CRN Channel Madness Results So Far: Big Upsets Brewing

Voting in the CRN Channel Madness Tournament of Chiefs opened yesterday. We're 7 minutes into the first half, otherwise known as the end of Day 1. It's early in the game, but we have a few upsets brewing in the Round 1 match-ups, so let's look at the highlights.

In the Infrastructure region, both of Cisco's representatives have stumbled out of the gate.

Cisco's Bruce Klein is trailing F5's Jim Ritchings 34 percent to 66 percent.

APC By Schneider Electric's Shannon Sbar has a commanding lead over Cisco's Edison Peres, where she's ahead 76 percent to 24 percent.

/**/ /**/

/**/ brightcove.createExperiences(); /**/

Extreme's Bob Gault is leading HP's Sue Barsamian 53 percent to 47 percent.

Elsewhere in the region, Herve Tardy of Eaton is leading SimpliVity's George Hope 56 percent to 44 percent.

Moving on to the Hardware region, where the big news is Dell's Frank Vitagliano is struggling against NetApp's Thomas Stanley, down 37 percent to 63 percent.

Vitagliano's compatriot at Dell, Cheryl Cook is faring much better, leading EMC's Gregg Ambulos 61 percent to 39 percent.

Ron Gill of Ruckus is engineering a takedown of HP's Jos Brenkel, with the wireless boss leading HP's printing and personal systems chief 61 percent to 39 percent.

And in a dead heat, we have Intel's Maurits Tichelman and Sophos's Mike Valentine splitting the vote 50/50.

In the Cloud region, AT&T's Brooks McCorcle is ahead of VMware's Frank Rauch 58 percent to 42 percent.

Amazon's Terry Wise is leading upstart Justin Moore of Axcient 56 percent to 44 percent.

NetSuite's Craig West is trailing Verizon's Adam Famularo 45 percent to 55 percent.

And VMware's Dave O'Callaghan is in control of his matchup against Comcast's Craig Schlagbaum, leading 67 percent to 33 percent.

Rounding out the tournament in the Software region we have Fireeye's Steve Pataky and Microsoft's Phil Sorgen in a tie at 50 percent each

Citrix's Tom Flink has pulled ahead of SAP's Kevin Gilroy 53 percent to 47 percent.

Microsoft's Jenni Flinders is taking Palo Alto's Ron Myers to school, leading 61 percent to 39 percent.

And, now we turn to the most heavily voted contest of the tournament, IBM's Marc Dupaquier vs. Red Hat's Mark Enzweiler. Adding a new twist to the rivalry, Dupaquier took to Twitter yesterday to announce he has bet his team that he can reach one million votes it this contest, a lofty goal. He's not there yet but he is leading Enzweiler 56 percent to 44 percent.

So that's where things sit after day one of Channel Madness. Voting in the round remains open until 10:00 AM ET on Wednesday March 25. Visit CRN.com/madness to cast your vote and choose your chiefs.

PUBLISHED MARCH 20, 2015