40 Channel Milestones Over 40 Years

As CRN celebrates its 40th anniversary, here are the 40 milestones that have shaped the channel over the last four decades.

For four decades CRN has documented the blockbuster products, deals and channel changes that have helped solution providers drive massive productivity gains, cost efficiencies and tighter relationships with their customers.

From the PC explosion powered by Apple and IBM to the LAN revolution that made Novell a channel favorite to the cloud revolution led by Amazon Web Services, CRN has been on the front lines making sure solution providers have all the information they need on the latest and greatest products and services.

Besides all of the huge technology shifts, CRN has provided solution providers insight into the many channel changes that literally define whether they make money or lose money, or potentially go out of business. That includes everything from the original PC retailing model to the open-sourcing revolution that rocked the market to the channel assembly model.

Along the way, there has been one blockbuster deal after another that has reshaped the channel—from Hewlett Packard’s acquisition of Compaq to Dell’s acquisition of EMC, along with countless channel battles on issues like Microsoft special pricing for PC OEMs or Apple channel shifts that left partners out in the cold.

Among some of the most powerful coverage of those four decades have come from partners stepping up to help customers in a time of crisis. Whether it was Sept. 11, Hurricane Katrina or the global pandemic, technology solution providers and their vendor and distribution partners have always been there to help customers through the tough times.

As we celebrate our 40th anniversary, here is our list of the 40 milestones that have shaped the channel over the last four decades.

COMPUTER RETAIL NEWS LAUNCHES

CRN started as Computer Retail News—the newspaper for systems and software retailing — with the first issue published on June 7, 1982. Apple and IBM may have lit the match that created the PC revolution, but it was a slew of national retailers and computer franchisee businesses that spread the fire into every major city and hamlet across the country. From Computerland, which opened its first store in 1976 and grew to 800 stores by 1985, to MicroAge, which was founded in 1976 and grew to 1,400 stores, to Intelligent Electronics, which was founded in 1982 and grew to 710 franchisees in 1989, the franchisee model created what amounted to powerful distributors of hard-to-get PCs. The model brought huge profits during the PC boom to the national chains.

INTEL PROCESSORS IGNITE A REVOLUTION

When Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce founded Intel in 1968, they had no idea the company would build the processors that would power the PC revolution. At first the company was focused on memory chips. But by the mid ’70s, Intel was pumping out processors that captured the imagination of Microsoft founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen. The x86 architecture that Intel created not only inspired Gates and Allen, but a new generation of entrepreneurs who would bring the new business productivity devices to customers of all shapes and sizes. In CRN’s inaugural issue, Bruce Burdick, the then-owner of five ComputerLand franchisees in Kansas City, told CRN he was cutting his Apple floor space in half to make way for IBM and Digital Equipment Corp. systems.

APPLE AND THE BYTE SHOP

Then-computer reseller Paul Terrell opened what came to be regarded as the first PC retail shop, The Byte Shop, in 1975 in Mountain View, Calif. The Byte Shop became the first retailer of the Apple I when Apple co-founder Steve Jobs made a deal to sell 50 systems to The Byte Shop for resale. Jobs and his partner, Steve Wozniak, along with a small crew, worked feverishly to deliver the systems after buying the parts needed to assemble the systems from Cramer Electronics. The first issue of CRN featured an ad recruiting independent computer retailers to “Join the Byte Shops.” “Build your business by affiliating with a winning national team. As a Byte affiliate, you’ll enjoy increased traffic through a national advertising campaign. Plus training, management assistance, signage, a décor plan, distribution and access to key product lines,” read the ad.

IBM PC AND THE COVETED MEDALLION

IBM introduced the Personal Computer on Aug. 12, 1981, an effort led by then-Director of Entry Systems Businsess Don Estridge. That opened the door to a PC reseller revolution. Apple may have had the cool factor, but IBM had brought out a machine for business. IBM established a rigorous authorization process, putting potential retailers through a carefully controlled vetting process. The battle among retailers and franchisees was intensely competitive. The prize—what became known as the vaunted IBM Medallion—was an authorization to sell the IBM PC. CRN’s first issue featured an article on 16 new IBM retailers capturing an IBM Medallion.

BUSINESSLAND’S DECLINE

Although the franchisee model dominated the early reseller landscape, there were a number of corporate-owned retail chains that went head-to-head against the franchisee model and succeeded for a time—including Businessland. Co-founded in 1982 by Dave Norman, the company—which focused on selling PCs to large corporations—grew to more than 100 outlets and delivered annual sales of more than $1 billion in 1989. But tough times were to come. A CRN cover story from 1989 asked in its headline, “Where Have All The Margins Gone?”

