CRN December 2020 - Issue 1399

ISSUE 1399 • DECEMBER 2020

crn.com

PRODUCTS OF THE YEAR PAGE 14 TECH INNOVATORS PAGE 24

NEXT-GEN SOLUTION PROVIDER LEADERS PAGE 42

NEWS, ANALYSIS AND PERSPECTIVE FOR VARs AND TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATORS

CHANNEL AWAKENING AMD President and CEO Lisa Su calls the channel an ‘incredibly important part’ of the chipmaker’s strategy, setting in motion an aggressive plan to double MDF, channel staff and funded positions for top solution provider partners PAGE 8

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Computer Reseller News

December 2020

Column 46 On The Record

By Robert Faletra

Features 6 Tech10

From AI-powered document processing to Kubernetes enrichment for log management and more, these 10 offerings are ready to power up cloud performance

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CHANNEL AWAKENING

8

Next-Gen Solution Provider Leaders

Our inaugural list honors those 40 years old or younger who through their drive and passion have helped propel growth and strategic direction at their companies

Who better to choose the best new partner-friendly offerings of the year than the solution providers who work with these products and services? With over 5,000 solution provider product ratings across 23 categories, here are 2020’s winners and finalists for Products of.the Year.

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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 CRN, Dept. 100, P.O. Box 3608, Northbrook, IL 60065-3608. 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). POSTMASTER: Send address changes to CRN, P.O. Box 3608, Northbrook, IL 60065-3608. FOR SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES call (877)705-5559 or go to crn.com/subscribe Copyright© 2020 by The Channel Company. All Rights Reserved. Registered for GST as The Channel Company, GST No. R13288078, Customer No. 2116057, Agreement No. 40011901. Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to: APC Postal Logistics, LLC PO Box 503 RPO W Beaver Cre, Rich-Hill ON L4B 4R6

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Tech Innovators What does innovation mean in a year in which the home has become the office—and the classroom? This year’s Tech Innovators have delivered differentiated products that are relevant in the current crisis and open the door to partner growth opportunities.

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There’s More Online Most-Read Stories

1. 10 Future Cloud

Computing Trends To Watch In 2021

2. AWS Takes Aim At Oracle

By Hiring Rich Geraffo As New Americas Sales Leader

3. AMD Chips Away At

Intel In World’s Top 500 Supercomputers As GPU War Looms

Carousels

Videos

Apple’s New iPhone 12 Pro Max Vs. Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra

IBM President Jim Whitehurst’s Predictions For 2021 Scan here to watch the video on CRN.com

CRN® Magazine Is Now Available Online • Easily accessed from anywhere • Share articles via email or social media

Read Online Now at CRN.com/Magazine 4

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Spectrum Proves Partner Experience Is The New Customer Experience Q. Can you tell us how the partner experience is the new customer experience?

A. There’s a direct correlation between partner experience and customer experience.

We have made several enhancements to the Spectrum Partner Program, from developing more robust API-driven tools, to adding partner-friendly client promotions, to launching new and exciting products. Partners need a better experience that makes it easier for them to do business with us.

Q. Because of COVID, what has been the biggest surprise that your business has faced this year?

A. Clients still need trusted technology advisors. Partners are helping clients solve

problems that many organizations have never faced before. Clients have to solve for remote workers, including the bandwidth and security concerns that may come from telework. Partners play a critical role in ensuring clients help keep their customers operational and secure in this new environment.

Q. Where do you think the channel is headed in 2021?

A. 2021 could bring dramatic shifts to the world we live in, including the continued

reliance on work-from-home technologies. The channel has transitioned in a few ways: moving to meetings through web-based applications; maintaining relationships through virtual events like happy hours or training sessions, and increasing use of social media.

This year, networking capabilities at home or remote offices will be of utmost importance, supporting a workforce that can work from anywhere at any time. In this new teleworking environment, having a larger digital presence and access to online resources appears to be the new trend. This means more tools, automated support, information and marketing to help remote partners to work more efficiently and effectively.

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See how you can enable your potential through partnering with Spectrum at partners.spectrum.com

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12/10/20 2:44 PM

T E C H 1 0 : CLOU D

Ten Ways To Boost Cloud Performance From block-and-file storage to AI-powered document processing to Kubernetes enrichment for log management, here are 10 offerings from tech’s dynamic cloud sector

By Donna Goodison 1. AMAZON WEB SERVICES GATEWAY LOAD BALANCER AWS’ Gateway Load Balancer is designed to make it easier and more cost-effective to deploy, scale and run third-party virtual appliances such as firewalls, intrusion detection/prevention systems and deep packet inspection systems on AWS. It provides a single gateway to distribute traffic across virtual appliances while scaling them based on demand to increase availability and eliminate potential points of network failure.

It performs health checks on the virtual appliances and reroutes traffic flows when it discovers unhealthy ones.

2. COCKROACH LAB COCKROACHDB 20.2 CockroachDB 20.2 is the latest version of Cockroach Lab’s cloudnative, distributed SQL database. It includes new capabilities for spatial data for net-new workloads for IoT, transportation and environmental applications; a new CockroachDB for Kubernetes option that packages the database with a custom operator optimized for orchestrated deployments; and the addition of enterprise backup-and-restore functionality to the free community option. The release extends CockroachDB’s TPC-C Benchmark performance up to 140,000 warehouses with a maximum throughput of 1.7 million transactions per minute, a 40 percent improvement over the past year, according to the company.

3. CYBERARK CLOUD ENTITLEMENTS MANAGER The cloud-agnostic CyberArk Cloud Entitlements Manager is a privilegebased, artificial intelligence-powered service designed to strengthen the security of cloud environments by removing excessive cloud permissions. It continuously detects hidden, misconfigured and unused cloud permissions to improve security through a least-privilege, zero-trust approach. It features a centralized dashboard with a single view of permissions across Amazon Web Services—including Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service— Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure environments.

4. GOOGLE CLOUD DOCUMENT AI Google Cloud’s serverless Document AI platform is a unified console for document processing that allows users to quickly access all of the cloud provider’s form, table and invoice parsers, tools and offerings—including Google Cloud’s Procurement DocAI and Lending DocAI—with a unified API. The document understanding offering uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to classify, extract and enrich data from scanned and digital documents at scale, including structured data from unstructured documents, making it easier to understand and analyze.

5. HASHICORP WAYPOINT HashiCorp Waypoint is a new open-source project providing developers with a consistent workflow to build, deploy and release applications across any platform. It enables developers to get their applications from development to production in a single file and deploy them using a single command: waypoint up. Waypoint supports Kubernetes, HashiCorp Nomad, EC2, Google Cloud Run, Azure Container Instances, Docker and Buildpacks, among others. It can be extended with plugins to target any build/deploy/release logic.

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6. LOGDNA KUBERNETES ENRICHMENT LogDNA’s new Kubernetes Enrichment for log management provides detailed insight into Kubernetes cluster environments. It’s designed to enhance existing application logs in LogDNA with Kubernetes events and resource metrics, empowering developers to resolve deployment issues without deep specialized knowledge of Kubernetes tooling. It provides development teams with a single-pane-of-glass observability experience between a user’s underlying Kubernetes infrastructure and deployed services.

7. MICROSOFT CLOUD FOR HEALTHCARE Microsoft Cloud For Healthcare is designed to help health-care customers and partners deliver better patient experiences, insight and care while improving workflow efficiency, streamlining collaboration and connecting data across sources. It incorporates offerings from Microsoft Azure, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform in addition to partner health-care solutions. Its architecture has built-in governance and privacy capabilities supporting compliance with HIPAA, GDPR, HITRUST CSF and other regulatory requirements.

8. NETAPP SPOT STORAGE Spot Storage by NetApp is a fully managed, continuously optimized blockand-file storage offering for cloud workloads. It automatically matches storage volume size and performance to application requirements, using NetApp technology for volume shaping, thin provisioning, compression and deduplication to deliver storage volumes that reduce storage costs.

It will be integrated with Spot optimization products including Ocean (for containers and Kubernetes) and Elastigroup (for virtual machines) to allow automated, application-driven storage and compute management.

9. SKYKICK CLOUD MANAGER The new Cloud Manager is SkyKick’s next-generation no-code and low-code automation, workflow and management application designed to help IT service providers securely administer and manage their cloud customers across SaaS, IaaS, PaaS and devices. Features include Command Center, a help desk automation application to aid tier one support desks in resolving cloud tickets faster; and WorkBench, a lowcode workflow automation engine that enables admins to turn PowerShell into Command Center applications with a click.

10. TRIGGERMESH CLOUD NATIVE INTEGRATION PLATFORM 1.0 TriggerMesh Cloud Native Integration Platform 1.0 automates Kubernetes, cloud-native and on-premises infrastructures. The architecture-agnostic, production-ready SaaS offering allows users to integrate services, automate workflows and build event-driven applications out of any on-premises application or cloud service. Features include a declarative API, event transformation to forward events from one format to another, and new bridges to automate infrastructure and bridge workflows between Salesforce, OracleDB, Zendesk, Datadog, Oracle Cloud Security Logs, Splunk and others. ■

DECEMBER 2020

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OF

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LEADERSHIP NETWORK Keeping the Women of the Channel Community Connected Is Our No. 1 Priority The Women of the Channel Leadership Network is an online community that brings together the most prominent and rising women in the IT channel to connect and learn from one another, as well as build new relationships. This community unites women from all career levels and delivers the content and connections they need to thrive in their organizations and achieve their personal and professional goals.

Take advantage of the following membership benefits: Access interactive peer networking groups, webinars, trainings, mentorship, and education Network and enhance relationships with women from across the tech industry Be inspired by best-in-class thought leadership Gain connections and content to advance your career and your business Discover how to improve company culture, while unleashing the power of inclusion

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Š 2020 The Channel Company, LLC. The Channel Company logo is a registered trademark of The Channel Company, LLC. All other trademarks and trade names are the properties of their respective owners. All rights reserved.

C O V E R S T O RY

Andy Jassy’s CHANNEL Next Act AWAKENING AMD President and CEO Lisa Su calls Bychannel Donna an Goodison the ‘incredibly important part’ of the chipmaker’s strategy, setting in motion a plan to double MDF, channel staff and funded positions for top solution provider partners

By Dylan Martin

W

hen one of the fastest-growing solution providers in the country sought laptops to fill critical customer needs amid the coronavirus pandemic, it opened the company’s eyes to the benefits of AMD. ImageNet Consulting, No. 3 on CRN’s 2020 Fast Growth 150 list, was facing unprecedented demand for laptops from its health-care, financial and manufacturing customers, which needed the devices for essential workers.

“We were dealing with probably some of the most stressful times in regard to product delivery that I’ve been in for years,” said Juan Fernandez, vice president of managed IT services at the Oklahoma City, Okla.-based company. “I’ve never experienced that before.”

But the Intel-based systems that ImageNet normally would have recommended were in short supply.

ImageNet’s decision to evaluate and then endorse AMDbased systems from HP Inc. had a wide-ranging positive impact, Fernandez said. He estimated that as of November AMD now accounts for roughly 65 percent of his company’s 2020 system sales compared with 35 percent Intel-based systems, a massive increase given that ImageNet sold very few AMD-based systems last year.

“They gave us the ability to increase profitability; they gave us the ability to increase market share,” said Fernandez.

“They gave us the ability to increase our reputation with our 8

customers, which is invaluable. And it gave us the ability to continue doing business in a very tumultuous time. And I couldn’t be more happy about that.”

ImageNet wasn’t getting any special treatment from AMD, nor is it part of any of AMD’s partner programs, but the chipmaker has turned Fernandez, a former AMD skeptic, into a believer—and he welcomes any opportunities to work more closely with the company.

“They’ve done a really good job at stepping up their game,” he said.

Stories like this underline the opportunity for the 51-year-old semiconductor company around enabling a broader channel as it surpasses 20 percent CPU market share against Intel and unleashes new GPUs that stack up competitively against Nvidia.

As solution providers like ImageNet open up to the possibilities of stronger partnerships with AMD, so too is the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company undergoing a channel awakening of its own.

Lisa Su, AMD’s president and CEO of six years, said the channel is an “incredibly important part” of AMD’s business, which is why the company plans to double market development funds, channel staff and funded positions for top solution provider partners next year.

“I think the channel is just a big opportunity for us. It’s really a matter of ensuring that as we scale as a company, we put resources into the channel to support all of the activities

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C O V E R S T O RY there, and I’m very excited about the possibilities,” she said in an interview with CRN last month.

AMD’s Channel Blitz Ami Kron, director of product management at Insight Enterprises who manages the company’s AMD business, said the chipmaker’s increased focus on the channel is palpable.

“I think that AMD is definitely doubling down, investing further,” he said. “In terms of the types of investments, it spans a couple different things. Obviously, just like other key partners that we have, there [are] a variety of digital marketing efforts and other sales enablement efforts that they’re investing in more heavily than they had in years past.”

That increased support has helped Insight increase AMDbased client sales by a mid-single-digit percentage and AMDbased server sales in the high-double-digit percentages this year, according to Kron.

“You look at the market-share numbers, you look at their growth, and they’ve done some good things,” he said. “Especially with the size of business that we have at Insight, we’ve seen some of that play out in our business.”

Some of Insight’s AMD wins have come because the company is willing to team with Insight’s sales force to answer customers’ questions, particularly around how AMD products compare with the competition, Kron said.

“I think AMD being able to step in and help from a competitive landscape scenario really helped articulate their value and their differentiated approach,” he said. “We’ve definitely had to leverage that at times to get them directly involved in those conversations.”

Su said AMD’s investments in partners like Insight represent an evolution of the chipmaker’s channel strategy, expanding beyond its traditional component channel for retailers and system builders with a new focus on solution providers that resell PCs and servers from OEMs. “I think we’re growing by leaps and bounds in the channel,” she said. “Now if you look historically, our larger relationships have been in the consumer channel, so sort of in the DIY space, across the world in the desktop as well as graphics cards. And that’s now expanding to the commercial channel, both commercial PCs as well as more commercial server-type opportunities.”

In addition to Insight, the other national solution provider companies that AMD has developed direct relationships with are CDW, SHI International, Connection and Zones, which rank Nos. 5, 11, 24 and 28 on CRN’s 2020 Solution Provider 500 list, respectively.

“I’m very happy with the partnerships with some of our top channel partners, like CDW and SHI and Insight, who are helping to broaden our reach to the next level of customers,” Su said.

But AMD plans to extend its channel reach even further.

Jason Mooneyham, corporate vice president of Americas sales who oversees AMD’s component and commercial systems channels in the region, said two of his priorities next year are

to expand direct coverage for national solution providers and establish coverage for regional value-added resellers focused on servers. The company is also expanding coverage for systems integrators in the federal space.

“We will double our head count and double our funding in [2021] relative to the channel, which is massive after it’s gone up basically 5X over the last two years,” said Mooneyham, who worked at Lenovo for nine years prior to joining AMD’s sales organization in 2016.

For head count, this means that AMD will expand investments in the number of technical positions it funds at solution provider partners as well as internal channel staff. On the funding front, AMD is ramping up market development funds and its volume incentive rebate program. The latter was originally for commercial PC sales and has since expanded to servers.

“Now that we have an expanding portfolio with Dell, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Lenovo on the server side, we can ramp up a lot more of those efforts from a funding standpoint,” he said.

Mooneyham said one of the top requests from solution providers has been technical positions funded by AMD. The company also funds positions for its four authorized commercial system distributors in North America: D&H Distributing, Ingram Micro, Synnex and Tech Data.

