Intel channel veteran Jason Kimrey is leaving the troubled chipmaker

As Intel continues to cut spending on a massive scale, longtime channel advocate Jason Kimrey is leaving the chip maker along with a few other partner-facing leaders.

Longtime Intel channel veteran Jason Kimrey, a strong channel advocate who is praised by partners as one of the most effective channel heads in the industry, is leaving the troubled semiconductor giant, CRN has learned.
The Santa Clara, California-based company on Friday informed sales and marketing group (SMG) employees of Kimrey’s departure, said a source with direct knowledge of the matter who requested anonymity to discuss the personnel move.
[Related: Intel Plans 35 Percent Cut In Costs For Sales And Marketing Group]
Intel partners told CRN they were surprised to learn of the departure of Kimray, vice president of commercial and partner sales for North America and a 23-year Intel veteran whom they considered the “face of the channel” for the chip company. Kimray is considered the “face of the channel” for the chip company. Most Influential Channel Head by CRN He has held this position for the last six years due to his strong advocacy for the channel.
“Jason was definitely the channel face for Intel and he treated everyone he encountered in the channel over the years fairly well,” said Marty Bauerlein, chief consumer and commercial officer for distribution giant D&H Distributing.
“His reputation was probably the best of any salesperson’s in terms of objectivity, his investment strategy and his involvement across the country. I would put him in the top 5 per cent of channel executives in terms of these things,” he said.
In a statement to CRN, an Intel spokesperson reiterated the company’s commitment to the channel.
“We are deeply committed to the success of our partners, and as Intel transforms into a more efficient, agile company, we are increasing our focus on our channel partner ecosystem,” the spokesperson said.
Kimray’s departure coincides with a handful of other senior channel leaders leaving Intel, as SMG — the channel’s main channel for working with the chipmaker — plans to reduce costs by more than 35 percent through job cuts and program changes. CRN reported last month,
The turmoil at SMG comes at a time when Intel is looking to cut more than 15,000 jobs, or 15 percent of its total workforce, and cut costs by more than $10 billion to cope with the crisis. Unexpected and significant decline in revenue and profitabilityIntel has been reducing its workforce through voluntary buyouts, early retirement packages and layoffs.
Other channel leaders leaving Intel include David Allen, who has been in the region for 31 years and was most recently director of U.S. distribution sales and marketing, and Jennifer Bossin, who has been in the region for nine years and was sales director of global systems integrator partnerships, according to sources familiar with their plans.
Kathleen Robinson, who was managing director of federal systems integrators and defense industrial base partners, recently updated her LinkedIn profile to say she left Intel last month to become vice president of enterprise sales at Seeker Technologies, an enterprise AI software company that is working with Intel on its Gaudi accelerator chips.
Allen is leaving because he has accepted a retirement package, according to two sources familiar with his departure. The reasons for Bosin and Robinson’s departures could not be known. Allen, Bosin and Robinson did not respond to requests for comment.
The departure of Intel channel veterans such as Kimray, Bosin and Allen is a “big blow” to the channel, an executive at one national systems integrator said.
“It’s really because you’re losing the leadership infrastructure,” said the executive, who asked not to be named to speak candidly.

Kimray Champion Partners

In February, Intel appointed Kimrey to head its North American commercial and partner sales organization, coinciding with the creation of the group.
The group was formed through a merger with the US Channel Scale and Partners team, which managed relationships with large US enterprise customers, US communications service providers, as well as Canadian customers and partners.
At the time, Kimrey told CRN that Intel decided to integrate the teams to ensure that the previously separate groups “work as one Intel” and “bring the best of what Intel has to offer to the entire commercial market with a single voice.”
“This is another example where we are trying to reduce layers and put in place a more efficient structure to drive maximum value to our customers through our partners,” he added.
An executive at another solution provider, who asked not to be named, said Kimray has done a great job connecting partners with customers in the region.
“He has a very good connection to sales. For us as a partner, we need someone who has some level of ability in sales,” he said.
Prior to leading the North America commercial and partner sales organization, Kimrey served as Intel’s channel head for the Americas for nearly seven years. In that role, he was responsible for working with a variety of partners, including national solution providers, system integrators, distributors and software providers.
Over the years, Kimray’s partner organization has launched and then refined Intel Partner Alliance Programwhich consolidated previously separate partner programs into one with the goal of simplifying access to partner resources and making it easier for different types of partners to collaborate.
Bauerlein, the D&H Distributing executive, said Kimray always took the time to make sure he had the latest information on any partner he was working with.
He added, “While he was working with D&H, he always made sure he was up to date on all the programs we were running, such as our Success Path program, and advocated for investments in our programs. And he also did a great job working with his team to ensure they provided use cases that were relevant to solution providers.”

Partners express concerns about departure and financing

An executive at a major distributor called Kimrey’s departure surprising and said he wanted to know how Intel would handle the transfer of responsibilities to employees leaving the company, whether voluntarily or through layoffs.
“If you’re looking at people who have bigger roles and bigger responsibilities, you know the transition process is very important,” said the distribution executive, who requested anonymity to talk about Intel employees leaving the company.
In addition to concerns about losing key channel advocates like Kimray, there remains concern among partners about a reduction in funding for them due to Intel’s plans to make major cuts to SMG. According to presentation slides seen by CRN last month, the group expects to cut $100 million this year and $300 million in the first half of next year by simplifying programs and adjusting roles and responsibilities around funding for partners.
Intel recently rejected a request for funding for sales enablement activities such as content development and training, the national systems integrator executive said.
“I’m afraid this will limit the resources that we have. So you have AMD, you have Nvidia coming forward to provide more resources, and you have Intel looking at providing less resources,” the source said.
Executives at the national systems integrator worry that Intel’s dwindling resources could hurt the company’s efforts to challenge Nvidia with its Gaudi 3 accelerator chip, a key part of the semiconductor’s AI strategy in the data center.
“They have a great product in the form of Gaudi 3, but I think their ability to deliver it to partners and customers is at risk,” the systems integrator said.
Although the national systems integrator executive has seen other major vendors cut funding for the channel, this will be a new challenge for Intel.
“Intel has built a model for getting people’s attention within the sales and engineering organizations, and they have to figure out a different way,” the source said.