SOFTWARE SALES BOOM

If Businessland was a pioneer in selling PCs to large corporations, then it was Corporate Software—founded in 1982—that pioneered the art and science of selling software to big busineses. Founded by Mort Rosenthal, the software business was fueled by the explosion in sales powered by Lotus 1-2-3, the visual spreadsheet that made the IBM PC a business staple. A CRN Hall of Fame article in 2001 on Rosenthal noted that the Corporate Software founder and his team built the business “not just by selling software products—the big names then were Ashton Tate’s dBase, Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect—but also by outsourcing software licensing and software asset management.”

COMPAQ’S PC PROWESS

If IBM brought business computing to corporate America, it was Compaq that brought PCs to the masses. The company delivered a PC-compatible experience in a portable system that captured the imagination of all businesses and, under the leadership of then-Compaq CEO Rod Canion and then- Channel Chief Ross Cooley, it cultivated deep and long-lasting channel relationships. In its first year of sales, Compaq reported $111 million, the first startup to ever hit the magic $100 million mark that fast, according to Wikipedia. Compaq’s tight partnership with Intel also gave it a leg up on competitors when it came to delivering top-performing PCs. That engineering excellence also made the company a favorite of industry luminaries, noted by a CRN Sept. 1986 cover story on Compaq’s unveiling of its it speedy new Desktop 386 system at New York’s Palladium nightclub.

COMPAQ DEAUTHORIZES BUSINESSLAND

It was the kill authorization that rocked the channel. In February 1989, Compaq deauthorized Businessland, preventing it from selling Compaq systems. The move came after Businessland said it was betting big on IBM’s Micro Channel PS/2 systems. Businessland, in fact, had committed to focus on the IBM standard and only support Compaq’s Enhanced Industry Standard Architecture if customers demanded it. Compaq said at the time the kill authorization was prompted by disagreements over strategic direction. Both companies paid a steep price for the split. Businessland accounted for 7 percent of Compaq’s sales in 1988, while Compaq accounted for 15 percent of Businessland’s annual sales. Nearly a year after the official split, a truce was called and Businessland was welcomed to once again carry the Compaq brand in March 1990.

OUTSIDE SALES FORCES

In the mid-1980s, a dramatic shift from retail stores to outside sales forces driving tight ties with corporate customers changed the channel landscape. A CRN cover story in 1985 detailed how seven of the top 10 retailers in the business were now deriving at least 50 percent of their sales from the seasoned sales reps knocking on the doors of major corporations. Those retailers that had built corporate sales forces that drove big sales growth included Computerland, MicroAge, Businessland, Inacomp, ValCom, General Micro and ComputerCraft. CRN reported that MicroAge employed 500 outside sales reps, while BusinessLand had 400 outside sales professionals calling on customers. “As the figures indicate the retailing industry is undergoing a distinct, and as some believe, much-needed metamorphosis,” read the CRN story in the June 17, 1985, edition. “The days of primary reliance on walk-in traffic are slowly dwindling.”

RESELLERS FEEL APPLE’S BITE

Apple has had a long history of channel schizophrenia that has angered resellers. The very first issue of CRN in 1982 featured a front page story with the headline, “Mail Order Dealers Jolted By Apple Ban.” The story focused on six Apple mail order resellers who were preparing for an antitrust suit against Apple. That Apple narrative has played out one decade after another. One of the biggest Apple channel slaps in the face came in 1992 when the company cut out channel partners reselling products to the education market, instead shifting to a direct sales model. CRN continuted to examine Apple and its channel strategy in an Oct. 12, 2015, cover story with the headline,“Bad Apple: An inside look at the rotting relationship between Apple and its partners.”

NOT AS EASY AS LOTUS 1-2-3

Lotus 1-2-3 is widely credited with sparking the PC revolution, but Lotus had more than its share of issues with partners. Lotus faced intense channel backlash when it moved to preload Lotus 1-2-3 on systems, angering software resellers. Lotus, however, backtracked after CRN coverage. Amid Lotus’ growing popularity, CRN reported in 1983 that co-founder and then-CEO Mitch Kapor had terminated its exclusive distribution pact with Softsel to bring on Micro D and Softeam. Softsel had been instrumental in driving sales growth for the $495 integrated software, which provided the ability to graph spreadsheet data. The new distribution partners came after Lotus had filed a $27 million IPO. Another major channel issue came when Lotus introduced its eagerly anticipated Lotus Notes product. Lotus sold the groupware product out of the gate through its direct sales force, cutting out partners. In fact, it took years before Lotus launched a channel plan for Notes.