“We’re trying to fund those bodies on the floor so that as those deals come up, they’re able to go right in-house to get it without having to chase down somebody in our field organization,” he said.

One major solution provider that AMD is ramping up a partnership with, according to Mooneyham, is World Wide Technology, No. 9 on CRN’s 2020 Solution Provider 500 list, a Maryland Heights, Mo.-based company that has a significant and longstanding strategic partnership with Intel, which includes ongoing investments in its Advanced Technology Center.

“We’ve got an initial call with WWT this week on how we want to set up training,” Mooneyham said, which was set to happen the week of Nov. 9.

A WWT spokesperson declined to comment.

A Channel Conversion Years In The Making There was a time not so long ago that AMD had a very small footprint in the channel.

One longtime system builder executive said he remembers when AMD’s channel efforts in the data center were essentially nil. After reaching double-digit market share against Intel in the mid-2000s, the chipmaker’s Opteron processors had fallen out of favor as it struggled to keep up with the performance gains of Intel’s Xeon processors.

“If you go back a few years, I mean, there was just nothing,” said Dominic Daninger, vice president of engineering at Nor-Tech, a high-performance computing system builder in Burnsville, Minn. “There was no structure left for their channel programs as far as marketing development funds and that DECEMBER 2020

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C O V E R S T O RY kind of thing. Everybody that worked in that area was gone.”

Even in the PC market, where AMD has maintained a continuous presence, the company’s channel resources were greatly diminished as Intel’s Core processors soaked up sales.

“If you rewind a few years back, when they were struggling, we just didn’t get [channel support from AMD] because they didn’t have the budget,” said a PC system builder executive who asked to not be identified.

Intel, meanwhile, has had a longstanding robust partner program with strong channel leadership such as 15-year veteran Jason Kimrey, general manager of U.S. channel and partner programs, and 21-year veteran Todd Garrigues, director of partner sales programs, keeping the company at the top of the channel pyramid for decades. “[Intel has] programs and incentives in place to make sure that they continue to grow the business. I think AMD has lacked that [same level of structure],” the PC system builder executive said.

In an interview earlier this year, Kimrey said Intel is more committed to partners than ever before, which is reflected by new investments it has made in its channel organization.

“We’re in a unique spot. We are a leading manufacturer in the data-centric era, and we have the ability to deliver and optimize with our partners industry-leading platform solutions to solve some of the most pressing and important problems facing consumers as well as businesses,” Kimrey said.

But partners said things have changed drastically for AMD since the rollout of its Zen-based processors began in 2017, with the Ryzen brand for PCs and laptops and EPYC for servers.

System builders, which fall under AMD’s component channel, now report having access to engineers, sales representatives and marketing specialists as well as market development funds, early samples and demonstration hardware.

The PC system builder executive said his company has received non-recurring engineering (NRE) funds from the chipmaker to design AMD-based systems, which he said closely mirrors Intel’s NRE program.

“They were very aggressive about making the project a reality with us,” he said.

Randy Copeland, CEO of Velocity Micro, a Richmond, Va.based PC system builder, said his company’s sales of AMDbased systems have approximately doubled year over year in 2020 while Intel-based systems have only grown roughly 5 percent, contributing to what has been his best year in business in the past decade.

“It’s a dramatic driver. I mean, our AMD business is really exploding,” he said.

But it wasn’t easy for AMD to get to this point. When Su joined AMD in 2012 as a senior vice president and general manager after nearly five years in senior executive roles at Freescale Semiconductor, the company wasn’t in a great place.

Its stock price hit a low of $1.81 per share that year, and by the end of the year, the company had made its second major

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round of layoffs within 12 months due to falling revenue.

“The reason I joined AMD is because I felt like this was a company that could be very important in the industry. I’ve always believed that processors are the center of the universe,” she said. “I’m slightly biased, but I do believe that processors are a very, very important piece of how do you move the industry forward. And AMD is one of the few that has the capability to lead in processors.”

When she was promoted to president and CEO of AMD in 2014, Su said the company made two important decisions based on conversations with employees, customers and industry leaders: The chipmaker wanted to become the leader in highperformance computing, and to get there, it needed to have a “consistent and executable” road map.

“That’s especially important with customers because when they decide to partner with AMD, it’s about a long-term partnership, it’s about investing resources over multiple years,” she said. “And what we needed to do was to make sure that they had the confidence in us, that we would give them leadership products generation after generation after generation.”

The result was Zen, a new x86 CPU architecture AMD would use to make Ryzen processors for desktops, laptops and workstations and to make EPYC processors for servers. But it would take multiple generations of Zen architecture before AMD was able to claim leadership not just in multithreaded performance, with processors offering more cores than Intel’s, but also in single-threaded performance, which had been Intel’s final holdout until the first Zen 3 processors arrived this fall.

“What we would say is we do believe we have leadership in the industry today. We’re very, very excited about that,” Su said. “I think the Ryzen 5000 series are going to be great desktop processors for our desktop fans. That’s going to translate into our EPYC processor line soon. And then you’ll see it also come out in notebooks.”

One server system builder partner, International Computer Concepts, has witnessed how AMD’s performance gains, combined with an aggressive pricing strategy, has improved sales.

Alexey Stolyar, CTO for the Northbrook, Ill.-based company, said because AMD’s second-generation EPYC processors feature up to 64 cores—more than double Intel’s current offerings —the company is able to pack more cores into single servers and sell more systems for customers with set power budgets.

AMD-based systems now account for roughly half of his company’s 2020 system sales to date compared with only about 10 percent last year, when Intel-based systems dominated.

“Say you have 100 amps, and each system consumes 1 amp, you can do 100 systems.Well, now if each system consumes half an amp, you can do 200 systems,” he said. “So for customers who have that set boundary, it definitely allows us to do larger installations and grow in those types of ways.”

AMD’s execution has resulted in major growth, with the company reporting in its third quarter that sales had grown

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C O V E R S T O RY 56 percent year over year. At the same time, AMD’s share against Intel in the x86 CPU market reached 22.4 percent, a 6.3-point increase from last year and its highest level since 2007, according to Mercury Research.

But the impact of Su’s leadership is perhaps most evident in the company’s stock price, which as of Nov. 11 was $81.28 per share, representing an increase of more than 2,300 percent since she became CEO. “I think we feel very good about where we are, and it’s our intention to maintain leadership,” Su said. “Obviously it’s a very competitive world out there, and we know that, but we also have lots of ideas beyond Zen 3 today that are deep in development already.”

The Challenges Ahead While AMD is on an upward trajectory, the chipmaker has plenty of work cut out for it.

One high-performance computing system builder executive, who asked to not be identified, said AMD will need to contend with the comprehensive and growing partner programs run by rivals Intel and Nvidia. Intel Partner Alliance, a new unified program, launches in 2021 and will bring together tens of thousands of partners of different types, while Nvidia Partner Network crossed 1,500 partners earlier this year.

“What we find is that the Intel program is the gold standard,” he said. “What I mean is that it is very structured in the sense that if you choose to partner with Intel, and depending on your level of partnership, your level of commitment, there is a matching program at Intel you can take advantage of.”

Jerome Sandrini, head of big data and security in North America at Atos, the multinational IT services giant that is No. 25 on CRN’s 2020 Solution Provider 500, said AMD’s channel support is “nowhere near the level of support” his company is getting from Intel, although he knows part of that is a function of AMD’s smaller size.

“We don’t really see the large program discounts, the joint go-to-market and the marketing support that we’ve been working on for many years with Intel,” he said.

But Sandrini thinks AMD can get there with time.

“There is recognition on both sides that we need to do more together,” he said.

Beyond AMD’s expanding direct coverage of top national and regional solution providers, the chipmaker plans to continue to reach a broader channel for component and commercial systems partners through its authorized distributors, although the two areas are kept separate. The company also has the AMD Partner Hub, an online portal for partners of all types that includes AMD Arena, which rewards individuals points for completing online training that can be used to redeem AMD products and systems.

“It’s a work in progress,” said Neil Spicer, corporate vice president of AMD’s global component channel. “We’re work-

ing very closely with all of our go-to-market and marketing teams on that evolution. But we’ve really focused on improving the tools that we do have.”

The high-performance computing system builder executive said one of the other areas where AMD needs to improve is on the discrete GPU front, where Nvidia has dominated in the PC and data center markets in recent years. Intel is also entering the segment with products targeting PCs and servers.

“AMD has been able to successfully challenge Intel on the CPU front, but they have yet to be able to challenge Nvidia on the GPU front,” he said.

Su said she sees the chipmaker’s aspirations in the GPU space as similar to what it has achieved with CPUs but acknowledged that it takes time to get there.

“As always, these things are journeys,” she said.

To challenge Nvidia’s dominance in graphics for PCs, the chipmaker recently launched the Radeon RX 6000 Series graphics cards for gaming PCs and a new data center GPU, the Instinct MI100, which the chipmaker said is the “world’s most powerful HPC [high-performance computing] GPU.” But as for where the company is headed in the next few years, Su pointed to AMD’s major contract wins to provide nextgeneration EPYC CPUs and Instinct GPUs for two of the U.S. Department of Energy’s first exascale supercomputers: Frontier, which is set to go live in 2021, and El Capitan, set for 2023.

“If you think about what makes these deployments so challenging, you’re trying to get the highest possible performance in what is a very power-constrained and, frankly, space-constrained environment,” Su said. “And so it really does come down to total cost of ownership, which is so important in everyone’s data center, whether you’re a cloud environment or you have a hybrid on-prem environment.”

The one other area of concern for AMD, which has been cited by partners as well as Wall Street analysts, is to what extent the chipmaker can continue to execute as it closes on its massive, $35 billion acquisition of programmable chipmaker Xilinx, which is set to happen in late 2021.

“Lisa Su is as sharp as they come, and her team is as good as they get, but this is a big undertaking,” said one executive who is a longtime AMD partner and asked to not be identified.

But Su doesn’t see Xilinx as a distraction. In fact, she believes the acquisition, which will bring AMD deeper into markets like telecom, will make her company stronger.

“I think we’ve built a very strong execution engine for the past six years. We’re absolutely committed to our road maps and to our customers, and that’s not going to change,” she said.

But more importantly, Xilinx will give AMD more products and technologies to help the channel grow, which Su said is unlike any opportunity she has encountered before.

“I think it’s actually perhaps the largest growth opportunity for us,” she said.”And we hope to earn the trust of all the channel customers.”

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C O V E R S T O RY Q&A With AMD’s Lisa Su If you need a sign that AMD President and CEO Lisa Su is making waves in the semiconductor industry, consider this: The electrical engineer recently received the Robert N. Noyce Award from the Semiconductor Industry Association, named after the founding CEO of her top rival, Intel.

“I will say it is quite an honor,” she said. “You have to understand I grew up as a semiconductor geek, right? I’ve been in this industry for 25-plus years, and people like Robert Noyce are just icons in the industry. So I’ll say it’s quite humbling.”

In an interview with CRN, Su addressed some top interests among solution providers as the company continues to grow: software support, CPU supply and AMD’s plan to acquire Xilinx.

Software support and optimization is one area where some solution providers have remained hesitant about AMD. Can you help CRN readers understand the investments AMD is making in software?

This has been a big area of investment for us, both for CPUs and GPUs. Our desire is to offer a very competitive suite of tools as well as optimized application software that works on our technology. I think we’ve made great strides. We appreciate the partnerships across the industry to get that done. I think our compilers are much better, our tools are much better. The partnership with [companies] like VMware and others has really expanded [our capability to] provide that out-of-box experience that feels very easy to use. And that’s our focus. On the GPU side, there’s a lot of work going on in terms of libraries and also optimization on machine-learning frameworks, like TensorFlow and others, to also make the out-of-box experience with GPUs better. I would say that we’ve made great progress, and you should assume that we’re going to continue to invest in these areas and really ensure the customers who want to use our hardware have a very robust software ecosystem.

Another area of concern for solution providers is supply, especially given Intel’s CPU shortages over the last couple of years. How has AMD’s supply situation been? And as AMD continues to grow, will the company be able to fulfill demand for its products?

2020 has been sort of an incredible year if you just look at it both from an industry standpoint and then from an AMD standpoint. From an industry standpoint, I think we’ve seen some areas of sort of unprecedented demand.

The PC market has never been stronger. Gaming is also very, very strong. And those have placed some, let’s call it, ‘strains’ on the supply chain. I would say from an AMD standpoint, we have significantly grown our shipments if you just look at PCs. We’ve probably grown over 50 percent year on year, so we’re very pleased with that. I think that’s the overlay of both the market being strong as well as AMD gaining market share, as we’ve now gained market share for 12 quarters in a row or so. And so the answer is yes, we’re ramping up our supply chain. I would say that demand still exceeds supply in certain parts of the supply chain, particularly education. We’re seeing that the education market has surprised us all a bit with just the strength, given all the school-from-home dynamics. But we’re continuing to increase our supply chain, and that becomes a big focus as we continue to grow. But I would say the growth that we’ve experienced in 2020 has been higher than we originally expected, and we’re working hard to meet our customers’ needs.

To what extent do you think that Xilinx’s products will become an important part of AMD’s data center offerings, and how broad of an opportunity will they be in the data center market?

We’re very excited about the acquisition of Xilinx. When we look at their product portfolio and the markets they’re in, we believe they add about $30 billion of addressable market to AMD’s addressable market, which was about $80 billion, so total, $110 billion of addressable market. In the data center in particular, I do think it’s very complementary to AMD’s efforts. Our focus has been on CPUs and GPUs, but I’ve always believed in a heterogeneous environment, and [Xilinx’s field programmable gate array] FPGA architecture adds sort of an adaptive capability. That’s really beneficial when algorithms are still not yet fully defined, and it allows for the ability to adapt in the data center market to new workloads. So I think it’s quite strategic. I think the Xilinx technology around SmartNICs is quite strategic as well as their network acceleration. Actually, since the [acquisition] announcement, I’ve gotten a number of inquiries from customers who are excited about what we can do together from a road map standpoint. I think it extends this notion [that] compute is very important, and you’re going to need compute in all different types of forms, and that’s what Xilinx brings for our portfolio. ■

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Putting Partners First

Software AG Channel Chief Fosters Partner Relationships Q. What was your journey to “Channel Chief” status?

A. I’ve worked in alliances and partnership sales and managed partner sales teams for 20-plus years. I’ve seen an evolution within the industry, including the emergence of cloud computing, software subscription models and how partners make money. My job title always focused on sales, but my passion is building relationships. I feel that your success is only as strong as the quality of your relationships.

I built my partner career at several companies, including Red Hat, where I focused on assisting our development of our alliances and channel business, which went from a startup partner business to achieving dramatic growth and 70 percent partner mix when I left.

I then transitioned to TIBCO, where I led the global partners and alliances teams. There, we built a partner business with outstanding growth. I joined Software AG this year as the SVP, Global Alliances and Channels, leveraging and expanding our partner ecosystem to meet customer needs and growing our business through partners. We help transform IT and processes and are experts in integration and IoT. Ultimately, we accelerate smarter decisions, and the work we’re doing with partners is critical.

Q. What is your recipe for success with Software AG partners?

A. I have four principles that I abide by with partners: •

Trust – This takes time, but I have achieved an honest, trusting approach with transparency.

•

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•

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•

Rules of Engagement – We take the strong rules that govern our partnership seriously. I believe return on equity is an important guideline that most ISVs aren’t good at.

