered its closest competitor in productivpresident of channel sales, David Smith, and a vice president of ity with its Workspace offering and apps including Docs, Sheets go-to-market, programs and experiences, Julie Sanford. and Meet.

“The decision to evolve what formerly had been a single role Microsoft is also widely considered the No. 2 cloud computing into two distinct areas of responsibility is a reflection of the grow- vendor behind Amazon Web Services and ahead of Google Cloud. ing importance and breadth of our partner ecosystem all-up,” The New Partner Capability Score according to the statement.

Microsoft recently named Nicole Dezen chief partner officer Tackling NCE and the discussions with customers over whether and corporate vice president of the Global Partner Solutions to make an annual commitment to Microsoft software packages

AUGUST 2022

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COVER STOR Y or to pay a 20 percent premium on month-to-month commit- until their next anniversary date. Gold and Silver badges and ments in case of a change in employee count or license type was marketing materials from Microsoft will go away Oct. 3. a heavy enough lift for some partners.

But as Microsoft executives said again and again during Inspire, ‘So Far’ From Qualifying the second controversial change for the Microsoft partner program— Prejean, currently a Microsoft Gold partner, said working toward a higher partner score for her business would be too difficult. the Partner Capability Score—is here to stay.

“We’re so far from being able to qualify that it’s been like, The Partner Capability Score will determine who qualifies as a Microsoft “Solutions Partner,” the designation that replaces ‘OK, we don’t even have to dig into this anymore,’” she said. the classic Gold and Silver partner competencies that come with “We can’t. It’s so based on growth.”

All levels of the upcoming Microsoft Cloud Partner Program sales and customer support for partners.

Under the new system, partners earn points for deployments, share some benefits—such as a cloud enablement desk, help and usage growth, getting certifications and new customer adds, with support requests, digital marketing content on demand, marketrules around how large a customer must be to count toward the place rewards, and training and enablement resources.

Partners who score below 70 can still buy Microsoft’s Action score. Solutions Partners can also go on to earn “specializations” Pack aimed at new and smaller partners, Rippey said during with more benefits.

Microsoft executives have touted NCE and the Partner Capabil- Inspire. Action Pack provides some technical presales advisory hours, co-sell eligibility Score as simpler ways for ity, Azure credits and Visual customers to do business with Studio subscriptions. It’s also the ecosystem.

‘We’re very well-versed in less expensive at $475 a year For example, NCE moves Dynamics, we do a ton of work than what partners currently Microsoft from about 20 lipay for Silver and Gold levels. censing constructs and purin Dynamics ... that shows me Silver costs partners $1,670 a chasing experiences—includsomething’s broken.’ year, while Gold costs $4,730 ing Open License and Select a year. The coming Solutions Plus—to three, Clark previ— Zac Paulson, CEO, TrueIt, on not Partner designation will cost ously told CRN. The three are meeting the Partner Capability Score the same as Gold. a breadth motion that includes threshold for Dynamics Zac Paulson, CEO of TrueIT, Cloud Solution Provider parta Fargo, N.D.-based Microsoft ners, an enterprise motion serviced by Enterprise Agreements and Microsoft Customer partner, called the new Partner Capability Score a “disaster.”

Agreements, and a self-service motion, all sharing a common His business, a Gold partner for Microsoft’s Dynamics CRM tool, currently scores below the 70-point threshold in all six platform.

Customers opting for annual commitments give partners a Solutions Partner areas—business applications, digital and app more accurate forecast of the revenue they stand to make. And innovation, security, modern work, infrastructure and data and the 20 percent premium on month-to-month commitments gives artificial intelligence.

Paulson told CRN that he’s confused on what data the Partner partners some cushion should a customer go out of business or Capability Score pulls from and how to get a more accurate reduce license count.

The Partner Capability Scores should also improve collabora- measure for his business.

“We’re very well-versed in Dynamics, we do a ton of work in tion between Microsoft sellers and partners, according to the Dynamics … that shows me something’s broken,” Paulson said. company.

Dan Rippey, program director for the Microsoft Partner “In my opinion, that does not represent the large buy-in our Network—which the tech company will rename as the Microsoft company has to Microsoft and the large spend we have with Cloud Partner Program in October—said during Inspire that the them either.”

Paulson is hopeful that Microsoft will delay the Partner Canew designations are meant to better communicate to customers a partner’s technical acumen and “ability to deliver successful pability Score deadline and revise how partners get points. He’s concerned that Action Pack won’t provide the same number of outcomes.”

Dezen said that partners who sold collaboratively with Microsoft internal use rights that comes with his Gold membership, should sellers saw revenue grow 29 percent in 2021, almost double the he lose it when he reaches his next anniversary in May. “One of the things that is probably the most frustrating with 15 percent revenue growth of partners not actively engaged in Dynamics is in order to get the [new Solutions Partner] designaMicrosoft co-sell.

Partners have until Sept. 30 to renew legacy competencies—and tion we would have to have 20 trained professionals,” said Paulthey will retain benefits they received as Gold and Silver partners son, who has a staff of about 50 between TrueIT and its spinoff,

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TruNorth Dynamics, a Dynamics consultant aimed at MSPs. “You had to have the certifications across the board,” he said.

“And that’s just not rational. Not rational at all.”

sultants to work as NCE unfolded, rewriting and retooling their internal system.

As a direct CSP partner, Core BTS uses its own tools to manage the business instead of a distributor as the smaller companies run A Moving Timeline

by Paulson and Prejean do. Paulson uses Pax8 as a distributor, Although various Microsoft executives repeated the October while Prejean uses D&H Distributing. deadline for Partner Capability Scores during Inspire, a delay The Core BTS team met monthly with Microsoft employees wouldn’t be a surprise. directly to learn about immediate changes and the road map for In June, the tech vendor indefinitely delayed a plan to enforce changes to come. Over several months, Core BTS employees the premium on renewals of Microsoft 365, one of multiple delays talked to more than 300 active customers in health care, financial during the rollout of the partner program changes. Microsoft services, retail and other industries to make sure each customer called the delay “a business decision” in an online post. had the appropriate Microsoft license amounts and types—giving The delay came two weeks ahead of the deadline—still more customers a mix of annual and monthly commitments. lead time than Microsoft gave partners in March when it gave “There’s complexity to migrating a whole portfolio of clients partners a reprieve for the overall Microsoft 365 and Office 365 over to the new NCE platform, but we built out a very rigorous price increase on the day it was set to go into effect. Microsoft approach to it and have some operations people on our CSP at that time announced team who’d been able to a two-week delay, citing coordinate to be able to “current high demand” make that go as smoothly ‘There’s complexity to migrating a to move customers onto as possible,” said Guidi, a whole portfolio of clients over to the NCE as the reason. nine-plus-year employee Even the start of NCE of Core BTS whose renew NCE platform, but we have ... was pushed back from sume includes more than some operations people on our team an original date in Octo30 years of IT consulting ber 2021—about seven and more than four years who’ve been able to coordinate to be months after Clark rewith Microsoft itself. able to make that go as smoothly as placed Gavriella Schuster Guidi left Microsoft in possible.’ as Microsoft channel chief.

2013 as a territory manClark and his team had ager for corporate account — Tony Guidi, SVP, Microsoft Partner Alliance, Core BTS also added a discount for customers in southern partners to effectively Ohio. keep the 20 percent discount at bay until June 2022—pointing Core BTS has not run into the same issue with bringing over a to the changes as signs to partners that Microsoft is listening to new customer during an annual commitment—as Prejean has—but their concerns.

Guidi said he believes most customers will stay with their MSPs “I made a decision to actually push the launch of this from and switch, if they want, on their anniversary dates.

October to January just to provide more time for our partners He also hopes to see Microsoft add the capability to change to get ready,” Clark told CRN in February. channel partners, which the company allows for Enterprise Agreements—aimed at customers with 500 or more users or Some Partners Praise Changes devices.

Prejean and Paulson’s experiences with NCE and the Partner Guidi also praised Microsoft for the new Partner Capability Capability Score have differed from others in the Microsoft Score, calling the change “overdue.” Some partners have sucpartner program. In CRN’s survey, 22 percent of partners said ceeded in passing the exams for Gold and Silver competencies they are more or significantly more satisfied with Microsoft as a but don’t have the real-world experience to deliver, he said. The partner than they were a year ago, while 51 percent said their Partner Capability Score and the new solution area designations satisfaction level remains unchanged. show customers that the partner has been vetted by Microsoft.

Take, for example, Tony Guidi, senior vice president of the “Talking with leadership on the partner side of the [Microsoft] Microsoft Partner Alliance at Indianapolis-based Microsoft part- house, really part of this is to help clients easily understand what ner Core BTS, No. 161 on CRN’s 2022 Solution Provider 500. partners are qualified to deliver on a specific solution,” he said. “If Core BTS is an Azure Expert MSP and a 2022 Microsoft U.S. a client is looking for a partner that is [in] app modernization, app Partner Azure Migration Award winner for helping customers innovation, there’s not really an easy way for them to determine migrate to the Microsoft Cloud. by looking at competencies if a partner is really qualified.”

Guidi put his team of 400-plus Microsoft architects and conRight now, Core BTS has 16 Gold competencies and five ad-

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COVER STOR Y vanced specializations. Guidi expects to qualify for five of the six solution area designations come October.

Microsoft Channel Consolidation On The Horizon?

Vince Menzione—who worked at Microsoft for more than eight years, leaving in 2016 with the title of general manager for partner sales and strategy and making CRN’s Channel Chiefs list multiple times—told CRN that he views the Partner Capability Score as Microsoft telling the largest partners where to invest in their Microsoft practices and turning attention away from the smallest partners.

“I think that Microsoft pivoted too much to the broad ecosystem of the 400,000” in the past, said Menzione, founder and CEO of Ultimate Partnerships, a Jupiter, Fla.-based consulting firm aimed at connecting ISVs with the channel.

“Microsoft loves everybody,” he continued. “It’s democratized.

And it treats everybody the same. And so what’s happened is those [smaller partners] have gotten more disproportionate love than the focus on building the practice for an Accenture, Deloitte and all the big guys, which takes a massive amount of time, effort and money to do.”

He said he expects to see consolidation in the channel as a result of the partner program changes. “Microsoft is going to force some of the smaller guys to sell to the larger guys. I think you’re going to see more of that,” he said.

Sherman Crancer, president of consulting and partner development management at Irvine, Calif.-based Crancer Group—a consulting company that is aimed at helping Microsoft partners grow—called the new Partner Capability Scores “a culling of the herd.”

Crancer, who spent five years at Microsoft, leaving the company in 2019 as manager of the top 25 Microsoft partners across the Western region, said that the bar for Gold and Silver was “too low” in the past. “Silver and Gold competency doesn’t mean anything anymore because there’s just too many people who got it,” he said.

“Too many Gold partners were professing that they were excellent at implementing Azure solutions, and the results were many incomplete implementations that then focused the attention back on Microsoft. Implementations started lowering confidence in Silver and Gold standards,” Crancer said.

Some of Crancer’s MSP customers still have points to earn for new certifications. He’s come up with a strategy for partners to dedicate only a month for engineers to stop working on customers and get their new certifications—focus on Microsoft’s learning materials for one week, then take two practice tests each day of week two, three practice tests a day in week three, four tests in week four, then take the test.

To Crancer, Microsoft’s biggest flub in rolling out the changes was lack of communication and a long-time lack of help for partners who struggle with net-new customers.

“The uproar is based on change and then [partners] not

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understanding the change. And that’s where Microsoft tripped.

They made both of them too abrupt, I think,” he said.

“If Microsoft could change, I think their messaging also needs to be about, ‘We’re going to make some changes, but let me explain to you, let’s really talk about how this is going to affect you financially in a positive way. Let me explain to you how you’re going to make more money here. Let me give you more about the benefits.’ I think that was lacking too. It was left to the machinations of people, which then [doesn’t work] because people like to go negative anyway. That just snowballs.”

Some Partners Soften Their Criticism Some of the fiercest critics of Microsoft’s 2022 partner changes have cooled on their rhetoric.

In September, the monthly premium angered Bobby Guerra so much that the CEO of Jacksonville, Fla.-based Microsoft partner Axiom posted a petition to Change.org calling for Microsoft to revoke it. As of July, the petition had garnered more than 2,000 signatures.

In a more recent interview with CRN, Guerra said that more customers than he expected accepted the monthly premium or an annual commitment, paying the solution provider the money up front.

“This might sound surprising: It was a lot more profitable for us than we thought it was going to be,” Guerra said. “I was surprised. It was a lot more profitable because so many went for the monthlies.”

He is still incensed, however, at the rules around changing a customer’s licenses—upgrading customers to more expensive licenses appears easier so far than bringing them down, and his portal with distributor Pax8 won’t let him schedule license changes for the future.

The biggest help to Guerra in navigating the changes wasn’t Microsoft or even Pax8 employees, he said. It was fellow partners talking to him about their strategies—partners he met through peer groups.

“It would not be as bad if we knew the strategies and the right approach to handle this,” he said. “And we didn’t get any of that guidance. It was everybody in the community on our side for managed service companies just coming up with alternative ways of approaching this nut to crack.”

Guerra and his team of 12 employees—whose customers come from a variety of industries, including health care, construction and legal services—are now working on increasing their Partner Capability Score before the October deadline.

At the same time, he said he is interested in possibly adding a Google practice and is becoming better versed in Google’s products.

TrueIT’s Paulson told CRN in November that encouraging customers to take an annual contract over a monthly one was not in “the spirit of the cloud” because it took away flexibility in changing the number of licenses.

In a more recent interview with CRN, Paulson said that the “We on-boarded a big corporate account earlier this year,” NCE rollout “hasn’t been too much of a challenge for us,” gave Hill said. “And our distributor was vital to winning the busihim the opportunity to give customers better plans and did bring ness, on-boarding the business and then now maintaining it by in some extra revenue—“a few $1,000 a month in revenue, and helping make sure we had all the resources we needed, including then a few $100 a month in margin.” the best pricing.”

But talking to customers about the price changes and re-quoting Hill also said he has no interest in adding a Google practice. products made Paulson and his team feel as though they were “We try to pull people off Google,” he said. “It’s unfortunate, reselling customers on products they already bought. Most of his but Google just doesn’t have a competitive product. And I think customers, ones with stable employee counts, opted for annual in this cloud, communications space, Microsoft really took the commitments instead of month to month. downtime during COVID and invested in their product. They’ve “I would say the trade was not fair,” Paulson said. But NCE got a product suite here for communications and collaboration “hasn’t been as big of a loss as predicted, so that part’s been nice. that is, frankly, unparalleled to anyone on the market and, basi… I wish they would have picked a time when the rest of the world cally, it’s priced right. So I just don’t see leaving the Microsoft wasn’t exploding. But I get it. They probably had this change in ecosystem.” the works for a long time and eventually it just had to happen.”

Even with the monthly premium and the new Partner Capabil- ‘A Positive Side’ ity Score, Paulson said that he is not interested in switching to or Even Prejean’s frustrations with Microsoft haven’t pushed her so far as to explore adding a Google practice. other partner programs, “At this point, we although her customers haven’t looked at Google,” ‘[Microsoft has] a product suite for have asked her about Paulson said. “And even communications and collaboration Google. In her opinion, though Pax8 has rolled out Microsoft’s offerings have AWS, we haven’t looked that is, frankly, unparalleled to better features and secuat AWS. There’s just so anyone on the market and, basically, rity, she said. much more capacity left in it’s priced right. So I just don’t see In fact, Prejean’s plans Azure and in [Office 365] for growing her business— that, I mean, we still are leaving the Microsoft ecosystem.’ which she founded in 1996 on-boarding clients that with her husband, John— don’t have O365, believe — Robby Hill, CEO, HillSouth IT Solutions include more investment it or not.” in the Microsoft portfolio.

Robby Hill, CEO of HillSouth IT Solutions, a Florence, S.C.-based Microsoft partner, Microsoft’s communications app, Teams, has proven popular with told CRN in November that customers would feel “alienated” by her customers. She’s also thinking of investing more in Microsoft’s a push to annual contracts and that annual contracts go against Defender cybersecurity offering.

“There is a positive side,” she said. “Their products are all so the allure of flexible cloud computing.

In a more recent interview with CRN, Hill said he has changed well-integrated that we put up with all their humbug because his mind about annual contracts—even though he’s run into the they do have exceptional products.”