Ivanti reports exploitation of cloud gateway vulnerability

A high-severity flaw in Ivanti’s Cloud Service Appliance (CSA) could be exploited to enable remote execution of code, the vendor says.

Ivanti said on Friday that a previously disclosed vulnerability in its Cloud Service Appliance (CSA) gateway is now being exploited by threat actors.
According to Ivanti exposure The vendor said Friday’s attacks exploiting a high-severity flaw affected only a “limited number” of CSA customers.
[Related: Network Security Devices Are The Front Door To An IT Environment, But Are They Under Lock And Key?]
This vulnerability (tracked at CVE-2024-8190) can be exploited to enable unauthenticated remote execution of code on affected devices and affects CSA version 4.6, which is no longer supported by Ivanti.
In fact, this means that the issue affects all devices prior to patch 519, said the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which issued a notification. Consultancy on Friday at Vulnerability.
“At this time, Ivanti has confirmed a limited exploit and urges its customers using affected versions to upgrade to CSA version 5.0,” the cybersecurity agency said in its advisory.
The OS command injection vulnerability was first disclosed by Ivanti on Tuesday.
“Following public disclosure, Ivanti has confirmed that this vulnerability has been exploited,” the vendor said. “At the time of this update, we are aware of a limited number of customers that have been exploited.”
CRN has contacted Ivanti for further comment.
This vulnerability has a severity rating of “high”, and its severity is rated at 7.2 out of 10.0.
In its advisory released Friday, CISA said that “a cyber threat actor could exploit this vulnerability to gain control of the affected systems.”
Ivanti CSA 4.6 is considered “end of life”, meaning that it “no longer receives patches for the OS or third party libraries.”
“Customers will need to upgrade to Ivanti CSA 5.0 for continued support,” the company said in its disclosure, noting that CSA 5.0 is the “only supported version” of the tool.

TD Synnex’s Peter Larocque On Retirement, His Special Advisor Role And What TD Synnex Will Look Like In Five Years

Larocque is officially retiring as president of TD Synnex North America on November 30 and moving into a special advisor role.