Q. What are your top channel goals for 2021?

A. There was a shift this year where technology and the customer experience aligned as

the connected enterprise was redefined. Our partners are uniquely positioned to address customers’ innovation needs as they reinvent their business models. In 2021, Software AG is focused on supporting partners in their transformation efforts, making it easy to have what they need in order to be successful. We’re on the ground working toward enhancing programs, new training and certification programs that focus on accelerating the adoption of emerging technologies and developing skills to execute any digital transformation strategy.

Jason Johns

”

SVP, Global Alliances and Channels

Our partners are uniquely positioned to address customers’ innovation needs as they reinvent their business models. In 2021, Software AG is focused on supporting partners in their transformation efforts, making it easy to have what they need in order to be successful.

”

Join our PowerUp Partner Program to grow your business and increase profits. www.softwareag.com/partners

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11/23/20 2:34 PM

Products Year 2020

of the

The Best Of The Best

CRN’s Products of the Year awards for 2020 honor the very best partner-friendly products and services that launched over the past year—as chosen by solution providers themselves.

To get things started, our editors selected product finalists in 23 key technology categories for the IT channel among offerings from September 2019 to September 2020. The categories ranged from big data, to cloud infrastructure and collaboration, to security, servers and storage. We then asked solution providers to choose winners based on how the products rate on technology, revenue and profit opportunities, and customer demand. The survey received more than 5,000 product ratings from solution providers, and the product receiving the highest overall score in each category was named the winner.

Notably, several companies took home multiple top prizes in this year’s contest: Cisco (with three category wins) and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Microsoft and Lenovo (with two category wins each).

By Kyle Alspach

BIG DATA ORACLE AUTONOMOUS DATABASE WINNER: OVERALL

With its fast-growing Autonomous Database offering, Oracle has said it has the makings for replicating the success of its original Oracle commercial relational database that launched the entire business.

Autonomous Database, which automates the provisioning, configuration and scaling of databases, runs natively on the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure platform, and comes with capabilities such as automated data protection and self-repair after user errors and system failures. Recent enhancements aimed at taking Autonomous Database to the next level have included the introduction of a dedicated deployment option to provide operational control, reliability and security for all classes of database workloads. Oracle has also updated its Enterprise Manager platform to expand Autonomous Database support, including with guided migrations and a streamlined user experience for moving workloads from on-premises environments to Oracle Autonomous Database.

Subcategory Winner—Revenue and Profit: Couchbase Cloud Finalist: MariaDB SkySQL Database-as-a-Service Finalist: Snowflake Cloud Data Platform Finalist: Splunk Data Stream Processor 14

BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE AND ANALYTICS CISCO APPDYNAMICS WINNER: OVERALL

Cisco Systems has reported a dramatic increase in business through the channel for its AppDynamics monitoring software, even as the company has continued to enhance the software with new capabilities including increased visibility into the paths of applications. AppDynamics brings together application performance monitoring with monitoring of business performance and end users, which translates into key business analytics and actionable insight for customers. Cisco has augmented the usefulness of the platform with updates such as the introduction of the AppDynamics Experience Journey Map, a new view that provides users or partners with visibility into the path of an application using data science algorithms that can pull out information in real time. The map shows user flows overlaid with performance and business metrics, which enable the identification of problems such as application bottlenecks.

Finalist: Microsoft Power BI Finalist: SAP Business Technology Platform Finalist: Splunk Cloud Finalist: Tableau

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COLLABORATION

uses predictive technologies and business rules to recommend

MICROSOFT TEAMS

boost customer satisfaction.

WINNER: OVERALL

Microsoft has pushed a rapid pace of development for the Teams collaboration app as users have surged in 2020. In particular, Teams has received

a course of action that might reveal cross-sell opportunities and

Finalist: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finalist: Oracle NetSuite Finalist: SAP S/4HANA Finalist: ServiceNow Customer Service Management

around its video meeting capabilities—such as with a larger

HYBRID CLOUD

gallery view and the ability to pop out separate windows for

AWS OUTPOSTS

a series of major upgrades

meetings in the app. Microsoft is also aiming to make one of

WINNER: OVERALL

the newest Teams features into the next big game-changer for

Amazon Web Services, the largest

videoconferencing. Together Mode places participants into a

public cloud platform by market share,

shared virtual background, which helps people to feel more

brought its on-premises version of its

like they’re sitting in the same room—and more capable of

public cloud into general availability

picking up nonverbal cues. Microsoft has also tackled personal

last December with the launch of

productivity within Teams, such as with the tasks app. The app

AWS Outposts. The offering entails

offers a unified view within Teams of tasks across different

AWS installing and managing a server

apps, including Planner, Microsoft To Do and Outlook.

rack in its customers’ data centers, and

ubcategory Winner—Revenue and Profit: S RingCentral Finalist: Cisco Webex Finalist: Intermedia Unite Finalist: Nextiva Finalist: Zoom

Salesforce’s market dominance in CRM software

innovation

has

as

the

kept

the

going

instances and EBS block storage, as well as two hosted container services, ECS and EKS. S3 storage on AWS Outposts became available in September. The first variant of Outposts is the “AWS native” option for customers that want to use the AWS APIs and

a VMware control plane, is expected in 2020.

WINNER: OVERALL

company

Outposts launched with AWS EC2

second variant of AWS Outposts, for customers that want to use

SALESFORCE

continued

must keep applications close to home.

control plane alongside their deployments in AWS regions. A

CRM/ERP

has

addresses the needs of enterprises that

strong

Subcategory Winner—Customer Demand: VMware Cloud on AWS Finalist: Dell Technologies Cloud Finalist: HPE GreenLake Cloud Services Finalist: Lenovo TruScale Infrastructure Services

Salesforce has been continually augmenting its Einstein

HYPERCONVERGED INFRASTRUCTURE

intelligence layer to the point that Einstein’s capabilities are

CISCO HYPERFLEX

on its unified platform, Customer 360, which spans sales, marketing, service and more. In the realm of AI advances,

now pervasive across Salesforce’s offerings. Recent updates to

WINNER: OVERALL

Einstein have focused on improving sales productivity, including

Built on Cisco’s UCS server

through the launch of Einstein Reply Recommendations, which

portfolio, Cisco’s HyperFlex

leverages natural language processing to provide immediate

hyperconverged infrastructure

suggestions about ideal responses to customer inquiries.

system enables the benefits of

Meanwhile, another new feature, Einstein Next Best Action,

cloud (such as agility and a pay-

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PR OD U CTS OF TH E YEAR as-you-go model) while also supporting distributed computing across multiple sites. HyperFlex leverages data optimization technologies and integrated fabric networking to help enable many types of workloads and offers configuration options such as all-flash, all-NVMe, hybrid and edge. Key capabilities include comprehensive management via the Cisco Intersight platform, while recent updates have included the launch of the HyperFlex Application Platform.The platform enhances the combination of HyperFlex systems with Kubernetes container orchestration, addressing the issue of how to provide persistent storage to containers.

Finalist: Dell EMC PowerEdge XE2420 Finalist: IBM Bare Metal Servers Finalist: Lenovo ThinkSystem SR860/SR850 V2 Finalist: Supermicro Nvidia A100 GPU-Powered Systems

INTERNET OF THINGS SCALE COMPUTING HE150 WINNER: OVERALL

Last December, Scale Com-

Subcategory Winner—Technology: HPE SimpliVity

puting launched its HE150

Finalist: Dell Technologies VxRail Finalist: Nutanix HCI Finalist: Scale Computing HC3

ture offering as a way to pro-

hyperconverged infrastrucvide the benefits of its HC3 virtualization platform but in a compact form factor and with high availability for use in edge environments. The HE150, which offers

INDUSTRY-STANDARD SERVERS

all-flash, NVMe storage-based compute, does not require a server

HPE PROLIANT MICROSERVER GEN10 PLUS

ter recovery and integrated data protection capabilities as well

closet or rack and takes up about the same amount of space as a stack of three smartphones. The appliance leverages Intel NUC mini PCs rather than traditional 1U servers, and includes disasas rolling upgrades and high-availability clustering. The HE150

WINNER: OVERALL

ultimately provides improved availability and power efficiency

With the HPE ProLiant

compared with 1U servers in edge environments, making it an

MicroServer Gen10 Plus,

ideal offering for smaller workload requirements at the edge.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise has

combined

powerful

performance, security and management capabilities for partners—all in a compact and lightweight form factor. The server offering has been designed to meet the needs of small and midsize businesses—and the channel partners that serve them—even though it boasts technologies that are fundamentally enterprise-grade. The

Subcategory Winner—Revenue and Profit: Nvidia Jetson Xavier NX Finalist: APC by Schneider Electric 6U Wall Mount EcoStruxure Micro Data Center Finalist: AWS Snowcone Finalist: Eaton MiniRaQ

textbook and a weight of just 10 pounds, making it about one-

MULTIFUNCTION PRINTERS

third of the size of existing server offerings in the market. But

XEROX ALTALINK C8170

HPE ProLiant MicroServer Gen10 Plus has a size similar to a

it still can offer up to twice the performance of its predecessor

WINNER: OVERALL

server, with options for Intel Xeon E processors or less expensive

Part of its new AltaLink C8100

Pentium chips. On security, for the first time on a ProLiant

series of multifunction print-

MicroServer, the offering includes HPE’s silicon root of trust

ers (MFPs), Xerox’s AltaLink

technology that protects the system down to the firmware. And

C8170 enhances productivity

in terms of management, HPE’s InfoSight for Servers—an AI-

with the ability to use an array

powered management tool that provides predictive analytics—

of on-device apps and with ad-

is made available for the first time to SMBs with the offering.

vanced capabilities such as ul-

Meanwhile, the ProLiant MicroServer Gen10 Plus comes

trafast scanning. The color MFP enables scanning documents at up

equipped with remote management capabilities via HPE’s

to 270 images per minute, with print speeds of up to 70 pages per

Integrated Lights Out (iLO) technology for the first time.

minute. With the inclusion of Xerox’s ConnectKey app interface,

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ADVERTISEMENT

TOP

100

Executives Partner Program Flexibility Boosts Hitachi Vantara Success Q. What would you say to partners about why they should partner with Hitachi Vantara?

A. Our Hitachi Vantara partner business continues to see strong growth year over year.

Why? Because partners are central to the way we innovate, solve new and emerging customer problems, penetrate new accounts, offer robust customer support, and add skills and offerings.

We continue to strategically expand our partner ecosystem across the globe to add new expertise, capabilities, solutions and services while protecting our under-distributed ecosystem model. Increasingly, our partner engagements are flexible, offering our partners choice in how and where they want to engage, but also predictable and profitable.

We want our partners to be successful and impactful – via differentiated offerings and a rich, stackable incentive structure to enable greater total margins. We offer a range of enablement resources, tools and systems, marketing support, investment funds and more to support the business objectives of our partners.

Q. We hear you have made significant changes around ease of doing business. Can you tell us how you tackled that and why?

A. Making it easier for our partners to do business with us has been one of our primary

objectives. We first needed to understand where the partner pain points were. Then, we began to tackle them.

We have inserted choice and flexibility into the partner engagement model around how partners want to engage with us. We have exponentially sped up deal-pricing guidance and automated deal-approval workflows. We have massively streamlined the partner onboarding process.

We have rolled out new tools and systems for technical support, sandbox and online labs, midrange storage workflow recommendations, a marketing hub with pre-populated campaigns, and flexible consumption models that give both our partners and customers flexibility. And, we’re not done yet.

Kimberly King

”

VP, Global Strategic Partners & Alliances

We want our partners to be successful and impactful – via differentiated offerings and a rich, stackable incentive structure to enable greater total margins.

”

Q. What is it like for you as a female VP in a male-dominated industry?

A. I don’t look at my work from a male or female perspective. Everyone should have the

opportunity to earn their seat at the table. I’m lucky to have worked for organizations, like Hitachi Vantara, who have given me opportunities because I have been the right person for the role based on my track record and contributions, regardless of my gender. That said, I know that my experience has not been everyone’s experience. I sincerely hope that our industry does more to provide opportunities to people of all backgrounds to have a voice at the table.

Hitachi Vantara is committed to driving mutual success, built on a predictable, profitable, and pioneering partner experience. Learn more about partnering with Hitachi Vantara. www.hitachivantara.com/partners

CRN_Dec2020_Top100Execs_HItachi_12-14-2020.indd 1

12/15/20 3:48 PM

PR OD U CTS OF TH E YEAR the AltaLink C8170 can access cloud services such as Microsoft Office 365, Dropbox and Google Drive, as well as numerous other apps. Xerox’s own apps, meanwhile, provide unique functionality such as translating copy into more than 50 languages (with the Xerox Translate and Print app); turning handwritten notes into digital (with the Xerox Note Converter app); and converting hard copy to audio (using the Xerox Audio Documents app).

ubcategory Winner—Technology (tied with Xerox): S HP LaserJet Enterprise MFP M635h Finalist: Canon ImageRunner Advance DX C3730i Finalist: Epson WorkForce Pro WF-C879R Finalist: Lexmark MC3426adw

NETWORKING EXTREME NETWORKS EXTREMECLOUD IQ WINNER: OVERALL

PC: DESKTOP COMPUTERS LENOVO THINKCENTRE M75N WINNER: OVERALL

With many workers continuing to operate out of a home environment, workspace is at a premium. Lenovo is seeking to address the issue with its ThinkCentre M75n, a “nano”-sized PC the company says is the smallest desktop in its ThinkCentre lineup—with a volume of just 21 cubic inches and a weight of 1.1 pounds. The compact ThinkCentre M75n doesn’t compromise on performance and connectivity, however, with the desktop featuring AMD Ryzen Pro 3000 processors and a range of ports (including both USB-C and USB-A). Mounting the desktop behind a monitor or under a tabletop is also an option with compatible accessories, saving even more desk space.

Enhanced insight, visibility and control—as well as new automation capabilities for

IT

come

administrators— together

ExtremeCloud lication

from

in IQ

the app-

Extreme

Networks. The enterprise network management app provides full visibility into every user and device in a network, as well as unified policy management across devices and sites. ExtremeCloud IQ also uses machine learning and AI to deliver actionable insight derived from the 3 PB of data that’s ingested by the company’s

ubcategory Winner—Technology, S Customer Demand: Apple iMac 2020 inalist: Acer Aspire C 24 AIO F Finalist: Dell OptiPlex 7780 AIO Finalist: HP EliteOne 800 AIO G6

PC: NOTEBOOKS LENOVO THINKPAD X1 CARBON, EIGHTH GENERATION

cloud instances each day. In addition, the new Co-Pilot feature

WINNER: OVERALL

provides automation capabilities that dramatically reduce the

As Lenovo’s flagship Think-

amount of context-gathering needed by IT administrators for

Pad, the latest X1 Carbon

handling support calls.

gets some notable upgrades that business users will

ubcategory Winner—Technology S Cisco Meraki MS390

appreciate. A new display

Finalist: CommScope Ruckus Analytics Finalist: HPE Aruba ESP Finalist: Juniper Networks AP63

Guard integrated privacy

option offers the Privacy screen and high brightness, up to 500 nits, along with a touch screen. The eighth-generation X1 Carbon also offers an enhanced keyboard, with the inclusion of keys for unified communications, and features keys that are comfortable and deep for a notebook that only measures 0.58 of an inch thick. But the most stunning quality remains its portability, with the notebook weighing in at just 2.4 pounds. That makes the 14-inch X1 Carbon notably lighter even than other top-level notebooks that have smaller display sizes.