ENTER COMPUTER RESELLER NEWS

With the PC boom bursting out well beyond retail into tens of thousands of resellers bringing technology solutions to businesess, Computer Retail Week became Computer Reseller News in the summer of 1986. In one of the first issues as Computer Reseller News, a banner headline read: “The IBM Shift Is On: Goodbye to Storefront Requirement?” The front page story detailed IBM’s subtly shifting policy away from mandatory storefront requirements by providing some dealers the opportunity to abandon business centers in exchange for opening sales offices. The change, CRN reported, signaled a new development in an in-house war being waged at IBM’s National Distribution Division over reseller requirements.

OPEN-SOURCING ROCKS THE MARKET

In 1994, Compaq fired the shot heard round the channel by implementing open-sourcing that allowed franchisees to buy Compaq products from any distributor or reseller. It’s hard to imagine today, but the sourcing restrictions placed by vendors gave franchisees no choice but to buy from a single source and bound them to a single supplier. That created a market with effectively no competition based on price or availability. “If a manufacturer is going to get to a majority share position, it has to have [fewer] restrictions regarding how resellers obtain its products,” then-Compaq Channel Chief Ross Cooley told CRN at the time. The Compaq move set off a price war between major chains and distributors including Intelligent Electronics, MicroAge, Inacom, Merisel and Ingram Micro. “Competition is extremely severe,” then-Ingram Alliance Chief Executive David R. Dukes told CRN. “And if people are not careful, it could become fatal for some companies.” Fatal indeed. The opensourcing model would go on to spread like wildfire, ripping through the high margins that the large franchise chains had enjoyed.

DELL DIRECT PUTS THE HEAT ON RIVALS

At Dell Technologies World this year, Dell Co-COO Chuck Whitten pointed to the $101 billion company’s logistics prowess as a “durable competitive advantage” in the midst of the current supply chain crisis. That supply chain superiority has been a problem for Dell competitors from the outset when Dell founder, Chairman and CEO Michael Dell began building PCs out of his dorm room at the University of Texas in 1984. Dell figured the cost savings from going direct would give him a huge competitive advantage over larger manufacturers. That direct philosophy turned Dell into one of the top PC makers, with CRN naming Michael Dell as the No. 1 executive of 1998. The company has not only reached the top rung of manufacturers, wrote CRN, it has “developed a build-to-order model that is causing competitors to dramatically readjust and revamp their own businesses.” CRN inducted Michael Dell into the Industry Hall of Fame in 2003.

CRN: REFLECTING THE NEW CHANNEL

With value-added resellers giving way to a new era of technology solution providers and cloud solution providers, Computer Reseller News became CRN in 2000. The name change hammered home just how far the channel had come in crafting end-to-end solutions for businesses. Like the partners that have evolved to deliver more value to customers, CRN changed too—becoming the newsweekly for builders of technology solutions. One sign of the complexity being handled by technology solution providers: Research from CRN that found the average solution at the time contained 40 different products and four different technologies. That research was prescient, pointing to the increasing brand power of partners bringing together a multitude of hardware, software and services to solve business problems for customers. One solution provider featured by CRN, TenCorp, in a 2003 case study delivered a solution for a private school that included 50 different products, 120 different SKUs, seven new applications and as many as 11 different technologies. That deal included overseeing everything from the phone system to a complex cafeteria system application to video surveillance security systems and wireless functionality.

MICROSOFT BACKS DOWN ON PRICING

When Microsoft provided special pricing on Microsoft Office for Dell and Gateway, the response was swift from angry Microsoft partners. In a CRN front page story in 1996 headlined, “Microsoft To Channel: Tough Luck,” partners complained Dell and Gateway were getting pricing at least 50 percent less than what they were paying to bundle their systems. Microsoft responded by claiming that Dell and Gateway were not competing with partners. “Dell and Gateway don’t sell to the same set of customers,” then- Microsoft Vice President of Desktop Applications Marketing Robert Bach told CRN. “We’ve got to think through the way the relationship works. It’s a different support model, a different marketplace.” Partners were furious and let Microsoft know in no uncertain terms. Shortly after the controversy hit the front page of CRN, Microsoft backed down and made a change to appease partners.

THE GENIUS OF NOVELL

Novell’s NetWare operating system brought the LAN revolution to businesses. NetWare, of course, was a breakthrough product. But the genius of Novell founder Ray Noorda, who ran the company from 1982 until 1994, extended beyond the product into the channel. Noorda, as CRN noted in a 30th anniversary look back at the CRN Industry Hall of Fame pioneers, “pushed the company to develop a tiered channel, certification programs for engineers and a successful channel partner program that several other companies came to similarly adopt.” The Novell channel model was the envy of the industry. By insisting on stringent certification standards, Noorda had created a highly skilled channel that was unmatched in its ability to deliver robust LAN capabilities. In the early ’90s, Novell had a 63 percent share of the market for network operating systems with an installed base of 500,000 NetWare-based networks with more than 50 million users, according to Wikipedia. In a CRN Top 25 Executive article in 1993, CRN hailed Noorda as the Henry Ford of the networking industry. “Ray’s biggest attribute is that he understands networking in an abstract way and he understands the needs of resellers,” Novell’s former legal counsel Carey Heckman, then a professor at Stanford University, told CRN. “He packaged networking in terms of ease of use and similar to Ford; he simplified sales of networking software.”

