Channel Partners’ Top 10 Stories in March

With David Letterman now retired, we at Channel Partners like to think of ourselves as the kings of the Top 10 list. 

In March, you were talking about the Channel Partners Conference & Expo (of course), Frontier’s acquisition of Verizon assets wrapping up, people on the move, awards, RingCentral, the TelePacific-DSCI merger and more.

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

Follow senior online managing editor Craig Galbraith on Twitter.

We honored 25 solution providers with a dinner and a special ceremony at the Channel Partners Conference & Expo in Las Vegas. These 25 companies proved their business value to customers by submitting a case study highlighting their ability to provide holistic technology services. You flocked to our image gallery to see who took home hardware and to learn how you could be on that stage next year.

Learn more about the Business Value Awards here.

The acquisition, LANDesk’s seventh in five years, advances its unified endpoint management by extending capabilities to include both physical and virtual devices, and eliminating the need for separate tools and processes, the company said. AppSense also brings advanced endpoint protection capabilities to LANDesk’s portfolio. Look for the deal to be finalized sometime this month.

You know her from her many keynotes at industry events; now Tiffani Bova is taking on a new challenge as Salesforce’s new global, customer growth and innovation evangelist. Bova previously was with Gartner, where she spent 10 years as a vice president, distinguished analyst and research fellow. She helped both established and emerging technology companies shape their growth, and apply customer and market trends to future sales initiatives.

Channel Partners’ other big awards event of the spring is the Circle of Excellence, where, in 2016, we welcomed 15 channel-partner and provider executives into our ring of honor. Some were honored for a second or third time, while others made their Circle debuts. All were recognized during a private dinner at the Palazzo Hotel’s Carnevino Restaurant, as part of the Channel Partners Conference & Expo. You flipped through our slide show to see who we honored.

Learn more about our Circle of Excellence here.

RingCentral, the cloud communications provider, said in March that it’s striving to grow its channel partner program by developing more relationships with master agents. Zane Long, newly appointed VP of channel sales, told us at the Channel Partners Conference & Expo his company isn’t targeting all of the “true master agents.” “We want to go a little more exclusive,” Long explained. “I’m pursuing what I consider the ones [that are] the best fit and the biggest in the industry, and we are going to go very deep rather than wide. We believe that kind of support and focus will garner more revenue for us.“

TelePacific Communications expects its purchase of Massachusetts-based MSP DSCI will expand its capabilities and reach to a nationwide audience. Focusing on California, Nevada and Texas, TelePacific delivers managed services and business communications to 75,000 locations for organizations of all sizes. DSCI provides services to more than 1,500 businesses throughout the Northeast. With the addition of DSCI, nearly half of TelePacific’s business will be in managed services and include a complete set of products, including over-the-top UC and managed IT services.

Our monthly gallery featuring people in the channel getting newly hired or promoted once again garnered thousands of views. You wanted to learn more about your colleagues and see what strategic personnel moves your rivals were making.

Here is last month’s Channel People on the Move gallery.

Gordon Mackintosh was a popular guy on our site last month after networking services provider Extreme Networks named him senior director of worldwide partner program and sales business development. The Cisco veteran will be responsible for the ongoing development of the Extreme Partner Network (EPN) to provide the company’s partners with new revenue streams and growth opportunities. 

Read more about Mackintosh here.

Another story that was a product of the Channel Partners Conference & Expo, Chris Gellos, Frontier’s vice president of alternate channels, spoke with us about the impact that his company doubling in size will have on telecommunications and the channel. Frontier acquired Verizon’s wireline operations that provide services to residential, commercial and wholesale customers in California, Florida and Texas.

If you were in Vegas for the Channel Partners Conference & Expo, a sure bet would’ve been that one of our annual galleries from the event would be our top story in March. You perused many of our image galleries from the show, but it was the glory of the expo hall that got the most attention.