Channel Madness Quarterfinals: Rooney, Grothjan Out To Early Leads

March 31, 2021, 10:44 AM EDT

It’s nearly halftime of Round 3 in the CRN Channel Madness tournament, and the Enterprise 8 are fighting for a place in the Field of Four.

As the Enterprise 8 face off in the quarterfinal round of the 2021 CRN Channel Madness Tournament of Chiefs, the regional Infrastructure, Hardware, Cloud and Security crowns are on the line.

A number of channel chiefs have significant ground to make up if they hope to make it to the Field of Four.

A lot of fans are keeping close tabs on Veeam’s Kevin Rooney as he tries to win the Channel Madness Championship for the second year in a row. He’s currently ahead of Nextiva’s Eric Martorano with 64 percent of the vote to Martorano’s 36 percent.

Meanwhile, Donna Grothjan of Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, is out to a strong lead in her duel with Scale Computing’s Scott Mann. Grothjan is out front with 75 percent of the vote while Mann’s at 25 percent.

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

Infrastructure

Christian Alvarez, Nutanix, 15 vs. Curtiz Gangi, Eaton, 85

Hardware

Donna Grothjan, Aruba, an HPE company, 75 vs. Scott Mann, Scale Computing 25

Cloud

Eric Martorano, Nextiva, 36 vs. Kevin Rooney, Veeam Software, 64

Security

Michelle Welch, WatchGuard Technologies, 31 vs. Frank Rauch, Check Point Software Technologies, 69

Voting in Round 3 remains open until Thursday, April 1 at noon ET. Visit CRN.com/madness to cast your votes and choose your chief!

Jennifer Follett

Jennifer Follett is the Executive Editor for CRN where she has been covering the IT solution provider channel for 20 years. She currently oversees CRN magazine and CRN.com, the website for the industry’s leading channel publication. She can be reached at jfollett@thechannelcompany.com.