Channel Madness: CrowdStrike’s Rogers, WatchGuard’s Welch Tied In Round 1

With the first weekend of voting in the books, a close matchup is shaping up in the Security region of the 2022 CRN Channel Madness Tournament Of Chiefs.

It’s been a busy opening for the 2022 Channel Madness Tournament of Chiefs. We’re more than halfway through Round 1 voting, and a lot of contestants have come out strong

Weekend voting developed into a tight matchup in the Security region, where tournament newcomer Michael Rogers of CrowdStrike and WatchGuard’s Michelle Welch are currently tied up at 50 percent each. That’s the closest matchup in the tournament right now.

Meanwhile in the Hardware region, Scale Computing’s Scott Mann jumped out quickly to a commanding lead. He’s currently ahead of Hitachi Vantara’s Kimberly King 73 percent to 27 percent.

In the Infrastructure region, Datto’s Rob Rae is holding off Eaton’s Steve Loeb, with Rae ahead 59 percent to 41 percent.

And in the Cloud region, VMware’s Sandy Hogan is well ahead of IBM’s Bob Lord with 61 percent compared to his 39 percent.

Here’s a look at the full results so far:

Infrastructure

Rob Rae, Datto, 59 percent vs. Steve Loeb, Eaton, 41 percent

George Hope, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, 65 percent vs. Christian Goffi, Nutanix, 35 percent

Oliver Tuszik, Cisco Systems, 31 percent vs. Shannon Sbar, Schneider Electric, 69 percent

Rob Cato, Lenovo, 69 percent vs. Jenni Flinders, NetApp, 31 percent

Hardware

Kimberly King, Hitachi Vantara, 27 percent vs. Scott Mann, Scale Computing, 73 percent

Rola Dagher, Dell Technologies, 32 percent vs. Scott Lannum, HP Inc., 68 percent

Donna Grothjan, Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, 62 percent vs. Alvin Da Costa, Nvidia, 38 percent

Richard Vaughn, Dynabook Americas, 68 percent vs. Jason Kimrey, Intel, 32 percent

Cloud

Jonathan McCormick, Intermedia, 33 percent vs. Kevin Rooney, Veeam Software, 67 percent

Kevin Ichhpurani, Google Cloud, 31 percent vs. Rodney Clark, Microsoft, 69 percent

Bob Lord, IBM, 39 percent vs. Sandy Hogan, VMware, 61 percent

Ruba Borno, Amazon Web Services, 39 percent vs. Jeff McCullough, SolarWinds, 61 percent

Security

Michael Rogers, CrowdStrike, 50 percent vs. Michelle Welch, WatchGuard Technologies 50 percent

Frank Rauch, Check Point Software Technologies, 69 percent vs. Joe Sykora, Proofpoint, 31 percent

Lori Cornmesser, CyCognito, 64 percent vs. Karl Soderlund, Palo Alto Networks, 36 percent

Bob Skelley, Arctic Wolf, 34 percent vs. Kendra Krause, Sophos, 66 percent

Voting in Round 1 remains open until noon ET on Wednesday, March 23 so there’s still time to head to CRN.com/madness to cast your votes and choose your chief!