We are once again counting down the most popular stories on our website.

In April, you got bug-eyed over awards: Who won what, where? You wanted to know more about the huge pending UC&C merger between Mitel and Polycom. Concerns over contracts with XO Communications got your attention.

As always, our top 10 stories from last month are determined by a combination of online page views and interest from our weekly newsletter audience.

Click through or download our slide show to see which story was No. 1.

Missed March’s top 10 stories? Click here to see our most-read posts in March.

Follow senior online managing editor Craig Galbraith on Twitter.

In the first of a two-part series, ClikCloud’s Dan Shapero discussed how the cloud contact center market will grow to over $3 billion by 2017.

A panel hosted by CarrierSales at the Channel Partners Conference & Expo brought together best-of-breed cloud contact center providers for an educational discussion focused on building a successful business around this hot market. Executives from ShoreTel, inContact, Interactive Intelligence, LiveOps and Five9 shared insights on identifying opportunities and creating strategies to build a successful practice. Some areas covered: What are the drivers fueling demand for cloud contact center solutions? How do you define a target market, decipher various contact center deployment models and handle objections to cloud services?

Shapero broke it down and suggested what should you look for from a cloud contact center provider.

They are top vendors, your partner peers, and possibly … YOU. We took a look back at the top partners as named by some of the biggest companies doing business in the indirect channel.

You wanted to know who was the best of the best.

You were interested in industry reaction to Mitel’s $2 billion bid for Polycom.

451 Research’s Brenon Daly noted that Mitel is buying a company that’s struggling to demonstrate any growth. Also, the acquisition is a “three-quarters stock deal, so this is not Mitel paying cash.”

Diane Myers, IHS’ research director for VoIP, UC and IMS, said communications and collaboration is an increasingly tight market in terms of sales and opportunity growth, and “with the number of vendors in this market, there has to be consolidation.”

Andrew Pryfogle, Intelisys’ senior vice president of cloud transformation, said Polycom has been a leader in the SIP endpoint and video space for a long time. Most UCaaS providers have standardized on their devices, he said.

Announced in February, the roughly $1.8 billion deal is expected to close during the first half of 2017. It would provide Verizon with access to XO’s fiber-based IP and Ethernet networks, “helping to better serve enterprise and wholesale customers,” according to XO. In addition, the acquired fiber facilities will help Verizon continue to densify its cell network.

Rick Dellar, Intelisys co-founder, said that after speaking with senior-level XO executives, there does not appear to be any available information about what will happen to XO once the acquisition is final.

“It’s disappointing to not have any substantive information about what will happen to XO, to our ability to take care of our customers placed through XO, or what will happen to the commissions we’ve built up over the past two decades,” he said.

The first workload available through the program is for legacy email archives, including Veritas Enterprise Vault and EMC SourceOne.

Rocco Seyboth, BitTitan’s vice president of product and marketing, told Channel Partners that most IT service providers are still operating in a reseller-style business model. Once they sell a customer a cloud product like Office 365, “they struggle to monetize that customer relationship further,” he said.

Sales partners from the Time Warner Cable Business Class Masters incentive program experienced a golf-lover’s dream at August National.

The cable company recognized Intelisys Communications and TBI as its top two fiber sales partners over the course of the incentive that it ran for months prior to the event.

As part of the program, each partner recognized and hosted top agents from their organization. GTS Telecom and Mercy Enterprises joined TBI as part of the Jack Nicklaus package for the first half of The Masters tournament week. Telco Experts and Cost Management Solutions joined Intelisys as part of the “Arnold Palmer” package for the second half of the week.

See who got to go in our image gallery here.

It’s a streak we don’t expect to end soon.

Once again, our monthly Channel People on the Move gallery was a big hit. You wanted to see who got hired and promoted.

It’s a story that’s still dominating national headlines.

Nearly 40,000 Verizon wireline workers represented by the CWA and the IBEW went on strike in mid-April.

The most popular of our stories on the subject was late in the month when the unions snubbed the company’s latest contract offer. It drew the ire of both sides of this heated debate.