Even with the arrangement she came to—sharing a customer same problem as Guardian Computer’s Prejean, the Microsoft partner who took on a new customer stuck in an annual contract with its former MSP—she said she feels OK with giving up revenue for a new customer, calling the arrangement a “gentlewith an old MSP. “We’re optimistic about how it’s going to really help the part- man’s agreement.” Her only concern is security with the old ners at the end of the day because I think by handcuffing those MSP still having access to the customer and seeing a slowdown end users to the partners, we all get to work together a little bit in responding to the customer’s needs due to having to work more in case there are any hiccups in the relationship where with another MSP. When asked if she has a message for Microsoft’s new channel basically we’re stuck with each other,” Hill said.

Hill also said that prices going up in the U.S. helped give leaders, Prejean said, “Listen to the smaller MSPs. Simplicity is Microsoft some cover, with his customers unsurprised if they got important to us.”

“With the NCE thing, if they would just work with us to tweak a price increase and more willing to lock in their price for a year in case the cost of Microsoft products continues to climb. He did it a little bit, I think it would be a win-win,” she said. “And that’s the whole portability aspect, letting us take it from distributor to not see an increase in revenue due to NCE, he said.

His distributor, Irvine, Calif.-based Ingram Micro, was helpful distributor, client to client, MSP to MSP. Just those three things would be huge.”  in adopting the NCE changes, Hill said.

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TOP 100 E XECU TIVES

The TOP 100 Executives Of 2022 Combine the blinding pace of technology advances with the semiconductor chip storage, the global supply chain crisis, a never-ending barrage of security breaches and a record year for channel mergers and acquisitions and you have an idea of the challenges faced by the 2022 class of Top 100 Executives. Needless to say, it is the bold and decisive who are determined to go further and faster that dominate our annual list of the best and brightest in the technology world.

No one better exemplifies that drive to go further and faster than Hewlett Packard Enterprise President and CEO Antonio Neri, our No. 1 Most Influential Executive. Over the last four years, Neri has transformed the legacy infrastructure product provider into an on-premises cloud services powerhouse that is going head to head against Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.

AMD North America Channel Chief Terry Richardson, our No. 1 Channel Sales Leader, is a 30-year-plus channel sales veteran who is bringing his vast relationships and partner program expertise to bear in a bid to dramatically boost AMD’s channel share in the commercial CPU and GPU market.

ThreatLocker co-founder and CEO Danny Jenkins, our No. 1 Innovator, is a cybersecurity maverick who has turned the tide on the slew of attacks battering MSPs with a technology approach that many scoffed at when he brought it to market.

Our No. 1 Disrupter is Broadcom CEO Hock Tan, who has bought four companies for a combined $71 billion since 2015. His latest planned acquisition,VMware, is his biggest and boldest bet yet—a $61 billion deal for one of the industry’s standard-bearers.

HPE’S ANTONIO NERI:

A Drive To Go ‘Further And Faster’

By Steven Burke PKA TECHNOLOGIES CEO FELISE KATZ was initially “very skeptical” in 2019 when she first heard Hewlett Packard Enterprise President and CEO Antonio Neri lay out his bold vision to move the company and its partners to a full HPE GreenLake Everything-as-a-Service model by 2022.

However, once Katz looked into how the change would drive a tighter and more strategic relationship with customers and in the process move PKA to a recurring revenue model that sharpened the focus on PKASolveIT managed services, she was all in.

Three years into the journey of reinventing what Katz calls her 26-year-old startup, she could not be more thrilled at what the change has meant to Montvale, N.J.-based PKA and its customers.

“GreenLake is really resonating with customers at this point,” said Katz. “They are looking at things through a different lens. It has enabled customers to be much more efficient, to keep costs under control and to keep their data secure. Everything GreenLake has promised to do it has certainly done for our customers. We have a huge pipeline of opportunities.”

That huge pipeline is due in no small part to the bold vision of Neri, who made a big bet on Everything as a Service as far back as four years ago. That bet has put HPE far ahead of legacy

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infrastructure providers like Dell Technologies and Cisco Systems in the rapidly emerging Everything-as-a-Service contest. It has also forever changed the channel landscape, with HPE partners moving from selling infrastructure products in a capital expenditure transactional model to selling on-premises cloud services in a consumption model that pits HPE GreenLake head to head against Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.

Most remarkably, Neri this year delivered on his pledge made at the HPE Global Partner Summit three years ago to move HPE and its partners to the cloud consumption model. At the time, Neri told partners: “Three years from now, this company will become consumption-driven and everything we do—whether it is at the edge, the core, the cloud business—software or infrastructure and services will be available to you and to our customers as a service.”

Now that pledge—which at the time seemed like a pipe dream— is a reality. Neri’s success bringing HPE and its partners into the consumption-based cloud services market has earned him the No. 1 Most Influential Executive on CRN’s 2022 Top 100 Executives List.

For PKA itself, which has had to undergo a massive cultural transformation, including three major changes to its compensation

Antonio Neri President, CEO Hewlett Packard Enterprise

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plan to drive pay-per-use GreenLake on-premises cloud services consumption, the change has led to a financially stronger company that is now acting as a strategic service provider to customers with its PKASolveIT suite of managed services, said Katz. “We could not be more pleased about the outcome for us and for our customers. We have a different relationship with our customers now. Our conversations are now with the C-suite—the CFOs and the owners and principals of companies. It’s a financial and a technical conversation at the same time. The future is brilliant.

It’s a great story,” she said.

That great story began with Neri—who started his career at HPE in 1995 in an HPE call center in Amsterdam—taking the helm of HPE on Feb. 1, 2018. On his first day on the job, Neri pledged to bring an innovator’s heart, a customer-first and customer-last ethos and a drive to go “further and faster” —accelerating “what’s next” for customers and partners.

Today, Neri’s commitment to go further and faster has transformed HPE from a bits and bytes-focused hardware provider to a cloud services powerhouse. And he did it by putting partners at the very center of that software and services transformation.

Anatomy Of A Transformation First off, Neri has done what many believed was impossible: moving the complete HPE product portfolio in just three years to a seamless and cohesive edge-to-cloud pay-per-use platform for both cloud-native and legacy workloads. In the process, Neri has made HPE GreenLake a compelling alternative to AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.

HPE GreenLake now has more than 70 cloud services that run the gamut, starting at the edge with connectivity from Aruba to a complex ERP offering like SAP and breakthrough artificial intelligence, machine learning and analytics services. GreenLake is now on track to deliver $1 billion in annualized revenue run rate (ARR) this year with a three-year compound annual growth rate projection of 35 percent to 45 percent for ARR.

At the same time, GreenLake is driving higher margins, with the ARR percentage of software and services set to soar from 61 percent in fiscal year 2021 to 77 percent in fiscal year 2024.

To power the Everything-as-a-Service transformation, Neri rebuilt HPE from the ground up, starting with a big investment in 2018 to modernize HPE’s own IT systems, putting the company on a single ERP system. From there, Neri put in place the ARR metric on the HPE balance sheet so investors and partners could track HPE’s as-a-service evolution.

At the same time he was making those changes, Neri was literally transforming the culture and character of HPE into a software and services organization. The company is now being viewed by customers and partners as a cloud powerhouse. Case in point: HPE now has 8,500-plus software engineers.

Customers have voted by moving their data and workloads to HPE GreenLake, Neri said. The edge-to-cloud GreenLake payper-use platform now has 65,000 customers and 120,000 users with 1 exabyte of data under management.

GreenLake’s total contract value has more than doubled from $3.1 billion in 2019 to $7.1 billion in the most recent quarter.

The channel has also voted for GreenLake, driving 155 percent sales growth on the platform in the most recent quarter, the second consecutive triple-digit growth quarter. More than 900 partners are now selling GreenLake, up 60 percent year over year. What’s more, the number of partners selling multiple deals is up 2.5 times year over year.

Neri told CRN that the key to the evolution of the $27.8 billion infrastructure provider was a matter of having “the courage” to do the right thing. He ran headfirst into that leadership lesson when he made his first big move to modernize HPE’s IT systems.

“No one wanted to do that,” said Neri. “No one wanted to do it because it was an enormous amount of work and money to reset the entire operations of the company and close the technical debt that we were not able to address because of the spins and splits [we went through]. That was a foundation [for the HPE

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TOP 100 E XECU TIVES transformation]. The second piece of this was, ‘OK, let’s establish who we want to be and stick to it.”

Sticking to it is something Neri is good at. One of his leadership maxims is never procrastinate and always look at “what you are going to do today that you could have done yesterday.”

For help making tough decisions, Neri credits HPE CFO Tarek Robbiati for knowing how to drive HPE to go “further and faster” with a sound capital allocation strategy. That rebalancing of resources has led to bigger investments in HPE research and development, from $1.7 billion in fiscal year 2018 to $2 billion in fiscal year 2021. “We had to rebalance resources,” said Neri.

“We looked at it through the financial lens as well as through the innovation lens. We married the two and said this is where we are going to double down—as-a-service is obviously one example.”

Neri has also doubled down on HPE’s culture, investing in new benefits like six months of paid parental leave and retirement transition support. Neri told CRN that a “pivotal moment” during his tenure as CEO came from a “who we are, what we stand for and how we operate” commitment that arose in conversations with HPE Executive Vice President and Chief Communications Officer Jennifer Temple.

Another top HPE executive who has made a big difference in overcoming obstacles in the transformation, said Neri, is HPE Executive Vice President and COO John Schultz.

Shultz, whose role has expanded recently with what HPE calls “increased responsibilities and a broader role in driving the company’s edge-to-cloud transformation,” has helped HPE “cross the chasm” by making sure it brings top talent into the organization, said Neri.

“One of the things that I really agree with [former HPE CEO and Neri mentor] Meg [Whitman] on is having the right person in the right job at the right time with the best attitude. Even though they may not have all the skill sets, I will take that over a perfect engineer that has no [emotional intelligence] to collaborate or understand the bigger picture,” said Neri. “It is phenomenal to do this thing [you may want to do], but I need people to think about the bigger picture, including partners.”

Another pivotal moment propelling Neri’s vison for a single unified edge-to-cloud platform came in the midst of the pandemic under a tent at HPE’s then-Santa Clara, Calif., headquarters. That led to the establishment of a team of 30 leaders to drive the cultural shift deep into the organization.

So just how radical is Neri’s view of the software and services transformation at HPE? “I think long term the vison is very simple: The infrastructure piece of this is nothing more than the cost of sales,” he said. “There is revenue, there is margin and a cost of sales. The majority of the margin will be services and software. The hardware piece, if you want see it that way, is a cost of goods sold.”

move the complete HPE portfolio to Everything as a Service and then getting the entire company of 60,000 employees on board.

“We knew we had to move quicker than we have moved before, and everything we needed to do was to serve that purpose,” said Hunter. “We knew we had to be working as hard as we possibly could to help us move our teams, our partners, our proposition, everything to be as-a-service such that when 2022 arrived everything was as-a-service-enabled.”

Hunter saw first-hand at the recent HPE Discover how transformative the move to GreenLake has been for partners. “The change I see is those partners have got religion,” he said. “They believe. The nature of their relationship with the customers has completely changed. They are much more important and relevant to customers and are having conversations they never had before.”

But it has been “hard work” for partners that have committed to GreenLake, said Hunter. “You have to be tenacious, you have to be committed to winning in the cloud-as-a-service world, and that is longer, harder and more complicated than it is in a ‘let me just refresh your environment’ world,” he said. “But the benefits are so much greater to the partner and us and the client. So partner perseverance is really rewarded.”

Hunter sees HPE GreenLake as a pivotal moment for all partners. “This is the lifeblood of the future for a healthy partner ecosystem,” he said. “We are in the process of partners reinventing themselves into companies that can really help their customers with problems that are business-related rather than feature- and technology-related. I think it is going to be invigorating. I think our companies are going to grow. The market continues to be very healthy. They and we have a path to being much more relevant to our customers in five years’ time than we were 10 years ago.”

Neri has been critical to driving sales growth because of his ability to handle everything from technology architecture and vision to support issues in front of customers and partners, said Hunter.

“Antonio has basically worked in every part of the company and remembers all the processes and policies associated with it, so he knows the actual plumbing of the business,” he said.

HPE Worldwide Channel Chief and Head of Partner Sales George Hope calls Neri the “industry’s biggest partner advocate” and most “partner-forward” CEO in the business. Nowhere is that more evident than with GreenLake, which was designed from the ground up to “grow with and through partners.” That includes an open API that allows partners to layer in their services on top of the GreenLake platform. “The partners see some of the other vendors bolting on channel after the fact,” said Hope. “They see us as baking in channel with the original recipe. That is a result of Antonio’s leadership in general for the channel. As he has put this [Everything-as-a-Service] vision forward and we have executed it, there has always been a channel weaved into the design and the conversation. That is a testament to his leadership.”

A Big Bold Vision Come To Life HPE North America Managing Director Paul Hunter, who was previously HPE worldwide channel chief and chief of staff to Whitman, credits Neri for making a “really bold statement” to

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Solving Public Cloud Pain Points A momentous bet on GreenLake three years ago has paid off in significant consumption-based sales growth for Milestone

Technologies, Castle Rock, Colo., which was just named HPE “simplicity” to grow their own pay-per-use platform, said JohnGreenLake U.S. Partner of the Year. “We are seeing tremendous son. Customers also like that there is a growing ecosystem of growth,” said Andy Johnson, director of enterprise solutions at third-party vendors like Cohesity, Commvault and VMware that Milestone. can be integrated into GreenLake. “Customers are really digging Milestone has five customers that it has outfitted with Green- that because it is a much easier model for them to adopt and to Lake and just signed another two, said Johnson. “Customers are integrate into their current [IT] environment,” he said. really jumping on board because it really addresses a lot of their Security issues and the ability to ensure regulatory compliance pain points,” he said. Those pain points—which have become have also been big differentiators, said Johnson. One state law increasingly prevalent in public cloud—include concerns about enforcement agency that manages Criminal Justice Information the high cost, security issues and even scalability, said Johnson.

Systems—a mandate for security compliance—turned to GreenCustomers are starting to realize that public cloud is not all Lake in the wake of the pandemic after running into trouble that it was made out to be and that if “they are not looking at certifying that the public cloud would be a “safe location” for a GreenLake secure private cloud solution then they are doing its data, said Johnson. their company or agency a huge disservice because it really does “When COVID hit, all of a sudden work-from-home and VDI solve a lot of the [cloud] pain points,” said Johnson. were a big deal; they had this explosion of storage growth im“When customers start mediately and they had no to realize their costs are idea how to handle it,” he out of control with the said. “That was one of our ‘As [Neri] has put this Everything-asingress and egress fees [of first key wins with Greena-Service vision forward and we have public cloud] and bandLake. … It was a great use executed it, there has always been a width restrictions, and case for them. They knew that they are sharing the the security issues would channel weaved into the design and [public cloud] with other go away with GreenLake the conversation. That is a testament customers and that there because it is in their enare security issues and vironment. They are the to his leadership.’ downtime, they look at it only ones touching it. It — George Hope, Worldwide Channel Chief, Head of Partner Sales, differently,” he said. “The is secure, and they don’t Hewlett Packard Enterprise timing is right because cushave to worry about shartomers had to experience ing workloads.” what public cloud was ofMilestone is doubling fering. … Once customers go through those pain points, they realize down on its investment in GreenLake as it sees the payback for that there are a lot of advantages that GreenLake provides them.” customers with the as-a-service model, said Johnson.

One Milestone government GreenLake customer moved away from public cloud because the “costs were outrageous,” said A ‘Tremendous Visionary’ And The Road Ahead Johnson. That customer had issues with billing, with multiple fees PKA’s Katz credits Neri with being a “tremendous visionary” in a disaster recovery environment, he said. “When we talk to who had the foresight to look into the future and move HPE and customers about GreenLake, we show them up front what their its partners to the edge-to-cloud Platform-as-a-Service model.