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Subcategory Winner—Customer Demand: Apple MacBook Pro 2020 Finalist: Dell Latitude 9510 2-in-1 Finalist: Dynabook Portégé X30L Finalist: HP Elite Dragonfly Finalist: Microsoft Surface Book 3

POWER PROTECTION AND MANAGEMENT

with four and eight sockets. The new processors bring performance gains over Intel’s second-generation Xeon Scalable lineup and introduce an additional instruction set for built-in AI acceleration, which can boost training performance 1.93 times and inference performance 1.9 times when performing single-precision floating point math. The third-generation Xeon Scalable processors feature up to 28 cores, up to 3.1GHz in base frequency, up to 4.3GHz in single-core turbo frequency and up to six channels of DDR4-3200 memory with ECC support. They also support Intel’s new Optane Persistent Memory 200 Series, which can provide more than 225 times faster access to data than a mainstream NAND SSD.

EATON PREDICTPULSE

Subcategory Winner—Customer Demand: AMD EPYC, Second Generation

With the redesign of Predict-

Finalist: AWS Graviton2 (Arm) Finalist: Nvidia A100 Tensor Core GPU

WINNER: OVERALL

Pulse—Eaton’s remote management service for power infrastructure—a number of new features have been added to complement key existing capabilities of the service, such as providing analytics and recom-

PUBLIC CLOUD MICROSOFT AZURE

mendations for proactive management of infrastructure. Major up-

WINNER: OVERALL

grades for the redesigned PredictPulse service include an improved

Microsoft’s Azure public

user experience on mobile devices and the web, a new notification

cloud is thriving because the

system and enhanced communications about device and location

company truly understands

performance. Leveraging customer input, the rebuilt PredictPulse

how businesses want to use

service offers a new mobile portal interface to better enable data

it, said Kelly Yeh, president of

center and IT managers to monitor power infrastructure health and

Phalanx Technology Group.

respond to incidents while off-site. The newly added PulseScore

“That’s what I always say is the best thing about Microsoft,” Yeh

feature, meanwhile, provides communications about the health of a

said. “We do both Azure and AWS. With AWS, we only use it for

customer’s uninterruptible power supply system overall.

our customers that are e-commerce sites or websites. The Microsoft Azure environment is far superior if you’re trying to move your on-

Subcategory Winner—Technology: APC by Schneider Electric Monitoring and Dispatch Services

prem server farm. So unless you’re heavily invested in Linux servers

Finalist: CyberPower CP1500PFCLCD Finalist: Tripp Lite EdgeReady Finalist: Vertiv Liebert PSI5

ranked Azure No. 1 in Technology and Customer Demand and No.

PROCESSORS INTEL XEON SCALABLE, THIRD GENERATION

on-prem, of course you’re going to spin it up in Microsoft’s Azure.

It’s just so much easier to manage than AWS.” Solution providers 2 in Revenue and Profit.

Subcategory Winner—Revenue and Profit: Oracle Cloud Finalist: Amazon Web Services Finalist: Google Cloud Finalist: IBM Cloud

WINNER: OVERALL

With Intel’s first batch of thirdgeneration Xeon Scalable processors, the chipmaker is targeting enhanced performance—including for dataintensive AI workloads—in servers

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PR OD U CTS OF TH E YEAR

SD-WAN VMWARE SD-WAN BY VELOCLOUD WINNER: OVERALL

As SD-WAN increasingly serves as a key

Subcategory Winner—Technology: Palo Alto Networks Prisma Finalist: Check Point CloudGuard Finalist: McAfee MVision Cloud Finalist: WatchGuard Cloud Platform

part of the broader area known as Secure Access Service Edge (SASE), VMware SDWAN by VeloCloud has been advancing its offering to deliver a powerful SASE platform for businesses. The platform brings together VMware’s hyperscale SD-WAN architecture, which is based on thousands of VMware SD-WAN Cloud Gateways, with a wide network of cloud services. The combination delivers an ideal user experience through identifying each client and optimizing application traffic across the cloud. VMware SD-WAN by VeloCloud also provides robust, integrated security with its SASE platform, including key capabilities such as zero-trust network access, cloud access security broker and secure web gateway. Ultimately,VMware SD-WAN by VeloCloud provides all users and devices with a secure and consistent experience, even across a distributed workforce.

SECURITY: EMAIL BARRACUDA ESSENTIALS WINNER: OVERALL

As a comprehensive offering for Microsoft Office 365 email protection, Barracuda Essentials provides everything from security, to backup and archiving, to cloud-based management. In security, Barracuda Essentials offers advanced threat protection, which scans attachments and blocks those that are suspicious; anti-phishing capabilities; malware protection; AI-driven defense against spear phishing and cyberfraud; and numerous other email protection features. Barracuda

Subcategory Winner—Revenue and Profit: Palo Alto Networks CloudGenix SD-WAN

Essentials also goes beyond security by addressing the need for

Finalist: Aryaka SmartServices Finalist: Cisco SD-WAN Finalist: Silver Peak Unity EdgeConnect Finalist: Versa Networks Secure SD-WAN

policies); compliance and e-discovery features; backup, recovery

SECURITY: CLOUD CISCO SECUREX WINNER: OVERALL

With the cloud-native SecureX platform, Cisco is dramatically enhancing security visibility with powerful analytics and automation—ultimately accelerating threat detection and response. SecureX is capable of analyzing traffic from the public cloud, as well as from networking infrastructure and private data centers, to rapidly identify the targets of cyberattacks and enable remediation. SecureX provides broad visibility of security environments at a customer, while deploying analytics to improve the detection of policy violations and unknown threats.

The offering also helps to make operations more efficient through the automation of typical security workflows, such as threat investigation and remediation.

email archiving capabilities (which enable granular retention and business continuity capabilities; and email management via a centralized cloud platform for managing configuration and policies.

Finalist: Cisco Cloud Mailbox Defense Finalist: Mimecast Email Security Finalist: Proofpoint BEC/EAC Integrated Solution Finalist: Zix Secure Modern Workplace

SECURITY: ENDPOINT PROTECTION CROWDSTRIKE ENDPOINT RECOVERY SERVICES WINNER: OVERALL For its Endpoint Recovery Services offering, CrowdStrike brings together its Falcon endpoint protection platform with threat intelligence and response to facilitate a rapid recovery after an intrusion. Incident recovery is enabled with the help of capabilities such as comprehensive endpoint visibility, via CrowdStrike’s Threat Graph, and analysis from experienced security professionals. The services

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How To

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by Seeing the Whole Story

Nextiva Delivers Cloud Communication Solutions That Help Partners Win Q. How has Nextiva supported businesses throughout 2020?

A. We looked to Nextiva’s three core values - caring, simplicity and forward-thinking – to

help us best support our partners and customers during these unprecedented times.

Caring: Nextiva helped businesses seamlessly transition to a remote work environment and maintain their Nextiva service, regardless of circumstance. We ensured businesses never lost communication with their teams or customers.

Simplicity: We strengthened our partner support by adding partner development managers, field marketing managers and solutions engineers to our existing channel sales managers, to ensure our partners had one localized team to rely on.

Forward-thinking: Our product team has worked tirelessly to bring our new NextOS platform to market. NextOS removes communication silos by uniting all teams on one platform, giving businesses visibility into all internal and external communication channels.

At Nextiva, our focus is providing the communication solutions necessary for businesses to prevail.

Q. How does Nextiva separate itself from the competition in the crowded business communications marketplace?

A. Nextiva’s powerful and unique NextOS platform combines a true communication

platform with business applications, intelligence and automation in an intuitive interface that every business can use to better communicate with their customers and teams. Our solutions are delivered on the most reliable network in the industry, with over 1 billion conversations each year. We are committed to being the easiest company to do business with by focusing on providing powerful tools with a simplified experience.

Q. Why should solution providers partner with Nextiva when it comes to offering business communications solutions?

A. True partnership starts with people. Nextiva offers partners comprehensive pre- and

post-sale support through regional channel sales, support, engineering, and marketing teams. We trademarked the term ‘Amazing Service’, as supporting both our partners and customers is our #1 priority. It’s important that our partners trust our team of people and can count on us through it all. Our goal is to make their jobs easier.

Through our NeXus partner program, Nextiva provides partners a robust set of pre- and post-sale resources. Rated 5-stars by CRN, NeXus offers dedicated channel sales and marketing support, gamified training and certifications, our powerful CoNEXtion partner-demand suite, lucrative promotions and SPIFFs, and more.

Eric Martorano

Chief Revenue Officer

”

Nextiva’s solutions are delivered on the most reliable network in the industry, with over 1 billion conversations each year. Our NextOS communication platform combines enterprisegrade voice with business applications, intelligence and automation in an intuitive interface that every business can use.

”

We continue to grow our channel teams, continue enhancing the programs and benefits of NeXus, and most importantly, continue to make it easy for you to partner with us in growing your business.

We’re here to help your business succeed and win at the communications game. It’s time to build an Amazing Partnership with Nextiva.

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PR OD U CTS OF TH E YEAR do not require on-site visits and installations to deploy the Falcon

triple-camera system, including an ultrawide camera for the first

platform, and also spare organizations from needing to reimage or

time. On battery life, the iPhone 11 Pro Max received a boost of

reissue devices. CrowdStrike’s Endpoint Recovery Services provide

up to five hours longer usage than its predecessor, the iPhone XS

immediate disruption of attacks and full remediation—accelerating

Max. And on performance, the six-core A13 Bionic chip in the

the restoring of operations and avoiding extensive downtime.

iPhone 11 Pro Max has enabled speeds that are only outpaced in the smartphone world by its successor iPhone 12 models that

Finalist: Kaspersky Endpoint Security Cloud Finalist: McAfee MVision EDR Finalist: Sophos Intercept X Finalist: VMware Carbon Black Finalist: Webroot Business Endpoint Protection

SECURITY: NETWORK

launched in October.

Subcategory Winner—Revenue and Profit: Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra Finalist: Google Pixel 4 Finalist: Motorola Edge Plus Finalist: OnePlus 8 Pro

its seventh-generation network

STORAGE: ENTERPRISE EXTERNAL STORAGE HARDWARE

processor—the NP7—which

HPE PRIMERA 600

FORTINET FORTIGATE 1800F WINNER: OVERALL

Fortinet is accelerating data center security performance with

made its first appearance in

WINNER: OVERALL

the company’s FortiGate 1800

With the latest update to its Primera 600 storage system, Hewlett Packard Enterprise is enabling new levels of performance and agility for partners and customers—who can now spend less time managing and tuning mission-critical storage infrastructure. In the past, storage administrators would have had to act on the AI-driven recommendations of the system, but that’s changed with the recent Primera 600 enhancements. Now, thanks to a major upgrade to the InfoSight AI capabilities, the system can take dynamic action to automatically resolve storage management issues. HPE Primera thus goes beyond predictive analytics to take direct actions that optimize resource utilization, dramatically improving storage performance for customers. Ultimately, Primera’s ability to automatically implement solutions to storage issues is providing a critical differentiator for HPE partners to become more strategic with their customers.

firewall earlier this year. The custom-designed NP7 is able to speed up the Fortinet 1800F to the point where it’s able to sit at the core of the network and support VXLAN network virtualization technology.

The processor can thus serve as the building block for hyperscale applications, delivering performance and fast connections across the board. In fact, the FortiGate 1800 firewall with NP7 technology is 14 times faster than the industry average for products at a similar price point, according to Fortinet. The NP7 debuted with the launch of the midrange FortiGate 1800 in February and is now powering several additional FortiGate firewalls as well.

Finalist: Check Point Fast Track Network Security Finalist: Palo Alto Networks CN-Series Finalist: SonicWall TZ Firewall Series Finalist: Sophos XG Firewall 18

SMARTPHONES

Subcategory Winner—Technology, Customer Demand: Dell EMC PowerStore 9000

APPLE iPHONE 11 PRO MAX

Finalist: IBM FlashSystem 9200 Finalist: NetApp AFF A800 Finalist: Pure Storage FlashArray//X90

WINNER: OVERALL As the top-tier model in Apple’s iPhone 11 lineup, the iPhone 11 Pro Max featured the largest display in the lineup at 6.5 inches along with vibrant OLED display technology. A major update on the smartphone’s rear camera setup brought the device to a

22

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STORAGE: SMB EXTERNAL STORAGE HARDWARE DELL EMC POWERSTORE 1000T WINNER: OVERALL Though it’s the base model in Dell EMC’s PowerStore offering, the PowerStore 1000T includes the same scale-up, scale-out architecture of the higher-tier models. The all-flash PowerStore offering leverages machine learning and automation technologies to provide a programmable infrastructure, improving everything from application development to deployment. The system’s machine-learning engine delivers optimized performance and reduced cost through automation of processes such as initial volume placement and load balancing. The PowerStore 1000T differs from higher-tier models in offering Intel Xeon Scalable processors with fewer cores per array (32) and a lower clock speed (1.8GHz), as well as less memory per appliance (384 GB). Other key components of the Dell EMC PowerStore offering include support for orchestration frameworks such as Kubernetes and Ansible, as well as VMware integration.

Finalist: IBM FlashSystem 5000 Finalist: HPE Nimble Storage HF20 Finalist: Lenovo ThinkSystem DE6000F Finalist: NetApp AFF C190

2020

Products of the

Year

Scan here to see the full 2020 Products of the Year database on CRN.com

DECEMBER 2020

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T E C H I N N O VAT O R S

Trailblazers Accelerate Pace Of Digital Transformation In a year of unheard-of change and uncertainty, one thing has actually stayed pretty consistent: the acceleration of digital transformation. The pace already was speeding up prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, but the crisis has taken digital transformation efforts to heights that few would have thought achievable in such a short time. Powering this shift are innovative vendors in sectors across the IT industry—and the solution provider partners who bring these differentiated products and services to customers.

What counts as innovation in a year when the home environment has become the office and the classroom for countless people across North America? While most tech companies claim to have differentiated products that are relevant in the current crisis, not all truly deliver—or don’t do so in a way that creates opportunities for partners. To help with recognizing true channel-friendly innovation, the 2020 CRN Tech Innovator Awards honor products and services released between September 2019 and September 2020 that offer both major advances in technology and partner growth opportunities—across areas including cloud, security, software, infrastructure and devices. The awards this year showcase trailblazing vendors in 48 categories, along with two Editor’s Choice awards for deserving products that didn’t fit elsewhere. The winners and finalists were chosen by CRN staff from among 388 applicants.

The delivery of truly differentiated offerings that create opportunities for partners during this unprecedented period is the crowning achievement of our Tech Innovator winners and finalists for 2020. On the following pages, we present the highlights of each of our winner’s offerings. For more on this year’s finalists, go to www.crn.com.

By Kyle Alspach

Scan here to see the full Tech Innovators database on CRN.com

3-D PRINTERS

BIG DATA PLATFORMS

Winner: Markforged X7

Winner: Snowflake Cloud Data Platform

The fl agship industrial 3-D printer from Markforged, the X7, uses dual-nozzle printing technology and a laser micrometer to lay continuous fibers with high accuracy and print quality. Materials available with the X7 include carbon fiber, Kevlar and fiberglass, and the 3-D parts printed with the system are ideal for verticals such as automotive and aerospace. Recent enhancements to the Markforged X7 include the addition of Turbo Print capabilities, which double the printing speed without reducing quality. Bringing Turbo Print to the X7 has enabled expedited development schedules for manufacturers and, ultimately, a quicker time to market.

