Channel Partners’ Top 12 Stories in August

A handful of big stories from Channel Partners Evolution headline our top 12 for August.

Notably, Vonage used the event as a forum to name its new channel chief. Our galleries from the conference and expo hall also cracked this list.

What else was big in August? Our Q&A with a new channel leader at CenturyLink scored with readers, as did Rackspace’s sale to a private-equity firm. As always, our top posts are determined by you! We’ve combined online page views and interest from our weekly newsletter audience.

Click through our gallery to see which story was No. 1.

Looking for more top stories? Click here to see our most-read posts in July.

Follow executive editor Craig Galbraith on Twitter.

Scott Forbush, Electric Lightwave’s vice president of indirect sales, told Channel Partners the split creates new opportunities for both Electric Lightwave and Integra partners.

“Electric Lightwave intends to extend and grow with the partner community that has made Electric Lightwave and its network infrastructure so successful,” he said. “And Integra partners will also see a great deal of opportunity, as they will be the exclusive outside sales channel in these markets.”

Looking for more details on this split? Get them here.

For the first time, Level 3 Communications was top dog when IHS Markit released it 2016 SIP Trunking North America Service Provider Scorecard last month.

The rankings are based on number of installed trunks.

Verizon and CenturyLink tied for second. AT&T and XO rounded out the top five.

Who else made the list? Click here to find out.

Keeping up with August’s “Evolution” theme, in a guest column for Channel Partners, ClikCloud’s Dan Shapero asked channel leaders from Verizon, Broadview Networks and Microsoft, “What evolutionary adaptations must your partners make to thrive selling digital services?”

Turns out, it’s more than a 50-words-or-less answer.

Click here to read what these important channel players had to say about the industry’s digital transformation.

There was a lot of buzz early in the month when it was rumored that Rackspace was on the auction block. It turned out those rumors were true.

Late in the month, the company announced its sale to Apollo Global Management for $4.3 billion. In accepting the buyout bid, the publicly traded, 18-year-old managed cloud company will become privately held, a move that many industry watchers applaud.

As for the channel, given that the acquisition appears to be financially driven rather than technically driven, there appears to be less risk to partners than if it were the other way around.

Click here to get the full scoop on the Rackspace sale.

We recognized 11 channel-partner companies during a special ceremony at Channel Partners Evolution.

These businesses, honored with a Channel Partners 360° Business Value Award, have well-rounded portfolios and proven track records of providing holistic technology solutions.

Until last month’s show, CP360°s had only been given at our spring event, the Channel Partners Conference & Expo. CP360° is now in its fifth year.

We published a pair of galleries celebrating the winners. The first explains why they were chosen and the second features pictures of the winners at the event.

Don’t miss your opportunity to be recognized with a 360° award at the 2017 Channel Partners Conference & Expo. Applications are being accepted now through December 31, 2016.

Speculation arose that Lightower Fiber Networks is seeking a buyer, with Level 3 and Zayo as potential suitors.

A Level 3 spokesperson said her company doesn’t “comment on rumors and speculation.”

Vonage Business used Channel Partners Evolution as the forum to announce its appointment of Kyle Johnson to senior vice president of sales, heading up its “one-stop shop” for more than 20 master agents and 350 subagents.

Johnson joined Vonage in 2013 as vice president of sales when the company acquired Vocalocity.

In addition to heading up channel sales, Johnson now leads Telesales for the entire Vonage organization.

If you haven’t read the guest column by Jo Peterson and Michael Goodenough over the past few months, you’re in the minority.

After taking the top spot the past two months, their “Top 10 Cloud Certifications for Partners” is still going strong, filling the No. 5 position in August.

Among the certifications they discuss are the Certificate of Cloud Security Knowledge, Cloud U (Rackspace) and CompTIA Cloud Essentials. To learn about those and the other seven, click here.

Channel People on the Move has become to this list what Oprah was to the Daytime Emmys. Maybe it should take itself out of consideration since it’s near the top every month.

The edition that made this list featured moves at Birch, Microsoft, RapidScale and more.

The inaugural Channel Partners Evolution welcomed 2,700 participants to suburban Washington, D.C., to network, learn and do business.

The image galleries we published were immensely popular. You wanted to relive or see what you missed in the expo hall; check out highlights from keynotes and education sessions; and enjoy pictures of networking and parties that your friends and colleagues attended.

This was a big one and is bound to be the first of many.

Distributor ScanSource announced that it’s buying master agent Intelisys Communications, in a move that will blend telecom and IT like never before.

Both companies said that, as a result, their channel partners have the opportunity to grow and enhance their recurring-revenue businesses in a big way.

Read more here. If you want to know what partners think of the deal, go here.

The first story that we posted in August turned out to be the biggest.

We sat down with John DeLozier, the new CenturyLink Channel Alliance vice president, who replaces Blake Wetzel – who took a similar job at Rackspace – as channel chief.

Previously general manager of channel for the Americas for Unify, he will oversee the development and execution of strategic sales and partner plans at CenturyLink, and define new go-to-market models with third-party partners such as SIs, MSPs and software companies.

Read the full Q&A here.