Top 12 Stories in February: Avaya, Windstream, WTG, More

February’s most-read stories include a pair of really hot topics in the channel — consolidation and Avaya’s chapter 11 bankruptcy filing.

Also here you’ll find stories about new channel sales leaders at Windstream and Cohesity, and images from master-agent giants Avant and WTG.

To identify our top 12, we tallied online page views and combined them with our weekly newsletter results.

So what was No. 1? Click through our gallery to find out!

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

Follow executive editor @Craig_Galbraith on Twitter.

Published late on Feb. 27, this story no doubt would’ve ranked higher if posted earlier in the month.

Upon formally closing its $1.1 billion acquisition of EarthLink, Windstream named Olen Scott as the combined company’s new channel chief.

Scott, previously EarthLink’s vice president of partner channels, is now Windstream’s vice president of channel sales. Jason Dishon, Windstream’s former channel chief, left the company to pursue other opportunities.

Scott will be responsible for designing, operating and supporting Windstream’s channel sales organization.

Read more here.

We typically publish a wrap-up of M&A activity every two months, but there was so much feverish activity in January that we gave you a bonus.

Among the highlights were the latest on Windstream-EarthLink and CenturyLink-Level 3, as well as new announcements from PGi, Datto and HPE.

Read about a manic month of merger news here.

You like startups. How did we come to determine that? For the fourth consecutive month, our feature highlighting 10 channel startups cracked our top 12.

Some on the list are storage providers; others offer cloud migration, analytics, data-center services, security — or a combination of two or more of these hot services. We profiled them, and clearly, you were – and still are – interested.

Don’t know Rubrik? You should. After we posted a Q&A with Mark Smith (right), the company’s new VP of global sales and business development, many of you know a lot more about the cloud data management provider.

Smith talked to us about working with partners and helping Rubrik achieve further financial milestones. (The company is on pace for $100 million in annual revenue.)

WTG’s new offices are the envy of anyone dreaming of an ocean view.

The master agent and connectivity-services distributor moved to a new digs last month in its hometown of Malibu, California, and opened a second office 20 miles away in Calabasas.

WTG sent us some pictures to share with you.

The storage industry is hot — and you want to know who the players are.

Cohesity hired Mark Parrinello as vice president of worldwide sales. His job involves working with customers as well as reseller partners. He most recently worked at Nimble Storage, where he was VP of sales for the Americas.

This is where to learn more about Parrinello.

Startups were front and center at RSA Conference 2017 last month in San Francisco.

We profiled seven of them.

Nearly 21,000 AT&T workers in 36 states authorized a strike, but later agreed to continue working under the terms of their old contract as the company and union continue to negotiate.

The employees demands included “wages, commissions, transfers, holidays, job openings, scheduling, call out and on-call pay, overtime and differential.” The union also cited concerns about the outsourcing of jobs overseas.

Read more here.

A lot of you would like to be certified cybersecurity experts.

CompTIA unveiled a new CompTIA Cybersecurity Analyst + (CSA+) certification. Skills required include the ability to: configure and use threat-detection tools; perform data analysis; and interpret the results to identify vulnerabilities, threats and risks to the organization.

Avant attracted 100 people to its first “Special Forces” training held at the master agent’s new Chicago headquarters.

It’s part of Avant’s sales enablement as a service, first introduced last year at Channel Partners Evolution.

Click here for pictures from the event.

Our monthly Channel People on the Move gallery featured 12 people taking new positions in the channel — or getting promoted.

Meet them here.

News about Avaya and its bankruptcy once again made its way to the top of our monthly list.

Our most popular story featured interviews with partners who said they weren’t caught off guard by the chapter 11 bankruptcy protection filing and believe the company will emerge as an even stronger software and services provider.

Also popular was our image gallery from Avaya Engage, which featured a recap of the event.