THE RISE OF WIRELESS NETWORKING

In 2002, CRN asked a number of industry luminaries to predict the future, including then- Intel Vice President and CTO Pat Gelsinger. Gelsinger, who headed up Intel’s corporate technology group at the time, including Intel Labs and Intel Research, advised partners— among other things—to invest in wireless technology and web services. “Wireless is huge,” he said. “The 802.11 specification has transformed the industry.” Gelsinger‘s prediction was spot on, with Wi-Fi taking hold and becoming widespread, particularly as the burgeoning smartphone market was catapaulted by the launch of Apple’s first iPhone in 2007.

CHANNEL SHORTAGES—IN THE ’90S

With PC technology solution sales soaring in the mid-1990s, a shortage of products had partners looking for answers on how to navigate what CRN called in an April 1993 cover story, “The Allocation Nightmare.” The lead story called out that there was “no end in sight to systems shortages.” In fact, CRN reported, with “PC demand remaining strong, a severe shortage of the most popular PC products in the channel persists. And unless dramatic changes are made by resellers and vendors product constraints could remain a permanent part of the fabric of the industry.” ComputerLand was one of the companies hardest hit by the shortage with a “backlog of more than $100 million, up as much as five times its historical peak.” “We will buy the modem, the carrying case and memory, and that sits in the warehouse while the notebook PC comes in seven weeks later,” then-CompuCom Systems Executive Vice President Philip Wise told CRN. “There is a danger that a reseller could have $100 million in inventory in his warehouse and nothing to sell.”

CHANNEL ASSEMBLY DOMINATES

With Compaq, IBM and Hewlett Packard moving to lower costs, slash inventory and become more competitive against Dell, channel assembly of PCs became a major issue in the late ’80s. In a September 1998 cover story, top channel executives lamented that with price protection now averaging about 20 days, distributors and national chains were faced with out-of-stock situations from the three major vendors. “I feel like we’re at halftime of a bad football game and God knows if it will be over soon,” then-CompuCom Systems CEO Ed Anderson told CRN. “Meaning we have got some structural things that make the short-term environment difficult. You have average selling price declines and a bunch of other stuff going on.” The channel executives told CRN that while the price gap between Dell and the big three was narrowing, Dell was still beating IBM, HP and Compaq to the punch by being the first out of the gate with Intel’s latest processors. “During the course of the last several years, Dell Chairman and CEO Michael Dell has done a great job of out-marketing us,” then-Inacom CEO Bill Fairfield told CRN at the time. “But I think there’s a full-court press by everybody around this table to try to redefine what we mean by total cost. It just isn’t the purchase price of the product.” When CRN asked the top channel executives to grade the supply chain performance of the three top vendors, they gave IBM a C+, HP a C- and Compaq a D+.

THE WILD SUCCESS OF ‘INTEL INSIDE’

Launched in 1991 under the leadership of then- CEO Andy Grove, “Intel Inside” became by many accounts the most successful marketing and branding campaign of all time—one that helped drive explosive channel sales growth for the chip maker. But it was more than OEMs that benefited from the Intel Inside campaign—the company’s channel partners, including systems builders, leveraged the Intel Inside marketing campaign to help drive lead generation through print and then online ads. The financial muscle that Intel provided to partners was key to growing the Intel channel. The company, in fact, cultivated a loyal channel following with military-like precision with the Intel Inside campaign.

GATES: OS/2 VS. WINDOWS

When IBM’s original PC was brought to market the operating system—MS-DOS— was supplied by Microsoft, providing the software company a huge royalty stream. That original relationship with IBM resulted in Microsoft co-founder and then-CEO Bill Gates backing IBM’s OS/2 operating system even as Microsoft pushed ahead with its Windows operating system. In an April 13, 1987, CRN front page story, Gates proclaimed of Microsoft’s OS/2—co-developed by Microsoft and IBM: “Eventually the market will insist on it.” Gates and Microsoft, of course, turned their back on OS/2 just two years later. In an interview before the split, Gates told CRN that his goal was to sell 1 million copies of OS/2 worldwide in 1990. “While those with the most capable machines will use OS/2,” he told CRN, there is “immense territory for DOS essentially to be replaced over time by DOS plus Windows.”