Snowflake has expanded to become a broad-based cloud data platform provider, with services that touch on data engineering and data science tasks, data lake management and data sharing. The Snowflake Cloud Data Platform provides a centralized place for deriving business insight from big data via a data warehouse that was created for the cloud along with secure access to an entire network of data and a core architecture to support versatile data workloads. Recent updates to the Snowflake Cloud Data Platform include the new Snowsight analyst experience for executing queries and commands against Snowflake; Dynamic Data Masking to enable different views of data based on user permissions; and enhanced data protection through integration with third-party tokenization offerings.

Finalist: Formlabs Form 3B

24

Finalists: Cloudera Data Platform Couchbase Cloud Domino Data Science Platform

DECEMBER 2020

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BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE AND ANALYTICS

CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURE AS A SERVICE

Winner: Google Looker 7

Winner: HPE GreenLake Cloud Services

Looker Data Sciences, now a part of Google Cloud, debuted its Looker 7 business analytics platform in November 2019, offering new features and enhancements that integrate analytical insight with day-to-day tools and workflows. Looker 7 makes it easier to apply analytical insight and curated data from Looker to other applications, including through a closed-loop integration with the Slack collaboration application as well as third-party integration with applications such as Box, Dropbox and Google Drive. In August, an update to Looker 7 added support for the complete Google Marketing Platform, upgrades for application builders and the general availability of Looker’s content marketplace.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise is out to deliver a cloud experience for applications and data across the hybrid estate with its GreenLake Cloud Services— bringing pay-per-use, self-service and scalability regardless of whether apps and data are on-premises, in colocation or at the edge. The offering covers everything from container management, storage and virtual machines to networking, compute and data protection while also providing preintegrated building blocks as well as a choice of configurations for its services. Included as part of the offering is HPE’s GreenLake Central, a portal that lets partners and customers centrally manage their hybrid environments while also doing complex cost, compliance and security analysis. HPE’s GreenLake Cloud Services ultimately enable—and accelerate—the modernization of apps and data wherever they are found.

Finalists: Cisco AppDynamics Juniper Mist Premium Analytics Service Promethium Data Navigation System

CLOUD DATA PROTECTION/ DISASTER RECOVERY Winner: Veeam Availability Suite v10 With the much-anticipated version 10 of its flagship Availability Suite, Veeam has doubled down on automation and simplification while enhancing its already robust data protection and recovery capabilities.

Veeam Availability Suite v10 brings more than 150 enhancements and new features including simplified protection via network-attached storage backup; automation of disaster recovery from data center outages (with the new Multi-VM Instant Recovery feature); improved ransomware protection through an updated S3 object storage integration, paired with immutable backups; and additional capabilities and support for platforms including HPE Primera and HPE StoreOnce, Nutanix AHV, Linux and MySQL.

Finalists: Commvault-Metallic Backup and Recovery Solution Datto SaaS Protection 2.5 IBM Spectrum Protect Plus StorageCraft ShadowXafe Veritas NetBackup 8.3

Finalist: AWS Outposts

CLOUD MIGRATION Winner: Nutanix Clusters On AWS With the recent debut of its Nutanix Clusters on AWS, Nutanix brings its hybrid cloud infrastructure to Amazon Web Services, enabling accelerated digital transformation using a streamlined offering for moving applications and data into the cloud. Nutanix Clusters on AWS offers a unified cloud environment for creating, managing and orchestrating infrastructure, while enabling the move of legacy applications to the cloud without the need for rearchitecting the apps. Key elements include integration with the networking layer in AWS, as well as cost reduction through eliminating the need for every cloud environment to be managed by a different team.

Finalists: BitTitan MigrationWiz Quest Software-Quest On Demand Migration

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T E C H I N N O VAT O R S CLOUD TOOLS AND MANAGEMENT

CONTACT CENTER APPS

Winner: VMware CloudHealth

Winner: Cisco Webex Contact Center

With powerful functionality for management and operation of multi-cloud environments, VMware’s CloudHealth enables optimized scaling of cloud infrastructure along with improved decision-making around everything from security to cost management. CloudHealth supports a broad set of environments including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud and Oracle Cloud as well as VMware, containers and bare-metal infrastructure. Partner-friendly enhancements have included the introduction of CloudHealth Savings Plan Recommendations, which allow MSPs to offer a comparison of all options for AWS Savings Plans. CloudHealth thus enables MSPs to guide a customer to the ideal Savings Plan choice based on its specific needs.

With advanced capabilities leveraging AI and machine learning, the Cisco Webex Contact Center enables enhanced customer experiences through greater speed and personalization. AI-driven capabilities include virtual agents (both voice and chat); real-time suggestions and guidance for agents; and call transcriptions and summaries. Integrated with enterprise-class calling, workforce optimization and data analytics, Cisco Webex Contact Center also offers interoperability with other Cisco products and cloud services via its multitenant cloud foundation. Meanwhile, partners and customers can develop customized features for Webex Contact Center, including AI features, through the availability of a set of APIs.

Finalists: Cisco Intersight CloudBolt Cloud Management Platform v9 HashiCorp Terraform Cloud Volterra VoltStack

Finalists: Avaya AI Virtual Agent CoreDial CoreNexa WFM Edify Huddle Eleveo Workforce Management

COLLABORATION APPS/ UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS

CONTAINER TECHNOLOGY

Winner: Intermedia Unite

Hewlett Packard Enterprise recently unveiled Ezmeral as its new open-source, cloudnative Kubernetes container software. Ezmeral provides the Infrastructure-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service offerings for partners and customers to build a new generation of intelligent applications that take advantage of the platform’s robust AI and machine-learning capabilities. Major differentiators include Ezmeral’s ability to provide persistent storage through the MapR file system and the AI capabilities of HPE BlueData.

That software is designed to run both stateful and stateless workloads, allowing HPE to provide the same cloud experience in a cloud-native or on-premises workload in the data center or in real time at the edge.

While collaboration and unified communications applications have boomed in 2020, the Intermedia Unite platform stands out by putting the needs of SMBs at the forefront and by integrating partner feedback into new updates.

Intermedia Unite, which brings together a PBX phone system with chat, videoconferencing, file sharing and backup, provides a Unified-Communications-as-a-Service offering with simplified management capabilities and strong reliability, ideal for SMBs and the solution providers who serve them. And in response to partner input, Intermedia recently brought Contact Center as a Service to Unite as an integrated feature for the platform. The integration has added call handling and routing features that are geared toward small businesses without the complexity of contact center offerings meant for larger customers.

Finalists: 8x8 Voice for Microsoft Teams Cisco Webex Nextiva Cospace RingCentral Video Zoom Phone 26

Winner: HPE Ezmeral

Finalists: Diamanti Spektra 3.0 Red Hat OpenShift 4 SentinelOne Workloads Snyk Container

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DATA CENTER INFRASTRUCTURE Winner: Microsoft Azure Stack HCI Designed for customers that want to run virtualized applications on hyperconverged infrastructure, Microsoft’s Azure Stack HCI includes the company’s Hyper-V hypervisor, Storage Spaces Direct for storage virtualization and Azure Monitor to get a global view of system health. Customers can utilize Azure Monitor for containers to better understand the performance and health of clusters from infrastructure to application. Recent Azure Stack HCI enhancements include improved manageability through Windows Admin Center; integration with improved security; and day one support for Samsung’s Z-SSD, Intel Optane, AMD’s EPYC and Intel’s Xeon Scalable processors. Notably, Microsoft offers Azure Stack HCI on a variety of hardware from vendors including Asus, Cisco, Dell EMC, HPE, Lenovo and Western Digital.

Finalists: Cyxtera Enterprise Bare Metal HPE Nimble Storage dHCI Nutanix Remote IT Infrastructure Operations Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8

DATA MANAGEMENT Winner: Commvault Hyperscale X With its new HyperScale X appliance, Commvault delivers a simple, flexible data management offering for all workloads including containers, virtual machines and databases. HyperScale X is a scale-out appliance that enables numerous use cases, starting with its deployment as a storage appliance optimized for Commvault-focused workloads— particularly for Kubernetes containers. Importantly, HyperScale X provides new policy capabilities and integration specific to Kubernetes—enabling Kubernetes containers to move between on-premises environments or between multiple clouds—while also offering disaster recovery and high availability.

DISPLAY: COLLABORATION/ SIGNAGE Winner: Samsung Electronics America Pro TV Bringing together high-resolution display quality with lengthy operating time and simplified setup, Samsung Electronics America’s Pro TV is optimal for the needs of small businesses.

Along with offering a range of display sizes of between 43 and 75 inches, Samsung’s Pro TV also can be customized with content that’s controlled from a mobile device, using the Samsung Business TV app. The app enables easy setup for the display, which features UHD resolution and vibrant picture quality. And when it comes to operating time, Samsung’s Pro TV supports extended usage of up to 16 hours a day, seven days a week.

Finalists: Sharp Electronics Windows Collaboration Display Tripp Lite Mobile Interactive Display

DISPLAY: MONITOR Winner: HP S430c Curved Ultrawide Monitor For power users seeking to take their productivity to the next level, HP Inc. offers its S430c Curved Ultrawide Monitor, featuring a huge 43.4-inch FHD screen that provides enhanced usability and aesthetics with its curved design. A number of additional features offer further improvement to the user experience, including connectivity to a PC with a single USB-C to USB-C cable; the ability to use the monitor either as two displays (with drag-and-drop functionality between the two) or as a single unified display; HP’s Device Bridge feature, which enables multitasking between connected macOS and Windows devices simultaneously; and a pop-up webcam that supports Windows Hello facial recognition for login.

Finalist: ViewSonic VG1655 Portable Monitor

Finalists: BigID Data Intelligence Platform HYCU Protégé Igneous DataFlow Information Builders Omni-Gen Komprise Intelligent Data Management for Multi-Cloud DECEMBER 2020

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T E C H I N N O VAT O R S EDGE INFRASTRUCTURE

IT INFRASTRUCTURE MONITORING

Winner: Scale Computing HE150

Winner: LogicMonitor

With its HE150, Scale Computing provides a fully functional hyperconverged infrastructure offering aimed at serving smaller workload requirements. The HE150 is a compact-size, all-flash, NVMe storage-based compute appliance that can provide improved availability and power efficiency compared with 1U server offerings in edge environments. Notably, Scale Computing is leveraging Intel NUC mini PCs for the HE150 instead of traditional 1U servers. Key features for MSPs include highly available virtual machines that can be created in minutes; no single point of failure; multisite management; and self-healing machine intelligence. The HE150 also works seamlessly with Scale Computing’s HC3 virtualization platform.

In a series of recent enhancements to its infrastructure monitoring platform for enterprises and MSPs, LogicMonitor has rolled out new AIOps capabilities to predict—and ultimately prevent—IT outages before they happen. Debuted last December, the AIOps early warning system received a major update in July that added support for rate of change and seasonality in its dynamic thresholds functionality. The update enables the LogicMonitor software to detect patterns and anomalies in performance (with the seasonality support) as well as detect anomalies within the rate that the metric values are changing at.

Finalists: APC by Schneider Electric-6U Wall Mount EcoStruxure Micro Data Center Eaton MiniRaQ HPE Aruba ESP Vertiv Liebert PSI5

IT/APPLICATION AUTOMATION Winner: GitLab 13.0 Through providing a single application for the entirety of the DevOps life cycle, GitLab eliminates the need for thirdparty solutions and manual integration—dramatically reducing cycle time while lowering development costs. Earlier this year, GitLab rolled out its first formal channel program to enable partners to bring its DevOps platform to more customers while also complementing the platform with their own services, such as managed DevOps. For the GitLab 13.0 release, security and compliance updates include Responsible Disclosure (enabling authorized users to request Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures information from GitLab); Standalone Vulnerabilities (which rearchitects management of vulnerabilities); and security scanning (including through offering Static Application Security Testing for the .Net Framework).

Finalists: Moogsoft Observability Cloud Puppet 2019.8 Refactr Platform Robin Automation Platform

28

Finalists: Cisco Data Center Assurance and Insights F5 Networks F5 Beacon New Relic One OpsRamp Platform Sinefa Endpoint Agent

LAPTOPS Winner: Dell Latitude 9510 Along with being a highly portable workhorse laptop, Dell’s Latitude 9510 stands out with a number of built-in AI capabilities. The notebook’s Intelligent Audio feature lets users configure their mic and speakers for the type of room they are in, while ExpressCharge learns how people use their PC and then adjusts policies to improve the battery life. Express Sign-In locks the notebook when users walk away and senses their proximity when they return—then automatically logs them in with Windows Hello facial recognition. On portability, the Latitude 9510 weighs just 3.3 pounds and sports a minimal-bezel design that makes it very compact for a 15-inch laptop.

Finalists: Acer Chromebook C871 Dynabook Portégé X30L HP Elite Dragonfly Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Panasonic Toughbook FZ 55

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by Seeing the Whole Story

ADT Cybersecurity Master MSSP Program Transforms Partner Offering

New Partner Program Transforms ADT/Channel Relationships Q. Was there a partner program previous to the ADT Cybersecurity Master MSSP Program? If not, what was the incentive for partners to work with ADT?

A. Candidly, prior to my arrival in June 2020, ADT Cybersecurity did not have a proper partner program or any incentive for partners to grow with us. Our partners were asking for a program so it was essential we acted quickly.

Q. What are the key components of the ADT Cybersecurity Master MSSP Program? Are there different levels/incentives for different engagement levels?

A. ADT Cybersecurity is deliberately dependent on our partners for our go-to-market strat-

egy. Our program is a straightforward and consistent three-tier system, with each having its own requirements and benefits. As partners progress from their entry-level Authorized status to Gold and Platinum, ADT Cybersecurity will unlock incremental value in the form of technical training, sales enablement, field resources, and proposal-based market development funds (MDF).

Q. Now that you’re launching/improving the ADT Cybersecurity Master MSSP Program, how will you continue to incorporate feedback as it moves forward?

A. As part of our inaugural partner program, we’re launching two exciting initiatives. First, we’re building out our first-ever Partner Advisory Council where select Gold and Platinum partners will meet quarterly in a third-party facilitated and objective forum. Second, we’ve made enhancements to our partner portal that’ll make it easier to interact with partners to obtain and incorporate feedback on a regular basis.

Q. What do you view as the core differentiators at ADT Cybersecurity and how do you think partners may benefit by working with ADT Cybersecurity?

A. First and foremost, ADT Cybersecurity partners have the opportunity to leverage the

highly recognized and respected ADT brand to drive strong, incremental growth and profitability from day one by becoming an MSSP with no upfront investment. Second, partners have the ability to harness the power of ADT Cybersecurity’s differentiated portfolio of managed security services. For example, ADT-IQ, which is a managed SIEM and MDR-as-aService, is a weapon of mass competitive differentiation and enables partners to dominate the markets they serve by bringing a managed SIEM solution down-market to the SMB.

Jon Kabrud

”

Director, MSP Channel Leader

We focus on accelerating mutual growth and profitability. With the potential to disrupt the security channel, we ensure partners are rewarded for the value they add. ADT Cybersecurity will continually invest in partner training, programs, tools and systems to help our partners build a managed security practice quickly and efficiently.

