Top 12 Stories in November: Windstream-EarthLink, CenturyLink’s Data Centers, PlanetOne

This month’s top 12 features big M&A activity such as Windstream-EarthLink and CenturyLink selling its data-center business.

It’s also rife with images and recaps from events Channel Partners attended — PlanetOne, Intel Security and Nextiva, to name a few.

As is the norm, our list features a combination of the most-read stories on our website and from our weekly newsletters.

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 October.

Follow executive editor @Craig_Galbraith on Twitter.

One of the hottest segments in the channel and the industry as a whole is the Internet of Things (IoT). 2016 brought new innovations, big investments, increased collaboration and growing security concerns in IoT.

We got a list of trends and predictions from business leaders at Verizon, TBI and 451 Research.

Get the buzz on IoT here.

In one of the larger acquisitions in what’s been a flurry of M&A activity over the past month, Windstream confirmed rumors that it was buying EarthLink for $1.1 billion.

The combined Windstream-EarthLink will have increased scale and scope, giving it the ability to leverage best practices across a broader platform, and offer customers expanded products, services and enhanced enterprise solutions, the companies said.

Get more thoughts on how it will impact partners here.

Partners attending Intel Security Focus 16 were eager to learn how they’ll be impacted once the McAfee name officially returns in spring 2017.

Channel Partners talked with some of them at the company’s Las Vegas event. Our gallery featured pictures and a recap.

Ending months of speculation, CenturyLink said it was selling its data centers and colocation business to BC Partners, in a consortium that includes Medina Capital Advisors and Longview Asset Management, for $2.15 billion in cash.

CenturyLink will get a minority stake valued at $150 million in the consortium’s new global secure infrastructure company.

 Read why the telco says its partner ecosystem will be “absolutely essential” post sale.

Nextiva pulled out all the stops for its NextCon16 conference in Scottsdale, Arizona, Nov. 14-16. Big-name speakers, flashy theatrics and a major product announcement kept the audience engaged.

Nextiva dedicated a significant portion of its time to meeting with partners and rolling out a new communications platform. Channel Partners was there, offering pictures and a recap in this gallery.

Drew Lydecker, president of “born-in-the-cloud” master agent Avant Communications, sat down with Channel Partners to talk about his company’s approach to sales enablement.

It became a full-blown business model a few months ago when the company launched Avant SEaaS, its sales enablement-as-a-service (SEaaS) platform.

Read what Lydecker says SEaaS can do for partners and why he considers it a differentiator.

More than 200 attendees, including more than 20 preferred partners, attended PlanetOne’s Year-End Event on Nov. 3 at Talking Stick Resort in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Stressing collaboration and partner support, the theme of the event was “Never Fly Solo.” And Channel Partners was there to take pictures and provide a recap in this image gallery.

Windstream plans to discontinue DSL service it provides to residential and SMB customers in CLEC territories across 25 states.

According to a filing with the FCC, the service is being provided on equipment that is “at the end of life, it is no longer supported by vendors and replacement would be cost prohibitive.”

All residential and SMB customers have been notified by mail, Windstream said, noting that “affected customers will not be unduly harmed because they are being provided ample notice of the discontinuance and customers have comparable options at comparable rates from other providers serving these states.”

Get the full scoop on Windstream’s decision here.

Everyone loves money — especially those of you in the sales business. The shift to monthly recurring revenue can be quite fruitful for partners if they do it successfully.

Patrick Oborn, co-founder of master agent Telarus, covered the different types of MRR, how to expand your base, and why consistency is so critical.

Maintaining its stranglehold in the top 12 – and top 3 for that matter – is our monthly Channel People on the Move feature.

This edition features new hires and promotions at a number of channel companies, particularly master agents and distributors such as Intelisys, WTG and ScanSource.

We introduced you to 10 hot startups in the channel community — all opening their doors in the past five years and seeing success in a variety of sectors.

Several are storage providers; others offer cloud migration, analytics, data-center services, security — or a combination of two or more of these hot services.

Want to see who we featured? Click here.

Late in the month, reports surfaced that Avaya is nearing a deal to sell its call-center business and could be heading toward chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Brendan Read, analyst with Frost & Sullivan, told us a call-center sale would be a good move, noting that Avaya has been “playing catch-up to competitors” that have growing presences in the cloud market, Read said, noting that Avaya has an “impressively large” installed base that has helped it maintain market leadership in inbound contact-center routing and IVR for many years.

“However, much of the installed base consists of older Avaya platforms and those gained through acquisition (such as Octel, VMX, and Nortel),” Read said. “This has represented an opportunity for Avaya that they haven’t capitalized on as much as competitor’s targeted replacement campaigns.”

Read the full story here.