When Peter Larocque graduated with an economics degree from the University of Western Ontario in 1983 he bought a one-way ticket to San Francisco, ran out of money and ended up getting a job at lean and mean technology distribution upstart Synnex.
Forty-one years later, Larocque, widely created with helping to build Synnex into a distribution titan that merged with Tech Data in 2021, is officially retiring as president of TD Synnex North America on November 30 and moving into a special advisor role.
Larocque, who played a key integration role during the merger, which created the world’s largest technology products distributor at what was then a $59.8 billion company, said one of the reasons he felt the time was right to step aside is because the merger has been completed with regard to the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning System).
“We go to market with ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning system) that we have that’s industry leading and a P & L that people can figure out how to manage their business effectively,” he said.
Larocque, who has become renowned as a dealmaker and solution provider relationship builder, is credited by partners with driving an unprecedented level of technology solutions sales during his four-decade-plus career.
TD Synnex North America Advanced Solutions Chief Reyna Thompson is taking over as North America President on December 1.
“(Former Synnex Chairman, President and CEO) Kevin Murai once told me: ‘When does doing this become enough?’ And it became enough,” he said in an interview with CRN. “We were ready, and the timing was right. Reyna will do an exceptionally great job.”
As for his special advisor role reporting to TD Synnex CEO Patrick Zammit, Larocque said it will be a part time role, looking at certain segments.
“It could be working on developing the international business and focusing on new vendors and solutions,” he said. “It could be five or 10 of these things. But you know, my suspicion is he (Patrick Zammit) and I will lock in on one or two. And we’ll execute, and it’ll be accretive to the business that we have.”
Larocque, 62, who concedes that he “missed a lot of stuff” during his long career, said he is looking forward to spending more time with his wife of 23-years, Lisa; his daughters, Marissa, 19 and Jenna, 17; and his son Andrew, 13.
Larocque said one of the benefits of the pandemic was the ability for him to be at the dinner table with his family. That is something he was grateful to be able to do. “I got to participate in the little things,” he said. “After the pandemic we all go back to our old habits. We did this merger and I spent a lot of time traveling again. I don’t want to miss anything (ever again).”
As for what the future holds for TD Synnex, Larocque said he is confident that the distributor is in good hands with the crop of talented young people coming up the ranks.
“We get new hires that come in and they are all extremely smart young folks, and the first question that they all ask is: where will this business be five years from now?” he said. “And my answer is twofold. First of all, just like when I was 21 years old and asked (former Synnex founder and CEO) Bob (Huang) that question. We’re going to have exceptional people who follow the culture rules that are the best in the industry, and these smart people are going to figure out ways to help customers and vendors do their job most effectively. and keep that mentality of take care of the partner, grow the business and be the best.”
As for Larocque’s future he noted that he is a member of two golf courses and hasn’t played at either in the last six months. “I’m about to fix that,” he said.
Below is an edited excerpt of the conversation with Larocque.
Why are you retiring now and how does it feel?
It feels good! After November 30 I’m going to be playing a role as strategic advisor for (TD Synnex CEO) Patrick (Zammit) on a lesser (than full time) basis.
When is a good time (to retire)? You know what I mean? I felt a good time is when we have a great team, which we do, the best in the industry.
I have the best job in the industry, and always have. So we have a great team. We have completed the (Tech Data and Synnex) merger from an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning system) and process perspective. I have a great group of leaders who, if you don’t play them, you’re perhaps missing a window that’s really important.
In the case of (incoming North America President) Reyna (Thompson) she is exceptional. This is how we roll here. That’s part of our success. We actively manage our succession plan. I’ve worked very closely with Reyna over the last 18 months, and she’s ready. And I’m ready to do things that are on a lesser basis, spend more time on family businesses and and relax.
So I’m here to help. Patrick’s got me locked in as an advisor. I’m going to focus on a few things for him and be an individual contributor.
(Former Synnex Chairman, President and CEO) Kevin Murai once told me: ‘When does doing this become enough?’ And it became enough. We were ready, and the timing was right.
Reyna will do an exceptionally great job. She knows, like I did, that I’m overhead. I’m overhead, and I’ve got CEOs of the business everywhere. And now Reyna has got the best team in the world.
What is the strategic advisor role? How long is the contract for and what does it entail?
Patrick has certain projects (that he is looking at). I’ll give you some examples. I don’t want to give away my secrets too much, but it could be working on certain segments of the business.
It could be working on government. It could be working on developing the international business and focusing on new vendors and solutions. It could be five or 10 of these things.
But you know, my suspicion is he and I will lock in on one or two. And we’ll execute, and it’ll be accretive to the business that we have.
Is that special advisor role a full-time role?
It’s not going to be a full-time role. And if you look at today I do a lot of part-time roles in a lot of different areas.
Managing and developing people is a big part of what I do. And those types of things will move over out of my purview.
I look forward to being an individual contributor and helping project by project, putting together plans and organizations, working with customers. That’s what I do well!
I’ve done this for 41 years, and I feel great. But you know I’m a proud warrior. I don’t want somebody to ask me to leave. And what if you’re going to leave- leave when you’re number one!
So how long will you be in that role as special advisor?
That is totally up to to me and Patrick. But it’s likely probably 12 months either plus or minus.
You’ve spent 41 years in technology distribution sales. What are the lessons learned from the Peter Larocque sales playbook?
One thing that we always talk about is what advice would I give my team. The advice I give them is: hit goal and don’t hide (behind an excuse).
There’s plenty of reasons that you didn’t maybe hit, but the only thing that we all are interested in is what are you going to do to make sure that you hit (goal) and grow the business?
We always feel a lot of pressure to grow the business because all the kids that work for us they want my job and the only way that they’re going to get that job (is to hit goal).
If you look at where we are today versus 10 years ago I’ve got a lot of CEOs (that run different segments of the business in North America). They all run big businesses for us.
But you know, it gets down to the very basics: find great people, put them in the right spot and don’t put a ceiling over their head. We’ve been very effective in doing that.
We have a lot of capabilities. It makes it easy to sell (to customers) in my opinion. I really feel like people like to own their own business. We go to market with ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning system) that we have that’s industry-leading and a P & L that people can figure out how to manage their business effectively.
I’m not the only person making decisions here. It’s the thousands of sales people, business development people, and product people that can use that to run a business.
We are a great believer in decentralized (management) and taking action. That and good coverage. There’s not a time that I go out and talk to a customer that may be buying certain things elsewhere. The way I look at it is if you’re doing that, you’re buying from second best. I wish I was 52 and could turn back time because with this type of lineup of people, product lines and capabilities, I like our chances.
What do you think is the biggest difference between TD Synnex and the other distributors as the channel evolves in the AI era?
The first thing is it’s a big company. Nobody wants to hear it’s a big company. But there are advantages of being a big company. For example, you may have 100 people in an AI group think tank, growing businesses, working with the key vendors in that space. You don’t get the luxury of having that type of team if you don’t have scale.
Look at the facilities that we have. Nobody has the five-million square feet that we have in the U.S. in the markets that partners need to be in.
Look at our financial capabilities in terms of bringing in inventory. If you’re small and you have got to bring in a lot of inventory to work with vendors when you’ve got a lumpy business environment like you have today, one month good, one month slightly down, one month good. Those things are a lot easier needles to thread (when you are big with our financial capabilities). You can bring in quite a bit (of inventory) when you are big. You can take risks that you didn’t take before financially for partners,
My sense is it’s the creativity, the coverage, the amount of people that we have that can cover a lot of folks, and the value pieces are exceptional.
If you look at our security business it’s a dedicated team with one throat (to choke). The customer calls in and gets one frontline person that answers their questions. They don’t throw it over a wall.
We have that in a lot of other businesses too. We have exceptional coverage in the field and on the phone. We have on the security side the CyberRange that we have in Phoenix. We have solution providers there on a regular basis, bringing their customers into the CyberRange.
There are just a long list of things we do like SLAs (Service Level Agreements) on difficult configs. We’re a big company that is acting like a little one: hungry for our dinner, competitive.
We have a good mix of associates here with a good front office and a good back office. We’ve had that Philippines operation since 2000.
We have number one draft choices and competent people who are selfless. You don’t do a merger like this (Tech Data-Synnex merging in 2021 in a $7.2 billion deal) without a lot of selfless people.
From a management perspective I never worried about having to talk to my people because we were around each other so long.
I don’t have to remember an exact conversation because I know damn well with regard to basic management capabilities me and my team are on the same page.
What do you see as the key for partners to drive growth in the AI era?
(Incoming TD Synnex North America President) Reyna (Thompson) is going to have more depth for you on this. But the biggest question our partners have is: what are we talking about (with AI)?…How do you make money and how big is it?
That’s why we have had that separate team working for Reyna doing the AI data analytics, developing skill sets and working with the major providers in that market.
That’s how you end up making a business for a partner. And let me tell you I’ve been to so many events where partners were doing zero modern data center business with us and then worked with our teams (to grow sales in that market).
I go to many of these major events that our OEMs have and I’m just shocked at how much our folks know. I don’t know why I’m shocked. Our people put together a lot of plans that partners can use to execute their business. It’s really everything. It’s not just devices. It is all about a real solution and what is it worth? That’s what people want to know. What is it worth and what steps do they need to take (to build a solution). So for a lot of partners we can fill that gap for them with our capabilities until they build up their practice. There are a lot of them that are significant companies.
We’re not talking the “S” of SMB. We’re talking midmarket and enterprise. A lot of people use our capabilities just like they use our government capabilities with the amount of contracts that we have and the people on the public sector side. We have people who help manage contracts for our solution providers. We set up events with an end user on behalf of partners. We’re filling that gap and because we have scale we can live to fight another day if (sales) are lumpy.
How do you feel about the future of TD Synnex as you get ready to start your new role as special advisor?
Well, I gotta tell you I have the best job in this business, and I have the best team in this business, so we expect hell or high water to always execute.
You know I was just telling somebody this: We get new hires that come in and they are all extremely smart young folks. And the first question that they all ask is: where will this business be five years from now? And my answer is two fold. First of all, just like when when I was 21 years old and asked (former Synnex founder and CEO) Bob (Huang) that question. We’re going to have exceptional people who follow the culture rules that are the best in the industry, and these smart people are going to figure out ways to help customers and vendors do their job most effectively. and keep that mentality of take care of the partner, grow the business and be the best.
The second thing is we’re going to be the most efficient business in the (distribution) business. Our customers and our vendors expect us to have a lot of capabilities and manage expenses tightly, and our ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning system) is the best in the business with a good full P&L for our CEOs up front to make decisions.
So we’re going to be efficient, and our smart people will always put us in a place to win because five years from now. Just think about it, even with your crystal ball, five years ago would you have dreamt this?

