Nutanix Bests Broadcom, ScalePad Beats Red Hat: Channel Madness Round 1 Results

Round 1 voting in the 2024 Channel Madness tournament saw two tournament rookies move ahead to the Solutions 16. Here’s a look at how it all played out.

Round 1 of the 2024 CRN Channel Madness tournament is in the books, and the winners are prepping their game plans for their next matchups.

It was an exciting round that saw two Channel Madness rookies advance to the next round. Here’s a look at Round 1 results and who’s moving on to the Solutions 16.

The Acceleration region was home to the tournament’s closest matchup leading into the final two days of voting, but newcomer Eric Torres orchestrated a come-from-behind victory with 60 percent of the vote against Stefanie Chiras of Red Hat’s 40 percent.

In the same region, another tournament rookie, SonicWall’s Michelle Ragusa-McBain stuck to her winning game plan to gain 64 percent of the vote against Hitachi Vantara’s Kimberly King, who ended with 36 percent.

Our third tournament newbie, Cynthia Loyd of Broadcom, did not fare as well. She was bested in the Innovation region by Nutanix’s Christian Goffi, who brought in 69 percent of the vote to Loyd’s 31 percent.

Here's a look at the final scores.

Transformation

Rob Cato, Lenovo, 70 percent vs. Ruba Borno, Amazon Web Services, 30 percent

Michelle Welch, WatchGuard Technologies, 66 percent vs. Kevin Ichhpurani, Google Cloud, 34 percent

Phil Soper, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, 59 percent vs. Michael Rogers, CrowdStrike, 41 percent

Kevin Rooney, Veeam Software, 70 percent vs. David Weeks, N-able, 30 percent

Acceleration

Ken Marks, SentinelOne, 72 percent vs. Rodney Clark, Cisco Systems, 28 percent

Michelle Ragusa-McBain, SonicWall, 64 percent vs. Kimberly King, Hitachi Vantara, 36 percent

Scott Mann, Scale Computing, 58 percent vs. Steve Loeb, Eaton, 42 percent

Stefanie Chiras, Red Hat, 40 percent vs. Eric Torres, ScalePad, 60 percent

Innovation

Bob Skelley, Arctic Wolf, 64 percent vs. Dan Tomaszewski, Kaseya, 36 percent

Nina Harding, Microsoft, 41 percent vs. Ken McCray, Fortinet, 59 percent

Christian Goffi, Nutanix, 69 percent vs. Cynthia Loyd, Broadcom, 31 percent

Frank Rauch, Cato Networks, 54 percent vs. Denise Millard, Dell Technologies, 46 percent

Evolution

Jenni Flinders, NetApp, 62 percent vs. Jason Kimrey, Intel, 38 percent

Tom Evans, Palo Alto Networks, 78 percent vs. Gordon Lord, Schneider Electric, 22 percent

Kendra Krause, Sophos, 43 percent vs. Gordon Mackintosh, Juniper Networks, 57 percent

Scott Lannum, HP Inc., 67 percent vs. Kate Woolley, IBM, 33 percent

Looking ahead to the Solutions 16, here are the face-offs in Round 2.

In the Transformation region, Lenovo’s Rob Cato will go up against WatchGuard’s Michelle Welch, while HPE’s Phil Soper will test the mettle of Veeam Software’s Kevin Rooney.

The Acceleration region will see SentinelOne’s Ken Marks pitted against SonicWall’s Michelle Ragusa-McBain, while Scale Computing’s Scott Mann challenges ScalePad’s Eric Torres.

In the Innovation region, Arctic Wolf’s Bob Skelley will take on Fortinet’s Ken McCray, while Nutanix’s Christian Goffi will match up against Frank Rauch of Cato Networks.

And in the Evolution region, NetApp’s Jenni Flinders will go head-to-head with Palo Alto Networks’ Tom Evans, while Juniper Networks’ Gordon Mackintosh will face HP Inc.’s Scott Lannum.

Voting in Round 2 opens at 10:00 AM ET on Thursday, March 21 and will remain open until Tuesday, March 26 at noon ET. Visit CRN.com/madness to cast your votes and choose your chief!