CRN Channel Madness: Quarterfinals Come To A Tumultuous Close

Quarterfinal voting in the CRN Channel Madness Tournament of Chiefs has come to a close, and the Enterprise Eight are about to learn their fate.

With titles up for grabs in the Infrastructure, Hardware, Cloud and Software regions, let's look at how it all shook out.

We had a come-from-behind victory in the Hardware region, where Sandra Glaser Cheek of Ruckus was down 12 points to Lenovo's Sammy Kinlaw yesterday but left it all on the court, pulling out a victory 56 percent to to 44 percent.

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In the Infrastructure region what started out as a lopsided contest turned into a nail-biter on the final day of voting. Kerry Bailey of Hewlett Packard Enterprise tried to overcome a 58 point deficit but came up just short in his Battle Royale with Extreme's Bob Gault. The two were tied early Thursday but a last minute surge gave Gault the victory and the Infrastructure crown with 50.4 percent of the vote to Bailey's 49.6 percent. Less than 200 votes separated them.

Another tight battle was fought in the Cloud region where Datto's Rob Rae and AT&T's Brooks McCorcle were separated by just four points yesterday, but McCorcle grew her lead and pulled it out 54 percent to 46 percent to win and become Queen of the Cloud.

And in Software, reigning champion Mike Valentine of Sophos is on a roll, besting Microsoft's Phil Sorgen 86 percent to 14 percent to win the region and continue his quest to win it all again.

So in the Field of Four, Extreme's Bob Gault will meet Sandra Glaser Cheek of Ruckus, while Brooks McCorcle takes on Mike Valentine of Sophos.

Voting in the semifinal round opens today, Thursday, March 31 at 4:00 PM ET and will remain open until Monday, April 4 at noon ET. Then get ready for the final round, which kicks off later on Monday. Visit CRN.com/madness to cast your votes and choose your chief!