AWS’s AI chips ‘extremely important’ to costs and supply chain: partner

“We’ve seen that, particularly in the AI ​​space, these very high-end chips are on backorder because they can’t make them fast enough. AWS’s own chips will be extremely beneficial in this regard, especially as AI workloads grow,” says Jimmy Chui, CEO of ClearScale.

Solution providers are excited by Amazon Web Services’ plans to invest heavily in building out its services. Own chips Specially Customized AWS infrastructure This will give the partners a competitive edge AI Marketplace Due to lower power costs and supply chain advantages.
“We’re already seeing the massive use of AI and companies are recognizing, ‘Oh, it’s not just expensive for the chips, but oh my god, they take up a lot of energy.’ So the electric bills are skyrocketing,” said Jimmy Chui, CEO of AWS partner ClearScale.
“You can imagine, in a huge data center, where everything is moving fast, processing is happening — you’re going to consume wattage very quickly,” Chui said.
For example, Oracle is considering powering its data centers through nuclear reactors to meet electricity demands. Hey,
[Related: 10 Huge AWS Exits And Hires From Google, OpenAI And Nvidia]
“The site and power plant we found already has permits for three nuclear reactors to be built,” Oracle chairman and co-founder Larry Ellison said during the company’s quarterly earnings call this week. “These are small modular nuclear reactors to power data centers. That’s how crazy it’s getting.”
AWS CEO Matt Garman said his $105 billion Cloud Company The company will continue to build its own AI chipsets, which will be optimized with its vast infrastructure.
“We don’t have to build these processors to run in a general purpose environment. They’ll run exactly in our servers, exactly in our data centers, exactly with our networking stack and so we can customize it for our customers,” Garman said. “We can optimize like crazy around it, plus we have a really good team building the chips.”

Domestic AWS chips to boost supply chain

ClearScale CEO says building its own take on AWS AI ProcessorSupply chain issues won’t impact customers as much.
The IT industry is plagued by Supply Chain Shortages High customer demand from businesses around the world has led to a surge in demand for AI processor-related products.
“With their ability to buy and design these chips, it will also secure them on the supply side, which is really smart,” ClearScale Chui said.
“We’ve seen that, particularly in the AI ​​space, these very powerful chips are on backorder because they can’t make them fast enough. AWS’s own chips are going to be extremely beneficial in this regard, especially as AI workloads grow,” Chui said.
Ethan Simmons, managing partner of AWS Partner PTP, agreed that AWS building its own AI processors would help customers with both cost and access to AI chips. “Owning AI hardware is very important for many reasons and only someone like AWS can accomplish this,” he said. “I’m glad that [AWS CEO Garman] The focus is on the right things.”

AWS CEO: ‘Own custom processors can help customers save money’

In recent years, AWS has focused its attention on building AI processors such as AWS Inferentia machine learning chips and Trainium ML Processor For training deep learning models.
AWS’s initial decision to build custom chips in-house was for the ability to support its virtualization technology through Nitro and to drive customer costs.
“This means we don’t have to buy from third parties, which allows us to reduce our costs,” Garman said. “We think there are some use cases where our own custom processors can help customers save money.”
AWS is also building strong partnerships with the world’s most innovative and largest chip manufacturers, such as Intel, AMD, and Nvidia.
“We strongly believe that AWS is the best place to run Intel, AMD, and Nvidia processors, and we think we can provide some differentiated capabilities as well by offering our own processors,” Garman said.