THE EPIC LAUNCH OF WINDOWS 95

It was the moment that Windows became a worldwide cultural phenomenon. In fact, Windows 95 is widely considered the biggest software product launch ever, with Microsoft spending some $300 million to propel its breakthrough graphical user interface-based operating system into the stratosphere. In a 2005 10-year anniversary CRN story of the epic launch, CRN wrote: “Then chief executive Bill Gates broadcast the first public boot-up of the sorta-32-bit operating system in front of cameras that blitzed the image worldwide via satellite. He even had late-night TV talk show host Jay Leno on stage to help him out. ... New York’s Empire State Building was lit in Microsoft’s corporate colors when Leona Helmsley, dubbed the ‘Queen of Mean’ by the city’s press, still stalked the halls. A 300-foot Windows 95 banner was draped from Toronto’s CN Tower.” Windows 95 proved so popular that Microsoft sold a whopping 7 million copies of the product in the first five weeks it was on the market. It’s hard to remember just how far Gates had come in delivering Windows 95. CRN’s Top 25 profile of Gates in 1995 said, “Gates is the first to admit that Microsoft isn’t known for creating great software the first time around, but that the company persists and gets it right. Windows was an industry joke when introduced in 1985, but 10 years later Windows is considered an operating system, not just an environment. It has won more developers and users than any other operating system.”

CISCO CERTIFICATIONS SET THE GOLD STANDARD

If Novell started the certification revolution, then Cisco Systems took it to another level with a finely honed channel model built on creating a value-added reseller network that would become the envy of the industry. With tens of thousands of CCIEs, the networking certification became the gold standard for delivering enterprise networks that changed the world and made way for the internet. With an emphasis on betting big on market transitions and constantly leading partners to higher-margin ground, Cisco has thrived by capitalizing on technology paradigm shifts that are not for the faint of heart. “Almost every market mistake I’ve made at Cisco was because I haven’t moved fast enough,” then-CEO John Chambers told CRN in a 2001 profile. “I challenge my partners to think the same way. It is not without risk. I don’t want to mislead anybody here. Most companies will make it, but a number of them will not.”

THE VIRTUALIZATION REVOLUTION

When VMware’s virtualization software struck the market at the turn of the century, the dramatic cost savings it drove by allowing customers to significantly reduce their server footprint powered a channel revolution. In March 2002, VMware said that its virtualization software had surpassed 1 million users with growth that exceeded on average more than 2,000 new users per day. “We have been very fortunate to see great demand for our virtualization software,” said then-VMware CEO Diane Greene of the company’s good fortune. “Because our products provide immediate ROI for IT departments and developer shops, we’ve found they’ve been able to make their way through the approval processes rather quickly.” Partners, for their part, were raking in big profits from the virtualization boom that continued even as VMware was adding more products to its arsenal. In 2010, CRN named then-VMware CEO Paul Maritz as the No. 1 executive of the year. “No one—and we do mean no one—has powered more high-margin sales and profits for partners this year,” wrote CRN. “Think about this: VMware virtual machines now outnumber physical servers.”

SEPT. 11, 2001: ‘THERE ARE NO WORDS’

CRN’s cover following the 9/11 terrorist attacks featured a photograph of the bombedout World Trade Center site with the American flag being flown from the tragic remnants of what was once one of the towers. The stories inside documented the scope of the tragedy for America and technology solution providers and featured a list of the industry executives and solution providers who lost their lives in the attack. CRN reporters provided updates from around the country, reporting from the field or heading home scrambling with solution providers for rental cars and buses from the Avnet partner conference in San Antonio, Network+Interop in Atlanta, CTIA’s Wireless conference in San Diego and the Compaq Enterprise Technical Symposium in Anaheim, Calif. In his editorial for the issue, CRN’s Robert Faletra called for Americans to unite. “In many ways, this tragedy will move us to do what we should have done long ago,” he wrote. “Unite as Americans. We should all hope that whether we see ourselves as Republicans, Democrats, conservatives or liberals, we are united in the lengthy war on terrorism we are about to embark on. We have the resolve to win. Technology will have to be used wisely as part of our strategy, and hopefully it will speed the time to completion. But make no mistake, our lives have been forever changed.”

LINUX TAKES HOLD

Today, the Linux open-source movement is deeply ingrained in every nook and cranny of corporate computing. But back in 2004, when CRN named Linus Torvalds, “the Finnish programmer and composer” of the Linux kernel, as the No. 1 executive of the year, the Linux movement was just starting to explode. In fact, as CRN reported, the completion of the Linux 2.6 kernel at the time had taken the “open-source operating system to the next level, making it enterprise-ready and forcing Microsoft, Sun Microsystems and other operating system vendors to make strategic changes to their business model.” Torvalds was humble regarding the changes he had prompted in the industry. “I’m still not very philosophical about open source,” he told CRN. “To me it’s pretty pragmatic. I have a very strong belief that cooperation and open sharing of knowledge end up resulting in better development.” In July 2019, IBM, of course, paid $34 billion to acquire open-source high-flyer Red Hat.