”

Become an ADT Cybersecurity Partner Today https://www.adt.com/cyber/partners

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T E C H I N N O VAT O R S MOBILE AND IoT MANAGEMENT

NETWORKING

Winner: Panasonic Productivity+

Winner: SonicWall TZ570, TZ670 Series

Panasonic recently debuted its Productivity+ suite of services, which can be leveraged by solution providers to help with serving the mobile computing needs of customers. As many organizations continue to run mission-critical applications on outdated platforms such as Windows CE and Windows Mobile, Productivity+ provides assistance with transitioning those crucial applications to Android—with capabilities that enable the rewriting of applications for Android.

Other services that are part of Productivity+ include capabilities for configuring Android device settings and defining user access.

Productivity+ provides crucial features to enable improved deployments of mobile devices in a variety of industries.

Along with breaking new ground in the industry as the first firewalls in a desktop form factor with multi-Gigabit interfaces, SonicWall’s TZ570 and TZ670 Series next-generation firewalls bring an array of useful features and specs for enabling secure networks. Key capabilities include support for TLS 1.3 decryption and 5G; integrated support for SD-WAN; up to 10 ports and 256 GB of storage; optional PoE and Wi-Fi; and the ability to connect up to 1.5 million devices, representing a 900 percent increase.

SonicWall’s TZ570 and TZ670 Series firewalls also feature simplified central management via a redesigned user interface on the included SonicOS 7.0 software.

Finalists: Addigy MDM Live SOTI Connect Zebra FulfillmentEdge

MSP TECHNOLOGY

Finalists: Commscope Ruckus Analytics Extreme Networks ExtremeCloud IQ VMware NSX-T 3.0 Zyxel Networks XS1930 Series

Winner: Liongard With its platform for MSPs, Liongard empowers them with deep visibility into onpremises systems and applications, network devices and cloud services. The end result is faster on-boarding times and the ability to resolve customer issues more quickly. Key features of Liongard’s platform include automated documentation of the full customer environment; powerful reporting capabilities; automated alerts; and a central location for MSPs to view comprehensive system data. The platform also stands out by continually collecting data and offering historical timelines, allowing MSPs to turn back the clock to answer key questions about what took place in the past.

Finalists: Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud Axcient AirGap Barracuda Message Bus

NETWORKING: SD-WAN Winner: Cisco SASE As Cisco continues building on its intent-based networking strategy, the company recently rolled out an offering that brings together cloud security and networking, enabling partners to move their customers toward a Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) architecture. The Cisco SASE offering features integration between Cisco’s flagship SD-WAN offering, powered by Viptela, and its cloud-based secure web gateway, Cisco Umbrella. The fully integrated SASE offering includes an SD-WAN dashboard that can be used to rapidly deploy Cisco Umbrella security across all sites and users. Partners can deliver protection against web attacks for thousands of customer sites within minutes, bringing cloud-native SD-WAN and security to workers whether they’re in the office or remote.

Finalists: Aryaka SmartServices Barracuda CloudGen WAN Fortinet Secure SD-WAN Versa Secure SD-WAN

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NETWORKING: WIRELESS Winner: CommScope Ruckus R750 CommScope’s Ruckus R750 access point is a high-performance offering for Wi-Fi 6 connectivity in dense environments. As one of the first access points to receive “Wi-Fi Certified 6” validation from the Wi-Fi Alliance, CommScope’s Ruckus R750 indoor access point provides a nearly 4X speed boost for devices compared with Wi-Fi 5. The dual-band access point is targeted at congested environments such as schools and hospitality venues and can manage up to 1,024 client connections at a time. Other key features include support for eight spatial streams (four each in 5GHz and 2.4GHz) and two wireless technologies in addition to Wi-Fi (Bluetooth Low Energy and Zigbee).

Finalists: Cisco User Defined Networks Cradlepoint E3000 Series WatchGuard AP225W Zyxel WAX650S

OFFICE PRODUCTIVITY SOFTWARE Winner: Citrix Workspace With the aim of boosting employee engagement and productivity, Citrix Systems’ Workspace software enables workers to securely access applications wherever and however they need them. Recent enhancements to Citrix Workspace have included improved integration through populating Workspace with “microapps”—integration with common cloudbased apps such as Salesforce, Concur, Microsoft applications and SAP. Using publicly available APIs for applications, the addition of microapps to Citrix Workspace enables employees to view information and take actions without needing to fully launch the application. By speeding up frequently performed tasks, microapps in Citrix Workspace allow for a more streamlined work routine.

Finalists: Acumatica 2020R1 Dropbox HelloSign IGEL OS 11 Monday.com-Monday 2.0

POWER MANAGEMENT TECHNOLOGY Winner: Eaton PredictPulse Eaton’s recent redesign of PredictPulse—its remote management service for power infrastructure—brings an improved user experience on mobile devices and the web, a new notification system and enhanced communications about device and location performance. Leveraging customer input, the rebuilt PredictPulse service offers a new mobile portal interface to better enable data center and IT managers to monitor power infrastructure health and respond to incidents while off-site. The newly added PulseScore feature, meanwhile, provides communications about the health of a customer’s uninterruptible power supply system overall. The additional features complement key PredictPulse capabilities such as providing analytics and recommendations for proactive management of power infrastructure.

Finalists: APC by Schneider Electric Monitoring and Dispatch Services CyberPower CP1500PFCLCD Server Technology PRO3X Vertiv Geist Combination Outlet C13/C19

PRINT TECHNOLOGY Winner: HP Workpath HP Inc. is enabling partners to create apps that can improve business processes—and run on HP multifunction printers—with its cloud platform and developer ecosystem, HP Workpath. The apps are intended to help businesses streamline core workflows, and HP Workpath provides partners with ways to easily create new apps as well as install existing apps onto HP MFPs. Existing app capabilities include scanning documents and saving them into a shared folder in Microsoft Teams or Google Docs, as well as using Concur to scan receipts and submit expense reports. Meanwhile, using the cloud-based HP Command Center platform, partners can rapidly equip MFP devices for using HP Workpath apps.

Finalists: Epson SureColor T5475 Lexmark Cloud Print Management

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T E C H I N N O VAT O R S PROCESSORS

SECURITY: CLOUD

Winner: AMD EPYC, Second Generation

Winner: Cisco Umbrella

With the recent expansion of AMD’s second-generation EPYC processor family, the chipmaker is delivering massive performance for key markets including hyperconverged infrastructure, high-performance computing and relational databases. AMD’s expanded second-generation, 7-nanometer EPYC lineup adds three processors that feature boost frequencies of up to 3.9GHz and L3 caches reaching 256 MB. Previously, the highest boost frequency achieved by an EPYC Rome processor was 3.4GHz. The three new processors—the 24-core EPYC 7F72, the 16-core EPYC 7F52 and eight-core EPYC 7F32—are being supported by server platforms from Dell EMC, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Supermicro.

Ultimately, the expanded second-generation EPYC lineup provides significantly improved per-core performance for some of the highest-demand enterprise workloads.

With Cisco Umbrella, the company’s cloud-based security platform, users are protected from malicious internet destinations whether they’re inside or outside their company’s network. Cisco Umbrella accomplishes this by combining offerings cutting across secure web gateway, DNS-layer security, cloud-delivered firewall and Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB). Recent enhancements to Cisco Umbrella include integration with the company’s flagship SD-WAN offering, powered by Viptela, which helps enable businesses to move toward a Secure Access Service Edge architecture. Meanwhile, during the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic, Cisco made its Umbrella offering available to new customers via a free license, while existing customers were enabled to exceed their user limit to support more remote employees.

Finalists: Intel 10th Gen Core vPro Nvidia A100 Tensor Core GPU

Finalists: Arctic Wolf Managed Cloud Monitoring Bitglass Total Cloud Security Platform Forcepoint Cloud Security Gateway Guardicore Centra Version 5 McAfee MVision Cloud for Container Security

ROBOTIC PROCESS AUTOMATION Winner: Automation Anywhere Enterprise A2019

SECURITY: DATA

The Enterprise A2019 platform from Automation Anywhere brings robotic process automation (RPA) to customers in any environment—onpremises, public cloud or hybrid—while delivering a wide array of new features for enhanced and simplified RPA. The entirely web-based platform makes it easier to create bots thanks to an improved UX, which offers capabilities such as cross-platform scripting and in-line scripting. Users can also now leverage AI solutions—including natural language processing and computer vision—from third parties, while integrating the solutions via drag and drop into automation workflows.

Plus, the Attended Automation 2.0 offering enables enhanced orchestration of work between humans and bots, accelerating and simplifying the automation of front-office tasks.

Winner: Veeam Backup For Microsoft Office 365 v4

Finalists: Kryon Full Cycle Automation-as-a-Service UiPath Hyperautomation Platform

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While Microsoft provides resilient infrastructure for Office 365, customers are responsible for protecting the critical data that sits on top of it. Veeam enables partners and customers to do just that with its Backup for Microsoft Office 365 offering. With the version 4 update, key enhancements include an improved way to keep Office 365 data in Microsoft’s Azure cloud through direct integration with Azure Blob Storage. Also added in v4 are performance upgrades for SharePoint and OneDrive for Business backups; file-level recovery of Veeam backups and native snapshots; and capabilities to restore to any environment that’s supported by Veeam, including on-premises data centers.

Finalists: Concentric Semantic Intelligence Datanchor Platform Fortanix Self Defending Key Management Service McAfee Unified Cloud Edge

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T E C H I N N O VAT O R S SECURITY: EMAIL/WEB Winner: Zix AppRiver Secure Modern Workplace Zix has combined the security and compliance offering from its 2019 acquisition of AppRiver with its own to create a single platform that safeguards digital communication tools. The Zix AppRiver Secure Modern Workplace platform is a layer that wraps around Microsoft 365, offering detection and remediation of advanced email threats, modern data privacy and archiving for improved compliance and secure collaboration for employees. Key capabilities include monitoring for compromised email accounts on a continuous basis and centralized management of customer subscriptions. Secure Modern Workplace from Zix AppRiver ultimately enables customers to confidently migrate to the cloud, minimize business risk and accelerate their transformation efforts.

Finalists: Cisco Cloud Mailbox Defense CymaticONE with VADR Mimecast Brand Exploit Protect Skout Cybersecurity Work from Home Bundle Veracode Security Labs

SECURITY: IDENTITY AND ACCESS MANAGEMENT Winner: Okta Platform Services Identity security firm Okta recently introduced its Okta Platform Services offering featuring a set of technologies at the core of its Okta Identity Cloud. The technologies that make up the offering include Okta Identity Engine, which provides authentication, authorization and registration flows that are customized and are context-based; Okta Directories, which runs the Okta Universal Directory and User Management, boosting both scalability and flexibility; Okta Integrations, which delivers access to anyone to build on top of Okta; and Okta Insights, with aggregation and analysis capabilities for Okta data, which are disseminated across key technologies.

Finalists: Centrify Privileged Access Service 20.3 Cisco Duo Device Health Application CyberArk Privileged Access Security Solution ForgeRock Identity Platform Kaseya-Passly by ID Agent

SECURITY: ENDPOINT

SECURITY: INTERNET OF THINGS

Winner: Sophos Intercept X

Winner: WatchGuard Firebox T35-R

With a focus on helping security and IT teams to rapidly respond to endpoint threats, Sophos recently debuted a major upgrade to its Intercept X offering—including an update of the company’s Endpoint Detection and Response solution within several new versions of Intercept X. The updated EDR offering includes new capabilities such as Live Discover (for pinpointing activity and answering threat hunting questions) and Live Response (which enables remote response to endpoints via a command line interface). Separately, Sophos recently launched protection capabilities for Chrome OS users against unsuitable and malicious web content, with its rebranded Intercept X for Mobile offering.

With its Firebox T35-R network security appliance, WatchGuard Technologies brings protection against threats such as malware and intrusions even in harsh environments located far beyond the data center—with features that provide ruggedization and strong performance. Main features include an IP64-rated industrial enclosure, delivering protection against splashes, dust and temperatures ranging from -40 degrees to 60 degrees Celsius; DC Power, with the ability to operate on 12v to 48v DC power; simplified, manageable and reliable siteto-site VPN connectivity; and enablement for key WatchGuard security offerings (without reduced network speeds) such as APT Blocker, DNSWatch, Threat Detection and Response, Gateway AntiVirus and Intrusion Prevention Service.

Finalists: Cybereason Defense Platform Malwarebytes Endpoint Detection and Response McAfee MVision EDR Tanium as a Service VMware Carbon Black Cloud

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Finalists: ExtraHop Reveal(x) 360 Forescout eyeSegment Microsoft-CyberX for Azure Security Center for IoT

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SECURITY: MANAGED DETECTION AND RESPONSE

SECURITY: RISK ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT

Winner: BitDefender Managed Detection and Response

Winner: FireEye Mandiant Security Validation

BitDefender recently made its Managed Detection and Response offering available to MSP partners, bringing together Bitdefender’s detection and prevention engines with the company’s 24x7 security operation in Texas as a pairing that can be leveraged by MSPs. The offering provides network traffic analysis, endpoint protection and security analytics along with threat hunting from experienced analysts. Specific capabilities include a Human Risk Analytics module, which evaluates and reports on the risk that is associated with weak passwords, misconfiguration and employees; high-risk target-monitoring services, delivering protection from threats such as whale phishing (a phishing attack targeting prominent individuals) and business email compromise for key individuals such as executives; and dark web monitoring to uncover stolen customer data and detection of previous breaches.

Finalists: Blackpoint Cyber SNAP Defense BlueVoyant Managed Detection and Response for Microsoft Defender Open Systems Managed Detection and Response

SECURITY: NETWORK Winner: Fortinet FortiOS 6.4 Fortinet debuted more than 350 new features on its FortiOS 6.4 operating system, including the addition of FortiNAC (Network Access Control) to the company’s topology map, making it easier to discover all of the IoT devices and endpoints within the Fortinet Security Fabric, as well as gain access to those systems using API technology. FortiNAC can now integrate with every single switch vendor, access point vendor and firewall vendor while providing powerful visibility.

Meanwhile, Fortinet rolled out SD-WAN enhancements around application performance criteria, a new orchestration system inside FortiManager, and more analytics, reporting and monitoring inside FortiOS as part of the 6.4 release.

Finalists: FireMon Automation Infoblox NIOS 8.5 SonicWall Network Security Services Platform 15700 WatchGuard Firebox T80 Webroot DNS Protection

With the Security Validation offering from FireEye’s Mandiant unit, the effectiveness of a customer’s security programs can be accurately measured on a daily basis—revealing a true picture of the customer’s security management technology. The Security Validation offering uses security instrumentation technology combined with threat intelligence and incident response data from the front lines. The result is that security teams are enabled to safely emulate real-world cyberattacks, delivering visibility into the performance of their security tools in protecting against a variety of attack behaviors.

Customers can thus determine which improvements to invest in first on their cyberdefenses, as well as how to effectively—and quantifiably—communicate about their security risk.

Finalists: AttackIQ Security Optimization Platform BitSight Attack Surface Analytics CyberGRX Control Framework Mapping McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention SecurityScorecard Atlas

SECURITY: SIEM/ SECURITY ANALYTICS Winner: Exabeam Cloud Platform In the security information and event management (SIEM) space, the new Exabeam Cloud Platform stands out through enabling continual improvement of the security posture within a security team. The Exabeam Cloud Platform accomplishes this by accelerating the way that teams provision and consume new content, apps and tools within security management. For security leaders, the Exabeam Cloud Platform can also speed up the implementation of new use cases in security, enabling quicker detection, investigation and response in the event of an attack. Key capabilities of the platform include user and entity behavior analytics, integration with 250 products, data graphing and cloud storage.

Finalists: Devo Security Operations Netsurion EventTracker v9.2 Perch Security-Perch SIEM Securonix SearchMore DECEMBER 2020

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T E C H I N N O VAT O R S SECURITY: THREAT INTELLIGENCE/ INCIDENT RESPONSE Winner: Cisco SecureX With its recently launched SecureX platform, Cisco delivers enhanced security visibility using powerful analytics and automation—accelerating threat detection and response.

The cloud-native platform enables broad visibility of security environments at a customer, while deploying analytics to improve the detection of policy violations and unknown threats. The offering also helps to make operations more efficient through the automation of typical security workflows, such as threat investigation and remediation. The Cisco SecureX platform has the capability to analyze data and events from more than 150 million endpoints—along with traffic from networking infrastructure, private data centers and the public cloud—to rapidly identify the targets of cyberattacks, ultimately enabling remediation measures.

Finalists: Flashpoint Compromised Credentials Monitoring Fortinet FortiAI Sophos Managed Threat Response Tenable.ot 3.7 Watchguard Threat Detection and Response

SERVERS Winner: HPE ProLiant MicroServer Gen10 Plus Hewlett Packard Enterprise recently introduced its newest MicroServer—the HPE ProLiant MicroServer Gen10 Plus— designed to meet the needs of small businesses and the solution providers that serve them. With a size similar to a textbook and a weight of just 10 pounds, the system is about one-third of the size of existing server offerings in the market and yet still manages to offer twice the performance of its predecessor server. The system can be provisioned with powerful Intel Xeon E processors, or with less expensive Pentium chips, and includes HPE’s silicon root of trust technology that protects the system down to the firmware. Meanwhile, at the request of channel partners, the ProLiant MicroServer Gen10 Plus comes equipped with Integrated Lights Out (iLO) technology that for the first time allows partners to monetize associated remote management services.

STORAGE: CLOUD Winner: NetApp Global File Cache The NetApp Global File Cache enables the consolidation of an organization’s numerous distributed file servers into a single, centralized location in the cloud. The data can then be managed and made available to users from that central location—streamlining the organization’s infrastructure, reducing cyberthreats (through shrinking potential attack vectors) and enabling a major reduction in cost. Key differentiators for NetApp’s Global File Cache include the use of technology layers such as global namespace representation and intelligent caching to provide strong performance to all users, even those in distant locations, avoiding the need for replicating and synchronizing data based on a central copy.

Finalists: Panzura CloudFS 8 Qumulo Shift for Amazon S3 Wasabi Reserved Capacity Storage

STORAGE: ENTERPRISE Winner: HPE Primera With a recent update to its Primera storage system, HPE has beefed up the embedded InfoSight AI capabilities of the system so that it can now take dynamic action to automatically resolve storage management issues. HPE Primera, which guarantees customers 100 percent uptime, has gone beyond predictive analytics to take direct actions that optimize resource utilization, dramatically improving storage performance for customers. Prior to the update, storage administrators would have to act on the AI-based recommendations of the system.

The recent Primera enhancements are enabling new levels of agility for customers, who can now spend less time managing and tuning mission-critical storage infrastructure.

Finalists: Dell EMC PowerScale IBM FlashSystem 9200 Infinidat InfiniBox Synology SA3200D Vast Data Universal Storage Version 3

Finalists: Bamboo Systems B1000N Series MemVerge Memory Machine PhoenixNAP FlexServers 36

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BEST OF BREED VIRTUAL SERIES

January 27 • 11:30 a.m. – 2:00 p.m. EST • #BOB21

Be Our Guest at the Exclusive BoB Virtual Event Series: Winter 2021 If you are a leader of one of the IT channel’s most esteemed solution provider organizations and a CRN® List company honoree — Solution Provider 500, Tech Elite 250 and Fast Growth 150 — we welcome you to join us and your executive-level vendor peers for this 2 ½-hour online event featuring: • Empowering CEO Interviews • SP 500 Solution Provider Spotlight

• Peer-to-Peer Networking • Content Gallery, including Executive Sessions

BoB CEO Interviews: Kris Hagerman CEO Sophos

Doug Yeum Head of WW Channels & Alliances Amazon Web Services

Featured Speakers:

Jim Kavanaugh CEO World Wide Technology

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Kelly Ireland CEO CB Technologies

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© 2020 The Channel Company, LLC. The Channel Company logo is a registered trademark of The Channel Company, LLC. All other trademarks and trade names are the properties of their respective owners. All rights reserved.

T E C H I N N O VAT O R S STORAGE: MIDRANGE

STORAGE: SOFTWARE-DEFINED

Winner: Dell EMC PowerStore

Winner: IBM Storage Suite For IBM Cloud Paks

With its new midrange allflash PowerStore offering, Dell EMC is meeting the challenges of continually expanding workloads using a unique scale-up, scale-out architecture that’s based on container technology.

Featuring built-in machine learning and automation, PowerStore is a programmable infrastructure that dramatically improves everything from application development to deployment. The offering includes VMware integration and support for orchestration frameworks including Ansible, VMware vRealize Orchestrator and Kubernetes. PowerStore’s machine-learning engine brings optimized performance and reduced cost through automation of processes such as initial volume placement and load balancing.

Meanwhile, improved flexibility around deployment is enabled through Dell’s new PowerStoreOS container-based architecture.

As an all-inclusive suite of software-defined storage offerings, the IBM Storage Suite for IBM Cloud Paks covers data resources for everything from file to object to block. The suite provides an out-of-thebox storage layer for simplified setup and is highly flexible with support for Kubernetes and Red Hat OpenShift along with IBM Cloud Paks. The offering also provides strong performance at any scale—and for every workload. Ultimately, the IBM Storage Suite for IBM Cloud Paks brings increased reliability, flexibility and performance while accelerating a customer’s shift to the cloud.

Finalists: Hitachi Vantara Virtual Storage Platform E990 IBM FlashSystem 7200

STORAGE: SMB Winner: Dell EMC PowerVault ME4 The Dell EMC PowerVault ME4 Series is a block storage array that delivers powerful features in a simplified, affordable offering to small and midsize businesses. The PowerVault ME4 offers easy deployment—with the ability to configure and provision the system in just 15 minutes—and numerous software capabilities such as Distributed RAID and auto-tiering. Updates to the PowerVault ME4 over its predecessor system include a 4X increase in IOPS; double the back-end connectivity; and the introduction of expanded capacity. The system is able to offer 16 TB in hard drive space with the ability to scale up to 4 PB in a 15U rack space, improving storage density by 25 percent.

Finalist: IBM FlashSystem 5000 and 5100

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Finalists: DataCore vFilO Lightbits LightOS 2.0

TABLETS Winner: Samsung Galaxy Tab Active Pro With the rugged Galaxy Tab Active Pro, Samsung is doubling down on its development of business-friendly Android devices. Updates for the Galaxy Tab Active Pro include a larger display at 10.1 inches versus 8 inches on the prior model in the series, along with expanded battery life at 16 hours compared with 11 hours previously. Another new addition is support for DeX, Samsung’s feature that lets users access an Android desktop on an external screen by plugging in their Galaxy device.

The Galaxy Tab Active Pro also offers useful features such as the ability to operate the tablet with gloves; strong durability and water resistance; and eFOTA (enterprise firmware over-the-air) management to ensure continuous security and control.

Finalist: Panasonic Toughbook FZ A3

DECEMBER 2020

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T E C H I N N O VAT O R S VIRTUAL DESKTOP INFRASTRUCTURE Winner: VMware Horizon 8 The surge in demand for virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) has only accelerated the development for leading offerings in the market, such as VMware’s Horizon. With Horizon 8, VMware has rolled out a variety of new capabilities including increased deployment options for hybrid and multicloud environments, enabling more flexibility and choice for customers. Other enhancements in VMware Horizon 8 include the introduction of Instant Clone capabilities, which enable provisioning of instant clones without a requirement for a parent virtual machine; new RESTful APIs to assist with automating capabilities such as monitoring and management; and support for unified communications and collaboration, delivering experiences that are made for Microsoft Teams, Cisco Webex and Zoom.

Finalists: Nerdio Manager for WVD NetApp Virtual Desktop Service

WORKSPACE AND COLLABORATION DEVICES Winner: Lenovo ThinkSmart View As the need for remote conferencing continues to soar, Lenovo’s ThinkSmart View serves as a dedicated device for Microsoft Teams calls, freeing up users’ PCs during meetings. The compact desktop device comes with an 8-inch touch screen, along with built-in speakers and microphones for participating in Teams videoconferencing and audio calls. Other key features of the ThinkSmart View include easy one-touch meeting launches, a mic mute button and Bluetooth connectivity. In addition, the device offers security protections such as a built-in camera shutter and device locking with a four-digit PIN when not in use.

Finalists: Dell Mobile Adapter Speakerphone-MH3021P IGEL UD3 Olea Kiosks-Irvine Temperature Screening Kiosk

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EDITOR’S CHOICE Winner: HPE GreenLake Central L a u n c h e d i n t o ge n e ra l availability earlier this year, GreenLake Central is HPE’s self-service portal that enables centralized management of hybrid environments. GreenLake Central empowers partners and customers to perform complex cost and compliance analysis—all across the HPE GreenLake pay-per-use private cloud, AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. For example, a chief security officer or chief compliance officer has the ability to ensure GDPR, PCI and HIPAA compliance across environments using GreenLake Central’s compliance metrics and remediation recommendations. Meanwhile, when it comes to enabling cost control, GreenLake Central provides aggregated cost data across environments in a single-pane-of-glass management portal.

Winner: Samsung Galaxy XCover Pro As a smartphone designed specifically for workers, Samsung’s Galaxy XCover Pro is ruggedized for usage on the go and in the fi eld with IP68 water and dust resistance, along with protection against drops and conditions such as high humidity and altitude. The device can be easily charged in a dock (without the need for cables) thanks to included support for pogo pin charging. The 6.3-inch phone has a 4,050 mAh battery that enables more than a day’s worth of usage, and the battery can also be replaced with a spare. Meanwhile, the phone’s display can be used with gloves—and the device also includes the new walkie talkie feature of Microsoft Teams, featuring programmable keys that enable the push-to-talk capabilities. ■

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2020 NEXT-GEN SOLUTION PROVIDER LEADERS

New Talent Brings New Ideas Just as the IT channel thrives on a steady stream of new, innovative technologies, so does it require a continual infusion of people with new talents and new ideas—not to mention the drive and passion—to use those technologies to develop and deliver IT solutions for their customers.

Here we present CRN’s inaugural Next-Gen Solution Provider Leaders, recognizing today’s rising star solution provider executives, directors and managers who are poised to be tomorrow’s channel leaders.

The list honors employees 40 years of age or younger who have made significant contributions to driving growth and strategic direction over the past year. It includes those who have rethought their company’s business models and processes to improve operations. Some have installed—and even built—new systems to support and automate those changes. And, perhaps most importantly, they have found new ways to better serve their customers and deliver value through ever-more-innovative IT solutions.

The achievements of those on this year’s list are all the more remarkable given that all of the honorees found themselves rapidly adjusting their business operations—even completely rethinking their business models—when the COVID-19 pandemic struck.

Solution providers pivoted to support customers’ work-fromhome employees even as they were also homebound and helped customers make unplanned digital transformations on the fly.

Here’s a look at 64 next-gen solution provider leaders in the channel, including a brief look at what they considered some of their key accomplishments.

By Rick Whiting

Danny Asnani

Alison Bartalino

Simon Beeny

Nick Bernfeld

Atul Bhagat

Principal

Financial Controller

Logicalis US

Director, Business Development

CEO

President, CEO

Bartalino has advocated for educating her finance team and cross-departmental collaboration throughout the company.

By expanding understanding of the bigger picture, the team can contribute through enhanced reporting, analytics and quality control.

Beeny has focused on expanding SSI’s portfolio of services beyond its traditional lines of business, uncovering new opportunities in its customer base and monetizing those opportunities through an expanded partner network.

He has also driven the launch of the SSI Shield security suite.

Bernfeld spurred efforts to develop new ways to work remotely in the face of the pandemic, both for his company and for customers, including expanding cybersecurity options. He also empowers employees to test new ideas and technologies.

Bhagat identified a need for better documentation in working with customers, spurring the adoption of a system that improved efficiency and changed how the company manages customer relations. He also is overseeing the rollout of a new MSSP practice.

Sofbang

Asnani led an initiative to strengthen the Sofbang brand, creating an expanded marketing team to boost awareness and improve its ability to identify, nurture and close sales opportunities. He has also led joint marketing initiatives with Oracle, Microsoft, Salesforce and Google.

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Systems Solution Inc.

IT Support RI

BASE Solutions

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2020 Next-Gen Solution Provider

LEADERS

BJ Bradley

Casey Bleeker

William Bluford

Head of Strategic Go to Market

VP

Huntington Technology

Davenport Group

Bleeker oversaw the development of a demand generation and automated marketing platform and then leveraged it to expand engagements with OEM partners. He was key to integrating IGNW with CDW, training 2,000 new co-workers on the company’s value proposition.

Bluford has established best practices for Huntington’s IT stack, including implementing twofactor authentication for all services, securing the documentation system and restructuring help desk operations to better support customers.

With Davenport Group unable to perform on-site implementations due to the pandemic, Bradley worked with engineers on remote implementation plans. He also developed a plan to build a virtual desktop and mobility management business to support remote workers.

Brown has been key to Microser ve’s M o d e r n Workplace consulting and managed services practice centered on Microsoft 365, Teams and SharePoint Online, helping customers leverage them to enable secure remote work and collaboration.

Burk oversaw the expansion of Hi-Fidelity’s managed services offerings to cover more devices, including video cameras, physical security and environmental controls. He pursues partnerships with vendors offering advanced technologies.

Joe Clarke

Brandon Cole

Jason Edelman

Director, Sales

Abbey Renee Colville

Matthew DeCurtis

Director, Cloud Architecture

Director, Managed Operations

Founder, CTO

With Network to Code’s revenue and head count doubling over the past year, Edelman has been instrumental in scaling the company’s technical sales capacity to drive its vision and expand sales reach.

He has focused on developing advanced demonstrations of its network automation solutions.

IGNW, a CDW Company

VP, Engineering Services

Nigel Brown

John Burk

VP, Professional Services

Director, Network Integration

Microserve

Hi-Fidelity

Anexinet

Advizex

Davenport Group

Clarke has been instrumental in developing Advizex’s cloud go-to-market strategy and launching key initiatives around VMware Cloud on AWS and VMware Cloud Foundation and related professional services. He brings disparate groups within Advizex together to accomplish strategic goals.

Cole led an initiative to pursue support renewals on all products sold by the Davenport Group and the creation of an automated system to support that effort.

That has generated an additional $2 million to $3 million in annual revenue and frees up inside sales reps to pursue bigger deals.

Despite having no developer background, Colville trained herself in the use of SharePoint and led the launch of a SharePoint development service that has brought in new customers and expanded business with current customers.

DeCurtis developed an IT service management platform along with related tools. By facilitating auto-incident creation from monitoring tools and allowing engineers to obtain all information for problem resolution, the company has changed the way it addresses customer issues.

Chris Emery

Rosana Filingeri

Josh Finke

Andrew Gilman

Courtney Graham

VP, Business Development

VP, Head of Alliances, Marketing

NWN

Director, Sales, Central and Southeast

SADA

VP, Marketing

VP, Operations

Vision Computer Solutions

Network to Code

Clearpath Solutions

Cybersafe Solutions

VP, Advanced, Emerging Technologies

Emery worked closely with vendors to build marke t i n g a n d channel programs that increased revenue for both parties. He also transitioned the company’s marketing focus to virtual events and content generation when the pandemic struck.