“Antonio had to look at what the iconic Hewlett Packard costs are going to be for the next four years if it is a 48-month deal,” he said. “If you take a look at where supply chain is and Enterprise brand was going to look like in the future,” she said. where it is going, this is giving customers a predictable cost model “That required a lot of inner searching. Then to be able to shift that is not going to change for four years. Customers love that.” and translate that back to HPE partners is quite incredible. AnOne of the keys to Milestone’s success with GreenLake has tonio and HPE have made a huge commitment to make a stand been to accurately size the GreenLake on-premises pay-per-use for partners on Everything as a Service. HPE has always led with cloud service environments for customers, said Johnson. Often the partner community, but now this opens up that partnership tremendously so we are able to really provide all of these services customers are overprovisioning, he said.

“When you start taking a look at the cost model and what and benefits to customers. At the end of the day, that is what we customers actually need, there is a big delta between what they are all about.”

Katz sees PKA in the next several years continuing to build out think they need and what they really do need,” said Johnson.

“That is where we come in and show them real data.” That has its PKASolveIT managed services on top of the GreenLake edgeled to big cost savings for customers and instilled customer “trust” to-cloud platform with HPE APIs. “We are adding more and more solutions under the GreenLake portfolio that will continue to enable and confidence in Milestone, said Johnson.

The GreenLake model has opened the door for customers to our customers to be better at what they have to do every single easily grow their IT environments with the “ease of billing” and day,” she said. “We are adding more and more services every day.

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25 MOST INFLUENTIAL We are a true edge-to-cloud provider. That is clearly becoming more and more of a differentiator for PKA.” Katz, in fact, said the direction PKA is going with HPE is leading to success. “It is a great journey,” she said. “I couldn’t be more excited to be an HPE partner at this point. I think only greater things are yet to come.”

Neri is also “excited” about what’s coming next for partners like PKA now that “big aspects” of the transformation have been completed. He sees a future for HPE and its partners that goes far beyond the role of an infrastructure product provider.

“I think the partners—together with us, obviously—have a huge opportunity to become the service providers for their customers,” said Neri. “When you become the service provider, you become way more relevant than just reselling someone else’s cloud offers. At the core of that, you need to be comfortable with the transformation of your business and the culture. We bring to the table the technology and the portfolio that partners need to compete and win in becoming a service provider.”

That move to a full-fledged strategic service provider makes partners “more relevant” and “way more profitable because the infrastructure comes with it and all the service consumption comes on top of it,” said Neri. “Then you add your own services.”

For Neri, making the big bold bet to transform was a matter of letting go of the past. Partners, he said, must do the same thing. “If you don’t want to move forward and let the past go,” he said, then “you are going to be less and less relevant. And our job is to make partners relevant.”

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George Kurtz

Adam Selipsky

CrowdStrike

Amazon Web Services

Kurtz is a security technology visionary who has turned the tide on cybercriminals with CrowdStrike’s cloud-first approach. The company’s comprehensive Falcon platform, along with Kurtz’s “partner-first” commitment, are proving to be an unbeatable combination for partners.

Selipsky returned to AWS in May 2021 and has hit the ground running, driving massive growth that included $18.4 billion in its first fiscal quarter, a 37 percent year-over-year sales spike. He is focused on enhancing the AWS Marketplace, forming new strategic partnerships and doubling down on security.

Co-Founder, President, CEO

CEO

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Michael Dell

Chuck Robbins

Dell Technologies

Cisco Systems

Considered by many to be one of the greatest business minds of his generation, Michael Dell spun out VMware from Dell last year but kept his majority interest and seat as the head of the board. The company that bears his name is coming off its best year in sales, with annual revenue of $101 billion.

Robbins, the tech giant’s leader for seven years, has taken Cisco through not one but two transformations. He’s been focused on directing Cisco’s metamorphosis from hardware heavyweight to software giant and now has his sights set on driving the company’s Cisco Plus asa-service strategy.

Founder, Chairman, CEO

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Chair, CEO

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Arvind Krishna

Satya Nadella

Pat Gelsinger

Enrique Lores

Lisa Su

IBM

Microsoft

Intel

HP Inc.

AMD

Krishna has brought a partner-centric savviness to IBM that is paying off for partners. His “winwin-win” philosophy is propelling big growth for IBM in the battle for multi- cloud archi tecture supremacy. He also deserves credit for keeping IBM’s Red Hat sales drive firing on all cylinders.

Under Nadella, the tech giant has grown its dominance in cloud computing and productivity applications while finding innovative ways to integrate its vast portfolio, adding new features to Teams, Power Apps and Outlook.

His vision for Microsoft includes dominating IoT and the metaverse.

Gelsinger has really shaken things up at Intel. Since taking the CEO reins in 2021, the company has embarked on an ambitious mission to overtake its major semiconductor competitors and reclaim its silicon throne.

Gelsinger ’s road map includes a multibilliondollar manufacturing gambit in the U.S. and Europe.

There’s no denying HP Inc. has enjoyed some stellar financial results and innovation with Lores at the helm.

Now, with the upcoming acquisition of Poly for $3.3 billion, Lores has said that the deal creates a “more growth-oriented portfolio” and strengthens its opportunity around “hybrid work solutions.”

Su is focused on the opportunities ahead with the acquisition of Xilinx, which expands AMD’s portfolio into the FPGA business, and its planned acquisition of Pensando, a move that will give it distributed computing technology for working with cloud, compute, networking, storage and security services.

Chairman, CEO

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Chairman, CEO

CEO

President, CEO

President, CEO

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Thomas Kurian

Nikesh Arora

Google Cloud

Since becoming CEO in late 2018, Kurian has added over 15,000 employees and has consistently grown sales by billions of dollars year over year. Google Cloud has blossomed from a data analytics cloud specialist into a premier enterprise cloud platform that operates with the same speed as a startup.

CEO

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Bill McDermott

Kris Hagerman

Yang Yuanqing

Palo Alto Networks

President, CEO ServiceNow

When you’re the head of one of the leading cybersecurity players in the world and it keeps on growing, then you most de f initel y have inf luence—and Arora has that in abundance. Palo Alto Networks saw a nearly 30 percent year-over-year gain in revenue in the third quarter this fiscal year.

McDermott is tak ing Ser viceNow to new heights. The digital workflow company in its last few fiscal quarters has shown revenue growth rates that make most companies jealous, which has led to McDermott pledging that ServiceNow will be a $15 billion company by 2026.

Sophos for the past decade has been led by Hagerman, who has seen his share of industry and company changes over the years, including its 2019 purchase

by Thoma Bravo. These days, Sophos is more likely to be the one acquiring others, having purchased SOC. OS, a cloud-based security alert investigation provider.

Under Yang’s leadership, Lenovo achieved a milestone in its 2022 fiscal year, hitting a record $70 billion in revenue. In May, Yang said that as good as the past two years have been, his sights are set on still more growth in areas where the company has been driving investment.

Chairman, CEO

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CEO Sophos

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Chairman, CEO Lenovo

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Ken Xie

George Kurian

Rich Hume

Marc Benioff

Fortinet

NetApp

TD Synnex

Salesforce

CEO Ingram Micro

One of the top cybersecurity companies in the world, Fortinet, founded and run

by Xie, just keeps on growing, most recently by 34.4 percent in the first quarter of this fiscal year. Xie sees a big growth opportunity for Fortinet’s operational technology business as manufacturers stare down security threats.

In his seven years at the helm of NetApp, Kurian has turned the former stodgy storage vendor into a cloud champion with a focus not only on storage but also on cloud operations, compute, VDI and more. He has shown how legacy vendors can not only survive in the cloud era but also become leaders.

Hume led the successful merger of Tech Data and Synnex to create the IT world’s largest distributor, and in under a year has welded the two into a single entity that has not only done well financially but has forged ahead on integration faster than many expected.

Benioff may be sharing the CEO title nowadays with Bret Taylor, but Salesforce is still his baby. As the giant in CRM and data analytics integrates its offerings with Slack, he is making moves to dominate front-office software and collaboration. The company has also made big investments in its partner program.

Bay, who was named CEO of Ingram Micro early this year, is investing in resources to help partners take advantage of the demand for digital transformation and recurring revenue business models.

The distributor recently unveiled its Xvantage digital twin platform and expanded its partnership with AWS.

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Sean Kerins

Rami Rahim

Founder, Chairman, CEO

President, CEO

21 Charles Giancarlo

CEO

Chairman, Co-CEO

Raghu Raghuram

Pure Storage

Arrow Electronics

Juniper Networks

CEO VMware

Pu r e S t o r a g e u n d e r Giancarlo has taken the flash storage world by storm and is on track to soon become the top flash storage system producer.

The company also has demonstrated how to keep systems up to date without forklift upgrades and is making flash the center of data centers and clouds.

Distribution succeeds only when it gets components and systems to solution providers on time. And during a shortage of a wide range of components as factories still suffer the impacts of the pandemic, Arrow under Kerins has become a key force in shortening supply chains and keeping businesses running.

Under Rahim’s leadership, Juniper has been smashing software records and partner-driven orders. This year, the company’s enterprise business outpaced its dominant service provider business for the first time in the company’s history.

The shift is indicative of the transformation journey Juniper has been on.

Raghuram is transforming VMware into a Software-asa-Service and multi-cloud software superstar. The CEO is forming new strategic partnerships with the world’s largest cloud players, launching innovative hybrid cloud solutions and doubling down on channel partners to lead its sales charge.

Chairman, CEO

CEO

CEO

Paul Bay

Larry Ellison Co-Founder, Executive Chairman, CTO Oracle

Ellison remains feistier than ever, taking every opportunity to count Oracle’s wins against rivals such as AWS and SAP. The company has introduced new capabilities in its cloud and database offerings, with a particular zeal for ruling the healthcare and financial services IT space.

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CHANNEL SALES LEADERS

Richardson is working to elevate AMD into a true channel powerhouse. He is bringing his vast relationships and partner program expertise to the table to drive AMD deeper into the enterprise and PC markets, launching a new partner program this year for commercial systems that rewards partners who aggressively position TERRY RICHARDSON the company ’s CPUs with North America Channel Chief financial incentives—includAMD ing volume rebates and MDF. Another smart move

by Richardson aimed at boosting AMD’s channel sales was the hiring of channel superstar Marty Bauerlein as head of North America commercial sales. Bauerlein and Richardson are now dialing up the competition against Intel and other rivals in the enterprise, midmarket and SMB segments. With the weight of AMD’s channel on his shoulders, Richardson is putting the profits into the pockets of partners with the goal of winning more market share.

6 Kendra Krause

VP, Global Channels Sophos

Sophos, considered an SMB cybersecurity stalwar t , mo st de f initel y has a stalwart leader for its global channels and sales operations. Krause has streamlined Sophos’ partner operations and significantly expanded its partner base, particularly the number of regional and global MSP partnerships.

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7 Donna Grothjan

VP, Worldwide Channel Sales Aruba, a Hewlett Packard

Enterprise company

Grothjan has spent more than six years at the helm of Aruba’s partner program and in that time has stayed on top of emerging trends to help partners up their game, such as managed services and Everything as a Service.

Under her leadership, Aruba in June unveiled a new partner program.

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George Hope

Oliver Tuszik

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Cisco Systems

Hope is driving unprecedented HPE GreenLake partner adoption and sales growth, with two consecutive quarters of triple-digit channel sales growth and over 900 partners now selling GreenLake. His latest move: a new Everythingas-a-Ser vice channel ecosystem program.

For over three years Tuszik has been on a mission to help partners perform and transform alongside Cisco.

He’s doing it by cutting complexity and promoting software and subscriptions through partners, who are the company’s leading force in driving recurring revenue and managed services.

Worldwide Head of Partner Sales

4 Rola Dagher

Global Channel Chief

SVP, Global Partner Organization

5 Ruba Borno

Dell Technologies

VP, Worldwide Channels, Alliances

Dell Technologies recently said that for the trailing 12 months, Dell partners drove $60 billion in bookings, a record, and a feather in the cap of Global Channel Chief Dagher. She said the company is putting partners at the center of everything it does and doubling down on winning trust by focusing on security.

AWS’ worldwide channel leader is laser-focused on making it easier to navigate the AWS Partner Network.

Borno is guiding partners to drive profitability and tailoring the AWS channel experience to partners’ business models, including investing in the Partner Paths program.

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Amazon Web Services

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Jason Kimrey

Rob Cato

Kevin Rooney

Intel

Lenovo

Veeam Software

One of the reasons Lenovo reached a record $70 billion in revenue in its 2022 fiscal year and a second year with $10 billion in sales growth is the seasoned leadership of the company’s channel chief. Cato was promoted in September to lead the overall North American channel.

The steady leadership and years of industry expertise that Rooney brings to the table have kept Veeam’s channel sales delivery on track. Part of Rooney’s job is to make sure that Veeam, which utilizes a 100 percent channel model, is helping partners build their business with the company.

GM, U.S. Channel, Partner Programs

Kimrey leads Intel’s substantial channel program within the U.S. In his role, he helps unleash AI, pervasive connectivity and cloud-to-edge and ubiquitous computing. He is a two-decade Intel veteran focused on embracing new partner types and folding them into the Intel channel.

VP, North America Channel, International Sales Organization

VP, Americas Channel Sales

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2022 TOP 100 EXECUTIVES Building A Sustainable Partnership with Innovative Products & Programs Q. How has digitization and the focus on the edge impacted the channel?

A. The rise of digitization, connectivity, globalization and everything-as-a-service have accelerated developments in areas such as Electricity 4.0 and sustainability. These advancements have created turbulences and great opportunities in the industry as partners look to address growing customer needs at the edge. According to IDC, approximately 80 percent of end users want to increase IT services edge deployments.¹ To meet this need, partners are expanding their integration, managed or professional services. Many are collaborating within the ecosystem—across IT technology alliances, other IT solution providers, system integrators, distributors and more. We are committed to providing our partners throughout the ecosystem with innovative, sustainable solutions focused around our key channel pillars of profitability, support, enablement and experience.

Q. How is Schneider Electric supporting partners’ evolving business needs?

A. To support this channel evolution, we recently announced the launch of the mySchneider IT Partner Program. The program rolled out with the IT solution provider specialization ideal for IT integrators, resellers and solutions providers who are experts in distributed IT environments and small-medium data centers. As part of this launch, mySchneider Rewards, one of our most popular benefits, was revamped to help members of the partner account including sales, engineers, services and other functions earn points for their contributions throughout the customer lifecycle.

Q. As one of the most sustainable companies in the world, how does Schneider Electric support partners in this area?

A. Many of our channel partners are investing in ESG resources and as a leading company in this area, we are here to support them with our products and programs.

Schneider Electric offers many Green Premium-certified products that deliver superior environmental performance by providing complete environmental data compliance with the most ambitious standards globally. These are available to our partners through the mySchneider app and online catalog. Partners who need to deliver and operate sustainable solutions for their customers leverage EcoStruxure IT and remote management services through our Edge Software and Digital Services Program.

These solutions provide visibility, monitoring and management capabilities that solution providers can leverage to run efficient edge environments and work toward sustainability goals. The edge software enables data collection from connected assets to provide visibility of critical systems, track energy usage and provide benchmarking performance. Monitor and Dispatch Services enable partners and end users to manage a fleet of UPS systems spread across multiple remote locations, reducing the site visits, operating expenses and carbon footprint.

Shannon Sbar

”

VP Channels

Sustainability is at the core of who we are at Schneider Electric. We will continue to deliver innovative solutions and programs to support our partners and their customers to achieve the goals of the present without compromising the needs of the future.

”

1 IDC’s Key Findings: 2020 Data Operational Survey—Cloud to Edge Datacenter Trends.

Learn more about Schneider Electric’s partner programs at apc.com/partners.

2022

25 CHANNEL SALES LEADERS 12

11 Scott Lannum

VP, GM, Commercial Sales Organization HP Inc.

The 14-year HP veteran— who has developed a close working relationship with partners—has the commercial sales channel firing on all cylinders. Lannum will also play a major role in driving channel synergies from HP’s $3.3 billion pending acquisition of videoconferencing standout Poly.

Scott Mann

Steve Pataky

Scale Computing

Cloudflare/Area 1 Security

The CRN Channel Madness 2022 Champion leads Scale Computing’s worldwide channel charge and is focused on driving edge computing and hyperconverged infrastructure partner wins. He was influential in helping grow channel bookings in 2021 by 36 percent year over year.

Following Cloudfare’s recent acquisition of Area 1 Security, channel stalwart Pataky is now driving sales for the combined company. He has wasted little time implementing major changes, including the launch last month of the new Cloudflare One Partner Program.