AWS ahead of the game

ClearScale’s Chui said it’s “extremely important” that AWS design chips specifically for AWS’s new AI services, just as it created chips designed for the AWS platform and cloud services.
AWS is currently at the forefront when it comes to AI, as most other competitors and companies are only focusing on AI experiments or initial use cases.
“We’re all experimenting with AI or getting into it. The time to get your own chip that’s extremely efficient and works on their specialized infrastructure to keep costs down — this is the right time for it. Because as soon as everyone who’s experimenting with it right now gets up to speed and realizes, ‘Yeah, this is my implementation’ and it’s live in production, we’re probably going to see the same explosive energy use and costs,” Chui said.
AWS plans to launch its new Trainium2 processors by the end of this year.
“We’re very excited about that platform,” Garman said. “We think we have an opportunity to aggressively drive down costs and increase performance for customers.”

Massive outages lead to demand for an alternative to ‘kernel mode’

In the wake of the global Windows outage caused by the faulty CrowdStrike update in July, “both our customers and ecosystem partners have called on Microsoft to provide additional security capabilities outside of kernel mode,” says Microsoft’s David Weston.

Aftermath of the incident caused by CrowdStrike Outages Due to widespread social disruptions in July, Microsoft has faced calls for organizations to provide alternative ways to secure Windows devices “outside of kernel mode,” according to a Microsoft executive.
Kernel access has been identified as a key factor that enabled CrowdStrike’s flawed July 19 update to send 8.5 million Windows devices into a “blue screen of death” state.
[Related: Congressional Hearing On CrowdStrike Outage Scheduled For September]
one of Post On Thursday, David Weston, Microsoft’s vice president of enterprise and operating systems security, summarized some of the key points discussed at this week’s conference. meeting The list of top security vendors includes CrowdStrike.
The summit, organized in response to the power outages in July, took place on Tuesday at Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington. Along with CrowdStrike, the summit was attended by executives from SentinelOne, Sophos, Broadcom, ESET, Trellix and Trend Micro.
Weston wrote in a blog post Thursday that even though the vendors are “competitors” to each other, “we are not adversaries.” “The adversaries are the ones we have to protect the world from.”
He said notable discussion topics at the summit included “long-term steps that meet resilience and security goals.”
Microsoft is already expanding security capabilities for Windows 11 that don’t require kernel access, Weston said.
However, he wrote, “Both our customers and ecosystem partners have called on Microsoft to provide additional security capabilities outside of kernel mode.”
Comments from participants quoted in the blog included a statement from ESET, which said the vendor “supports modifications to the Windows ecosystem that demonstrate measurable improvements in stability, on the condition that any changes should not weaken security, impact performance, or limit the choice of cybersecurity solutions.”
“It is imperative that kernel access remains an option for cybersecurity products to enable continued innovation and the ability to detect and prevent future cyber threats,” ESET said in the statement.
In a statement included in the blog, CrowdStrike executive Drew Bagley called the discussions at this week’s summit “important.” The ultimate goal is “how to best collaborate to build a more flexible and open Windows endpoint security ecosystem,” Bagley said.
CRN has contacted CrowdStrike for further comment. Microsoft said in an email Friday that it had no further comment beyond Weston’s post.
In the days following the massive outage in July, Microsoft executive John Cable wrote in a post that the unprecedented incident “clearly shows that Windows must prioritize change and innovation in the area of ​​end-to-end resilience.”
Cable, vice president of Windows servicing and delivery at Microsoft, also spoke at the time on the role of third-party access to the Windows kernel. He pointed to recently announced capabilities that provide “an isolated compute environment that does not require kernel mode drivers to be tamper-resistant” – which helps show “what can be done to encourage development practices that do not rely on kernel access.”
The impact of the outage that occurred on July 19 lasted for the next week, resulting in affected devices becoming nonfunctional until they were manually fixed by an IT professional.
Its real-world effects were widespread – causing major disruptions to air travel, health care, and many other sectors – and are estimated to have cost major corporations billions of dollars.
CrowdStrike has pledged to conduct additional testing and implement a phased rollout of updates aimed at preventing such problems in the future.

Fortinet says less than 1 percent of its customers were affected by the breach

This percentage equates to potentially 1,500 customers affected by the compromise of Fortinet’s cloud file-sharing environment.

