Channel Madness: Close Races Shaping Up In Infrastructure, Security

In CRN Channel Madness Round 1 voting, Kaseya’s Dan Tomaszewski is trying to hold off Nutanix’s Christian Goffi while Cato Networks’ Frank Rauch is a hair’s breadth ahead of WatchGuard’s Michelle Welch.

Round 1 of the 2023 CRN Channel Madness Tournament of Chiefs is well underway. We’re more than halfway through the voting and there are a number of close contests shaping up.

After a busy weekend of voting, tournament newcomer Dan Tomaszewski of Kaseya had a slow start but has now edged ahead of Nutanix’s Christian Goffi with 50.5 percent of the vote in the Infrastructure region.

Meanwhile in the Security region, Cato Networks’ Frank Rauch, a finalist in the last two tournaments, is holding a slim lead over WatchGuard’s Michelle Welch with 50.3 percent of the vote.

In the Hardware region, tournament rookie James Robbins of Dynabook Americas has pulled ahead of Lenovo’s Rob Cato with 73 percent of the vote.

And in the Cloud region, VMware’s Ricky Cooper has a solid lead over IBM’s Kate Woolley with 64 percent of the vote.

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

Infrastructure

Dan Tomaszewski, Kaseya, 50.5 percent vs. Christian Goffi, Nutanix, 49.5 percent

Oliver Tuszik, Cisco Systems, 26 percent vs. Shannon Sbar, Schneider Electric, 74 percent

David Weeks, N-able, 24 percent vs. Jenni Flinders, NetApp, 76 percent

Steve Loeb, Eaton, 39 percent vs. Phil Soper, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, 61 percent

Hardware

Scott Mann, Scale Computing, 86 percent vs. Rola Dagher, Dell Technologies, 14 percent

Scott Lannum, HP Inc., 54 percent vs. Kimberly King, Hitachi Vantara, 46 percent

Donna Grothjan, Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, 66 percent vs. Jason Kimrey, Intel, 34 percent

James Robbins, Dynabook Americas, 73 percent vs. Rob Cato, Lenovo, 27 percent

Cloud

Ruba Borno, Amazon Web Services, 45 percent vs. Kevin Rooney, Veeam Software, 55 percent

Kevin Ichhpurani, Google Cloud, 32 percent vs. Stefanie Chiras, Red Hat, 68 percent

Jonathan McCormick, Intermedia, 33 percent vs. Nina Harding, Microsoft, 67 percent

Kate Woolley, IBM, 36 percent vs. Ricky Cooper, VMware, 64 percent

Security

Michael Rogers, CrowdStrike, 41 percent vs. Bob Skelley, Arctic Wolf, 59 percent

Frank Rauch, Cato Networks, 50.3 percent vs. Michelle Welch, WatchGuard Technologies, 49.7 percent

Lori Cornmesser, Deepwatch, 65 percent vs. Ken Marks, SentinelOne, 35 percent

Tom Evans, Palo Alto Networks, 57 percent vs. Kendra Krause, Sophos, 43 percent

Voting in Round 1 remains open until noon ET on Wednesday, March 22, so there’s still time to head to CRN.com/madness to cast your votes and choose your chief!