Channel Chief

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Graciano Beyhaut

Kevin Ichhpurani

SVP, Partners, Channel NetApp

Commercial Integration Leader, VP, Data Center Channel Sales, Critical Power, Digital Infrastructure

CVP, Head of Global Ecosystem, Business Development Google Cloud

Eaton

The standout 14-year Eaton veteran is passionate about helping partners realize the revenue advantages of moving into managed services.

Beyhaut’s mission is to help partners grow and add to their bottom line.

Google Cloud’s new channel leader, Ichhpurani, is investing heavily in its Google Cloud Marketplace to create end-to-end solutions where customers can spend their cloud commitment not just on Google products but on channel partner solutions.

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21 Jon Bove

VP, Channel Sales Fortinet

Fortinet has seen growing demand for its security products, and global players need global channel programs if they’re going to remain competitive in the long run. Bove has recently stepped up to that challenge, pushing hard to globalize and improve the company’s partner program across the world.

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Head of Sales

Jenni Flinders Flinders, who took over as Ne t App’s channel chief a year ago, has kept the company’s traditional channel focus even as it moves further away from its traditional storage-only roots to become a leader in cloud technologies including cloud operations, VDI, compute cost optimization and more.

AUGUST 2022

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Christian Alvarez

Frank Rauch

Nutanix

Check Point Software Technologies

SVP, Worldwide Channel Sales

Nutanix channel chief Alvarez has spent the past year driving the company’s core-based pricing and metering to help the company’s partners win more hyperconverged infrastructure deals and drive storage sales.

Head of Worldwide Channel Sales

Considered an inspirational leader of sales, channel and strategy teams, Rauch has strengthened the ties between partners and the field sales organization to maximize channel profitability. He and his team are always at the top of their game.

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19 Shannon Sbar

Craig Schlagbaum

Schneider Electric

Sbar is the channel chief of a revamped program at Schneider Electric that has partners gushing. The 15-year veteran is also focused on the next generation of business minds with a passion for career development, coaching and leadership.

A channel veteran of more than two decades, Schlagbaum has led the cable giant’s channel organization for over 11 years.

In that time, he built the Comcast channel program from the ground up and hasn’t stopped innovating, rolling out new offerings to the company’s hungry partners.

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VP, Channels, North America

SVP, Indirect Sales Comcast

Gordon Mackintosh

Kimberly King

Lori Cornmesser

Nick Tidd

Juniper Networks

Hitachi Vantara

Deepwatch

Poly

Mackintosh made his 2020 entrance into Juniper by asking partners to be bold and, with the company’s partner program under his leadership, they have. The channel chief has helped Juniper put its money where its mouth is by investing more than $100 million in the channel.

King has guided Hitachi Vantara’s channel as it has evolved from a focus on storage to one that combines leading-edge storage, IoT and business analytics. A unified organization helps partners build IT infrastructure that forms the foundation of smart cities and more.

Cornmesser is bringing her extensive channel security background to bear in her new role at Deepwatch, where she’ll be helping the company up its channel game, particularly as the managed detection and response vendor pushes the rollout of its recently launched MXDR service.

With more than 20 years of channel management experience under his belt, Tidd has helped countless partners succeed.

Now at Poly he is helping partners meet customers’ collaboration needs, which in today’s work-from-home environment arguably have never been higher.

Global Channels, Virtual Sales

VP, Global Strategic Partners, Alliances

SVP, Worldwide Channel, Alliances

VP, Global Channel Sales

25 INNOVATORS 2 One of the security industry’s most innovative visionaries and a true cybersecurity maverick, Jenkins is turning the tide on the barrage of attacks battering MSPs with ThreatLocker ’s deny by default whitelisting and ringfencing technology. The indefatigable Jenkins stared down the skeptics who scoffed at that technology, which is now DANNY JENKINS being embraced by MSPs Co-Founder, CEO and even large enterprises ThreatLocker at a breakneck pace. In April alone, ThreatLocker added 700 new MSPs to its community and is on pace to add a total of 3,000 MSPs in 2022. “Ransomware is the biggest threat to any individual MSP, but it is also the biggest threat to the industry as a whole because when one of your peers gets hit by ransomware and it makes the headlines, it makes it harder for MSPs to sell their services to businesses,” he told CRN in May. “Once MSPs start treating security with a sense of urgency, the world will be a better place,” he said.

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Jensen Huang

Founder, President, CEO

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Huang’s passion for innovating around GPUs, AI and hardware and software endeavors is always on display. Uner his leadership, Nvidia is focused on reinventing computer science and computing so that machine learning, AI and data-driven approaches will be central to everything the company does.

No CTO has had a bigger impact on the cloud fortunes of a company in such a short period of time. In just 10 months on the job, Russo has brought an architectural clarity and an invigorating fresh view on how to deliver a much more compelling HPE GreenLake cloud experience.

4 Jeff Clarke, Chuck Whitten

Jeff Ready CEO

Scale Computing

Dell Technologies

Ready said Scale Computing is going to see big growth as partners of rival VMware fret over the upcoming merger with Broadcom. Ready also partnered with Intel this year to launch a line of compact hyperconverged infrastructure devices that bring massive compute power to the edge.

On paper and in person the two men appear as different as peanut butter and jelly, but when they begin to talk technology, it all blends together. Whitten is zeroed in on capturing big new growth opportunities while Clarke is focused on Dell’s products and services lineup.

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9

Michael Gold

Prakash Panjwani

Nutanix

Arcserve

Intermedia

WatchGuard Technologies

Ramaswami has revamped how the company charges customers with new corebased pricing and metering.

The hyperconverged infrastructure software superstar and rising hybrid cloud player is reaping the benefits of his leadership, with four consecutive quarters of revenue growth between 17 percent and 21 percent.

Lacey joined Arcserve as CEO in October, about seven months after the company acquired StorageCraft. He has since turned Arcserve into a key data management and protection vendor for businesses of all sizes that is now thriving in a competitive environment.

Gold, who has been at the helm of Intermedia for more than a decade, has led the business communications standout down an aggressive path. The channel-first company has a number of acquisitions under its belt to give partners more options and went global in 2020 via a blockbuster deal with NEC.

Vector Capital earlier this year took a majority stake in WatchGuard but the heart of the company remains CEO Panjwani and his vision for the future.

To Panjwani the investment means two things: the ability to boost sales via the channel and improve the company ’s partner programs.

CEO

5

Co-COOs

Brannon Lacey CEO

EVP, CTO

Nvidia

Rajiv Ramaswami CEO

Fidelma Russo

CEO

10 Alex Cho

President, Personal Systems HP Inc.

Cho drives HP Inc.’s mighty commercial PC business and is responsible for the company ’s notebooks and desktops along with its accessory and displays business. His long-term goal is to have HP be seen as a go-to in hybrid work rather than just a PC company.

AUGUST 2022

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25 INNOVATORS 11

12

13

John Kalvin

Gary Steele

Nick Parker

VP, GM, Global Partners, Support Intel

Kalvin is responsible for global partner strategy and programs, as well as scaling customer support operations worldwide. A 24-year company veteran, he has been busy building Intel’s latest partner program, Intel Partner Alliance.

President, CEO Splunk

President, Industry, Partner Sales

Steele joined Splunk in April and is focused on accelerating development and sales of its data platform for enterprise observability and unified security applications in hybrid cloud environments—all while pushing the company toward a goal of $5 billion and beyond in annual revenue.

A 22-plus-year veteran of Microsoft, Parker was promoted in July and now leads the tech giant ’s multibillion-dollar sales business, bringing together teams focused on industries, strategic partnerships, enterprise commercial operations and partner ecosystem success.

CVP, GM, Cloud, Enterprise Solutions Group Intel

The former Oracle group vice president, who was helping drive machine learning breakthroughs for the database behemothturned-cloud-provider, is now using her AI smarts to make sure that Intel is at the top of the AI innovation pyramid.

Amit Yoran

Mark Barrenechea

Tenable

OpenText

Yoran has been shaking up the cybersecurity industry of late via strategic acquisitions of key sector players. In April, Tenable unveiled its acquisition of Bit Discovery. That deal followed two acquisitions in 2021 of cloud security startup Accurics and of Active Directory security startup Alsid.

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CEO

21 Alexandra Zagury

VP, Partner Managed and As-A-Service, Global Partner Organization Cisco Systems

Zagury is leading Cisco’s managed services and XaaS charge through the team she built herself.

Under her leadership, Cisco has reshaped its systems, processes and p o r t f o l i o a ro u n d t h e $8 billion partner managed business.

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AUGUST 2022

Patrick Pulvermueller CEO Acronis

Pulvermueller has been CEO of Acronis for about a year now, and it’s been a year of change for the c ybersecurit y vendor.

Pulvermueller ’s marching orders at Acronis have been clear: grow the company‘s partner network and increase sales.

Kristin Russell

President, Global Enterprise Computing Solutions Arrow Electronics

Russell is dedicated to bringing enterprise computing technology, services and support to solution providers, MSPs and systems integrators. Under Russell, the ArrowSphere cloud management platform continues to add strategic relationships.

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16 Janet George

Microsoft

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Eva Chen

David Friend

Barrenechea became CEO in 2012 and CTO in 2016 and has built OpenText into Canada’s largest software company. Under his leadership, OpenText has developed a broad portfolio of software via organic development and acquisitions such as Documentum and cloud storage provider Carbonite.

Trend Micro, the global cybersecurity giant, keeps growing and innovating.

The company has released new products this year such as VicOne, which provides security for electric and connected vehicles, and Trend Micro One, a new unified cybersecurity platform.

Friend is a leader in keeping AWS honest with his company’s cloud storage offering that promises prices that are 80 percent below AWS while eliminating the need for egress fees. Wasabi has become the back-end cloud storage for many of the world’s top data protection providers.

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CEO

Co-Founder, CEO Trend Micro

CEO Wasabi

Jed Ayres

Rob Rae

Sasan Goodarzi

Tomas Gorny

IGEL

Datto, a Kaseya company

Intuit

Nextiva

Ayres—who does not get enough credit for his technology vision—has transformed IGEL into a secure edge OS market leader at the vanguard of the cloud workspace revolution. For IGEL partners, that has been a pathway to double-digit margins backed up by a robust recurring revenue model.

MSPs are looking to Rae to ensure Datto continues to be the MSP-friendly organization they were used to before the acquisition by Kaseya. Now that the integration of the two companies is underway, MSPs are counting on Rae to become the driver of channel unification.

Under the mantra of “powering prosperity around the world,” Goodarzi is leading Intuit’s shift beyond its tax and accounting application roots to provide an AI-driven financial expert platform, including marketing and credit monitoring capabilities, for consumers and small businesses.

At the helm since 2006, Gorny has led Nextiva to exceed the business communications needs of its customers. In fact, the company raised $200 million for global expansion in 2021. Nextiva in April also launched a revamped partner program to springboard recurring revenue through the channel.

CEO

VP, Business Development

CEO

Co-Founder, CEO

ADVERTISEMENT

2022 TOP 100 EXECUTIVES Ingram Micro CEO: Today’s IT Channel Is Critical And Core Q. What is your outlook on the tech industry and the channel specifically?

A. I’m more excited now than I’ve ever been. The IT channel is critical to the global economy and core to creating the experience and business value we expect to see in businesses of all sizes and within all markets.

Two big benefits to working with Ingram Micro is our ability to simplify the complex and help solve for the business outcomes our channel partners, as well as the end-users, are working to address.

Q. As CEO, where’s your focus today?

Paul Bay

A. Ingram Micro is 100 percent focused on our team and our partners and what we

can do to help them run better, grow faster and do more for the customers they serve.

Our goal remains to serve as an indispensable business partner to the channel. We are proud to serve as the business behind the world’s brand and we continue to invest in resources—including our new Ingram Micro Xvantage™ digital experience platform—to make it easier and more profitable for our partners and tech ecosystem to do business.

Q. What resources are channel partners finding the most value in today?

A. Ingram Micro’s services are designed to complement a channel partner’s

business—we serve as an extension of their team—creating opportunity and solving for gaps that may be slowing them down from realizing their full potential, including talent, technical expertise and financing. These are all areas where Ingram Micro brings calm and confidence to channel partners.

Q. What’s your ask of channel partners and providers?

”

Chief Executive Officer Ingram Micro

We are 100 percent focused on our team and our partners and what we can do to help them run better, grow faster and do more for the customers they serve.

”

A. We want to be the business behind your brand.

Use our Playbooks, tap into the power of the Ingram Micro Cloud Marketplace and take advantage of our Centers of Excellence.

Challenge our team to find more ways we can accelerate your growth and maximize your profit potential.

Stay close to the happenings around our new Ingram Micro Xvantage digital experience platform.

Access Ingram Micro’s Playbooks at: playbooks.ingrammicro.com Preview Ingram Micro Xvantage at: www.xvantage.com

2022

25 DISRUPTERS 2

Broadcom CEO Hock Tan has bought four companies for a combined $71 billion since 2015 in a relentless drive for growth. Now he has set his sights on VMware via a proposed $61 billion acquisition that has the potential to shake up the cloud market, following Symantec in 2019, CA Technologies in 2018, Brocade in 2016 and the merger in HOCK TAN 2015 between Avago and CEO Broadcom. It’s moves like Broadcom those that led the co-founder of Broadcom, Dr. Henry T. Nicholas, to describe Tan as a “visionary” leader for creating “a fast-paced, nononsense, process-driven business culture that we need to take our combined company to the next level.” In June, following the revelation that Broadcom had reached the VMware agreement, Tan appeared on CNBC’s “Mad Money,” where host Jim Cramer asked Tan if there was anyone left to acquire. “Oh, I’m sure there will be, but I’m focused on one deal at a time,” Tan answered with a smile.

6 Bill Scannell

President, Global Sales, Customer Operations Dell Technologies

Dell Technologies’ longtime sales leader is on a roll. With the company last year hitting a record $101 billion in revenue, Scannell’s sales engine is firing on all cylinders.

Scannell has proven his channel mettle in keeping that momentum strong.

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AUGUST 2022

7 Matt Hicks

President, CEO Red Hat

In July, Red Hat promoted Hicks to the top role of president and CEO of the company. A 16-year Red Hat veteran, Hicks brings major technical acumen to the job, previously serving as an OpenShift founding team member and overseeing all product engineering for the IBM subsidiary.

Fred Voccola

8

Dan and Michael Schwab Co-Presidents D&H Distributing

The Schwabs continue to push D&H into the cloud fast lane. The latest: a new Modern Solutions Business Unit that rips apart the old distribution go-tomarket model. The new multivendor Everything-asa-Service business unit is backed up by a $5 million investment.

Keith White

CEO

SVP, GM, GreenLake

Kaseya

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Voccola in 2022 engineered the most significant event in the MSP field when his company acquired rival Datto, thereby cementing Kaseya’s position as the top provider of technology to MSPs. He has a lot of work to do as he starts melding the two into one, but Voccola is not one to be discounted.

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3

With his cloud smarts and passion for partners, White has been instrumental in building a broad ecosystem for HPE GreenLake.

His ability to drive partnerships with companies such as Nutanix, SAP and Equinix is helping drive dramatic GreenLake growth.

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5

Jeetu Patel

Vladimir Rozanovich

Cisco Systems

Lenovo

Patel in 2020 took two of Cisco’s biggest business units under his wing: collaboration and security.

Since then, Cisco Webex has added more than 1,000 new features, and the security portfolio continues to climb by double-digit revenue.

Lenovo made a bold move last year when it lured Rozanovich away from AMD to lead the company ’s North American operations. He is focused on new areas of growth, telling CRN that Everything as a Service is going to be a big part of the company’s business going forward.

SVP, GM, Security, Collaboration Division

9 Kyle Hanslovan

SVP, President, North America

10 Tomer Weingarten

Co-Founder, CEO

Co-Founder, CEO

Huntress Labs

SentinelOne

Few have done more to protect MSPs from cyberattacks than Huntress Labs, which under Hanslovan has made security a priority for MSPs. Hanslovan is often the first to publicly divulge new threats and discuss what they mean to MSPs and is ready to discuss any and all security implications.

SentinelOne may have made history when its IPO last year became the most valuable in cybersecurity.

Weingarten’s company keeps growing at an impressive clip, and many see its innovative products, such as its SentinelOne Singularity, as true market disrupters.

