This year’s leading news stories (so far) include the ongoing AI wave that’s remaking the IT industry, the impact of three multi-billion-dollar acquisition deals, the contrasting fortunes of two of the industry’s leading semiconductor companies – and what was likely the biggest IT system failure to date.

AI Highs, Service Failure Lows

The top news stories this year (so far) have been a study in contrasts.

Near the top of the list is the wave of AI development that exploded in 2023 and continues to remake the IT industry in 2024. IT vendors, solution providers and their customers are all riding that AI tsunami as it promises to make IT—and everyone who uses it—a whole lot smarter.

And yet another major story in 2024 is about how a simple cybersecurity software upgrade triggered a massive number of system failures, disrupting businesses and organizations around the world and causing combined losses that could total billions of dollars.

Top stories for this year include the impact of three 11-figure industry acquisition deals (two completed and one in progress). The rapid rise of one semiconductor maker and the struggles of another is also a major story. IT company layoffs, while not as widespread as last year, still make headlines as do a steady stream of ransomware and cyberattacks.

Here’s our look at the top 10 news stories of 2024 (so far), starting with No. 10 and counting down to No. 1. Take a look and see if you agree with our choices.

No. 10: Service Outages Cause Major Disruptions

Businesses and organizations are increasingly dependent on cloud computing technologies and services. While service outages may be uncommon, they are highly disruptive and costly—including for solution providers—when they do happen.

The first half of 2024 has seen a number of major cloud service outages.

One of the largest was the Feb 22 failure of several AT&T network services, including Internet service, leaving customers unable to make calls, send text messages or access the internet. Most services were restored after about 11 hours.

AT&T later blamed “the application and execution of an incorrect process” while upgrading the company’s network for causing the problem. In May AT&T dealt with another outage, largely in the Virginia and North Carolina region, due to equipment failure.

Multiple Microsoft services experienced disruptions and outages on Jan. 21 as the Azure Resource Manager faced degradation problems. The problem affected downstream Azure services including CDN, Virtual Machines, Data Factory, Azure Container Registry and Service Bus, according to Microsoft. Altogether users endured problems for about seven hours.

On April 12, thousands of websites using the Cloudflare-powered Unpkg free content delivery network experienced errors for several hours. And on May 16 Salesforce customers faced service failures for the company’s cloud applications and AI tools for more than four hours. The problems were caused by intermittent failures from a third-party Domain Name System service provider.

A more complete rundown of cloud service outages in 2024 (so far) can be found here.

This list, however, doesn’t include what is likely the largest global IT service outage ever. That is a story all by itself, so read on.

No. 9: Adam Selipsky Steps Down As AWS CEO

Amazon Web Services operates the cloud platform that many IT software and service companies rely on to run their businesses. AWS also offers its own huge portfolio of application and IT infrastructure software and services. It’s fair to say that AWS is more than just an IT cloud company—it’s a critical nexus for much of the IT industry.

So it was big news on May 14 when Adam Selipsky, who led AWS as its CEO for three years, took the industry by surprise when he announced that he was stepping down from the top job effective June 3.

“In the back of my head I thought there might be another chapter down the road at some point, but I never wanted to distract myself from what we are all working so hard to achieve,” Selipsky said in a statement. “Given the state of the business and the leadership team, now is an appropriate moment for me to make this transition, and to take the opportunity to spend more time with family for a while, recharge a bit, and create some mental free space to reflect and consider the possibilities.”

Selipsky took over the CEO job in 2021 after his predecessor, Andy Jassy, was promoted to CEO of Amazon, AWS’ parent company. Selipsky came to the CEO post from data analytics software developer Tableau, where he was also CEO. Before that he worked at AWS for 11 years, leading its sales, marketing and support operations.

Matt Garman, senior vice president of AWS sales, marketing and global services, was named the new CEO of the $100 billion cloud and AI giant. He joined AWS in 2006 as software development project manager for AWS EC2 and over 17 years worked his way up the ranks.

