CRN Channel Madness: Weekend Voting Brings Lead Changes

Voting in the CRN Channel Madness Tournament of Chiefs continued all through the weekend. We're well into the second half now with less than 48 hours of voting time remaining. We've had a few lead changes as of Monday morning, so let's get to the highlights.

In the Infrastructure region, HP's Sue Barsamian has closed the gap in her face-off with Extreme's Bob Gault. Barsamian was down by six percentage points Friday morning but has now pulled up even with Gault 50/50.

Both of Cisco's representatives continue to struggle in their matchups.

F5's Jim Ritchings gave up a point but continues to lead Cisco's Bruce Klein 65 percent to 35 percent.

Cisco's Edison Peres gained three points but still lags behind APC By Schneider Electric's Shannon Sbar 27 percent to 73 percent.

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And SimpliVity's George Hope gained one point but still trails Eaton's Herve Tardy 45 percent to 55 percent.

Moving on to the Hardware region, where the big news is Intel's Maurits Tichelman has broken the tie in his contest with Sophos's Mike Valentine. Tichelman now leads 51 percent to 49 percent.

Dell's Cheryl Cook slipped three points but maintains a commanding lead over EMC's Gregg Ambulos 58 percent to 42 percent.

NetApp's Thomas Stanley dropped one point but continues to lead Dell's Frank Vitagliano by a wide margin, 62 percent to 38 percent.

And HP's Jos Brenkel picked up one point, but that doesn't get him close to Ruckus's Ron Gill, who leads 60 percent to 40 percent.

In the Cloud region, Axcient's Justin Moore has picked up steam. He was down 12 points Friday morning vs. Amazon's Terry Wise but is now neck and neck with him at 50 percent each.

VMware's Dave O'Callaghan extended his lead by one point against Comcast's Craig Schlagbaum 68 percent to 32 percent.

His colleague at VMware Frank Rauch picked up two points but still trails AT&T's Brooks McCorcle 44 percent to 56 percent.

And Verizon's Adam Famularo picked up one point in his battle with NetSuite's Craig West, with Famularo now leading 56 percent to 44 percent.

And now on to the Software region, where's Microsoft's Phil Sorgen has pulled ahead of FireEye's Steve Pataky 52 percent to 48 percent. The two were tied as of Friday.

Microsoft's Jenni Flinders maintains her lead over Palo Alto's Ron Meyers 61 percent to 39 percent.

SAP's Kevin Gilroy picked up one point in his head-to-head with Citrix's Tom Flink but still trails Flink 48 percent to 52 percent.

And, in what remains the most heavily voted contest of the tournament, IBM's Marc Dupaquier vs. Red Hat's Mark Enzweiler, Dupaquier has extended his lead by three points and is now ahead of Enzweiler 59 percent to 41 percent.

So that's where things sit after 96 hours of Channel Madness voting. 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 23, 2015