Channel Madness: Red Hat’s Chiras, ScalePad’s Torres Fighting It Out

The closest match-up of Round 1 is shaping up in the Acceleration region of CRN’s 2024 Channel Madness tournament.

We’re more than halfway through the voting for Round 1 of the 2024 Channel Madness Tournament of Chiefs, with several close contests underway.

After a busy weekend of voting, tournament newcomer Eric Torres of ScalePad is holding his own in the Acceleration region against a formidable foe, Red Hat’s Stefanie Chiras, winner of CRN’s 2023 Woman of the Year – Vendor/Distributor Award. Torres is keeping it close with 49.7 percent of the vote to Chiras’ 50.3 percent.

Meanwhile in the Evolution region, HP Inc.’s Scott Lannum has been trading leads with IBM’s Kate Woolley. Wooley was ahead Friday afternoon but currently trails with 43 percent of the vote to Lannum’s 57 percent.

In the Innovation region, 2018 Channel Madness Champion Ken McCray of Fortinet is trying to hold the lead with 55 percent of the vote against Microsoft’s Nina Harding, who has 45 percent.

Also in the Innovation region, Frank Rauch of Cato Networks is looking good with 56 percent of the vote against Dell Technologies’ Denise Millard, with 44 percent.

Here’s a look at the full results so far:

Transformation

Rob Cato, Lenovo, 71 percent vs. Ruba Borno, Amazon Web Services, 29 percent

Michelle Welch, WatchGuard Technologies, 66 percent vs. Kevin Ichhpurani, Google Cloud, 34 percent

Phil Soper, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, 63 percent vs. Michael Rogers, CrowdStrike, 37 percent

Kevin Rooney, Veeam Software, 69 percent vs. David Weeks, N-able, 31 percent

Acceleration

Ken Marks, SentinelOne, 71 percent vs. Rodney Clark, Cisco Systems, 29 percent

Michelle Ragusa-McBain, SonicWall, 72 percent vs. Kimberly King, Hitachi Vantara, 28 percent

Scott Mann, Scale Computing, 61 percent vs. Steve Loeb, Eaton, 39 percent

Stefanie Chiras, Red Hat, 50.3 percent vs. Eric Torres, ScalePad, 49.7 percent

Innovation

Bob Skelley, Arctic Wolf, 65 percent vs. Dan Tomaszewski, Kaseya, 35 percent

Nina Harding, Microsoft, 45 percent vs. Ken McCray, Fortinet, 55 percent

Christian Goffi, Nutanix, 70 percent vs. Cynthia Loyd, Broadcom, 30 percent

Frank Rauch, Cato Networks, 56 percent vs. Denise Millard, Dell Technologies, 44 percent

Evolution

Jenni Flinders, NetApp, 63 percent vs. Jason Kimrey, Intel, 37 percent

Tom Evans, Palo Alto Networks, 72 percent vs. Gordon Lord, Schneider Electric, 28 percent

Kendra Krause, Sophos, 40 percent vs. Gordon Mackintosh, Juniper Networks, 60 percent

Scott Lannum, HP Inc., 57 percent vs. Kate Woolley, IBM, 43 percent

Voting in Round 1 remains open until noon ET on Wednesday, March 20, so there’s still time to head to CRN.com/madness to cast your votes and choose your chief!