Our top 20 stories from Channel Futures in May will take you on an emotional rollercoaster.

The lows, as usual, are layoffs. Aside from our updated telecom-IT layoff tracker, there are only two articles about layoffs impacting companies doing business in the channel. Yes, two is two too many, but that’s an improvement from recent months.

One high could be Avaya’s emergence from chapter 11 bankruptcy for the second time in six years. The company told us why this time might be different — and you clearly were interested.

Another high? A look into the future. Panelists representing some of the biggest vendors in the business offered some forecasts at the Channel Partners Conference & Expo. And speaking of the future, Canalys’ Jay McBain cracked the top 20 again with his predictions for the MSP community the rest of the year.

Jump into our slideshow above with both feet and you’ll see all top stories that made our monthly countdown. You, of course, are the arbiter of the rankings, since we determine them by aggregating online pageviews and results from our various channel newsletters. This is where you can sign up for those newsletters.

If you missed our top 20 stories from April, featuring murder and racism – seriously – you can see that countdown here.