Round 2 Channel Madness Results: Rauch, Martorano Prevail

After a frenzy of voting over the last 24 hours, Round 2 of the 2021 CRN Channel Madness Tournament of Chiefs is complete. Here’s a look at how the Solutions 16 fared and who’s moving on to the quarterfinal round as the Enterprise 8.

The spotlight was tuned to the Security region, where Check Point’s Frank Rauch and Palo Alto Networks’ Karl Soderlund were locked in a fierce battle that saw numerous lead changes. In the end Rauch emerged as the victor, winning 56 percent of the vote to Soderlund’s 44 percent.

Another close bout shaped up in the Cloud region, where Nextiva’s Eric Martorano was able to hold off Microsoft’s Gavriella Schuster. Martorano took the victory with 55 percent of the vote over Schuster’s 45 percent.

Here’s a look at the full results:

Infrastructure

Shannon Sbar, Schneider Electric, 15 vs. Christian Alvarez, Nutanix, 85

Rob Rae, Datto, 12 vs. Curtiz Gangi, Eaton, 88

Hardware

Rob Cato, Lenovo, 40 vs. Donna Grothjan, Aruba, an HPE company, 60

Jason Kimrey, Intel, 14 vs. Scott Mann, Scale Computing 86

Cloud

Gavriella Schuster, Microsoft, 45 vs. Eric Martorano, Nextiva, 55

Carolee Gearhart, Google Cloud, 36 vs. Kevin Rooney, Veeam Software, 64

Security

Todd Meister, Zscaler, 27 vs. Michelle Welch, WatchGuard Technologies, 73

Frank Rauch, Check Point Software Technologies, 56 vs. Karl Soderlund, Palo Alto Networks, 44

That sets up the Enterprise 8 quarterfinal matchups, which will see Nutanix’s Christian Alvarez take on Eaton’s Curtiz Gangi for the Infrastructure crown, while Aruba’s Donna Grothjan goes up against Scale Computing’s Scott Mann for the Hardware title.

Nextiva’s Eric Martorano squares off against 2020 Channel Madness Champion Kevin Rooney of Veeam, while WatchGuard’s Michelle Welch will try to take down Check Point’s Frank Rauch for the Security crown.

Voting in Round 3 opens today, Tuesday, March 30 at 4:00 PM ET and remains open until April 1 at noon ET.

Visit CRN.com/madness to cast your votes and choose your chief!