25 DISRUPTERS 12

13

Ryan Walsh

Kevin Lynch

Matthew and Peter Cassar

Joyce Mullen

Pax8

Optiv

Co-Founders, Co-CEOs

President, North America

Pax8 is at the forefront of cloud-focused distribution with a platform that combines the benefits of multiple vendors’ offerings in an easy-to-consume fashion. Walsh is driving day-to-day execution and ensuring partners remain at the center of Pax8’s mission to transform the cloud market.

Since taking the helm of Optiv two years ago, Lynch has transformed it into a next-generation security services solution provider that’s charting a new path for customers to defeat attackers. He has created an Enterprise IoT Lab that shows customers how to discover IoT devices present in their environment.

Sherweb

Insight Enterprises

MSPs looking to add cloud services to their offerings have a friend in Sherweb and coCEOs Matthew and Peter C a s s a r. T h e C a s s a r s made Sherweb a pioneer in becoming a full cloud d i s tr i b u t o r f o r M S Ps with a strong focus on Microsoft Azure.

Mullen has put together an executive team that is a model of diversity, equity and inclusion, with six of its nine named executive officers being women. In the process, she has run a world-class IT solution provider that in 2021 saw revenue grow 13 percent to $9.44 billion.

11 COO

CEO

16 Sanjay Beri

Founder, CEO

Charlie Tomeo CRO

Nick Schneider CEO

Gajen Kandiah

CEO

Hitachi Vantara

Kandiah joined Hitachi Vantara at a critical time.

The company three years earlier was formed from the merger of Hitachi’s storage, IoT and big data analytics businesses, and just after it merged with Hitachi consulting. Since then, he has helped turn the company into a leading global IT services business.

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Bryan Palma

Jason Magee CEO ConnectWise

CEO

Netskope

Axcient

Arctic Wolf

Trellix

After last year’s $300 million infusion of new funding into Netskope, Beri’s job has been to further drive adoption of SASE, and he’s having success. In late June, Netskope achieved a major milestone when it was awarded the industry’s first SASE U.S. Federal Civilian Government contract in history.

Tomeo joined Axcient less than two years ago, but he has since been busy building programs that keep MSPs focused on storing, protecting and sharing data. His fingerprints are all over the Axcient Partner Program, which was enhanced with a number of new benefits.

He’s been on the job for less than a year, but Schneider is already making a difference at Arctic Wolf. The company is seeing demand for its complete security offering, which includes managed detection and response, managed risk, managed cloud monitoring and managed security awareness.

Palma this fall stepped in to lead FireEye-McAfee Enterprise, now known as Trellix. Palma is now tasked with pulling the companies together and leveraging the best of both sides in a hardcharging and potentially disruptive way within the cybersecurity industry.

Magee has a lot on his plate with the merger of archrivals Kaseya and Datto now complete. The 11-year ConnectWise veteran has the experience, top -notch technology and loyal partnerships to ensure his seat at the MSP table.

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21 John Pagliuca

James Robbins

N-able

Dynabook Americas

Pagliuca became CEO of N-able as it spun out of SolarWinds in 2020 and is focused on empowering MSPs to boost their profitability and furthering the digital evolution of the small-medium entrprise. No one should bet against his ability to compete for the hearts and minds of MSPs.

Robbins joined Dynabook in 2021, with a goal of breathing new life into the former Toshiba PC business. Under his leadership, the company has been able to build a quick following amid a supply chain crisis by leveraging its Toshiba heritage and the financial muscle of parent company Foxconn.

President, CEO

GM, President

Phil Soper

Head of North America Partner Sales Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Soper, who likes to point out that this is “not your grandfather’s HPE,” is changing the face of the channel by bringing new incentives to the table aimed at accelerating the GreenLake partner ecosystem transformation. Partners see his appointment to the post in June as game-changer.

Bob Calderoni

Philip Burger

Citrix Systems

Acer

Calderoni is no stranger to Citrix, having served on the board of directors since 2014. But his installment as interim CEO in October gives him great sway over Citrix’s future as it navigates a merger with Tibco and aims to conquer the markets for Desktop as a Service, cloud computing and virtualization.

Burger joined Acer in 2008 and has since climbed the ranks to become its U.S. channel chief. Like many in the PC industry, Acer experienced a huge sales increase because of the COVID-19 pandemic. But Burger is now helping the company’s partners navigate difficult supply chain issues.

Interim President, CEO

VP, U.S. Channel Sales

AUGUST 2022

25

CRN EMERGING VENDORS

Startups Provide The Spark

By Rick Whiting

D

ESPITE THE PANDEMIC AND THE ECONOMIC UNCERTAINTY of the past several years, the IT industry has continued to innovate. And much of that innovation is driven by startup companies.

By far the lion’s share of IT products sold by the channel come from the industry’s established vendors such as Dell Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Cisco Systems and Microsoft. And those companies certainly have their own innovation track records.

But many of the industry’s most innovative technologies and products come from startups with no legacy products—or legacy thinking—to hold them back. These companies may not be household names, but they are gaining attention and market traction as they push the IT envelope.

Solution providers looking for a competitive edge should take note of startups with breakthrough technologies they can use to develop solutions and services for their customers.

Here we present the CRN 2022 Emerging Vendors, 136 startups founded in 2016 or later with annual revenue of less than $1 billion that are working with channel partners in North America.

Some of the companies on this year’s list have already established a presence in the industry. Orca Security and Wiz, for example, have high profiles in the cloud security space. Likewise for HYCU and Hammerspace in data storage. ComputerVault is making a name for itself in the virtual desktop/server and hyperconverged infrastructure arenas. And startups Alkira, Celona and Infiot are making waves in the networking and unified communications market.

Startups often initially focus on selling directly to a limited number of early adopter customers, only turning to the channel as they look to expand their sales reach. But savvy startups recognize that solution providers can introduce their next-generation technologies to potential customers by building solutions around them and providing services that make it easier to adopt leading-edge products.

Celona launched its Fanatics channel program in June with the goal of helping its reseller, MSP and systems integrator partners sell the startup’s 5G wireless connectivity. “This technology represents where everything is going as it relates to digital transformation,” Ron Gill, Americas channel chief, told CRN. “And when you’re bringing a new slice of wireless spectrum to customers to

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solve use cases and deliver outcomes that they’ve struggled to deliver, it’s a great place for partners to invest in.”

One indication of the value of IT startups is the amount of venture funding they attract. Starburst, a developer of advanced data analytics technology, has raised $414 million in funding—including $100 million in January 2021 and $250 million in January of this year—putting its valuation at $3.35 billion. In February cloud data warehouse provider Firebolt raised $100 million in a funding round that boosted its valuation to $1.4 billion.

Cybersecurity startups have particularly attracted the attention of venture capital investors. In February, Salt Security, a developer of API security technology, raised $140 million in funding that boosted its valuation to $1.4 billion. Secure browser developer Island raised $115 million in a funding round in March that established its valuation at $1.3 billion. And in April zero trust endpoint security provider ThreatLocker raised $100 million, bringing its valuation close to $1 billion.

Another indication of the value of IT startups is how often they are acquired by big IT vendors looking to expand their portfolios with leading-edge products.

On June 16, after this year’s Emerging Vendors list was assembled, online community giant Reddit acquired Spell.ml, a hot startup with a deep learning application platform. On July 6 IBM, looking to expand its offerings in the fast-growing data observability space, acquired Databand, an Israel-based data observability platform developer.

Sometimes startups buy startups. In June Starburst bought Varada, an Israeli developer of data lakehouse analytics acceleration software launched in 2017, for an undisclosed sum.

With the uncertain economy and plunging stock markets, startups’ potential valuations are lower, and it’s becoming harder for them to raise financing. That means more early stage startups could be acquisition targets, said Justin Borgman, co-founder and CEO of Starburst, which is on the hunt for other potential acquisitions.

“It gives us the opportunity to look for startups that will have a harder time continuing to raise funding at the valuations that they could have raised a year ago, and that creates [acquisition] opportunities,” Borgman said.

Gina Narcisi contributed to this story.

2022 AI/Machine Learning Tools

Emerging Vendors The List

AI and machine learning help businesses operate smarter, streamline processes and better utilize data to automate decisions. Here’s a look at some of the emerging vendors developing AI/ML technologies to make that possible.

Abacus.ai

Founded: 2019 Top Executive: Bindu Reddy, CEO

Abacus.ai, San Francisco, launched its MLOps platform in 2021, offering an autonomous, end-to-end system for training and deploying custom, deep learning models. The platform supports streaming pipelines, data wrangling, model monitoring, drift tracking and other capabilities.

Comet

Founded: 2017 Top Executive: Gideon Mendels, Co-Founder, CEO

New York-based Comet’s platform provides data scientists with the ability to manage and optimize the entire machine learning life cycle from building and training models, experiment tracking and model production monitoring—resulting in improved visibility, collaboration and productivity.

OctoML

Founded: 2019 Top Executive: Luis Ceze, Co-Founder, CEO

OctoML’s SaaS Octomizer enables businesses to put deep learning models into production more quickly on different CPU and GPU hardware, including at the edge and in the cloud. In June Seattle-based OctoML unveiled a command line interface that automates model containerization and acceleration.

Striveworks

Founded: 2018 Top Executive: Jim Rebesco, CEO

Striveworks is a pioneer in operational data science for national security and highly regulated industries. The Austin, Texas-based company said its platform is purpose-built to enable engineers and business professionals to transform data into actionable insight.

Aporia

Founded: 2020 Top Executive: Liran Hason, Founder, CEO

Aporia, Tel Aviv, Israel, develops a full-stack, highly customizable machine learning observability platform that data science and ML teams use to monitor, debug, explain and improve machine learning models and data.

DotData Founded: 2018 Top Executive: Ryohei Fujimaki, Co-Founder, CEO

DotData’s software provides automated feature engineering and enterprise AI automation for building AI and machine learning models. The San Mateo, Calif.-based company also offers the dotData Cloud AI automation platform, dotData Py and dotData Py Lite tools.

Snorkel

Founded: 2019 Top Executive: Alexander Ratner, Co-Founder, CEO

The Snorkel Flow data-centric system, which Redwood City, Calif.-based Snorkel made generally available in March, accelerates AI and machine learning development through the use of programmatic labeling, a key step in data preparation and machine learning model development and training.

Auditoria

Founded: 2019 Top Executive: Rohit Gupta, Co-Founder, CEO

Auditoria, San Jose, Calif., provides AI-driven SaaS automation applications for corporate finance back-office operations.

By leveraging natural language processing, AI and machine learning, Auditoria SmartBots remove friction and repetition from mundane tasks while automating complex functions.

Iterative

Founded: 2018 Top Executive: Dmitry Petrov, Co-Founder, CEO

Iterative builds tools for machine learning with the goal of streamlining data scientists’ workflows by solving the complexity of managing data sets, ML infrastructure and ML model life cycles. The San Francisco-based company integrates ML workflows into business practices for software development.

Spell.ml

Founded: 2017 Top Executive: Serkan Piantino, Co-Founder, CEO

The Spell DLOps platform is used to develop, train, deploy and manage machine learning and deep learning models and run machine learning experiments at scale. New York-based Spell was just acquired in June by news aggregation, discussion and online community website Reddit.

Tecton

Founded: 2019 Top Executive: Michael Del Balso, Co-Founder, CEO

Tecton develops a machine learning feature store platform it said can speed the deployment of machine learning applications from months to minutes. San Francisco-based Tecton’s technology automates the transformation of raw data and generates training data sets.

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Emerging Vendors

Application Development/ DevOps Armory

Founded: 2016 Top Executive: Jim Douglas, CEO

Deploying new and updated software can be time-consuming for developers. Armory, San Mateo, Calif., provides “continuous deployment” tools that simplify software delivery life cycles by deploying new versions of applications alongside live versions, incrementally scaling up the new versions and enabling mutual reviews.

Esper

Founded: 2018 Top Executive: Yadhu Gopalan, Founder, CEO

Esper, Bellevue, Wash., provides a “DevOps for dedicated devices” system, including an SDK and APIs, for building Android-based mobile applications for enterprises. The company’s device infrastructure enables developers, midmarket organizations and those with fleets of 100,000-plus devices to deliver applications as a service.

Kubecost

Founded: 2019 Top Executive: Webb Brown, CEO

Kubecost, San Francisco, provides an open-source offering for monitoring, managing and optimizing Kubernetes spending at scale and in real time, helping businesses reduce their cloud computing costs. The company aims to build a developercentric community around its software.

OpsCruise

Founded: 2018 Top Executive: Scott Fulton, Founder, CEO

OpsCruise, Santa Clara, Calif., offers an observability platform that predicts performance degradations and automates causal analysis for modern Kubernetes applications running in cloud infrastructure. The platform works by unifying open telemetry and tools and applying streaming analytics and automation.

Oxeye

Founded: 2020 Top Executive: Dean Agron, Co-Founder, CEO

Oxeye, Tel Aviv, Israel, helps organizations build secure cloud-native applications with its application security testing offering designed for modern architectures across microservices, containers, clusters and clouds. The company announced the general availability of its platform at KubeCon 2022 in May.

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They say every company today is a software company. But developing and deploying applications remains a cumbersome task. These startups are building a new generation of development technologies to change that.

CTO.ai

Founded: 2017 Top Executive: Kyle Campbell, Founder, CEO

CTO.ai, Vancouver, B.C., offers a CI/CD platform to boost productivity and improve workflows. The platform provides automation across the entire developer life cycle, allowing teams to build, run and share workflow automation and develop them in the language of their choice.

Harness

Founded: 2016 Top Executive: Jyoti Bansal, Co-Founder, CEO

The Harness software delivery platform uses AI technology to provide a range of DevOps processes, including CI/CD, feature flags and cloud costs, allowing engineers to automate the deployment, testing, verification and rollback of software code. In March, the San Francisco-based company acquired ChaosNative, creator of the LitmusChaos testing technology.

Macrometa

Founded: 2017 Top Executive: Chetan Venkatesh, Co-Founder, President, CEO

Macrometa, San Mateo, Calif., provides a NoSQL database, event processing, publish/subscribe messaging and a serverless computing platform for developing real-time edge applications and APIs.

Opsera

Founded: 2019 Top Executive: Chandra Ranganathan, Co-Founder, CEO

Opsera, San Francisco, markets a self-service, no-code, continuous orchestration and DevOps intelligence platform. The Opsera technology works with CI/CD toolchains and provides development and operations teams with unified analytics and logs across the entire software delivery process.

Pluriza

Founded: 2017 Top Executive: Andrés Lastra, CEO

Pluriza is a software development consulting company founded in Barranquilla, Columbia. It works with startups, midsize companies and enterprises across three different continents, helping them build their software products and scale up their development teams.

DevRev

Founded: 2021 Top Executive: Dheeraj Pandey, Co-Founder, CEO

DevRev, Palo Alto, Calif., is building an API-first, developmentcentric CRM system that allows developers to leverage data, design and machine intelligence to create products. The technology, now in beta, will eliminate system silos and enable developers and customers to communicate socially and in real time.

Katalon

Founded: 2016 Top Executive: Vu Lam, Founder, CEO

Katalon Studio is a test automation system for web, mobile, desktop and API software. Atlanta-based Katalon’s tools make it easier to create automated tests, run them, evaluate the results and coordinate test automation. It can integrate with the rest of a development team’s architecture for early stage automation programs and enterprise-scaling projects.

Nobl9

Founded: 2019 Top Executive: Marcin Kurc, Co-Founder, CEO

Nobl9, Boston, offers a service-level observability platform that provides businesses with context for software delivery. Businesses in financial services, e-commerce and SaaS industries use Nobl9 to accelerate software engineering, set software reliability goals and ensure that user requirements and service-level objectives are met.

OpsLevel

Founded: 2018 Top Executive: John Laban, CEO

OpsLevel’s mission is to make it simpler and faster for companies to ship and operate high-quality software. The Toronto-based company’s developer portal makes it easier for engineering teams to tackle service ownership and maturity, which enables more secure and reliable software.

vFunction

Founded: 2017 Top Executive: Moti Rafalin, Co-Founder, CEO

VFunction, Palo Alto, Calif., provides an AI-driven cloud application modernization platform for software developers and architects that transforms complex monolithic applications into microservices. The platform helps organizations restore engineering velocity and optimize the benefits of the cloud.

