CRN

Congratulations to our 15th annual 100 People You Don’t Know But Should honorees! With a passion for helping solution providers find success, these go-getters work hard behind the scenes to make sure channel business gets done and done well. You can learn about them all here: https://okt.to/zjQK3B. Across the channel’s vendors and distributors, these individuals are helping to keep the channel engine running, and now is their time to shine. #CRN100People

Matt Lee, CISSP, CCSP, CFR, PNPT, Pax8's senior director of Security and Compliance and the GTIA - Global Technology Industry Association's 2025 Member of the Year, spoke with Pax8 Corporate Vice President of Community and Partner Experience Rob Rae and CRN Senior Associate Editor CJ Fairfield about working for a managed service provider that suffered a devastating cyberattack, forcing it to shut down. That experience has fueled Lee's passion to support others who have experienced similar crises. Rae said that passion is at the core of what Pax8 looks for in its teams. You can watch CJ's entire interview with Lee and Rae for CRNtv On Location at GTIA's #ChannelCon2025 here: https://okt.to/W6IJ13.

IT service provider Blue Mantis this week expanded its go-to-market reach into Canada with the acquisition of fellow services provider Coreio. Blue Mantis, which until mid-2023 was known as GreenPages, also gained an expansion of its ServiceNow business with Toronto-based Coreio, said Joshua Dinneen, CEO of Portsmouth, N.H.-based Blue Mantis, which ranked No. 136 on CRN’s 2025 Solution Provider 500. Dinneen, whose prior company Norwell Technology Group was acquired by GreenPages in 2018, told CRN that Coreio brings a reach into the Canadian market that Blue Mantis did not have despite having a presence in Toronto that delivered services to the U.S. https://lnkd.in/erJ3BxZh

Global spending on artificial intelligence will reach nearly $1.5 trillion in 2025, with worldwide spending topping $2 trillion in 2026, according to new data from Gartner. Here are the details on the six largest tech markets in 2025 and 2026 in terms of global AI spending, according to Gartner, including GenAI smartphones, AI services, AI processing semiconductors and AI-optimized servers:

In this episode of Channel Women in Security, host Cass Cooper, MHR sat down with Barb Huelskamp, global channel leader at SolarWinds, to talk about her career journey, the importance of advocacy, and the opportunities available for women in the IT channel and cybersecurity. https://lnkd.in/epTQBQeS

Microsoft, which has made big market-share gains in the security market with its Defender software, told CRN it is “committed to ensuring a level playing field” for other software security providers. “As both the platform provider and a security solution developer, Microsoft is committed to ensuring a level playing field for software security providers,” Microsoft said in a written response to CRN questions after concerns were raised by security software executives in a CRN Security Roundtable session. “This is demonstrated through the Microsoft Virus Initiative (MVI) program, a program that provides third-party security vendors with Windows APIs, system capabilities, early access to platform changes, and technical documentation to ensure their applications run reliably and securely on Windows devices.” Among the issues raised during the roundtable was third-party security software maker access to the Microsoft Windows kernel in the wake of the massive CrowdStrike-caused outage in July 2024. Here are the questions CRN presented to Microsoft in the wake of concerns from participants in the roundtable: #MicrosoftSecurity

In the wake of Cisco’s blockbuster acquisition of Splunk last year, Splunk channel partners are still working through the details of how the integration of the two companies, and their channel operations and programs, is shaking out, even as they extol the potential opportunities and additional partner resources they see coming their way. Here’s a deep dive into where those efforts stand, according to the following Splunk executives, and what the following partner executives have to say about the progress so far: - Kamal Hathi, senior vice president and general manager of the Splunk business unit - Frank Dimina, Splunk senior vice president and chief revenue officer - Scott Powers, Splunk group vice president, customer and channel strategy, and chief of staff Partner perspective: - Ryan Morris, president of solution provider BLACKWOOD - Matthew Clemmons, strategic director of the Splunk Division at managed services and solutions provider TekStream Solutions - Judd Robins, co-founder and executive vice president of TekStream Solutions - Laura Vetter, co-founder and CTO of Evolutio - George Nassopoulos, vice president of strategic partnerships at Evolutio #splunkconf25

A simpler partner program, partners helping ServiceNow establish a reputation outside its classic IT tool use cases and speeding up customers’ time-to-value are part of the goals ServiceNow channel chief Michael Park has for himself and the vendor’s solution providers. His goal is to transform ServiceNow Partners to “create a vibrant AI-led ecosystem and really be the company and be the organization that writes the playbook on what does it really mean to be an AI-led partner ecosystem,” Park told CRN's Wade Tyler Millward in an interview. Park, whose official title is senior vice president of global partnerships and channels, said that he has consolidated the partner leadership team, established greater accountability for field teams and ServiceNow global functions, and better aligned the company’s incentive structure to bring ServiceNow closer to its partners. https://lnkd.in/e4SwN6MH

With Intel’s majority stake sale of its Altera programmable chip business to private equity firm Silver Lake recently completed, the CEO of the freshly spun-off company, Raghib Hussain, said he sees a “huge opportunity” to take FPGA market share from AMD. Read Dylan Martin’s interview with Hussain to learn more, including how Altera’s strategy is changing from how it operated under Intel, what the AI opportunity looks like for FPGAs, what the company’s timeline for going public looks like and how it’s investing in the channel: