The 10 Most Controversial Companies Of 2025

A cloud behemoth grappling with a massive cloud outage, an SP 500 solution provider facing a lawsuit from a longtime customer and continued program changes from a software kingpin that included deep partner cuts were among the most controversial companies of 2025.

2025: A Year Of Cybercriminal Attacks, Channel Program Changes, Executive Shakeups And Layoffs

With AI transforming the technology landscape at a breakneck pace, 2025 was yet another year of cybercriminal attacks, executive shakups, layoffs and last but not least channel program changes that roiled partners.

Security issues were once again in the spotlight in 2025 with a distribution behemoth’s online ordering system taken down by a cybercriminal attack and an SMB firewall security stalwart facing a “notable increase in both internally and externally reported cyber incidents.”

A longtime customer, meanwhile alleged that an SP-500 solution provider behemoth’s “failures and actions directly caused” a cyberattack that disrupted the company’s business operations.

The CEO for a legendary chipmaker faced calls for his resignation from President Donald Trump, a corporate drama that ended with the U.S. taking a 10 percent stake in the chip maker.

MSPs were stunned by the news that the hard-charging leader of a dominant MSP platform was stepping aside as CEO.

A channel chief, who was charged with driving the biggest channel program change in the history of a highly-regarded channel stalwart, suddenly left the company in the wake of partners expressing uncertainty about the program changes.

Last but not least, a software market leader continued to make partner program changes that roiled partners and customers.

Here then are the 10 Most Controversial Companies of 2025.

Kaseya CEO Fred Voccola Abruptly Steps Aside As CEO, The End Of An Era

The year started off with an MSP shocker when on January 9 Kaseya CEO Fred Voccola suddenly stepped aside as CEO and moved into a vice chairman role without a replacement being named.

MSPs were stunned by the news that Voccola -– the hard-charging leader who built the company into the dominant MSP platform- would no longer be at the helm.

“He was the face and the voice of Kaseya,” said Mark Essayian, president of Irvine, Calif.-based KME Systems, a Kaseya partner. “When he was speaking, the company was speaking.”

Tim Conkle, the CEO of Plano, Texas based-Kaseya partner The 20 MSP said: “Considering Kaseya just took over the lead in market share in (PSA and) RMM from ConnectWise after 25 years, and their financial numbers were the best they’ve ever recorded, the timing seemed odd. Fred was deeply invested in the MSP space and truly loved the company, which made the news even more surprising.”

Conkle, who oversees a highly respected corps of more than 37 MSPs across 23 states, said incoming leadership “will have to balance being results-driven with fostering stronger, broader relationships. It’s a challenging job. Success will elevate not just Kaseya but the entire MSP space.”

Under Voccola’s more-than-decade reign, Kaseya grew from a single-product vendor into a platform provider with more than $1.5 billion in annual recurring revenue.

Kaseya said that Voccola, who is one of the company's largest shareholders, will remain on Kaseya’s board as vice chairman.

Kaseya said Voccola will focus on long-term innovation and strategy while helping the board look for a new CEO as it lays the foundation for a potential public offering.

In June, Kaseya named former Google and Intuit executive Rania Succar, a rising star in the tech industry, as its new CEO.

In an interview with CRN, Succar outlined a bold vision for Kaseya’s future anchored on accelerating innovation, enhancing customer experience and creating a culture defined by “bold ambition and tremendous speed.”

“We’ll be a company that sets big goals and moves quickly to achieve them,” she said. “We want our teams to operate without friction, to be highly accountable, customer-obsessed and relentlessly innovative.”

David Stinner, president of USitek, a Buffalo, New York-based MSP who uses seven Kaseya products in his business, said he is excited to see a talented, young woman with deep software industry experience leading Kaseya.

In fact, Stinner said, Succar’s experience at Intuit will be invaluable as she takes the helm at Kaseya.

“Intuit is one of the premier SaaS subscription model companies,” he said. “They dominate their market and moved their entire customer base to subscriptions. That is great experience for how Kaseya operates with its MSP customers.”

In September, Succar appointed a new chief revenue officer, Anthony Anzevino, a 20-year-plus industry veteran who was most recently senior vice president of sales for Commvault, and Pratik Wadher, also a 20-year-plus industry veteran who was most recently senior vice president of product development for Intuit, as chief technology officer.

An October CRN cover story titled ‘A Kinder Kaseya’ Emerges Under CEO Rania Succar focused on Succar’s announcement of MSP crowd pleasers at the company’s Dattocon 2025 conference including a new backup device, billing updates, agentic AI-powered automation features, the acquisition of email security vendor Inky.

Each new revelation at the conference, held in Kaseya’s hometown of Miami, garnered ardent applause from the audience.

After a round of applause would subside, shouts and cheers from individual attendees—“Thank you!,” “Woo!,” “Yeah!”—rang out from all corners of the room, reactions signaling that partners believe the moves Kaseya is making will translate directly to solving their pain points.

“Everything we’re doing is about helping MSPs succeed,” Succar told CRN in an interview at the event. “That’s our mission. That’s who we are under my leadership. We’re a high-velocity, customer-obsessed company, and we’re just getting started.”

And she has laid out a clear directive for her team moving forward.

“I want every feature we launch to be tied to MSP revenue growth or margin expansion,” she said. “That’s how we measure our success.”

Dell Executive Shakeup, CFO Departure And Layoffs

In July, Dell Technologies Chief Operating Officer Jeff Clarke assumed leadership of the company’s Client Solutions Group, taking over the duties of Dell CSG President Sam Burd, who moved into a corporate strategy job.

The move came with CSG revenue for its second fiscal quarter ended August 1 up one percent year over year to $12.5 billion with consumer client revenue down seven percent and commercial client revenue up two percent. Operating income for the period was down two percent to $803 million.

Longtime Dell partner Bob Venero, CEO of Future Tech, a Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based Dell Global Titanium partner that does business in 37 countries, was heartened by the change.

“Jeff is going to go bare knuckles,” said Venero. “When you have somebody who’s like, kind of that SWAT leader, that can come in and any aspect of the business and be able to move mountains, they’re a key to the success of it. Especially someone who’s been there as long as Jeff.”

Venero said the shakeup creates “definite excitement” around how to capture and grow that business,” Venero told CRN. “And that’s going to mean a few things. That’s going to mean innovation. That’s going to be routes to market. That’s going to be streamlining process. He’s going to look at the whole thing and figure out what needs to be done. And again, there’s not a better guy that that you can have doing that then Jeff right now. I’ve known Jeff for a really long time and, trust me, I’m excited.”

Clark moved quickly to gain PC share with two Dell Pro Essential models priced as low as $300.

“We have every intention to grow,” Clarke told investors on the company’s second-quarter earnings call. “We have every intention to outperform the marketplace and take share. That’s our goal. We have not done that consistently enough. That’s problematic. We are focused on doing so.”

Clark said the PC business is “hugely important” to the company. “Many customers experience our company through the PC business,” he said. “They experience our brands. They experience their interaction with our company through our PC business. And that’s why it’s very important. We’re focused on it. I’m not happy with the share performance. We’re going to turn that around.”

One month after the Client Solutions Group shakeup, Dell CFO Yvonne McGill, a 28-year Dell veteran, announced she was stepping down effective Oct. 31. She was replaced as CFO by Dell Senior Vice President Global Business Operations Finance David Kennedy, who was appointed on an interim basis and then named permanent CFO in November.

The changes at Dell came after the company carried out a round of job cuts that includes its “new logo” account acquisitions team and a number of sales positions, sources told CRN.

One of the impacted Dell employees who spoke to CRN said the cuts fell hard on what Dell calls its acquisitions team, a group of around 150 sales professionals—not including support staff—that must win “new logos” deals among commercial and enterprise companies that haven’t done business with Dell in the last three years.

“The (new logo) acquisitions organization at Dell pretty much no longer exists. A small percentage of reps were repurposed to other places in the organization. And the rest were let go. It was across the whole country. From the Northeast team to California, central, everybody in between,” the former Dell employee said.

The CEO of an SP 500 solution provider company, who did not want to be identified, said he is moving quickly to try to hire top performers from the new logos account organization that have been laid off.

“It’s a great team with some really good people,” said the CEO. “We have won a lot of business working with them. My objective is to hire some of these people to go after net new business. They know how to hunt and how to get new customers. I see this as a big opportunity for the channel to hire some of these people. There is some good talent available.”

The CEO said he believes the elimination of the account acquisition team will definitely impact Dell’s ability to capture net new business. “We have had many years of success working with that Dell acquisitions team,” he said. “I’m not surprised by anything in times like these, but this is disappointing.”

In February, the Round Rock, Texas-based Dell said it had 108,000 employees, which is down 10 percent or 12,000 employees from February 2024 to January 2025.

SonicWall Firewalls Hit By Akira Cybercriminal Group, Posts Advisory On Gen 7 Firewalls

In the latest of a series of attacks targeting SonicWall devices, the Akira cybercriminal group was believed to be behind a resurgence in ransomware attacks exploiting a previously disclosed vulnerability impacting certain SonicWall firewalls, researchers at cybersecurity vendor Rapid7 disclosed in September.

The attacks exploited a critical-severity vulnerability (tracked as CVE-2024-40766), initially reported in August 2024, which can be utilized to gain improper access to SonicWall firewall appliances with SSLVPN enabled.

The affected devices were SonicWall Gen 5, Gen 6 and Gen 7 firewalls, Rapid7 said.

The latest ransomware activity indicates that Akira has resumed its attacks that had previously been reported by security researchers in early August, according to Rapid7 researchers.

At the time, SonicWall said that reports from researchers suggesting a zero-day flaw was being exploited were incorrect, and that the attacks were exploiting the 2024 vulnerability.

The SonicWall attack came after the company posted an advisory on Aug. 4 pointing to a “notable increase in both internally and externally reported cyber incidents involving Gen 7 SonicWall firewalls where SSLVPN is enabled” over the past 72 hours.
Then in December, SonicWall confirmed that a zero-day vulnerability in its SMA1000 Appliance Management Console have been exploited in new cyberattack campaigns. SonicWall issued a fix for the vulnerability.

In its advisory, SonicWall said that the zero-day SMA1000 flaw “was reported to be leveraged in combination with CVE-2025-23006 (CVSS score 9.8) to achieve unauthenticated remote code execution with root privileges.”

SonicWall said it “strongly encourages all customers to remain current with patches and updates to ensure full protection.”
SonicWall is one of a number of firewall vendors that have been impacted by cyberattacks exploiting critical vulnerabilities in 2025 including Cisco, which was the subject in September of an “emergency directive” from the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). Exploitation of vulnerabilities in Fortinet products, meanwhile, prompted CISA to issues a mandate requiring federal agencies to patch quickly in November, and then again in December for a separate issue.

At the XChange Best of Breed Conference 2025, hosted by CRN parent The Channel Company, Zscaler founder and CEO Jay Chaudhry told partners that firewalls and VPNs have lived a useful life but are no longer fulfilling their core mission of increasing security.

Ultimately, if network security devices have themselves become the weak link on cybersecurity, then “having the network security architecture is irrelevant,” Chaudhry said. “I like to say, ‘Don’t do network security.’”

Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan’s Odyssey, US Government Gets 10 Percent Stake, Executive Departures

Lip-Bu Tan, who took over as CEO of beleaguered chipmaker Intel in March, became a lightning rod of controversy when President Donald Trump demanded he resign.

The demand by Trump came August 7 after Sen. Tom Cotton raised concerns about ‘Intel’s operations and its potential impact on U.S. national security’ related to a report alleging Tan’s ties with Chinese companies.

Trump made the demand in a short, three-sentence post on his Truth Social website, adding that “there is no other solution to this problem.”

Tan defended his integrity as a tech executive and investor in a letter to his employees and said the chipmaker is “engaging” with the Trump administration to address concerns.

After Trump met with Tan on August 11, he singled out Tan’s “success and rise” as an “amazing” story.

On August 22, Trump announced that Intel has agreed to give the U.S. government a 10 percent stake valued at roughly $10 billion in the troubled semiconductor giant.

“I said, ‘I think you should pass 10 percent of your company.’ And they said, ‘Yes, that’s about $10 billion,’” Trump said in an Oval Office gathering with reporters before saying that Tan agreed to the president’s request.

Intel continues to face a number of high-level executive departures including Vice President of Data Center AI Product Management Saurabh Kulkarni, who left in November to join rival AMD as corporate vice president of datacenter GPU product management.

Also leaving the company were: former Global Channel Chief John Kalvin who was heading up Intel’s Europe, Middle East and Africa commercial business; Chief Commercial Officer Christoph Schell who left in April to become CEO of Kuka, a German automation company; Intel Chief People Officer Christy Pambianchi who also left the chipmaker in April to take the top human resources job at construction giant Caterpillar; Intel Products CEO Michelle Johnston Holthaus, who stepped down after working for the company for three decades.

Cognizant Sued By Customer For Allegedly Providing Network Credentials Without Authentication

Cognizant, ranked No. 7 on the CRN 2025 Solution Provider 500, was sued by its longtime customer Clorox for allegedly allowing a cybercriminal to enter Clorox’s network by providing the needed credentials over the phone without authenticating who the caller was.

Clorox, in its lawsuit filed in July in the Superior Court of California, County of Alameda, said that it had trusted Cognizant for over a decade to “play critical roles in Clorox’s cyber environment.”

Clorox alleged that Cognizant, despite being provided “straight-forward procedures” to properly authenticate employees who called its Cognizant-operated service desk to reset their credentials, failed to do so, resulting in a “catastrophic cyberattack” on the company.

“Cognizant was not duped by any elaborate ploy or sophisticated hacking techniques. The cybercriminal just called the Cognizant Service Desk, asked for credentials to access Clorox’s network, and Cognizant handed the credentials right over. Cognizant is on tape handing over the keys to Clorox’s corporate network to the cybercriminal—no authentication questions asked,” Clorox alleged in the lawsuit.

Clorox, in a statement emailed to CRN in response to a request for more information, wrote that Cognizant’s “failures and actions directly caused the August 2023 cyberattack and the significant disruptions to The Clorox Company’s business operations.”

Clorox said the company is seeking $380 million in direct and compensatory damages in addition to punitive damages resulting from what it alleged as “Cognizant’s incompetence and disregard for Clorox’s password policies and basic cybersecurity standards” that caused the August 2023 attack

Jeff DeMarrais, Cognizant’s senior vice president of global marketing and chief communications officer, wrote in response to an emailed request from CRN for more information that it was Clorox’s own security practices that were lax.

“It is shocking that a corporation the size of Clorox had such an inept internal cybersecurity system to mitigate this attack. Clorox has tried to blame us for these failures, but the reality is that Clorox hired Cognizant for a narrow scope of help desk services which Cognizant reasonably performed. Cognizant did not manage cybersecurity for Clorox,” DeMarrais wrote.

The FAIR Institute, a research-driven not-for-profit organization dedicated to advancing cyber and operational risk management, called the lawsuit a “wake up call for third party cyber risk management.”

The Fair Insitute’s Managing Director Todd Tucker said in an post promoting the webinar: “The Clorox–Cognizant breach has put third-party cyber risk back on the front page, and with good reason. But it shouldn’t take a public lawsuit or operational disruption to realize that current approaches to TPRM are overdue for transformation.”

Microsoft Cloud Renewal Issues, New Eligibility Rules, Layoffs

Microsoft faced its fair share of channel challenges in 2025.

This year, an aggressive Microsoft renewal program, in the view of some partners, jeopardized solution providers’ status as trusted advisers as Microsoft mounted a full-court press on cloud renewals.

Contractors associated with Microsoft’s Vendor Digital Sales (VDS) team were “way more aggressive” in direct contacts with partner customers than partners had seen in the past, multiple solution providers told CRN. The contractors were looking to get customers to adopt higher-tier licenses and a broader range of Microsoft products through phone calls, emails and even unsolicited calendar invites without prior notice to partners.

Partners said these communications violate the primary tenant of channel sales that a vendor should not go behind a partner’s back to sell to an established customer.

In February, the customer of a Mid-Atlantic-based Microsoft solution provider received a cold call from a person in Costa Rica referring to herself as a Microsoft “solutions consultant” who wanted to discuss the customer’s upcoming cloud subscription renewal.

But if that wasn’t bad enough in the partner’s view, after talking to the customer, the solutions consultant sent a low-quality lead through the Microsoft Partner Center portal to his company.

“The lead that they submitted had less licenses than the client has now,” the Mid-Atlantic partner told CRN in an interview. “Plus, they have no idea that the client has backups and other services with other providers. It’s insane.”

The partner said that their client was angered by the whole experience, finding it a waste of time. “This is not acceptable and is not working the way that they (Microsoft) think it is,” the partner said.

In an email to CRN, a Microsoft spokesperson said that the communications are related to the Redmond, Wash.-based tech giant’s Vendor Digital Sales team. The VDS team “identifies up-sell and cross-sell opportunities with small and medium businesses, connects those opportunities to partners, prioritizing the customer’s preferred partner, and develops them jointly through a consultative approach.”

“Quoting, billing, and implementation are all done by the partner,” the spokesperson said. “The program, which has been in existence for more than five years, provides technical expertise at no cost to help partners increase win rates and maximize deal sizes.”

Microsoft also raised the ire of some partners when it increased authorization eligibility for its Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) partner program effective Oct. 1. Microsoft notably more than tripled revenue rules for direct bill partners.

Under the changes, the revenue threshold for direct bill partners changes from $300,000 for the trailing 12 months (TTM) at the partner global account level to $1 million.

Partners also now need to pass an annual, automated assessment measuring operational capabilities, sales capacities, customer support practices and compliance frameworks. The assessment has been active this Microsoft fiscal year for new and geographical expansion partners.

The result was direct-bill Microsoft partners looking at whether it still pays to have a direct relationship with the vendor, or if they are better off moving to a distributor and becoming an indirect reseller.

“I believe we will survive as direct,” one solution provider told Microsoft before the eligibility change. “But wow, [$1 million] is a big number.”

Microsoft was also among the technology vendors that implemented mass layoffs in 2025. Those spanned from 6,000 jobs cuts announced in May and 9,000 employees—about 4 percent of its total workforce—announced in July as getting let go.

“We continue to implement organizational changes necessary to best position the company and teams for success in a dynamic marketplace,” a Microsoft spokesperson told CRN in an email in July.

AWS Outage, Layoffs, Executive Changes

AWS this year grappled with one of the biggest cloud outages of the year, layoffs and a number of executive departures.

The 15-hour AWS global cloud outage on October 20 hit more than 4 million users and impacted over 1,000 companies including from payment service providers and financial trading applications to social media websites and commercial software.

Cyber risk analytics firm CyberCube estimated a preliminary insured loss estimate for AWS’ outage a range of between $38 million and $581 million.

“We apologize for the impact this event caused our customers,” said AWS in its post-mortem report of the outage results and root cause.

The outage was yet another reminder of just how much businesses and consumers rely on AWS for any and all aspects of daily online life.

The AWS’ blackout affected large airlines, including Delta Airlines and United Airlines banks, media, applications and websites, including cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, streaming services Disney+ and Hulu, and AI star Perplexity all reporting disruptions.

AWS’ internet outage also affected popular social media providers like Snapchat as well as popular online sites like Reddit and designer platform provider Canva.

The root cause of AWS’ outage stemmed from a Domain Name System (DNS) error that prevented applications from locating the correct address for DynamoDB. AWS’ DynamoDB is a cloud database that stores user information and other critical data.

The DNS issue triggered a waterfall effect that spread throughout AWS’ vast services portfolio that millions of users leverage every day, including internet websites, digital products and applications.

AWS implemented layoffs in both July and November.

AWS confirmed the layoffs in in July, but did not specify which groups are impacted or how many AWS employees were impacted.

In October, AWS parent Amazon confirmed that it will lay off 14,000 corporate employees as part of major organizational changes across the company.

Beth Galetti, senior vice president of People Experience and Technology at Amazon, in a letter to employees pointed to the need to be organized more leanly, with fewer layers and more ownership, to move as quickly as possible for our customers and business.

Looking ahead to 2026, Amazon said it expects to “continue hiring in key strategic areas.”

However, the company said it will continue to find “additional places [where] we can remove layers, increase ownership and realize efficiency gains,” said Galetti.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said that the company expects to “reduce” its corporate workforce due to “efficiency gains” in artificial intelligence.

“As we roll out more Generative AI and agents, it should change the way our work is done. We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today and more people doing other types of jobs,” said Jassy in his letter to employees.

“It’s hard to know exactly where this nets out over time, but in the next few years we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company,” Amazon’s CEO said.

Among the top AWS executive departures during the year were: Vasi Philomin, an eight year AWS veteran who was vice president and general manager of AWS Generative AI and the driving force behind Amazon Bedrock, who left to join Siemens as its executive vice president of data and AI; Prathiban Mohanasundaram, a 14 year AWS veteran who was head of engineering for S3 and S3 Edge, who left to join Snowflake as a senior manager of engineering; and Christopher Niederman, an 11 year AWS veteran who was managing director of AWS Industries and Solutions, who also left to join Snowflake as senior vice president of alliances and channels.

As the year came to a close, AWS announced that effective at the end of 2025, AWS AI Chief Rohit Prasad, a 12 year AWS veteran was leaving the company.

Ingram Micro Hit By Ransomware Attack, Certain Data ‘Exfiltrated’ From Systems

Distribution behemoth Ingram Micro was hit with a ransomware attack on July 3 associated with the SafePay ransomware organization.

The attack, which was first reported by Bleeping Computer, took down Ingram Micro’s online ordering system and website.

“This is our worst nightmare come true,” said the CEO for an SP500 company, who has reached out to Ingram Micro and has not heard back on the extent of the outage. “If we can’t place orders or get quotes it stops our business. We are extremely concerned that this could last for some time and have reached out to Ingram.”

Visitors to Ingram Micro’s website were greeted with the message: “Maintenance: We are currently experiencing technical difficulties. We apologize for the inconvenience and are working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible. If you have any questions please contact us.”

Ingram Micro confirmed the ransomware attack, noting that it was “working diligently to restore the affected systems so that it can process and ship orders.”

The $48 billion distribution behemoth, which notified law enforcement and has launched an “investigation” with the assistance of leading cybersecurity experts, “apologized” to customers, vendor partners and others for any “disruption” caused by the incident.

On July 8, Ingram Micro said it was making “important progress” on restoring its transactional business.

In a statement posted to its website the distributor said that “subscription orders, including renewals and modifications, are available globally and are being processed centrally via Ingram Micro’s support organization.

Additionally, the company said “it was now able to process orders received by phone or email from the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Brazil, India, China, Portugal and Nordics.”

That said, the company noted that “some limitations still exist with hardware and other technology orders, which will be clarified as orders are placed.”

Ingram thanked “customers and vendor partners for their patience” as the restoration efforts progressed.

In the midst of the attack, many partners pledged their loyalty and vowed to stick by Ingram’s side.

Mark Essayian, president of Irvine, Calif.-based KME Systems, told CRN that Ingram “is a good partner.” “If they could fix it in a second, they would. But they’ve got to do it correctly and they know what’s at stake.”

Essayian, a member of Ingram Micro’s Trust X Alliance, said the ransomware attack isn’t a failure but is a test of long-standing relationships.

On July 10, Ingram said it had restored all business operations around the globe.

In a statement posted to its information page regarding the attack, the Irvine, Calif.-based distributor stated that it is “pleased to report that we are now operational across all countries and regions where we transact business.

“Our teams continue to perform at a swift pace to serve and support our customers and vendor partners,” the statement continued. “We are grateful for the support we’ve received from our customers and industry colleagues. This is an industry based on strong and committed relationships that make all the difference.”

On August 6, Ingram Micro CEO Paul Bay said “certain data was exfiltrated from our systems”during the attack.

“This process is ongoing and complex,” Bay said. “Should we determine that personal information was affected, we will provide notification based on relevant regulations.”

Bay said that “while no company wants to face the increasing reality of such an attack” the company’s response reflected the way it does business as a platform company.

“We approached the incident as a business challenge, and the entire organization mobilized to address it. Due to our scalable and modular platform architecture and the tireless, coordinated efforts of our team, we restored secure operations within days, minimizing disruption to our customers, partners and the overall business.”

Cisco Channel Chief Change In Midst Of Historic 360 Partner Program Changes

Cisco Channel Chief Rodney Clark, who was charged with driving the biggest channel program change in Cisco’s history with Cisco 360, stepped aside from the position suddenly in August after less than two years on the job.

The departure of Clark, a 24-year former Microsoft executive who joined Cisco in November 2023 as senior vice president of partnerships and small and medium business, came with partners expressing uncertainty in Cisco 360 compensation changes.

Clark, who was senior vice president of global partner sales, was replaced by Tim Coogan, a 25-year Cisco veteran who moved into the critical channel job after nearly three years as senior vice president of the U.S. Commercial business.

One Cisco partner executive who spoke under the condition of anonymity said that “partners are high-fiving” the news of the new channel chief.

“[Coogan] has a ton of experience with partners. It’s a great move and we could not be happier,” the executive said.

Manak Ahluwalia, CEO of Aqueduct Technologies, a Canton, Mass.-based Cisco Gold partner that grew its Cisco business by double-digits in the last fiscal year, said when the change took place that he was “excited” about the appointment of Coogan to the channel chief seat.

“Tim gets it,” said Ahluwalia. “He understands where the partner provides value, the sales landscape, what it means to get down on the street. He has heard partners talk about profitability and operational challenges. He gets Cisco. That’s a great choice! Everybody else was an outsider. They came in, disrupted the whole program, tried to emulate things they did in the software space and now they are all gone.”

Coogan, for his part, told CRN in an interview in October that the success of the Cisco 360 partner program will at the end of the day be determined by whether it was “additive to or did it diminish from the trust that we have with our partners.”

Coogan said Cisco 360 is “not an opportunity to do less with [a partner]. It is an opportunity to reward their investment by doing more. I think that’s really something that’s fundamentally different about the way we have always approached our partner ecosystem.”

Broadcom VMware Program Changes Roil Partners; Competitors Pounce

Broadcom continued to make program changes in 2025 that roiled partners and customers.

Broadcom increased the cost of VMware for some customers by boosting the minimum purchase from 16 cores to 72 cores, according to a memo to solution providers from distributor Arrow that was obtained by CRN. The changes went into effect on April 1.

In addition, Broadcom implemented a penalty equivalent to 20 percent of the price of the first-year subscription for customers that have not renewed their subscription licenses by their anniversary date, the memo stated.

The CTO of a Broadcom VMware partner, who did not want to be identified, said the new 72-core minimum for licenses actively discourages cost-conscious SMB customers and even large customers with small remote office environments from using the virtualization platform.

“VMware is punishing small and medium business customers that continue to use the platform,” he said. “Clearly VMware does not value the small and medium business community that have built their business leveraging the platform.”

One VMware partner told CRN that the Broadcom VMware changes are going to spark customers to look for alternatives.

"This is Broadcom drawing a line in the sand saying they have a minimum entry fee that is much higher than before," said the VMware partner via email, who asked not to be named because of ongoing business with the company. "Customers that have been happy with VMWare but only spending $1,000 to $2,000 a year on perpetual renewals are now looking at $3,500 to $4,000 annually."

In a June 1 blog post, Broadcom VMware continued the channel shakeup informing partners in a blog post that it was cutting partners in its lowest channel tier from their ability to resell VMware products as the company looks to slim down its partner base.

CRN featured the Broadcom VMware changes in a cover story titled: “Like It Or Not This Is Broadcom’s New VMware Channel Strategy.”

Broadcom executives leading its VMware business and channel strategy made it clear in interviews with CRN that partners that want to remain relevant must double down on professional services capabilities and technical certifications to help customers unlock all of the value VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) promises.

“We want very technical pre- and post-sales partners that can walk a customer through the [VCF] journey, implement and drive the outcomes. If you do that well, you will thrive. You will prosper beyond what you’ve ever experienced with VMware,” said Brian Moats, Broadcom’s global channel chief.

The Broadcom VMware changes marked another year of competitors swooping in to win over partners frustrated with the Broadcom changes.

Nutanix’s annual sales leaped 18 percent as the company added 2,700 new customers to its platform—including large enterprise accounts that have tens of thousands of compute cores—with the channel flipping more of its VMware customers to the hyperconverged infrastructure platform, said Nutanix CEO Rajiv Ramaswami.

As Broadcom has dumped some of its longstanding VMware channel partners amid a push for larger deals among enterprise customers—dropping from 25,000 VMware resellers to about 18,000 in 2024—those channel partners have brought their accounts to Nutanix, Ramaswami said.

“All those partners have come to us, and some subset of the customers,” he told CRN. “I think these partners have a lot more customers than what we’ve gotten. Clearly, the partners have been influential in us getting these customers. They can’t just overnight bring them all over. They still have to do a migration. So it still takes time, but the partners are certainly leaning in with us now more than they were before.”

HPE stepped up its march to grab share from VMware with a VM Essentials standalone as a global offering with a no-holds barred “channel only” go-to-market model backed up by a 10.5 percent rebate.

“We wanted to demonstrate our commitment to partners and therefore we made a decision that HPE VM Essentials standalone will be channel-only,” said HPE Worldwide Channel and Partner Ecosystem Leader Simon Ewington (pictured) in an interview with CRN. “The message that we want our partners to understand is that we are all in with partners on HPE VM Essentials.”

HPE partners, for their part, said they see a massive opportunity to displace Broadcom VMware.

Sarah Miles, founder and CEO of Milestone Tech, Castle Rock, Colorado, has already trained her entire team as part of an “all hands on deck” sales offensive to take advantage of the “massive” opportunity to provide HPE VM Essentials as a much-needed alternative to the high-priced path Broadcom has taken with its VMware strategy.

“I don’t have any customers that are happy with VMware,” said Miles. “Some are begrudgingly doing what they have to do in tandem, but everybody is sort of hungry for plan B…I think our customers are going to be really receptive to the (HPE VM Essentials) price-point, the licensing model, and how this can be a bridge and transition strategy that HPE has thought through to enable them to transfer VMs. I think it’s pretty compelling so we are excited to start the journey with some of our clients.”