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2022

2022

Emerging Vendors

Big Data

Data is not only exploding in volume, it’s increasingly scattered across on-premises, hybrid and multicloud environments. These emerging companies are helping businesses access, integrate, analyze, manage and govern big data.

Ahana

Founded: 2020 Top Executive: Steven Mih, Co-Founder, CEO

Ahana, San Mateo, Calif., offers a managed service for the Presto SQL query engine on AWS with the vision to simplify open data lake analytics. Ahana Cloud delivers easy-to-use Presto SaaS and enables teams to provide high-performance SQL analytics on S3 data lakes and other data sources.

Cribl

Founded: 2017 Top Executive: Clint Sharp, Co-Founder, CEO

Cribl develops a line of data observability products, including Cribl Stream and Cribl Edge, that the company said “makes open observability a reality.” In August 2021 the San Francisco-based company launched Cribl Cloud, making it possible to monitor and manage data through the cloud while keeping it in local processing and storage systems.

Firebolt

Founded: 2019 Top Executive: Eldad Farkash, Co-Founder, CEO

Firebolt’s high-performance cloud data warehouse system is aimed at data-intensive applications and interactive analytical systems that tap into huge volumes of data. The Tel Aviv, Israel-based company targets its cloud system at engineers and developers.

Nexla

Founded: 2016 Top Executive: Saket Saurabh, Co-Founder, CEO

Nexla, San Mateo, Calif., provides an automation platform that unifies data operations with a single interface for managing all flavors of data flows including ETL, ELT, API integration, API proxy and Data as a Service. The platform automatically creates data as a product.

Starburst

Founded: 2017 Top Executive: Justin Borgman, Co-Founder, CEO

Starburst’s systems, including Starburst Enterprise and the cloud-based Starburst Galaxy, can query data across any source and location, without needing to move data, making it instantly actionable. The Boston-based company’s products are based on the Trino SQL query engine.

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Airbyte

Founded: 2020 Top Executive: Michel Tricot, Co-Founder, CEO

Airbyte develops an open-source data integration engine that businesses use to unify their ETL pipelines under a single platform. Airbyte, San Francisco, said it is disrupting the data integration/ETL space with its pricing model that’s based on compute time rather than data volume.

Databand

Founded: 2018 Top Executive: Josh Benamram, Co-Founder, CEO

Databand develops a proactive data observability platform for detecting, troubleshooting and resolving data quality issues in near-real-time. IBM acquired Tel Aviv, Israel-based Databand on June 27.

Molecula

Founded: 2019 Top Executive: Higinio Maycotte, CEO

Molecula, Austin, Texas, develops the FeatureBase featureoriented database that data engineers use to support real-time analytical tasks and machine learning applications. The database simultaneously executes low-latency, high-throughput and highly concurrent workloads.

Promethium

Founded: 2018 Top Executive: Kaycee Lai, Founder, CEO

Promethium, Menlo Park, Calif., develops a collaborative data and analytics acceleration system that the company said enables data-driven decisions without the complexity of data management. The Promethium technology can discover, prepare, query and visualize data without the need to move it or switch between tools.

Syncari

Founded: 2019 Top Executive: Nick Bonfiglio, Co-Founder, CEO

Syncari, San Francisco, develops a no-code data management and process orchestration platform that addresses a range of challenges. The Syncari system is designed to help businesses overcome the many point-to-point data integrations that have developed over time.

Bigeye

Founded: 2019 Top Executive: Kyle Kirwan, Co-Founder, CEO

Bigeye develops data observability software tools for measuring and improving the quality of data used for self-service business analytics, machine learning models and other data-intensive tasks. San Francisco-based Bigeye’s platform monitors the quality of data as it flows between systems.

Equalum

Founded: 2016 Top Executive: Guy Eilon, CEO

Equalum’s continuous data integration platform natively supports all data integration modes under one unified platform with zero coding. Equalum, Sunnyvale, Calif., offers nextgeneration change data capture, real-time streaming, ETL/ ELT and batch ETL capabilities with native cloud support and enterprise-grade scalability.

Monte Carlo

Founded: 2019 Top Executive: Barr Moses, Co-Founder, CEO

Monte Carlo’s data observability and reliability platform helps ensure that data is accurate. The San Francisco-based company’s platform automatically monitors data as it flows through pipelines and alerts for data issues across data warehouses, data lakes, ETL systems and business intelligence tools.

Prophecy

Founded: 2017 Top Executive: Raj Bains, Founder, CEO

Prophecy, Palo Alto, Calif., markets a low-code data engineering system that the company said “democratizes” the development and deployment of high-quality data pipelines.

The platform is built on the Apache Spark data processing engine and Kubernetes container management system.

Emerging Vendors Cloud

2022

Here’s a look at startups developing the technologies that organizations need to build, deploy, manage and automate IT infrastructure—and the applications and workloads they support—across hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

Cast AI

Founded: 2018 Top Executive: Yuri Frayman, Co-Founder, CEO

Cast AI, North Miami Beach, Fla., offers a cloud cost optimization platform for analyzing applications and workloads running on Kubernetes clusters and determining the most efficient combination of needed resources.

Kong

Founded: 2017 Top Executive: Augusto Marietti, Co-Founder, CEO

Kong helps businesses resolve cloud connectivity challenges with its API management, service mesh and microservices platform. In November 2021 the San Francisco-based company launched KongForce, its second-generation partner program.

Prosimo

Founded: 2019 Top Executive: Ramesh Prabagaran, Co-Founder, CEO

Prosimo’s AXI platform delivers simplified, multi-cloud infrastructure for distributed enterprise cloud applications. The San Jose, Calif.-based company’s technology combines cloud networking, performance, security and cost management.

Data Center/ Systems

Enzu

Founded: 2021 Top Executive: Steve Empie, CEO

Enzu, Cheyenne, Wyo., offers what it calls “IT infrastructure, simplified” for global enterprises, SMBs and channel partners with its TrueCloud build-to-order private cloud platform and bare metal edge cloud servers.

Nerdio

Founded: 2016 Top Executive: Vadim Vladimirskiy, Co-Founder, CEO

Nerdio empowers MSPs and enterprises to build successful cloud practices in Microsoft Azure with Azure Virtual Desktop and Windows 365. The Chicago-based company’s Nerdio Manager adds value on top of the powerful capabilities in AVD by delivering over 200 additional features.

Golioth

Founded: 2020 Top Executive: Jonathan Beri, Founder, CEO

Golioth, San Francisco, provides a cloud platform that enables device hardware developers to build end-to-end IoT connected products using their choice of hardware and connectivity. The platform’s device services meet development hardware and firmware requirements.

Oatfin

Founded: 2020 Top Executive: Jay Paulynice, Co-Founder, CEO

Oatfin helps businesses accelerate cloud application delivery by transitioning to self-service automation. Boston-based Oatfin’s application checks out code repositories on GitHub, GitLab or Bitbucket and creates build artifacts such as a Docker container, Kubernetes and load-balanced instances.

Tetrate

Founded: 2018 Top Executive: Varun Talwar, Co-Founder, CEO

Milpitas, Calif.-based Tetrate’s offerings, including Tetrate Service Bridge and Tetrate Cloud, are designed to help businesses manage the complexity of modern hybrid cloud applications.

Think cloud computing means the end of the data center? Think again. These emerging vendors are developing the processors, connectivity technology and other hardware needed to power nextgeneration data centers.

Ampere Computing

Founded: 2017 Top Executive: Renee James, Founder, CEO

Ampere develops 64-bit, cloud-native ARM microprocessors for cloud infrastructure servers, specifically designed to handle hyperscale cloud and edge computing workloads and applications. In December, the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company acquired OnSpecta in a move to strengthen its Ampere Altra performance with AI inference applications.

NeuroBlade

Founded: 2018 Top Executive: Elad Sity, Co-Founder, CEO

NeuroBlade, Tel Aviv, Israel, develops its Xiphos compute-inmemory systems and related analytics software designed to accelerate analytical workloads that process huge volumes of data. The Xiphos appliance is built around the company’s Intense Memory Processing Unit.

Astera Labs

Founded: 2016 Top Executive: Jitendra Mohan, Co-Founder, CEO

Astera develops purpose-built connectivity technology for distributing data and resolving performance bottlenecks within data-centric systems. In April Astera, Santa Clara, Calif., opened a new research and development design center in Markham, Ontario, to take advantage of the engineering talent in the greater Toronto area.

Pliops

Founded: 2017 Top Executive: Uri Beitler, Founder, CEO

Pliops’ “extreme data processors” manage data as it flows between applications and storage. The San Jose, Calif.-based company’s technology boosts workload scalability and data capacity with drive fail protection and in-line compression for NVMe SSD-based data-intensive applications.

ComputerVault

Founded: 2019 Top Executive: Peo Nathan, Founder, CEO

ComputerVault, Worcester, Mass., develops a single platform that provides virtual desktops and servers, hyperconverged infrastructure, virtual networking and SD-WAN capabilities—all with built-in cybersecurity. Lenovo is an OEM partner and master reseller of its software. ComputerVault also has an OEM partnership with Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

SambaNova Systems

Founded: 2017 Top Executive: Rodrigo Liang, Co-Founder, CEO

SambaNova, Palo Alto, Calif., develops its Data Scale AI hardware and integrated systems and Dataflow-as-a-Service software-defined platform to run AI and deep learning applications from the data center to the cloud.

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Emerging Vendors

Data Center/Systems continued Speedata

Founded: 2019 Top Executive: Jonathan Friedmann, Co-Founder, CEO

Netanya, Israel-based Speedata’s Analytics Processing Unit chip technology accelerates database and data analytics workloads. The company said the processors provide a two-fold or more performance boost over mainstream processors.

Tachyum

Founded: 2016 Top Executive: Radoslav Danilak, Co-Founder, CEO

Las Vegas-based Tachyum’s Prodigy universal processor integrates the functionality of CPUs, GPUs and TPUs, providing high performance for AI and compute-intensive applications while improving energy consumption and server utilization.

Ventana Micro Systems Founded: 2018 Top Executive: Balaji Baktha, Co-Founder, CEO

Ventana, Cupertino, Calif., is developing a line of data centerclass, high-performance RISC-V CPU cores and compute subsystems. The CPUs will have extensible instruction set capability in the form of multi-core chiplets or core IP.

Xsight Labs

Founded: 2017 Top Executive: Guy Koren, Co-Founder, CEO

Xsight Labs, Kiryat, Israel, aims to upend the data center switch market with a super-fast, programmable switch the company said can meet the power and performance demands of cloud, high-performance computing and AI applications.

Edge Computing/ IoT

Edge computing and IoT extend management capabilities and data collection beyond traditional New technologies to manage, back up and protectIT networks to building controls, industrial systems construction sites. These startups are developing data and assets the software that makes that happen.

Cognite

Cohesion

Founded: 2016 Top Executive: Girish Rishi, CEO

Founded: 2018 Top Executive: Thru Shivakumar, Co-Founder, CEO

Cognite, Oslo, Norway, develops industrial DataOps software for companies in oil and gas, energy and utilities, manufacturing and other industries. The Cognite Data Fusion platform collects data from industrial systems for a range of tasks.

Networking/Unified Communications Founded: 2018 Top Executive: Amir Khan, Co-Founder, President, CEO

Cloud Networking-as-a-Service startup Alkira, San Jose, Calif., in June launched its next-generation Cloud Area Networking, a full-stack, edge-to-cloud, enterprise-grade network with built-in routing and network services.

Infiot

Founded: 2018 Top Executive: Parag Thakore, Co-Founder, CEO

Infiot provides intelligent access for remote-first users, micro branches and IoT devices. Zeto, the San Jose, Calif.-based company’s cloud-based wireless edge access platform, provides optimized application connectivity, zero trust security, AI operations and network edge intelligence capabilities.

AUGUST 2022

Founded: 2016 Top Executive: Meirav Oren, Co-Founder, CEO

Los Altos, Calif.-based Versatile’s CraneView hardware and software system collects job site production data and uses machine learning and AI to optimize construction and industrial processes and improve productivity.

Emerging vendors are developingNew the technologies SD-WAN, 5G,to SASE and software-defined network manage, back up and protect technologies that connect on-premises and cloud environments and provide users with data assets secure access to cloud applications—and each other.

Alkira

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Chicago-based Cohesion offers an IoT and AI-enabled smart building platform for managing commercial real estate. The system collects and integrates operational and environmental data to help managers improve the tenant experience.

Versatile

Celona

Founded: 2019 Top Executive: Rajeev Shah, Co-Founder, CEO

Cupertino, Calif.-based Celona’s private LTE/5G networking platform unites Wi-Fi and cellular capabilities to provide enterprise customers with more wireless options. The company launched its Fanatics channel program in June.

Neat

Founded: 2019 Top Executive: Simen Teigre, Co-Founder, CEO

Neat, Oslo, Norway, designs simple video devices that the company said make virtual meetings feel as real as meeting face-to-face. Neat devices have crystal-clear audio and video, plus capabilities that support an engaging and safer hybrid working and learning environment.

EdgeQ

Founded: 2018 Top Executive: Vinay Ravuri, Founder, CEO

EdgeQ, Santa Clara, Calif., has created a 5G base station-ona-chip with the ability to bring AI to the edge of the network.

The company’s technology is used to build 5G private wireless networks for IoT and industrial use cases.

Perimeter 81

Founded: 2018 Top Executive: Amit Bareket, Co-Founder, CEO

Cloud and network security provider Perimeter 81 develops secure, remote networks based on zero trust architecture designed to replace legacy firewall and VPN technology with what the Tel Aviv, Israel-based company calls “secure service edge” capabilities.

Emerging Vendors Networking/Unified Communications continued SignalWire

Founded: 2017 Top Executive: Anthony Minessale, Founder, CEO

SignalWire, Palo Alto, Calif., said its software-defined telecom network, API technology and video communications applications unite traditional telecom, IP messaging and modern WebRTC video and audio.

Stateless

Founded: 2016 Top Executive: Murad Kablan, Co-Founder, CEO

Stateless, Boulder, Colo., provides network automation with its Stateless Software Router and Cloud Connect-as-a-Service offerings, helping organizations build complete multi-hybrid cloud connections with a single workflow.

2022

Trustgrid

Founded: 2016 Top Executive: Joe Gleinser, Co-Founder, CEO

Austin, Texas-based Trustgrid’s digital identity platform provides cloud-native, software-defined connectivity to securely connect SaaS applications with customer IT environments for identity-based transactions.

Zuper

Founded: 2016 Top Executive: Anand Subbaraj, CEO

Zuper develops digital offerings to help businesses provide better customer service. With the Seattle-based company’s customizable field services management software, businesses can scale and modernize their operations to improve engagement.

Security

IT networks are increasingly vulnerable to cyberattacks as they expand to the edge and into the cloud. These startups are developing ways to secure systems, networks, applications and data in distributed environments.

6clicks

Founded: 2019 Top Executive: Anthony Stevens, CEO

6clicks, Melbourne, Australia, is a next-generation SaaS governance, risk and compliance platform, whose differentiators are a regulatory, cyber-risk and compliance Content Marketplace, Hailey AI machine learning for regulatory compliance and control mapping, and multitenancy single-pane-of- glass GRC for complex organizational structures.

Antigen Security

Founded: 2020 Top Executive: Steven Legg, CEO

Antigen Security is a digital forensics, incident response and recovery engineering company helping businesses prepare for, respond to and recover from cyberthreats. The Flint, Mich.-based company’s services include consulting, managed detection and response and specialized training for IT teams.

BluBracket

Founded: 2019 Top Executive: Prakash Linga, Co-Founder, CEO

BluBracket, Palo Alto, Calif., protects software supply chains by preventing, finding and fixing risks in source code, developer environments and DevOps pipelines. The company’s technology detects code risks, credentials and misconfigurations and prevents the inclusion of personally identifiable information and other credentials in code.

AaDya Security

Founded: 2019 Top Executive: Raffaele Mautone, Founder, CEO

Detroit-based AaDya provides AI-powered cybersecurity software for SMBs that enables threat detection and automated remediation, endpoint detection and response, DNS filtering, password management, single sign-on and other capabilities.

Axonius

Founded: 2017 Top Executive: Dean Sysman, Co-Founder, CEO

Axonius helps customers control complexity by mitigating security threats, navigating risk, automating response actions and informing business-level strategy. The New York-based company integrates with hundreds of data sources to provide a comprehensive asset inventory, uncover gaps, and automatically validate and enforce policies.