Partners told CRN they were shocked at Selipsky’s unexpected and relatively sudden departure. But they praised Garman as someone who could take AWS to the next level of its development and growth.

No. 8: Nvidia’s Rise, Intel’s Struggles

It would be hard to find two companies in the IT industry with such divergent fortunes in 2024 (so far) than semiconductor giants Nvidia and Intel.

With soaring demand for its GPUs and AI infrastructure products, Nvidia has been on a roll in 2024. Just this week the company reported that revenue for the first six months (ended July 28) of its fiscal 2025 reached $56.1 billion—up nearly 171 percent from $20.7 billion in the first half of fiscal 2024.

For a short time in June, Nvidia became the world’s most valuable company with a market capitalization of $3.34 trillion, putting it in company with Apple, Microsoft and Google parent Alphabet (It’s market cap currently stands around $2.9 trillion).

Nvidia surpassed rival Intel in revenue in February when the company reported its fiscal 2024 fourth quarter financial results. How did Nvidia pull this off? An analysis shows that Nvidia spent years building a comprehensive stack of chips, systems, software and services for accelerated computing—with an emphasis on data centers, cloud computing and edge computing—and was well-positioned when demand for AI systems exploded.

The company has also made savvy moves to maintain its momentum through key partnerships with Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud in the cloud infrastructure space; server builders including Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Lenovo, Dell Technologies and Cisco Systems; and other industry leaders such as IBM, SAP, ServiceNow, Databricks, Snowflake and many others.

Intel, meanwhile, has struggled to regain the momentum that once made it one of the IT industry’s most powerful companies. CEO Pat Gelsinger, with his IDM 2.0 strategy, has made sweeping changes throughout the company, including launching Intel Foundry, building new fabrication plants and revitalizing Intel’s contract manufacturing business.

Gelsinger has refocused Intel’s attention on CPUs, accelerator chips and networking chips, and exited some businesses and spun off others that were considered not core to Intel’s business. The company is banking on a host of new processors and other technologies, as well as ramping up the Intel Foundry business, to lead to improved growth.

In June Intel scored a win when it secured an $11 billion investment from Apollo Global Management for a chip fabrication plant in Ireland that opened in 2023.

But overall progress has been slow and on August 1 Intel said it would cut its workforce by more than 15 percent, roughly 15,000 jobs, as well as make big cuts in operating and capital expenditures and suspend the company’s dividend in a bid to reduce costs by more than $10 billion in fiscal 2025.

“Our revenues have not grown as expected—and we’ve yet to fully benefit from powerful trends, like AI,” Gelsinger wrote in an open letter to employees. “Our costs are too high, our margins are too low. We need bolder actions to address both—particularly given our financial results and outlook for the second half of 2024, which is tougher than previously expected.”

No. 7: Cisco Completes $28 Billion Splunk Acquisition

On March 18 networking giant Cisco Systems completed its $28 billion acquisition of data management and observability platform developer Splunk, wrapping up one of the biggest acquisitions in the history of the IT industry. The two companies first announced the acquisition deal in September 2023.

The Cisco-Splunk merger combined the two companies’ observability and cybersecurity technology strengths, creating what company executives described as a distinctive AI-powered data platform.

“As one of the world’s largest software companies, we will revolutionize the way our customers leverage data to connect and protect every aspect of their organization as we help power and protect the AI revolution,” Cisco Chair and CEO Chuck Robbins said in a statement announcing the completion of the acquisition.

Cisco and Splunk have wasted no time in bringing together their technology portfolios and capabilities. At the RSA Conference 2024 in May the two companies detailed plans to integrate their security products, including integrating Cisco’s XDR platform with Splunk SIEM technology. That momentum continued in the following weeks with product integration and development announcements at the Cisco Live and Splunk .conf24 events.

Executives from both Cisco and Splunk have made it clear that Splunk will not be subsumed into Cisco: Cisco’s observability development operations, in fact, were moved into the Splunk business unit shortly after the acquisition. Speaking at Splunk .conf24 in June, Robbins and Splunk President and CEO Gary Steele, newly appointed as Splunk general manager and Cisco go-to-market president, vowed that the acquisition would not disrupt Spunk’s track record of technology innovation.