DELL’S NEW VIEW OF THE CHANNEL

Twenty-three years after Michael Dell founded Dell with an aim of cutting out the middleman, Dell launched its first channel program in December 2007. “With the launch of the Dell channel program, the company flipped the switch to turn on a dedicated website for solution providers that will manage conflicts as resellers register deals, access its product lineup and manage logistics with Dell,” wrote CRN. In a Best of Breed conference interview in 2013 with CRN’s Robert Faletra, Dell said his goal was to become the best channel partner—bar none. “We believe we have a great program today, and we’re really pleased with the progress over the last four or five years,” he said. “I’d like to come back in the future and be your best partner. So you know, that’s our goal. So we haven’t set a low goal, but I think if you step back, and you look at the last five years or so, we’ve taken the channel program to be about a third of our commercial business. So order of magnitude, we’ll call it a little more than $15 billion.”

WHEN DISASTERS STRIKE

Whenever there was a disaster like Hurricane Katrina, an earthquake and even war, CRN was there to document how solution providers were overcoming life-threatening conditions to help customers. Take Hurricane Katrina in 2005. CRN touched down in New Orleans several weeks after the tragedy and documented the plight of solution providers like Universal Data and its CEO Jim Perrier. Perrier and a small tight-knit group of employees banded together after the tragedy to continue to serve customers like Dickie Brennan & Co. Restaurants. “Universal Data really took care of us,” Dickie Brennan, owner of the legendary New Orleans family restaurant business, told CRN at the time. “We were one of the first restaurants to open up in downtown New Orleans. Universal Data was a part of that because we were able to communicate with our people and develop a plan.” CRN also traveled to Beirut to document the survival of solution provider BMB Group in 2006 in the midst of an Israeli attack on Hezbollah after the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers that resulted in Lebanon being bombed for 34 days. BMB—one of the few Cisco and Microsoft Gold partners in Beirut at the time—had built a $10 million business. BMB Group co-founder Simon Samia told CRN that he was afraid for his engineers and his country, but that he continued to think about what was ahead. “We’re thinking about the future,” he told CRN. “Our dreams are bigger. We have big potential. We have knowledge. We want to use it.” In 2010, CRN detailed the survival of Port Au Prince, Haiti-based solution provider CompHaiti after an earthquake in 2010 that killed more than 200,000 people and left 1 million people without homes. CompHaiti itself lost one of its employees during the earthquake. Nearly three weeks after the earthquake, CompHaiti President Ralph Pereira and his team reopened on a small scale, with senior management filling orders and scrambling to find equipment to help some organizations get up and running. “The problem is most of our customers’ offices are damaged,” he told CRN. “Everything is flat down. They are trying to find different locations for temporary offices. Everybody is trying to set up networks.”

AWS’ $6 BILLION MAN

AWS has come a long way since CRN dubbed then-AWS CEO Andy Jassy the $6 billion man and crowned him the top executive of 2015, highlighting the revenue run rate for the fast-growing AWS business. In that 2015 interview with CRN, Jassy said it was time for partners to get on board. “I totally understand—it’s a hard decision for companies who have been successful in a different model to decide to embrace a newer model,” he said. “But once you realize that model is succeeding, it’s important for your future to do so. When there’s a big shift going on, you can howl at the wind all you want, but if the shift is going to happen because it is good for customers, it is going to happen.” In a CRN interview in 2019, Jassy reiterated his support for the company’s partner ecosystem. “Our partner ecosystem is not somehow like a side project with a very small amount of our total business,” he told CRN. “Our partner ecosystem—really from the very start of AWS, but particularly so over the last five years—has continued to become a very significant part of our AWS business, and it’s super strategic and important to us.”

HELLO, STRATEGIC SERVICE PROVIDERS

The business outcome approach to selling solutions was hailed by CRN’s Robert Faletra in 2015 as “solving business problems with services-led solutions” with recurring revenue services. “As for driving profitable growth, the focus is on increasing the percentage of recurring revenue services, better utilization of existing technical staff, and charging differently for services, according to research from The Channel Company at that time. The new strategic service provider elite class told CRN they intended to get better utilization from technical staff and to charge differently for services and solutions. “The shift to the new model is putting pressure on technology vendors to identify strategic service providers, enable them with business outcome-based intellectual property, and then follow through with channel program changes such as longer deal registration time frames and rules of engagement designed for the longer, more complex sales cycle,” wrote Douglas Grosfield, then-CEO of Five Nines, who sold his old solution provider business to build a business based on the new industry dynamics, told CRN at the time the new model is 10 times more profitable with fewer employees and a simpler, more reliable, scalable and predictable IT model for his customers. “If you are truly listening to your customers, you are hearing over and over again the challenges they are facing and the frustration they have with IT,” he told CRN. “There is a different answer needed today.”