Cybersafe, an MSSP that also sells its services through partners, tapped Filingeri to build and launch Cybersafe University, a training and business development tool.

Next she’ll be adding a video collaboration piece to help bring the tool to a larger audience.

Finke has led I r o n B o w ’s evolution from product reseller to providing innovative as-a-service solutions—becoming one of Cisco’s leading partners in cloud collaboration. He has focused go-to-market resources on improving user productivity.

With dual roles in leading channel alliances and marketing, Gilman has pursued innovative initiatives such as developing demand-generation programs using intent-based data feeds and AI tools, improving strategic integration with OEM partners.

Graham led a program to help other channel companies run their business on Google Cloud, generating more than $67 million in business.

The initiative helped companies improve their recruiting, branding and pricing structures to work within a cloud ecosystem.

Cole Halpin

Owen Hayes

Matthew Hellhake

Javid Khan

Kailynn Lambert

Director

VP, Operations

Clover Communications Management

Program Manager

Anexinet

CTO

IT By Design

Director, Marketing, Sales Operations

Halpin has solidified products and services into consistent, repeatable solutions that help the company scale more quickly.

He managed the standardization and automation of customer agreements, auditing and billing—improving the efficiency of once-labor-intensive processes.

Hayes worked with IT and carrier partners and customers to move beyond traditional telecom and hardware and adopt UCaaS/ CCaaS, SD-WAN and IaaS. To help alleviate video-call fatigue, he created custom trivia hours for some customers—complete with nerdy inside jokes.

With a strong focus on relationshipbuilding, Hellhake helped Anexinet grow its infrastructure and information security services sales by engaging with all areas of a customer’s business, demonstrating Anexinet’s value and growing trust.

Khan drove the transition of IT By Design’s project management operations into an agile methodology that provides fast product implementation. He also spearheaded the development of a cost-effective managed administration assistant service.

Avitus Technology Services

Iron Bow Technologies

Davenport Group

Lambert expanded her team and implemented a virtual marketing strategy for eight territories, adjusting traditional in-person marketing efforts to adapt to virtual forums amid the pandemic.

She also introduced a new sales application and structure, allowing team members to collaborate.

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2020 Next-Gen Solution Provider

Parker Leavitt

Joshua Lee

Director, Marketing, Communications

Sales Director

VirtuIT Systems

Leavitt transformed vCore’s marketing strategy and execution with a focus on lead generation and pipeline development. New digital marketing efforts included “Meet the Team” video content, showcasing behind-the-scenes problem resolution people at vCore.

Lee emphasizes his ability to build strong relationships with manufacturer partners and provide them with insight into how VirtuIT can help them accomplish their goals.

He also established a partnership with a strategic cloud provider with lower-cost solutions.

Sean Lowry SVP, Sales, Marketing

LEADERS

Sara Lehmer

Courtney Letema

Thomas Lohr

Team Lead, Inside Sales, Endpoint Specialty Sales

Techworks Consulting

When hired, Lehmer focused on developing sales presentations and the company’s next-gen IT, cloud, voice and data offerings. This year she developed the concept, strategy and execution of over 12 virtual events that generated over 200 leads and $1.8 million in revenue.

L e t e m a launched an e - commerce portal that lets customers view the solution provider’s end-user computing products portfolio, driving a new revenue stream. She also helped expand Winslow’s end-user and endpoint security technology portfolios.

Lo h r h a s a talent for discovering vendors with right-fit technologies for Techworks’ customers and building and maintaining relationships with them. This year that included establishing multiple new cybersecurity partnerships.

Simon Margolis

Crystal McFerran

Marc Menzies

Stephen Monk

Lowry Solutions

VP, Presales Cloud Engineering

SADA

Chief Marketing Officer

President, CTO

CEO

L o w r y identified opportunities created by the pandemic to offset slower sales in traditional offerings. This included working with technology partners to identify adjacent products — and obtaining certifications to work with them—to maintain the sales pipeline.

Margolis cites t h e d e ve l opment of SADA’s Technical Account Management program as one of his major achievements: Adding more technical depth earlier in the sales cycle has increased SADA’s sales, client retention and Net Promoter Score.

McFerran plays a leadership role in achievi n g g row t h objectives for The 20, a group of MSPs that share a nationwide IT support desk. She developed member acquisition and engagement strategies and grew the marketing team to enhance brand equity.

Matthew Narolewski

Jennifer Noto

Spenser Paul

Zac Paulson

Rob Pepper

VP, Marketing

Director, Sales

CEO

vCore Technology Partners

VP, Marketing

Cutting Edge Technologies

The 20

Winslow Technology Group

Overview Technology Solutions

Menzies went all in on Micros o f t Te a m s and Windows Virtual Desktop. This had an immediate positive impact on employees and customers by providing flexibility in deployments, standardizing the solution provider’s IT stack and helping it be agile with the work-from-home model.

VP, Operations

Noverus Innovations

Using AI and automation services in Microsoft Azure, Monk has stepped up service automation initiatives—allowing the company to expand its service offerings around the Microsoft platform. He also overhauled the company’s business processes to optimize workflow.

Director, Professional Services

Logically

DoiT International

TrueIT

Sr. Solution Architect, Power and Cooling

Narolewski expanded Complete Network’s professional services division from one project team of three engineers to 11 team members working across four teams. That allowed it to acquire another company and merge it with his company’s culture.

Hired at the beginning of the year, Noto quickly shifted the marketing strategy to digital marketing initiatives and virtual events. She oversaw the move of the sales development rep team to operate under marketing, ensuring a team approach to lead generation.

Paul has overseen 250 percent annual revenue growth at DoiT. He has focused on ensuring DoiT is set up to scale by implementing a new CRM system for the global sales team, establishing measurable success metrics and compiling a companywide data catalog.

Paulson led TrueIT through a partner buyout, including bringing in a new equity partner. He has worked with other MSPs nationwide to offer Microsoft Dynamics applications as a service to customers, creating an opportunity to increase their recurring revenue.

P e p p e r launched the “Year of Power” campaign to ensure customers had essential power equipment to support work-from-home employees. He led the marketing effort to promote adoption of the Vertiv SmartRow data-center-ina-box within K-12 school systems.

Tuan Pham

Andrew Piland

Daron Plummer

Paul Ponzeka

Richard Porter

CEO

Chief Operating Officer

Datel Systems

BizTek Connection

Abacus Group

Cinch I.T.

Pham works with customers on digital transformation, including optimizing Microsoft 365 for customers’operations and providing secure remote connectivity.

His company works with nonprofits, and Pham is creating an affiliate partnership networking group in the Boston area.

Piland is focused on establishing Datel as a true MSP, vetting several IT solutions to help reach that goal and analyzing the company’s current services offerings and pricing. He also led initiatives to increase margins in current business practices and grow recurring revenue.

Plummer m e rg e d h i s solution provider firm (A+ Technologies) with BizTek Connection and moved the combined companies in a more services-oriented direction, including offering managed networking, VoIP, backup and recovery, and cybersecurity services.

Ponzeka developed a public cloud MSP platform that allows Abacus Group to operate with greater economies of scale and faster time to market. The platform can reach new customers and offer additional services to current customers.

Por ter converted the MSP into a national franchise model, trained six new MSP owners and helped them launch six Cinch I.T. offices.

The model provides centralized help-desk support, network operating center services, education and training.

Complete Network

Tech Networks of Boston

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CEO

CTO

CDW

President

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2020 Next-Gen Solution Provider

LEADERS

Cody Rivers

Sohale Razmjou

Ian Richardson

VP, Federal

CEO

CTO

Nancy Sabino

Heather Schaan

CEO

VP, GM

Razmjou has developed an organization that’s built on integrity and ethics. He also revamped corporate processes around annual planning, financial analysis and channel revenue targets, quarterly business reviews, partner execution plans, sales standards and fundamentals.

Richardson has focused on a strategy of becoming a partner of choice for leading IT vendors by fully disclosing Doberman’s strategy—necessary for achieving successful integration with them. He also rebuilt Doberman’s account management process.

Rivers has zeroed in on a limited number of vendor partnerships, allowing the company to provide more in-depth product-related services and develop deeper knowledge and expertise about vendor products and services.

When the pandemic hit, Sabino developed remote user capabilities for employees and customers. She also launched customer outreach efforts, including a podcast and video series, to educate businesses on the benefits of working with an MSP.

Schaan has sought to foster growth planning and improvement within Microserve. She introduced a new strategic business planning process that improves communication and collaboration within the leadership team and across the organization.

Ben Schmerler Director, Strategic Operations

Anthony Schweitzer

Taylor Scott

S. Dustin Seyfert

Maulik Shyani

VP, Solutions Architect

VP, Sales, Operations

Service Desk Operations Manager

CEO

Schmerler emphasizes the need to provide customers with IT that meets their requirements and provides a justifiable ROI—not necessarily the most technologically advanced IT. He created a structured process for managing the MSP-customer relationship and customer on-boarding.

Schweitzer does a lot of due diligence when it comes to adopting new technologies, including product testing and implementation, to ensure his company is solving customers’ business problems with technology solutions that are innovative and fiscally responsible.

When the pandemic hit, many MSPs were not prepared to support IT in residential workplaces. Scott developed a solution that helps MSPs support home technology, including onsite dispatching to residences, and allows My Computer Works to be the first line of support.

Scott Warner

Nick Whiting

Darrell Wilson

Jeremy Wittkop

Phil Wright

Connecting Point

Professional Services Manager

Director, Collaboration Solutions

CTO

Owner

Focused on growing top-line revenue and maintaining proper margin on managed services customers, Warner is also developing an advanced security services stack and enhancing the company’s core offering with critical security solutions.

Whiting introduced standards across the professional services group to drive project visibility, profitability and collaboration.

This has helped the group think and act holistically and provide a repeatable customer experience across the organization.

Wilson architected and deployed CSPi’s Vital UCaaS hosted collaboration system, getting it certified through Cisco’s Cloud and Managed Services Program. He has also managed presales engagement and post-sales implementation of CSPi’s UCaaS customers.

Wittkop provided the vision that guided the launch of Aperture, which aims to optimize the Microsoft data protection toolset for customers.

It ties together multiple technologies in a console that optimizes workflows and how customers interact with InteliSecure.

As Accent Consulting moves toward its goal of expanding into new regions, Wright is driving the rollout of an improved marketing and sales lead generation process.

He has also implemented the use of KPI dashboards to improve visibility and accountability.

Hank Yee

Kyle Yencer

Edmond Youash

Kristin Zick

Delivery Manager

Anexinet

VP, Services, Connected Workforce

Managing Director, Google Cloud Sales

VP, Progams

For Anexinet, 2020 has been the year of the cloud. Yee led many projects for customers that are starting or furthering their cloud journeys. On projects ranging from education to Microsoft Office 365 migrations, he helped ensure that each company had the smoothest journey possible.

Yencer leads M i c r o A g e ’s managed services organization and its staff of IT service professionals, working to accelerate cloud growth with both new and existing clients. He is now developing a comprehensive managed services offering surrounding Microsoft Azure.

Yo u a s h h a s been laserfocused on building and enhancing strategic relationships with SADA’s core cloud partner, Google Cloud. The result: The company has increased its Google Cloud Platform business by 10X from where it was one year ago.

Leading a team o f ta lented engineers and program managers, Zick grew a portfolio that doubled in revenue and tripled its backlog from the previous year. The teams she manages have more than doubled, directly contributing to business growth targets.

Blackwood

DP Solutions

President, CEO

Doberman Technologies

Eagle Technologies

Logicalis US

MicroAge

Apex Infinite Solutions

My Computer Works

CSPi Technology Solutions

SADA

SabinoTech

Microserve

Logicalis US

Seyfert helped build a companywide mentoring program, which was then adapted to function for a fully remote workforce following the onset of COVID-19. He also helped lead the transition to fully remote service desk operations, ensuring minimal disruption to Logicalis’ business and customers.

InteliSecure

BayInfotech

Described as passionate about not just his work but about working with people, Shyani pushed BayInfotech to enter the Platform-as-a-Service market this year with its new BiTPaaS offering, which was designed to quickly deliver value to customers seeking business transformation.

Accent Consulting

Zivaro

Scan here to see the full 2020 Next-Gen Solution Provider database on CRN.com

DECEMBER 2020

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ON TH E R ECOR D

Can Intel Regain The Dominance It Once Enjoyed?

M

By Robert Faletra Y EARLY DAYS of covering high-

tech as a journalist were focused on the semiconductor industry in the early 1980s. Back then I wrote for electronics purchasing managers sourcing components for major finished goods manufacturers like Compaq Computer, HP, Dell and others.

I spent days with my head spinning, talking to electrical engineers as they explained the nuances of nanotechnology design.

I was writing for purchasing managers, talking to engineers and interacting with component distributors about acquisition lead times. It’s how I first came to be interested in the channel.

Intel back then was still making memory chips, and it was challenged in the market. Its history is fascinating. Born out of Fairchild Semiconductor in 1968 as a DRAM manufacturer, it was a huge story in 1985 when it conceded that business to Japanese competitors to focus on microprocessors.

Intel’s x86 architecture over time dominated the industry. That was not gained with a “field of dreams” approach. It had great technology, but so did its competitors.What it also had, however, was a take-no-prisoners culture and a willingness to innovate in ways outside its core competency of product engineering.

There have been two remarkably innovative marketing initiatives in the history of our industry that drove long-term dominance.

One was Microsoft’s launch of the Office Suite in November 1990. At the time, Microsoft did not have the No. 1 word processor, spreadsheet or presentation software in the market.

What it did have was a product in each category that was good enough. Bundling them at a price far lower than the cost of buying three best-in-class products from three different developers changed the game overnight.

Less than a year later, Intel realized it could influence its customers’ customers with marketing and by doing so drag computer manufacturers into a lucrative program of jointly advertising the Intel brand. The Intel Inside program, which

46

funded PC maker advertising that touted the chipmaker’s processors, drove its brand with the ultimate consumer and pushed competitor brands to perceived second-class status.

By providing marketing dollar support to manufacturers that got more money to jointly advertise based on the amount of Intel processors they bought, the chipmaker created a gamechanging program. It drove the market for more than 20 years.

During that time, Intel worked with channel partners who were building their own PCs, but the company also innovated with other channel programs and engagement. It fought on every battlefield and conceded none.

But it’s now 30 years later, and the world has changed.

Intel, still an incredible company with world-class products, is competing in a completely different environment. Computing has changed with cloud infrastructure, handheld devices and a growing propensity for manufacturers like Apple to design their own CPU. AMD is gaining in stature as well. Nvidia is a growing threat, and let’s not forget Qualcomm with its position powering handhelds, let alone Samsung.

Intel’s future is less secure today than it was 10 years ago. But is it less secure than it was in 1985? Is the chip brand powering the devices we use more agnostic today? If its customers are becoming vertically integrated, should Intel do the same and build more finished product? These questions need answering.

While there is no certainty of Intel’s future, don’t bet against it. The company’s culture is on its side as is its engineering expertise and maybe, just maybe, there is a marketing and channel program trick or two up its sleeve that can challenge the competition once again. Its brand is also widely recognized in the consumer space, and there may be a bigger play there. n

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

DECEMBER 2020

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