Channel Beat: Meet the New Channel Chief at Dell-EMC

This week Dell named John Byrne as its new global channel chief for Dell-EMC.

The 27-year sales vet will have the task of combining the two companies' channel organizations.

Byrne aims to establish a single channel program for Dell-EMC before the beginning of Dell's fiscal year, February 1.

The $62 billion acquisition is expected to close by October.

Just one month after unloading assets from its EDS acquisition, HPE is reportedly shopping around its Autonomy software business.

HP acquired Autonomy in 2011 for $10.3 billion, but HPE partners told CRN the software has never found great success in the channel.

HPE partners predict the company may have a hard time finding a buyer for the software, and Bloomberg - which originally broke the story - reported that HPE will also look to sell its Mercury Interactive and Vertica Systems businesses.

Channel partners are cheering what they perceive as increased collaboration between Cisco Systems and VMware, two companies who have had a contentious history but share many partners.

This week Cisco acknowledged requests for tighter integration between Cisco ACI and VMware NSX, and Cisco leaders hinted at an official SDN collaboration between the two companies.

That's a virtual 180 from former Cisco CEO John Chambers' comments in 2014 to 'crush' VMware in the SDN space.