CRN Channel Madness: Buzzer Beaters Lead To Round 1 Upsets

The votes have been cast, the polls are closed and the results are in for Round 1 of the 2016 CRN Channel Madness Tournament of Chiefs.

Some chiefs who had been trailing throughout the week dug deep to pull out victories. Others never really found their footing and are left to spend the off-season wondering where it all went wrong. We started with 32 chiefs. After more than 55,000 votes, let's find out which ones made the Solutions 16 to move on to Round 2.

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In the Infrastructure region, Chris Morgan of Nutanix trailed throughout Round 1 but found some spark in the final hours to beat Cisco's Wendy Bahr, pulling this one out with 51 percent to Bahr's 49 percent.

Extreme's Bob Gault extended his lead over Dell's Cheryl Cook to clinch victory 59 percent to 41 percent.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise's Scott Dunsire and SimpliVity's George Hope had been back-and-forth this whole round, but Dunsire walked away with this one 55 percent to 45 percent.

Dunsire's compatriot at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Kerry Bailey, made it a clean sweep for HPE, sailing past EMC's Gregg Ambulos 55 percent to 45 percent.

In the Hardware region, Lenovo's Sammy Kinlaw orchestrated a comeback after trailing for much of the round, shutting down HP's Stephanie Dismore 64 percent to 36 percent.

Dell's Frank Vitagliano and HP's Jos Brenkel were tied yesterday but Vitagliano dug deep to pull this one out 51 percent to 49 percent.

Sandra Glaser Cheek of Ruckus capped off her tournament debut with a victory over Eaton's Curtiz Gangi, winning 61 percent to 39 percent.

And Intel's Maurits Tichelman closed out Rob McKernan of APC by Schneider Electric 61 percent to 39 percent.

The Cloud region was rocked Tuesday when CRN broke the news that Verizon's Adam Famularo is leaving the company for role as CEO of an as-of-yet unspecified software company. Famularo's job change might be good news for him but it was bad news for his Channel Madness campaign. Carbonite's Jessica Couto prevailed in that contest 56 percent to 44 percent.

Datto's Rob Rae finished off Amazon's Terry Wise 65 percent to 35 percent. VMware's Frank Rauch closed out NetSuite's Craig West 68 percent to 32 percent, and AT&T's Brooks McCorcle didn't miss a step in her battle with StorageCraft's Mike Kunz, winning 79 percent to 21 percent.

In the Software region, SAP's Rodolpho Cardenuto sent IBM's Marc Dupaquier packing, 57 percent to 43 percent.

Phil Sorgen of Microsoft pushed out Palo Alto's Ron Myers 57 percent to 43 percent. Red Hat's Mark Enzweiler was in charge of his contest with Fortinet's Joe Sykora, closing it out 69 percent to 31 percent.

And Mike Valentine of Sophos breezed through Round 1, knocking off Oracle's Bill Swales 79 percent to 21 percent in phase one of his quest to repeat as Channel Madness Champion.

Now let's look at the Solutions 16 match-ups.

In Infrastructure, Bob Gault of Extreme will square off against Scott Dunsire of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, while Chris Morgan of Nutanix takes on Hewlett Packard Enterprise's Kerry Bailey.

In the Hardware region, Intel's Maurits Tichelman goes up against Lenovo's Sammy Kinlaw, while Sandra Glaser Cheek of Ruckus challenges Dell's Frank Vitagliano.

In the Cloud region, we'll see storage rivals Jessica Couto of Carbonite and Rob Rae of Datto face off, while AT&T's Brooks McCorcle will see if she can get past VMware's Frank Rauch after being bested by him in Round 1 last year.

And in the Software region, Mike Valentine of Sophos will battle Mark Enzweiler of Red Hat, while SAP's Rodolpho Cardenuto and Microsoft's Phil Sorgen will face off.

Voting in Round 2 closes at 10:00 AM ET on Thursday, March 24 and will remain open until Tuesday, March 29 at noon ET. Visit CRN.com/madness to cast your votes and choose your chief!