Symantec, Ribbon Lawsuit Highlight the Weekly Wrap

It’s the last week of November, and that can only mean one thing: Fantasy football playoffs are upon us.

Most of America refuses to acknowledge fantasy football’s immense impact in our corporate psyche, but it’s of vital importance to the Channel Partners/Channel Futures team. Executive editor Craig Galbraith and video producer Charlie English spent the previous two years planning for our draft, and their preparation has worked to an extent.

But the real winner in our league (so far) is our director of business development, Kevin Morris. He took the wise approach of drafting Chiefs and Rams, and it has paid major dividends with an 11-1 record. His team, “Little Lebowskis,” can’t be stopped. The guy is seriously wiping the floor with us, and I think the power has gone to his head.

We’ll see how the playoffs go.

But in all seriousness, the end of November means the holidays are upon us, and we trust that you – our highly regarded readers – enjoyed your Thanksgiving. May the goldest of leaves be ever at your back as you make your way to 2019. Here are our most-read stories from the week on Channel Partners.

7. Ribbon Refutes Metaswitch Antitrust Claims

Ribbon Communications publicly denounced Metaswitch Networks’ attempt to sue it for monopolistic behavior.

It’s the latest in a series of nasty barbs between the two companies. Ribbon successfully sued Metaswitch for patent infringement in 2014, and Metaswitch is now suing Ribbon for “aggressively consolidating” the North American VoIP migration market to the point where allegedly its only competition is Metaswitch.

The Westford, Massachusetts-based Ribbon is not amused, calling the suit Metaswitch’s “latest litigation tactic to try to avoid payment for its use of Ribbon’s intellectual property.”

Ribbon, if you don’t recall, is the end result of the merger between Genband and Sonus Networks.

Edward Gately has the story.

6. Avaya: Cloud Migration a ‘Journey, Not a Jump’

We’re still doling out content from Channel Partners Evolution in October, and much of that content consists of video interviews we did with channel leaders.

Steve Forcum, cloud technologist for Avaya, laid out the trends and strategies that are shaping Avaya and its partners.

The vendor has pivoted significantly in both its technology and its business model. It launched a cloud division and made a strong commitment to the agent channel.

Take a look at my interview with Steve.

5. CenturyLink Focuses on Geography-Based Model Post Level 3

CenturyLink is another company whose portfolio looks drastically different than it did two years ago.

Channel chief Garrett Gee explained how the acquisition of Level 3 Communications fit into the transformation and outlined the path forward for partners.

Gee led Level 3’s channel before it became part of CenturyLink.

Gee spoke with our executive editor, Craig Galbraith, at Evolution.

4. Master Agent Matchmaking: 8 Areas to Examine When Making Your Choice

All master agents are different, but each will probably say it fits your company best.

Buffy Naylor endeavored to help you weigh these claims. She used interviews with several established master agents to lay out criteria for selecting one. Commission recovery and back-office support were two important factors.

Check out the gallery.

3. At re:Invent, AWS Announces Services with Open Source, IoT Focus

Contributor Lynn Greiner traveled to Vegas to cover the public cloud giant’s annual conference.

The organization used the conference to announce several new services and products, including three new instance types for Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and four new IoT services and tools.

Read about the announcement, as well as Greiner’s coverage of security and AI-related keynotes.

2. Cisco, IBM, Symantec Among Key Players in IoT Security

The vendors mentioned above made Grand View Research’s list of top … 

IoT security vendors. In addition to naming top players, Grand View offered some numbers on the growth of the IoT security market, which reportedly totaled $1.24 billion in 2017. The compound annual growth rate for the market is nearly 30 percent.

Get more details in Edward Gately’s article.

1. Symantec’s President Out in Leadership Shake-up

Wait for it, wait for it … There’s the personnel piece we’ve come to expect to lead our traffic rankings!

Michael Fey, Symantec’s president and COO, resigned out of the blue as the cybersecurity company announced changes to its leadership.

Symantec did not explain Fey’s reason for leaving. CEO Greg Clark assumes the role of the company’s president.

Mark Andrews’ duties are now expanded, but he will continue as senior vice president of worldwide sales. Symantec brought on Art Gilliland, former CEO of Skyport Systems, as executive vice president and general manager of enterprise products.

Read more about the changes.