Blue Hexagon

Founded: 2017 Top Executive: Nayeem Islam, Co-Founder, CEO

Blue Hexagon’s deep-learning-based network threat protection platform provides runtime cloud threat detection and response capabilities, powered by deep learning AI, for continuous cloud-native security, visibility and compliance for all major cloud platforms. Blue Hexagon is based in San Francisco.

Adlumin

Founded: 2016 Top Executive: Robert Johnston, Co-Founder, CEO

Adlumin’s managed detection and response platform is the command center for security operations with easy-to-use, comprehensive reporting tools. The Washington, D.C.-based company has a passion for solving the most challenging problems through the targeted application of data science and compliance integration.

BlackCloak

Founded: 2018 Top Executive: Chris Pierson, Founder, CEO

BlackCloak is a pioneer in digital executive protection. The Lake Mary, Fla.-based company’s Concierge Cybersecurity and Privacy platform protects the online privacy, personal devices and home networks of the C-suite, board members and other executives with access to finances, confidential data and proprietary information.

Blumira

Founded: 2018 Top Executive: Jim Simpson, CEO

Blumira’s cloud SIEM with detection and response enables faster resolution of threats to help SMBs and their MSPs stop ransomware attacks and prevent data breaches. The Ann Arbor, Mich.-based company’s technology helps customers automatically block known threats and contact Blumira’s security team for guidance.

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Emerging Vendors

Security continued BreachQuest

Founded: 2021 Top Executive: Shaun Gordon, Co-Founder, CEO

BreachQuest’s digital forensics and incident response tools and services, including its Priori Platform, help businesses battle threats from ransomware to zero day exploits. The Dallas-based company’s capabilities include recovery and remediation and proactive managed services.

Constella Intelligence

Founded: 2016 Top Executive: Kailash Ambwani, CEO

Constella Intelligence, Los Altos, Calif., is in the digital risk protection space with its multitenant SaaS platform that offers executive and brand protection, domain monitoring, and geopolitical and threat intelligence offerings across vertical markets and sectors.

Cyral

Founded: 2018 Top Executive: Manav Mital, Co-Founder, CEO

Milpitas, Calif.-based Cyral’s data defense platform easily authenticates, authorizes and audits access to database systems in any cloud, providing data security and governance, stateless interception and identity attribution capabilities.

Galactic Advisors

Founded: 2019 Top Executive: Bruce McCully, CEO

Galactic Advisors, based in Nashville, Tenn., helps MSPs reduce risk and increase profit by providing stress-free third-party security audits and a simple framework to eliminate security holes often found inside MSP-supported environments.

Huddle

Founded: 2022 Top Executive: Todd Knapp, CEO

Huddle helps partner companies deliver innovative technology and cybersecurity services to their customers. This includes penetration testing, vulnerability assessments, Microsoft zero trust implementations and much more. Huddle is based in Pawtucket, R.I.

Interrosec

Founded: 2019 Top Executive: Nick Phelps, CEO

Interrosec, Pembroke, Mass., offers software and services that provide network security visibility and the data needed to make informed security architecture and incident remediation decisions.

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Cado Security

Founded: 2020 Top Executive: James Campbell, Co-Founder, CEO

Cado Security, London, U.K., provides security threat and incident investigation and response capabilities for cloud, container and serverless environments. It also now enables security teams to investigate and respond to incidents across AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform.

CyCognito

Founded: 2017 Top Executive: Rob Gurzeev, Co-Founder, CEO

CyCognito, Palo Alto, Calif., provides an external attack surface management platform that quickly prioritizes, investigates and responds to potential security risks. Several Fortune 500 companies use CyCognito to autonomously discover security threats.

Ermetic

Founded: 2019 Top Executive: Shai Morag, CEO

Ermetic, with headquarters in Boston and Tel Aviv, Israel, offers a comprehensive cloud security platform for AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform that reduces customers’ attack surface, detects threats and reduces the blast radius of a breach.

Grip Security

Founded: 2021 Top Executive: Lior Yaari, CEO

Tel Aviv, Israel-based Grip Security’s SaaS security control plane allows companies to discover and control access to every SaaS application used by employees. Its visibility extends to dormant SaaS applications that are no longer used but still have active logins or company data.

Hunters

Founded: 2018 Top Executive: Uri May, Co-Founder, CEO

Hunters’ SOC platform empowers security teams to automatically identify and respond to incidents across their entire attack surface through built-in detection engineering, data correlation and automatic investigation. Hunters has headquarters in Newton, Mass., and Tel Aviv, Israel.

Island

Founded: 2020 Top Executive: Michael Fey, Co-Founder, CEO

Island’s Enterprise Browser rearchitects the role of the browser in the enterprise and delivers a new approach to cybersecurity by managing and securing the last mile. The Dallas-based company’s technology is designed to tackle the security needs of the modern workplace.

Cavelo

Founded: 2020 Top Executive: James Mignacca, CEO

Cavelo, Waterloo, Ontario, helps businesses proactively reduce cybersecurity risk and achieve compliance with automated data discovery, classification and reporting. Its cloud-compatible data protection platform scans, identifies, classifies and reports on sensitive data across an organization.

Cynet Security

Founded: 2016 Top Executive: Eyal Gruner, Co-Founder, CEO

The Cynet 360 AutoXDR is an end-to-end, natively automated XDR platform that’s backed by a 24x7 managed detection and response service. The New York-based company’s platform was purpose-built to enable IT security teams to achieve effective protection regardless of their resources.

Expel

Founded: 2016 Top Executive: Dave Merkel, CEO

Expel, Herndon, Va., provides 24x7 managed detection and response for everything from cloud to networks and endpoints. By understanding and adapting to each customer’s environment, Expel finds and closes detection gaps.

Hook Security

Founded: 2019 Top Executive: Zachary Eikenberry, Co-Founder, CEO

Hook Security, Greenville, S.C., offers a new approach to phishing testing and end-user security awareness training and supports MSPs, MSSPs, agents and VARs in reaching SMBs and midmarket companies with the latest in psychological security training experiences.

Immersive Labs

Founded: 2017 Top Executive: James Hadley, CEO

Immersive Labs offers a cyber workforce optimization and cybersecurity training platform that empowers organizations to measure, map to risk, and optimize the human cybersecurity capabilities of their entire workforce. The company is based in Bristol, U.K., and Boston.

JupiterOne

Founded: 2018 Top Executive: Erkang Zheng, CEO

JupiterOne, Morrisville, N.C., develops a cyber asset management platform that helps enterprises easily map, analyze and secure complex cloud environments. The technology provides full visibility into IT assets and the relationships between them to uncover threats, close compliance gaps and prioritize risk.

Emerging Vendors Security continued Laminar

Founded: 2020 Top Executive: Amit Shaked, Co-Founder, CEO

Laminar, with headquarters in Tel Aviv, Israel, and New York, develops a multi-cloud data privacy and security platform it said provides full data observability and data leak detection across an organization’s entire public cloud environment including AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform and Snowflake.

MSP Solutions Group

Founded: 2020 Top Executive: Tim Conkle, CEO

MSP Solution Group’s ID 20/20 software is a verification tool developed to stop social engineering by creating an easy process to verify who’s on the other end of the line. The North Hollywood, Calif.-based company said it takes less than a minute on average to protect organizations from social engineering.

NeuShield

Founded: 2017 Top Executive: Yuen Pin Yeap, CEO

NeuShield protects data from cyberthreats by preventing malware from changing or corrupting data. The Fremont, Calif.-based company’s technology, called “mirror shielding,” allows instant recovery of data from any fully undetectable or zero-day threat without requiring updates.

Orca Security

Founded: 2019 Top Executive: Avi Shua, Co-Founder, CEO

Orca Security has been among the most visible cybersecurity startups in recent years with its cloud security platform that utilizes side-scanning technology to rapidly detect and prioritize cloud security risks. The Portland, Ore.-based company’s platform performs a broad range of security tasks.

Quickpass Cybersecurity Founded: 2018 Top Executive: Mateo Barraza, Co-Founder, CEO

Quickpass says its mission is to help MSPs create hyperefficient help desks while protecting themselves and their customers from cybersecurity threats. Quickpass, based in North Vancouver, B.C., is focused on offering an MSP-centric approach to privileged access management.

Silverfort

Founded: 2016 Top Executive: Hed Kovetz, CEO

Silverfort’s technology enables secure authentication and access in a unified manner across all corporate resources, both on-premises and in the cloud, to detect and stop identitybased attacks including account takeover and ransomware propagation. The company is based in Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel.

Lightspin

Founded: 2020 Top Executive: Vladi Sandler, Co-Founder, CEO

Lightspin’s offering prioritizes and remediates security findings across cloud infrastructure and Kubernetes environments, bridging the gap between DevOps and security operations teams. Lightspin has offices in Tel Aviv, Israel, and New York.

Neosec

Founded: 2021 Top Executive: Giora Engel, Co-Founder, CEO

Neosec, Palo Alto, Calif., develops API security technology that helps organizations protect APIs from abuse and data theft. The company’s cloud-based security platform uses AI, big data and behavioral analytics to reveal API abuse and provide visibility into blind spots.

Noetic Cyber

Founded: 2020 Top Executive: Paul Ayers, Co-Founder, CEO

Boston-based Noetic Cyber develops a continuous cybersecurity asset management and control platform that helps security teams better understand the cyber risks to their environment and optimize their cybersecurity posture.

Piiano

Founded: 2021 Top Executive: Gil Dabah, Co-Founder, CEO

Piiano’s data privacy vault technology provides developers with the security engineering infrastructure they need to safeguard customers’ sensitive data and personally identifiable information, pre-empt data breaches and comply with privacy regulations. Piiano is based in Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel.

Salt Security

Founded: 2016 Top Executive: Roey Eliyahu, Co-Founder, CEO

The Salt Security API Protection Platform discovers all APIs and their exposed data across an organization’s IT environment, eliminates vulnerabilities during development, stops cyberattacks and provides remediation insight for developers.

Salt Security is based in Palo Alto, Calif.

SnapAttack

Founded: 2021 Top Executive: Peter Prizio, CEO

SnapAttack, Washington, D.C., develops a “purple” threat detection and analysis platform that helps security analysts, CISOs and other cybersecurity managers understand the nature of an attack from both the attacker (red) and defender/ threat hunter (blue) point of view.

2022

Lumu Technologies Founded: 2019 Top Executive: Ricardo Villadiego, Founder, CEO

Miami-based Lumu Technologies provides cybersecurity compromise assessment capabilities that help organizations discover their compromise level and measure the impact of cybercrime within their networks.

Netography

Founded: 2018 Top Executive: Martin Roesch, CEO

Netography delivers security for what the Annapolis, Md.-based company calls “the atomized network” where applications and data are scattered across a complex environment of multi-cloud, on-premises and legacy infrastructure—all accessed by increasingly mobile and remote workers.

Noname Security

Founded: 2020 Top Executive: Oz Golan, Co-Founder, CEO

Noname Security, Palo Alto, Calif., offers a complete API security platform for protecting IT environments from vulnerabilities, misconfigurations and design flaws. The platform protects APIs from attacks in real time with automated detection and response capabilities.

Query.AI

Founded: 2018 Top Executive: Dhiraj Sharan, Co-Founder, CEO

The Query.AI security investigations control platform helps businesses better address threats by enabling more efficient security investigations and responses across cloud, SaaS and on-premises systems. In October the Brookings, S.D.-based startup launched its Query.AI Partner Alliance Program.

Sevco Security

Founded: 2020 Top Executive: J.J. Guy, Co-Founder, CEO

Sevco Security, Austin, Texas, offers its cloud-native Cyber Asset Attack Surface Management platform for identifying and closing gaps in security tool deployment and coverage, improving incident response and maintaining compliance with security policies.

SolCyber

Founded: 2020 Top Executive: Scott McCrady, CEO

SolCyber delivers a curated stack of enterprise-strength security tools and services that are streamlined, accessible and affordable for any organization. The Dallas-based company says it is disrupting the status quo by providing a new standard of managed security.

AUGUST 2022

35

2022

Emerging Vendors

Security continued StrikeReady

Founded: 2019 Top Executive: Yasir Khalid, CEO

StrikeReady, Palo Alto, Calif., offers a SaaS-based platform that empowers security analysts with real-time institutional knowledge and the experiences of security analysts for better decision-making and response as they transform their Security Operations Center.

ThreatLocker

Founded: 2017 Top Executive: Danny Jenkins, CEO

ThreatLocker, Maitland, Fla., improves enterprise-level server and endpoint security by blocking exploits of unknown application vulnerabilities through application whitelisting, ringfencing, storage control, privileged access management and network access control solutions.

Valence Security

Founded: 2021 Top Executive: Yoni Shohet, Co-Founder, CEO

Valence, Tel Aviv, Israel, is focused on securing SaaS-to-SaaS supply chains by providing visibility, reducing unauthorized access and preventing data loss. The platform discovers and auto-remediates risks to business-critical SaaS applications and data that result from third-party supply chain integrations.

Symbol Security

Founded: 2018 Top Executive: Craig Sandman, Co-Founder, President

Mountain Lake, N.J.-based Symbol Security’s SaaS-based phishing simulation and training platform simulates real phishing attacks for users and reinforces learning through interactive training content—dramatically lowering the risks of users falling victim to attacks that cause data breaches.

Traceable Founded: 2018 Top Executive: Jyoti Bansal, Co-Founder, CEO

Traceable, San Francisco, offers the Traceable AI full-life-cycle API security platform that discovers, manages and secures all APIs for cloud-native applications at enterprise scale. The platform provides visibility into API and application inventory.

Valtix

Founded: 2018 Top Executive: Douglas Murray, CEO

Deployable in five minutes, Valtix combines multi-cloud security with cloud-first simplicity and on-demand scale. Powered by cloud-native architecture, the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company provides cloud network security that links continuous visibility with advanced security controls.

Talon Cyber Security

Founded: 2021 Top Executive: Ofer Ben-Noon, Co-Founder, CEO

Talon Cyber Security develops the TalonWork secure browser for hybrid office-remote work environments, designed to provide enterprise-grade security to managed and unmanaged endpoints regardless of location, device type or operating system. The company is based in Tel Aviv, Israel.

TXOne Networks

Founded: 2019 Top Executive: Terence Liu, CEO

TXOne Networks, Taipei, Taiwan, provides cybersecurity offerings that ensure the reliability and safety of industrial control systems and operational technology environments. The company works with manufacturers and critical infrastructure operators to create practical approaches.

VisibleRisk

Founded: 2019 Top Executive: Derek Vadala, Co-Founder, CEO

VisibleRisk, a developer of cyber-risk assessment software, has been acquired by Boston-based BitSight, which is incorporating VisibleRisk’s proprietary, automated, internal data collection technology into its tools used to calculate financial exposure to cyber risk.

Wiz

Founded: 2020 Top Executive: Assaf Rappaport, Co-Founder, CEO

The Wiz enterprise cloud security platform rapidly scans an organization’s entire cloud environment, prioritizing potential risks and allowing security and development teams to proactively harden cloud systems. The company is based in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Storage

(Including Disaster Recovery)

Businesses today recognize data as a valuable asset. These emerging vendors are developing next-generation technologies to manage and protect data that’s dispersed across hybrid cloud and multi-cloud systems.

Calamu

Founded: 2020 Top Executive: Paul Lewis, Founder, CEO

Calamu, Clifton, N.J., develops what it calls “data-first”technology that protects against breaches. Calamu Protect processes data from server workloads and end-user workstations, automatically scattering it across multiple storage locations.

36

AUGUST 2022

Filebase

Founded: 2019 Top Executive: Joshua Noble, Co-Founder, CEO

Filebase, Boston, develops an S3-compatible object storage platform that stores data in a secure and redundant manner across multiple, decentralized storage networks.

Graid Technology

Founded: 2020 Top Executive: Leander Yu, Co-Founder, CEO

Graid, Santa Clara, Calif., develops Graid SupremeRAID, an NVMe RAID card designed for modern software composable environments that the company says can unlock the full potential of SSD performance.

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How To

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by Seeing the Whole Story

Simplify Your Multicloud Management Strategy And Achieve Better Results Q. What are the major takeaways from Seagate’s new Multicloud Maturity Report that organizations can use to enhance their multicloud maturity?