THE EVOLUTION OF DISTRIBUTION

From the boom times of the personal computer revolution to the LAN explosion to the internet era and cloud computing shifts, distribution’s ability to provide pick, pack, and ship, as well as offer financial muscle to partners has been a constant. There’s a reason distribution pioneers like former Ingram Micro CEO Chip Lacy, former Tech Data Chairman and CEO Steve Raymund and D&H Distributing CEO Izzy Schwab were honored by CRN numerous times as top executives. They were among the executives who helped power the growth of millions and millions of solution providers. A Global Technology Distribution research report that was released just three years ago shows how vital distributors remain to partners. Among the most valued distribution supply chain capabilities ranked by survey participants for the digital transformation era were virtual warehouse support for SaaS and cloud solutions, integration services and global logistics. In the cloud era, distributors have stepped up with massive investments to bring cloud computing marketplaces to partners. TD Synnex CEO Rich Hume, who changed the distribution landscape by bringing distribution powerhouses Tech Data and Synnex together in a game-changing merger in 2021, has used the combination to drive big new investments for TD Synnex partners.

BLOCKBUSTER HP-COMPAQ MERGER

“Dazed and Confused” read the cover headline in CRN after HP announced at the end of the Labor Day weekend in 2001 that it was acquiring Compaq in a $25 billion deal that would reshape the PC landscape. Solution providers were left wondering what kind of impact the blockbuster merger would have on their business. They told CRN that they anticipated a year or more of intrigue about how HP and Compaq would merge their brands, channel organizations, partner programs and product lines. Then-HP Chairman and CEO Carly Fiorina promised no cutbacks in channel sales representatives for the combined company. “We are not going to be cutting the number of people in the field talking to partners,” she said. As to whether HP’s Hard Deck strategy or Compaq’s channel strategy would prevail, Fiorina replied: “It’s a little hard to make it that black and white. We will blend elements of both. You can count on us to be clear about the rules of engagement, which is what the Hard Deck program is all about.”

THE MARKET-RATTLING DELL-EMC DEAL

When Dell said in 2015 that it was planning to buy storage giant EMC for $67 billion, partners knew immediately that the market-rattling deal would forever change the channel. “It’s a great day to be a Dell partner,” Michael Goldstein, president and CEO of LAN Infotech, a Dell partner, told CRN after the deal was announced. “EMC’s product portfolio fills in a lot of gaps that I had with Dell. Overnight, Dell and LAN Infotech become a one-stop shop covering all a customer’s enterprise needs.” Dan Serpico, thenpresident and CEO of FusionStorm, a top 10 partner with both Dell and EMC, told CRN the combination would open big opportunities for partners. “The opportunity to merge those infrastructures together is tremendously exciting. It creates a tremendous value for our customers.” Dell Chairman and CEO Michael Dell said simply that together Dell and EMC would be “even more powerful.” More powerful indeed. The blockbuster merger set the stage for a Dell renaissance that would lead the company to post sales of $101.2 billion in the fiscal year ended Jan. 28, 2022, with the channel accounting for $59 billion of that total. As for the future, Dell told CRN in March that partners will continue to play a critical role as the company looks to continue to grow. “Last year was a historic year for us, especially for our partners,” said Dell. “The omni-channel business model that we have and robust partner ecosystem is really at the core of our strategy. It’s critical to our growth and success, and our partners are growing and succeeding with us.”

POWERHOUSE HP SPLITS INTO TWO COMPANIES

Hewlett Packard CEO Meg Whitman spent the early hours of Oct. 6, 2014, phoning partners with news that would result in the original Silicon Valley powerhouse being split into two: Hewlett Packard Enterprise, an enterprise systems and services company, and HP Inc., a PC and printing company. In an appearance at the Best of Breed Conference a week later, Whitman told partners that they would be able to make more money with both companies as a result of the split. “I think we are just going to get better and stronger and more important in terms of you growing your business and making money,” said Whitman in a wide-ranging 50-minute interview with Robert Faletra. “I am really excited about the separation,” Whitman said at the time. “This is the right thing for our partners. It is the right thing for our employees. It is the right thing for our investors. I think we are going to be in a really good position, a stronger position, than we are today.” Bruce Geier, then-president and CEO of Technology Integration Group, a channel legend who passed away last year, told CRN at the time that the split would lead to two more nimble companies in their respective markets, accelerating innovation. “It’s a great move for HP,” he said. “Meg’s leadership is very good and positive for the company. She is very channel-centric.”