Fortinet disclosed that “less than 0.3 percent” of its customers were affected by the breach of its cloud file-sharing environment, while it believes the incident is unlikely to have a significant impact on its business.
The cyber security vendor Confirmed Earlier on Thursday, news broke that a threat actor had compromised a cloud environment containing customer data and gained access to a “limited number of files.”
[Related: 10 Major Cyberattacks And Data Breaches In 2024 (So Far)]
Following alleged claims made by a hacker about the incident, Fortinet said in a statement that the impact from the breach is minimal. Post later on Thursday.
“The compromise involved limited data relating to a small number of Fortinet customers (less than 0.3%),” the vendor said in the post.
Fortinet previously exposure As of the end of June, it had more than 500,000 customers. Based on the percentage of affected customers reported by Fortinet on Thursday, the incident may have affected as many as 1,500 customers.
CRN has contacted Fortinet for comment.
In the post on Thursday, Fortinet said it expects the breach will not be “material” in terms of impact.
The company said, “Given the limited nature of the event, we have not experienced, and we currently do not believe, the event is likely to have, any material impact on our financial position or operating results.”
According to a note from KeyBanc, Report By Seeking AlphaThe firm’s analysts agree that the Fortinet breach is unlikely to have any material impact.
Fortinet has not clarified where the affected customers are located, what specific data is affected, or when the incident occurred.
The company said in a post Thursday that there is no indication yet that the incident resulted in any malicious activity affecting any customers.
“There is no impact to Fortinet’s operations, products and services, and we have found no evidence of additional access to any other Fortinet resources,” the vendor said.
Further, the company said, “the incident did not involve any type of data encryption, use of ransomware, or access to Fortinet’s corporate network.”
Following the attack, Fortinet said it began executing its response plan and had “communicated directly” with affected customers.
according to a Bleepingcomputer According to the report, a threat actor claimed On a hacker forum they alleged they had stolen a large amount of data from Microsoft SharePoint servers hosted on Fortinet’s Azure cloud, and claimed they posted the stolen data after Fortinet refused to meet their ransom demands.
As of this writing, it does not appear that Fortinet has filed a breach disclosure with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Such filings are only required of publicly traded companies when they have suffered an event with a “material” impact.

Five winning companies this week

For the week ending Sept. 13, CRN took a look at the companies that performed best in the channel, including ConnectWise, Todil, AWS, ServiceNow, and Blue Mantis.

Week ending September 13
Topping this week’s winners list is ConnectWise, as it has acquired Xcient and Skykick, boosting its data protection technology portfolio.
Cybersecurity tech developer Todil also made the list, having revamped its channel program that offers partners more resources and support. Amazon Web Services made the list for its plans to expand its UK data center to meet the growing demands of AI. ServiceNow received praise for major changes to its Now platform.
And strategic services provider Blue Mantis, already on a rapid growth path, is here to continue its aggressive growth plans after being acquired by a new private equity owner.

ConnectWise acquires Xcient and Skykick to strengthen cybersecurity and data protection offering
To strengthen its cybersecurity and data protection capabilities, ConnectWise this week acquired Xcient and Skykick, reinforcing the critical role of data protection as the last line of defense against cyber threats.
The deal gives ConnectWise a full-fledged MSP-focused business continuity and disaster recovery offering that will go head-to-head with MSP platform powerhouse Kaseya, which acquired storage backup vendor Datto for $6.2 billion in June 2022. In April, Kaseya launched its Kaseya 365 MSP platform that includes endpoint management, endpoint protection, backup, and automation.
Two acquisitions Will bring advanced data protection through Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BCDR) solutions and SkyKick’s Microsoft 365 cloud backup.
“The strategy behind acquiring both Skykick and Axient was to further expand our cybersecurity and data protection portfolio,” said Amir Karim, executive vice president and general manager of Tampa-based vendor ConnectWise. CRN“As cyber threats evolve, data protection and cybersecurity must go hand in hand. By integrating these two innovative companies, we are strengthening our business continuity, disaster recovery, and overall data protection offerings.”
ConnectWise said SkyKick and Axient customers can expect a seamless transition when joining the ConnectWise ecosystem via the Asio platform.
Karim said the deal will see about 300 Xcient employees join ConnectWise, including CEO Rod Matthews. Skykick co-CEO Todd Schwartz said more than 100 employees are joining the acquisition and that he and co-CEO Evan Richman will remain there.
Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. CRN previously reported that ConnectWise was in talks to buy Denver-based business continuity and disaster recovery vendor Xcient The deal will be worth between $400 million and $500 million, according to two people with knowledge of the deal.

Todil launches new partner program to enhance MSPs’ security capabilities
Todil this week launched a partner program that has been redesigned “from the ground up” to better align its internal resources and deliver exceptional value to MSPs.
Advanced Programs Provides advanced resources and strategic support to MSPs by providing expert assistance to deliver tailored security solutions in the evolving threat landscape.
“Our program is unique because it integrates three distinct roles, each of which addresses a critical aspect of a partnership’s success,” explained John Neylan, CEO of Todil. CRN“We are excited about the potential this program has to expand our partners’ businesses and enhance their security capabilities.”
The advanced program provides each partner with a designated customer success manager who aligns the Denver-based cybersecurity vendor’s technical capabilities with the partner’s business objectives. The success manager will oversee onboarding, configuration deployment, and ongoing support to ensure partners make the most of Toadil’s platform.
Partners will also have an account manager focused on security-led growth who will guide partners through go-to-market strategies and security initiatives. And MSPs will have a managed identity and response manager who will act as an extension of partners’ teams, providing real-time support and status reviews.
Additionally, the program offers sales and marketing support including campaigns-in-a-box, custom webinar planning and execution, and end-user leads. Partners also get exclusive access to Todil University and its comprehensive, self-paced learning, including use-case modules, helping partners deepen their understanding of Todil’s platform.

AWS invests $10.5B in UK to boost AI infrastructure expansion
The wave of AI software development and deployment is putting greater demands on data centers, whether they are run internally by businesses and organizations, by data center service providers, or by cloud hyperscalers.
Amazon Web Services made it onto this week’s Came to Win list after it announced it would Plans to invest $10.5 billion to expand its data centres in the UK over the next five years, aiming to enable AI systems for British businesses.
AWS said this investment is vital to building out AI infrastructure in the region and securing the UK’s economic future in the AI ​​age.
“We are proud to announce our plans to invest £8 billion ($10.5 billion) in digital and AI infrastructure over the next five years to meet the growing needs of our customers and partners and support the transformation of the UK’s digital economy,” Tanuja Randari, vice president and managing director for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) at AWS, said in a statement.
AWS invests billions of dollars each year to expand its data centers to enter new markets or enhance capabilities in existing regions. AWS data centers house thousands of servers, storage, networking, data protection, and power infrastructure that enable its cloud services and AI services.
Parent company Amazon employs around 75,000 people in the U.K., including data center teams and AWS employees. AWS has estimated that its new investment will contribute around $18.3 billion to the U.K.’s total GDP between 2024 and 2028.