A. Data is growing at an astounding rate, and as a result, multicloud is a mess.

Because IT organizations are extra concerned about their budgets, it’s crucial to minimize costs and maximize innovation. Understanding multicloud maturity is vital for the success of the digital transformation of enterprises. That’s because high maturity organizations tend to outperform their less mature peers in many aspects, as they are better at balancing data costs and innovations. The report shows that data is slowed down by multicloud friction. Partially, the sources of friction are cost related. And the other source of friction is structural: clouds aren’t too good at talking to each other. All this leads to service interruptions, data lock-in, and organizations finding it hard to control data resilience and security.

Q. How can enterprises focus on data costs to unlock the greater value of multicloud maturity?

A. The more business leaders see data as a vital business currency, the easier it will

be for them to find a way to generate business value. This is challenging since multicloud’s data-related costs get in the way of data value. In the report we found that 81 percent of business leaders said they often incur unexpected cloud costs (such as those related to egress after migration). Furthermore, 79 percent said that timing and budget forecasting is extremely challenging to do accurately. To keep data costs low while enabling data-driven innovation, business leaders need to use predictive cloud cost tools and invest in technology that allows for easy data movement across multiple clouds at an optimal TCO.

Q. What is Seagate doing to reduce storage costs and promote cloud development?

A. Seagate remains committed to reducing the overall cost of enterprise storage. Last

year, we introduced the groundbreaking Exos® CORVAULT™ PB-level self-healing block storage system, which accommodates 106 SAS hard drives into a 4U rack for up to 2.12PB of raw storage. Our Lyve Cloud object storage is designed to tear down barriers between different cloud environments. With no egress or API fees, you can move data seamlessly across private, public, and compute clouds—accessing it wherever and whenever you need it. We have tremendous confidence that our enterprise storage systems deliver the most flexible and powerful offerings in the market with a level of support only Seagate can provide.

Learn how to get more value out of data with the Seagate Multicloud Maturity Report: www.seagate.com/resources/multicloud-maturity-report

Brad Painter

Director of Americas Channel Sales

”

To keep data costs low while enabling data-driven innovation, business leaders need to use predictive cloud cost tools and invest in technology that allows for easy data movement across multiple clouds at an optimal TCO.

”

2022

Emerging Vendors

Storage (Including Disaster Recovery) continued Hammerspace

HYCU

Founded: 2018 Top Executive: David Flynn, CEO

Hammerspace, San Mateo, Calif., delivers a global data environment that spans on-premises data centers and public cloud infrastructure. Hammerspace connects users with their data and applications on any existing data center infrastructure or public cloud services.

Founded: 2018 Top Executive: Simon Taylor, Founder, CEO

By bringing true SaaS-based backup to both on-premises and cloud-native environments, Boston-based HYCU provides data protection, migration and disaster recovery to more than 3,100 companies and 400 partners worldwide.

Nyriad

Shayre

Founded: 2021 Top Executive: Derek Dicker, CEO

San Jose, Calif.-based Nyriad’s storage offerings utilize the power of GPUs and CPUs, delivering performance, resilience and efficiency. The systems enable petabyte-scale shared block storage that is simple to deploy, operate and maintain and is ideal for data-intensive workloads.

Founded: 2018 Top Executive: Chris Monte, Co-Founder, CEO

Shayre’s software utilizes an optimized TCP-IP stack for high network performance and data encryption to safeguard data while in transit. The Los Angeles-based company’s direct point-to-point and point-to-multipoint technology utilizes an organization’s own storage systems.

Wult

Founded: 2020 Top Executive: Rune Bromer, Co-Founder, CEO

Copenhagen, Denmark-based Wult develops a data extraction, transformation and management platform for data governance and compliance tasks with the mission to make data compliance simple and accessible, even without technical knowledge.

2022

Emerging Vendors The List

More details about our 2022 Emerging Vendor companies are available by scanning here.

38

AUGUST 2022

Lightbits Labs

Founded: 2016 Top Executive: Eran Kirzner, Co-Founder, CEO

Lightbits Labs offers a disaggregated, NVMe/TCP elastic block storage platform that delivers ease of use and efficiency for private, public and edge clouds. The San Jose, Calif.-based company targets Tier 2 and 3 cloud service providers, financial services and telecommunications companies.

Tsecond

Founded: 2020 Top Executive: Sahil Chawla, Co-Founder, CEO

San Jose, Calif.-based Tsecond develops Bryck, a portable, universally compatible data management platform that’s used to capture, process, store and move large volumes of data from static or mobile edge computing devices.

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Sysdig Doubles Down On Channel-First Approach Q. What solution does Sysdig provide?

A. Sysdig cloud and container security closes the loop from source to run. The plat-

form helps teams find and prioritize software vulnerabilities, detect and respond to threats and manage cloud configurations, permissions and compliance.

Q. What steps is Sysdig taking to deliver cloud and container security solutions in partnership with the channel?

A. Earlier this year, we announced a “Channel-First Approach” to give our partners

the tools needed to bring Sysdig cloud and container security to their customers. In support of this, we implemented a strategy to ensure all sales outside of the Global 500 transact through partners. Since then, we’ve seen our signed partners grow by more than 30 percent. With a focus on partner profitability, our partners can expect healthy margins on all partner-initiated deals, as well as additional incentives for setting meetings and closed business. With a dollar-based net retention above 135 percent, partners know when customers select Sysdig, they are gaining a solution that will be a cornerstone of their cloud environment.

Q. How does Sysdig ensure partners continue growing their business?

A. Our partner-first focus has driven both Sysdig-initiated pipeline growth and deal

registration growth with our partners by 2x QoQ. We invest in our partners because we know how relevant they are to our customers and how important they are to Sysdig’s long-term success. Our best-in-class renewal rates demonstrate the stickiness of our platform and the value we deliver to our customers. On top of bringing business to partners and having healthy expansion rates, we also provide educational opportunities for our partners, both on our product and industry best practices. Later this summer, we are launching a set of accreditations for both partner AEs and SEs designed to help them become experts not only on Sysdig, but also on DevOps best practices.

Q. How does Sysdig see economic changes affecting security adoption?

A. More than ever before, organizations are scrutinizing every stack tool, with security

teams being asked to do more with less, while not impacting the speed of innovation or increased security risk. Sysdig gives companies a complete platform that provides a single view of risk from source to run with no blind spots, no guesswork, no black boxes.

With Sysdig, businesses can consolidate from up to five tools, down to one. Sysdig can help with better capacity planning and smarter prioritization of vulnerabilities, while producing less alerts—all of which saves time and money.

Learn about Sysdig’s partner program at https://sysdig.com/partners

Keith Joseph

Vice President Worldwide Channels and Corporate Sales

”

The cloud learning curve is steep and channel teams have a tremendous opportunity to help their clients select, implement and operate security tools. By providing cloud security built on open standards, Sysdig enables channel partners to deliver a fully integrated security stack for clients.

”

C R N FA S T G R O W T H 1 5 0

Forging Ahead At Top Speed

By Rick Whiting

T

he channel has faced serious headwinds due to the global pandemic, economic uncertainty, employee shortages, ongoing supply chain issues and other challenges over the past two years.

And yet many solution providers have not only survived but thrived as they stepped up to meet changes in IT needs and usage, including the rapid shift to workfrom-home and hybrid workplaces, high demand for cybersecurity solutions and the ongoing migration to cloud computing.

“We’re growing like crazy,” Michelle Accardi, CEO of Logically, a Portland, Maine-based MSP and MSSP, told CRN. The CRN Fast Growth 150 list ranks solution providers with annual sales of at least $1 million by their average two-year revenue growth rate (this year between 2019 and 2021). The 25 solution providers with the highest growth rates appear on the following page, and the complete list can be found at www.crn.com.

Computacenter United States is No. 1 this year with an impressive 772.55 percent two-year growth rate.The San Francisco-based solution provider has been establishing its presence in the U.S. through a series of acquisitions, including FusionStorm in late 2018 and Pivot Technology Solutions in November 2020—acquisitions that undoubtedly account for a big part of the company’s rapid growth.

Overall, this year’s Fast Growth 150 recorded an average twoyear growth rate of 96 percent. That’s up from 83 percent average growth for the Fast Growth 150 list in 2021, but below the 101 percent growth recorded by the 2020 Fast Growth 150 class.

The 150 companies on this year’s list collectively generated revenue of $82.40 billion in 2021. That’s down from $94.78 billion for the 2021 Fast Growth 150, but considerably above the $37.80 billion collectively reported by the Fast Growth 150 in 2020.

Some solution providers on this year’s Fast Growth 150 are well-known names in the channel, including SADA Systems (No. 9), Denali Advanced Integration (No. 27), Converge Technology Solutions (No. 30), Slalom Consulting (No. 63), EPAM Systems (No. 68), ePlus Technology (No. 72), Carahsoft Technology (No. 89) and GreenPages Technology Solutions (No. 144).

This year also has a number of solution providers that are appearing for the first time, including ExterNetworks (No. 5 with 293.5 percent growth), 5 Point Technology (No. 13 with 221.4 percent growth) and BlackHawk Data (No. 16 with 203.6 percent growth).

40

AUGUST 2022

While organic growth certainly plays a major role in many solution providers’ overall growth rate, mergers and acquisitions are often a major factor in boosting a company’s Fast Growth 150 ranking.

Converge Technology Solutions has been on an acquisition spree, acquiring 31 companies in five years, and is on pace to increase its revenue by $1 billion this year through acquisitions.

Acquisitions are essential to building the kind of talent that will make Toronto-based Converge a multibillion-dollar provider of IT services in the next couple of years, CEO Shaun Maine told CRN. “We believe that the team will always beat an individual, no matter how bright they are,” Maine said. “We’ve really emphasized that team mentality, and the way that we’ve been bringing on talent is by buying companies rather than hiring individuals. When you buy a company, they’re already a team.”

Computacenter just acquired Buffalo Grove, Ill.-based solution provider Business IT Source, a move that does not factor into its Fast Growth 150 ranking this year. But the acquisition could boost Computacenter’s standing in 2023 given that Business IT Source is No. 49 on this year’s list with 83.2 percent growth.

A series of acquisitions, meanwhile, has helped fuel Logically’s growth to No. 28 on the list this year. In June the company acquired Ohio-based MSP Cornerstone IT, Logically’s 11th acquisition since 2019. But spiking demand for its services has also boosted organic growth. “Cybersecurity and outsourced remote IT support are the two areas that obviously companies are needing,” Accardi said.

SADA, a Los Angeles-based solution provider and IT consultancy, has experienced explosive growth thanks to its superstar status as a Google Cloud Premier Partner.

“We’re winning from a significant migration of existing data centers, and we’re winning from other clouds,” SADA President and CEO Tony Safoian told CRN in April. “The fact that we surpassed the $500 million mark in just two years and a quarter versus the three years that we had [planned] to achieve that is a great sign.” n C.J. Fairfield, Joseph F. Kovar and Mark Haranas contributed to this story.

For information on purchasing the complete list with all collected firmographic data, please contact sales@ thechannelcompany.com or call 508-416-1175. Scan here to see the full list.

2022 Fast Growth 150: THE TOP 25 Rank

Company

Top Executive

1

Computacenter United States

Kevin Shank, President, North America

772.55%

2

Valeo Networks

Travis Mack, President, CEO

562.29%

3

Striveworks

James Rebesco, Co-Founder, CEO

485.02%

4

Blue.cloud Tampa, Fla.

Kerem Koca, Co-Founder, Co-CEO Praveen Ramineni, Co-Founder, Co-CEO

417.72%

5

ExterNetworks

Malik Zakaria, Managing Director

293.46%

6

DoiT International

Yoav Toussia-Cohen, CEO

288.89%

7

Mission Cloud Services

Simon Anderson, Chairman, Founder, CEO

287.83%

8

Clutch Solutions

Garrette Backie, Founder, CEO

277.37%

9

SADA Systems

Tony Safoian, President, CEO

265.44%

10

Intuitive Technology Partners

Jay Modh, Founder, CEO

264.14%

11

Network to Code

John Marchese, CEO

241.13%

12

Wursta

Matt Wursta, Founder, CEO

235.25%

13

5 Point Technology

Alexander Hamwey, Founder, CEO

221.38%

14

The [Re]Design Group

Phil Sanginario, CEO

206.27%

15

Nordicom Technologies

Miles Olson, CEO

205.33%

16

BlackHawk Data

Maryann Pagano, CEO

203.64%

Ryan Heidorn, Managing Director

203.07% 200.00%

San Francisco

Rockledge, Fla. Austin, Texas

Piscataway, N.J.

Santa Clara, Calif.

Los Angeles Mesa, Ariz.

North Hollywood, Calif.

Edison, N.J. New York

Austin, Texas Plymouth, Mass.

Hermosa Beach, Calif.

Novi, Mich.

New York

Root 1 7 Steel Salem, Mass.

Two-Year Growth Rate

18

ANC Group

Brian Daughhetee, President, CEO

19

Rhize Tech

Terry Williams, CEO

187.71%

Erez Pikar, CEO

183.64%

Terry Murray, President

182.73%

22 Anatomy_IT White Plains, N.Y.

Daniel Spitzer, CRO

181.01%

23 10Pearls Vienna, Va.

Imran Aftab, CEO

178.80%

Systems Recovery 24 DMD Tempe, Ariz.

Aaron Zeper, CEO

178.69%

One 25 BCM New York

Geoff Bloss, CEO

177.53%

Greenville, S.C. Edwards, Colo.

20 Bluum Phoenix 21

Prescriptive Data Solutions San Antonio

AUGUST 2022

41

ON THE RECORD

Do We Need The CHIPS Act?

By Robert Faletra

H

ERE WE ARE sitting in the opening act of a recession. Washington has spent $6 trillion it didn’t have on COVID relief. Inflation is running at unprecedented levels and is nearing double digits. The Federal Reserve has raised the interest rate again, and the beat goes on in Washington, D.C. The semiconductor supply shortage continues, as does the push to bring more manufacturing to the states.

Are there strategic reasons to do so? You bet. Would it be best to have America once again be the location where the majority of chips are made? It’s hard to argue against that.

At one point, we manufactured the majority of semiconductors here, and today we manufacture only about 12 percent.

There is support on both sides of the political aisle for subsidizing the U.S. semiconductor industry with the CHIPS Act, which as of press time has passed the Senate.

But the issues surrounding all this are complex. There are national security issues. Inflationary spending issues. Government involvement in private industry issues. Supply chain issues. And the list goes on.

Would dropping more money the government doesn’t have add to inflation? I’m not an economist, but many argue the biggest contributor to the current inflationary problem is government spending.

The famed economist Milton Friedman argued “inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.” Well, the $6 trillion in stimulus contributing to a national debt nearing $31 trillion—or nearly $92,000 for every person in the country—has something to do with the money supply.

Doling out billions more in subsidies given the size of the debt almost seems de minimis. And might it be worth it for national security reasons? I’m not arguing for or against this, but I do know the semiconductor industry isn’t on its deathbed.

42

AUGUST 2022

Intel earlier this year opened a $3 billion expansion of its facility in Hillsboro, Ore., that sits on a 500-acre campus it named Gordon Moore Park. The company is working on shrinking features on chips to the size of atoms. It’s been investing in its foundry business with a recent $20 billion new fab in Ohio. That’s one of more than 20 construction projects underway.

I’m not picking on Intel, as Nvidia, Broadcom, Micron Technology and others based here are also investing in their businesses, as they should. The question that needs answering is would it be better for the industry to be subsidized by taxpayers or is it best for it to stand on its own? If subsidies are best, how best to implement them and what type of government involvement is going to come with that.

I don’t know the answer to these questions, but it seems as though there isn’t enough debate happening around what could be the unintended consequences of the government’s involvement.

College tuition has skyrocketed because of the student loan program. Constructed in an effort to make it easier to pay for college, the program instead injected tons of capital into the market, and universities universally raised rates as a result. Decades later, it’s actually more difficult now to pay for an education than before the program existed—an unintended but real consequence of increasing the available money supply.

Will we get the desired results of government involvement in the semiconductor industry?

I don’t know, but I also don’t think the folks designing these subsidies do either—and that’s what’s scary. What might be the unintended consequences? n

B A C K T A L K : Make something happen. Robert Faletra is a Founding Partner of The Channel Company. You can contact him via email at rfaletra@thechannelcompany.com.

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