Patrick Piwowarczyk is now head of channel development in the Americas for unified communications specialist Polycom.

Solution providers and vendor executives at Black Hat 2017 say that opportunities abound around ransomware, cloud security and IoT, as well as emerging technologies such as DevOps.

The channel is in a state of serious flux, fueled by cloud computing, Internet of Things, mobility and other disruptive technologies, and many solution providers are trying to evolve their businesses in the face of digital transformation.

The Fast Growth 150 is CRN's annual ranking of the fastest-growing solution providers, resellers, technology integrators and IT consultants in North America. Here we present the top 50 from the class of 2017.

The CRN Test Center compares Apple's popular laptop with Microsoft's new Windows 10 S notebook. Here's how the Apple MacBook Air stacks up against the Microsoft Surface Laptop.

Emilio Ghilardi steps down as president of Lenovo's North America Business, AppDynamics launches a new Titan Partner Program, and Kaspersky Lab names Jason Stein as its new head of North American channels.

Mike Champion, founder and CEO of solution provider startup Xcelocloud discussed why he created a company with a laser-focused on SD-WAN consulting, broke down the different "flavors" of SD-WAN and highlighted the growing opportunity for partners.

Partners say reports that Intel's upcoming eighth-generation Coffee Lake CPUs will not be compatible with existing 200-series motherboards could be a "procedural headache" for the channel.

"[Mitel-ShoreTel] does not seem to be, from my perspective, like one-plus-one equals three here. It seems like two legacy providers who are running out of market share," said RingCentral CEO Vlad Shmunis.

For the week ending Aug. 4, CRN looks at IT companies that were unfortunate, unsuccessful or just didn't make good decisions.

In July, the telecommunications industry stayed hot with providers snapping up more fiber assets and releasing new services for partners and customers. CRN rounds up six moves that solution providers should know about.

The marriage of Pomeroy and CompuCom would unleash a 15,500-employee workhorse on the channel with expertise in everything from cloud and managed services to IT outsourcing and help desk.

For the week ending Aug. 4, CRN takes a look at the companies that brought their 'A' game to the channel.

Here's a look at which executive comings and goings made our July list.

Arrow's cloud business is on track to have a $1 billion run rate in 2017 due to the onboarding of MSPs and other types of non-traditional channel partners.

Search Technology's team of engineers will work to further develop solutions that help companies examine unstructured data from a variety of media sources, including social media.

The company is recruiting partners that want to help businesses to mobilize their legacy enterprise apps.

In an interview with CRN, Symantec CEO Greg Clark addressed the company's two recent acquisitions, the divestiture of its website security business, and overall growth around its platform security strategy.

Emilio Ghilardi's replacement as president of Lenovo's North America business faces many obstacles as the company tries to muscle share away from data center stalwarts like HPE, Dell EMC and Cisco, solution providers said.

Dell Senior Vice President Steve Lalla, who has been leading the thin client charge at Dell for the last four years, is being replaced as the head of the cloud client solutions group by Jay Parker, a rising star within the company.