ServiceNow Launches Now Platform ‘Xanadu’, Released at Partner Summit
Agentic AI, improvements to the Now Assist AI assistant software, and a pro version of RaptorDB are among the biggest additions to ServiceNow’s Now platform, part of the Xanadu release that first made its debut in 2014. Company’s Global Partner Ecosystem Summit This week.
ServiceNow has about 2,200 channel partners, and Chief Experience Officer Amy Lockie said the company is focused on making it easy for partners to deploy the Now platform.
“We’re constantly making it simpler and easier, and doing all that hard work so our customers don’t have to and our partners can quickly get what they’re looking for,” Loki said. “Often, our partners are actually some of the first to try these new solutions themselves in their ServiceNow implementations. So they’re really design partners with us as we implement the solutions.”
Loki said the new capabilities in the Xanadu release will help partners focus on “massive increases in productivity, which will benefit employees, better customer service, better customer loyalty” as they develop AI projects in collaboration with customers.
Technology launches include a more scalable RaptorDB Pro version of the company’s Postgre-based database, with improved transactional and analytical performance, and a new unified Knowledge Graph that consolidates data management and analytics functions.
The Xanadu release of the Now platform includes hundreds of AI updates, including the Now Assist AI assistant, new AI agents in areas like customer service management and ITSM, and the Now Assist integration with Copilot for Microsoft 365.

Blue Mantis shifting into ‘high growth mode’ with new private equity majority owner
Blue Mantis is advancing its security-first, next-generation service provider sales campaign led by a new private equity majority owner, Recognize.
New York-headquartered Recognize, which focuses solely on technology services companies and has a portfolio of just nine companies, hopes to build on Blue Mantis’ foundation with near- and long-term acquisitions.
“Overall, I couldn’t be more pleased, as we are now really entering a high-growth mode,” said Blue Mantis CEO Josh Dinneen, who plans the private equity deal to fuel geographic expansion and additional acquisitions.
“But I want to be very clear: we will move forward in control and with purpose. We are not going to just adopt a roll-up strategy. It is not going to be M&A-led. It is a combination of organic and inorganic growth that will drive performance,” he added. CRN,
Previous majority owner Abry Partners, which acquired an ownership stake in Blue Mantis in December 2020, will remain as a minority investor. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Blue Mantis, which formally announced Recognition deal This week, we will be “more aggressive” with acquisitions, focusing on investing in the right geographies and technology segments to drive sales growth, Dineen said. “We are extremely excited to expand and become a North American powerhouse.”
Dinneen is already in discussions with three potential acquisition targets. Areas of potential acquisitions include data enablement, data management, cybersecurity and regional expansion. “We’re looking for companies that have really meaningful adjacencies and capabilities that can help us accelerate growth,” he said.
The new majority stake is held by Blue Mantis, a next-generation midmarket and enterprise-focused services provider headquartered in Portsmouth, NH, based on sales growth driven by services. The company has grown at a 26.5 percent CAGR over the past three years and revenues have grown to over $250 million, 50 percent of which is recurring revenue. Also, the company’s workforce has grown to 400 from 150 three years ago.

5 things to know about Mastercard acquiring Recorded Future

The credit card company is entering the threat intelligence business with a $2.65 billion acquisition.

Credit card company Mastercard announced Thursday that it is entering the threat intelligence business with the planned acquisition of Recorded Future.
MasterCard said the acquisition value of the 15-year-old company is $2.65 billion.
[Related: 5 Major Security Vendors That Could Be Acquired By Private Equity]
Following are five things to know about Mastercard’s planned acquisition of Recorded Future.

The ‘biggest’ player in providing threat intelligence

In a news release announcing the acquisition deal, Mastercard called Somerville, Massachusetts-based Recorded Future “the world’s largest threat intelligence company.”
According to Mastercard, Recorded Future currently has more than 1,900 customers, spanning 75 countries. These customers include 45 national governments and more than half of the Fortune 100 companies, the payments firm said.

Focus on fraud prevention

In addition to using Recorded Future’s technologies to analyze threats across various data sources, Mastercard also said the vendor’s capabilities will assist with key priorities for the payments firm, including fraud prevention.
The credit card giant said that being able to use Recorded Future’s technologies will “enhance Mastercard’s identity, fraud prevention, real-time decisioning and cybersecurity services.”
Ultimately, this will “expand threat intelligence capabilities [Mastercard’s] The company said it is “a network of merchants and financial institutions.”

AI Focus

Mastercard said another key aspect of the acquisition is the joint focus on AI by the two companies.
Mastercard said the two companies are already collaborating on “an AI-supported service that alerts financial institutions more quickly and with greater accuracy when a card may have been compromised.”
In particular, Recorded Future “has been a pioneer in using AI-powered analytics to generate information that is easily accessible and understandable for customers,” the credit card firm said.