A PANDEMIC AND A ‘NEW NORMAL’

When the global pandemic put 265 million Americans into lockdown in March 2020, it marked the beginning of a massive surge in work-at-home technology products and services supplied by solution providers. Seventy-one percent of MSPs and 49 percent of VARs/systems integrators surveyed by CRN at the time said they were seeing a spike in customer requests for work-at-home products and services as a result of the pandemic. ACP CreativIT, a solution provider based in Buffalo Grove, Ill., saw its sales quadruple in the first quarter after the pandemic hit compared with the same period the previous year. ACP CreativIT moved to a 24/7 operation to meet the demands of customers, some of whom were working on the front lines of the coronavirus crisis, said ACP CreativIT CEO Scott Dunsire at the time. “We are cranking,” said Dunsire. “We have been working seven days a week around the clock to assist customers with the shipment of thousands of devices, including laptops, desktops, thin clients, monitors, audio-visual solutions, webcams and the managed services to go along with the devices, like monitoring access points and bandwidth.” Today, the soaring demand continues with solution providers struggling to get products as a result of a supply chain crisis. Cisco in its most recent quarter reported that its backlog hit a record of more than $15 billion. “COVID and the pandemic exposed the power of technology to C-suite executives and political leaders in ways they had never seen before,” Cisco Chair and CEO Chuck Robbins told CNBC. “They always knew it was strategic. But now they truly understand. It was up close and personal. They understand how this can fundamentally change the customer experience.”

MICROSOFT’S NADELLA: PARTNER FOCUS

Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella’s bold moves upon taking the helm of the company eight years ago, including ushering in a new consumption-based compensation model, transformed it into nothing less than a cloud powerhouse that could go toe-to-toe with Amazon Web Services. Nadella told CRN in an April 2021 cover story that he sees partners and the Microsoft partner ecosystem as key to success. “We fundamentally wouldn’t exist as a company if not for the partner ecosystem taking what we build, adding value to it and then, most importantly, jointly being obsessed about how do the outcomes of it help the world get better one business at a time, one community at a time.”

MSPs UNDER ATTACK

CRN has covered the growing trend of MSPs grappling with cyberattacks for many years, including an April 2019 cover story on the WiPro breach. More recently, MSP platform mainstay Kaseya became the victim of one of the biggest ransomware heists in the history of computing on the July 4th weekend in 2021. It was a day of reckoning like no other for MSPs and their customers. Law enforcement and government cybersecurity agencies—including the FBI and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)— were notified and immediately engaged. Soon after the attack, with assistance from the FBI and CISA, the root cause of the attack was identified, with notorious ransomware operator REvil demanding $70 million. Approximately 50 of Kaseya’s MSP customers using an on-premises version of VSA were directly compromised by the attack. Of the 800,000 to 1 million local and small businesses that are managed by Kaseya MSPs, about 800 to 1,500 were compromised, according to Kaseya. Huntress CEO Kyle Hanslovan, a fierce advocate for MSPs, said the attack signaled that it was time for both MSP vendors and MSPs to “get it together or go out of business.”

IBM’S KRISHNA USHERS IN NEW MODEL

IBM Chairman and CEO Arvind Krishna in 2021 introduced a new simplified sales structure, with the goal of transforming IBM into an AI and hybrid cloud powerhouse focused on a trillion-dollar market opportunity. In a February 2021 cover story, Krishna called it the biggest change IBM had made in its go-to-market model in 30 years. The go-to-market model focuses IBM’s direct sales force on the biggest accounts and leaves the rest of the market—literally 100,000 accounts that previously were manned by IBM sales reps—to IBM ecosystem partners. Krishna told CRN he sees the new model as an opportunity to drive a partner renaissance that harkens back to the astronomical sales growth partners experienced first with IBM’s mainframe platform and then its middleware portfolio. “We made tens of billions and they made hundreds of millions in aggregate over the decades,” Krishna told CRN. “I would like to see our hybrid cloud platform be as big or bigger than any of those.”

HPE’S NERI: AS-A-SERVICE PLEDGE

When Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Antonio Neri made a pledge three years ago to transform the complete HPE product line into an as-a-service model, there were more than a few competitors that scoffed at the lofty goal. “Our vision for our company is to deliver everything we do as a service,” said Neri, addressing partners at the Global Partner Summit in 2019. “Three years from now, this company will become consumption-driven, and everything we do—whether it is at the edge, the core, the cloud business, software or infrastructure and services—will be available to you and to our customers as a service.” Today, Neri’s bet has become a reality and is paying off in an HPE GreenLake pay-per-use cloud service, storage and infrastructure subscription sales renaissance. Neri himself described HPE’s full pivot to an as-a-service edge-to-cloud company as the start of a new era. “This is just the beginning,” he said. “We have been talking about this and see the momentum, but this is a new beginning to me, which is the next phase of who we are and how we are transforming ourselves.”