Acquisition details

Mastercard entered into an acquisition agreement with Insight Partners, which has held a controlling stake in Recorded Future since 2019.
Mastercard said the $2.65 billion acquisition is expected to be completed by the first quarter of 2025.
Recorded Future will operate as “an independent subsidiary of Mastercard,” Recorded Future co-founder and CEO Christopher Ahlberg wrote in a post Thursday.

The CEO Perspective

In the post, Ahlberg wrote that “with Mastercard, we are entering the next phase of our evolution, broadening our threat intelligence strategy and expanding our global reach.”
“This mission remains unchanged: we will continue to operate as the same company, but now with a new owner and greater expansion potential,” he wrote.
“Ultimately, we are dedicated to operating as a free and open intelligence platform,” Ahlberg said.

Microsoft appoints Carolina Dybeck Happe as new COO, reshuffles organizations

“Microsoft’s goal is to raise the bar for operational excellence,” Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO and president, said in a statement.

Microsoft has a new chief operating officer and executive vice president, tasked with helping the vendor “drive continuous business process improvement across all our organizations and accelerate our company-wide AI transformation, driving value for customers and partners.”
Carolina Dybeck Happe — who served as General Electric’s chief financial officer and senior vice president during the more than 130-year-old company’s split into three distinct businesses — will take on a newly created role as a member of the Senior Leadership Team (SLT), reporting to Satya Nadella, CEO and chairman of the Redmond, Washington-based technology giant.
“I admire Carolina for her work as a global business leader, including her recent role in GE’s historic turnaround,” Nadella said in a blog post Thursday. “She is recognized for her ability to drive transformational change at scale, while delivering superior customer experiences and faster time to value.”
[RELATED: Microsoft Is Doubling Down On AI, Security: Here Are Some Of Its Recent Hires]

Microsoft appoints new COO

CRN has contacted GE and Microsoft for comment. The vendor has more than 400,000 partners worldwide and expects to grow the number of channel partners it works with over the next 12 months. According To the 2024 Channel Heads of CRN.
“The Commerce + Ecosystems organization in Cloud + AI, the Microsoft Digital organization in Experiences + Devices, and the Microsoft Business Operations organization in Finance,” will report to Happe, according to Nadella’s post.
According to CNBC, Microsoft’s last operating chief was Kevin Turner, who stepped down in 2016. The reshuffle comes about six months after Microsoft Have been taken There is a lot of excitement among leaders around the world over the appointment of Mustafa Suleyman as the CEO of Microsoft AI.
As part of Suleman’s moves, Pawan Davuluri has been promoted to lead the combined Windows Experience and Windows + Devices team and will report to Rajesh Jha, executive vice president of the Experience + Devices division, who will now report to Happe.
“These teams are doing mission-critical work for us and have highly ambitious plans for how we can empower our partners, customers and employees with world-class technology and experiences,” he added.
He said the COO appointment comes at a time when Microsoft is “looking to raise our level of operational excellence, continuously improve our security, quality and delivery to customers, and enhance the rigor with which we conduct business.”
“Building this capability is essential, and I want each of us to take as much pride in our product innovation as we do in exceeding customer expectations in our fundamentals,” Nadella said. “After all, both are mission critical to our customers and our future.”
Happé said in a post on LinkedIn on Thursday that he took the job because he “instantly saw the incredible opportunity for AI to benefit every aspect of our business as a catalyst for innovation, growth, and value creation.”
“I am very excited to bring my lifelong passion for technology and my global experience to Microsoft in partnership with others to drive change at scale,” he wrote.
Happe began working with Microsoft this month, according to his account on Microsoft-owned social media network LinkedIn.
In the COO role, his work will include “leveraging expertise in large-scale global transformation, digitalization, and continuous improvement to accelerate AI-based transformation across the company.” AccordingHe has shared a post on his LinkedIn account.
Happe began working with GE in 2020 and worked on the spin-off of GE Healthcare in 2023 and the spin-off of GE’s energy businesses into GE Vernova, which was completed in April. GE itself became GE Aerospace.

Cloud environment breach affected ‘small number’ of customers

The security vendor says a threat actor “accessed a limited number of files stored on a Fortinet instance of a third-party cloud-based shared file drive.”

Fortinet confirmed on Thursday that its cloud storage environment had been breached, affecting customer data.
The cybersecurity vendor described the incident as minimally impacted, saying the number of files accessed was “limited” and that data for a “small number” of customers was affected.
[Related: 10 Major Cyberattacks And Data Breaches In 2024 (So Far)]
This violation had occurred earlier as well Report Australia-based publication Capital Brief reported that customers in Asia-Pacific were also among those affected by the incident.
In response to inquiries from CRN on Thursday, Fortinet did not say where the affected customers are located, what specific data is affected, or when the incident occurred.
In a statement on Thursday, the company revealed that “someone gained unauthorized access to a limited number of files stored on Fortinet’s instance of a third-party cloud-based shared file drive.”
“The accessed files included limited data relating to some of Fortinet’s customers, and we have communicated directly with customers as appropriate,” the company said.
Fortinet said that so far, “there is no indication that this incident resulted in malicious activity affecting any customers.”
“There is no impact to Fortinet’s operations, products and services,” the company said.
According to BleepingComputer ReportA threat actor has claimed on a hacker forum that it has stolen a significant amount of data from a Microsoft SharePoint server located on Fortinet’s Azure cloud, and claims to have posted the stolen data after Fortinet refused to meet a ransom demand. CRN has contacted Fortinet for comment on the report.
As of this writing, it did not appear that Fortinet had filed a breach disclosure with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Such filings are only required of publicly traded companies when they have suffered an event with significant impact, though some companies have adopted the practice Voluntarily Filing a disclosure of violation with the SEC.