No. 6: Aftershocks Of Broadcom’s $69 Billion Acquisition Of VMware Continue Into 2024

On Nov. 22, 2023, Broadcom closed its $69 billion acquisition of virtualization technology giant VMware, 18 months after first announcing the deal, in one of the largest acquisitions in the history of the IT industry.

Almost immediately Broadcom began implementing major changes to VMware including reorganizing VMware into four divisions, implementing layoffs that impacted more than 2,000 jobs and announcing that Raghu Raghuram was stepping down as VMware CEO.

Broadcom has continued to reshape VMware, including its operations and its go-to-market practices, in 2024 with significant implications for the company’s partners and customers.

Broadcom reduced the VMware product portfolio from thousands of products to just four core product subscription-based offerings; eliminated the VMware Partner Connect Program; increased prices; and terminated AWS’ reseller agreements with AWS, requiring that customers now to go directly to Broadcom for procurement of VMware Cloud on AWS.

In February VMware struck a deal to sell its End User Computing business, including its VDI solutions, to private equity giant KKR for approximately $4 billion.

VMware’s legions of channel partners have been particularly impacted. In late December Broadcom said it was canceling existing VMware partner agreements with resellers and service providers as of Feb. 4, 2024, and that partners would have to reapply to continue selling VMware By Broadcom products. And in early January word leaked out that Broadcom was taking VMware’s top customers direct—an estimated 2,000 strategic accounts—and would reject partner attempts to register deals with those customers.

All this has led to significant blowback from VMware’s scared and angry partners. “This will bite them in the [expletive]. Imagine 50,000 VMware partners with a chip on their shoulder,” said one of the partners who received the termination notice and in January did not know whether it would be allowed to join Broadcom’s partner program or how the business could recoup that revenue if it could not.

Broadcom CEO Hock Tan had a very different viewpoint, calling the first 100 days of VMware under Broadcom’s ownership “a strong start” in a March blog post. “All of these moves have been with the goals of innovating faster, meeting our customers’ needs more effectively, and making it easier to do business with us. We also expect these changes to provide greater profitability and improved market opportunities for our partners,” he said.

And during an earnings call in June Tan said the changes were designed to eliminate the “chaos and conflict” of VMware’s old go-to-market model.

The impact of Broadcom’s moves with VMware has rippled out to other segments of the IT industry, including VMware OEMs and competitors. In April Scale Computing CEO Jeff Ready told CRN that Broadcom’s price increases and channel policy changes were fueling demand for his company. In May, Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell told CRN that demand for Dell’s hypervisor-agnostic PowerFlex was enjoying “great momentum” as customers and partners hunted for VMware alternatives.

No. 5: IT Industry Layoffs Continue In 2024

Employee layoffs have continued throughout the IT industry in the first eight months of 2024, although not at the pace of the waves of layoffs that IT companies undertook in 2022 and 2023.

Correcting for over-hiring in recent years and continued economic uncertainty were behind some employee roster cuts. But in some situations, rapid technology transformation and changes in business strategy—often driven by the impact of artificial intelligence—have led some IT companies to restructure their operations and re-think what employee skills they need.

In January, for example, Google laid off more than 1,000 workers in such areas as advertising sales, and CEO Sundar Pichai told employees to expect more through 2024. In an internal memo Pichai said the cutbacks were about “removing layers to simplify execution and drive velocity” in certain areas, including being able to invest in its biggest priorities such as AI.

Also in January, cloud application giant Salesforce said it would cut some 700 jobs and then in July added about 300 more. Those job cuts followed massive layoffs in 2023 that reduced the Salesforce workforce by about 10 percent.

In February Cisco confirmed reports that it would lay off 5 percent of its global workforce (cutting about 4,250 employees) in a company-wide restructuring, partly due to weak product revenue but also to adjust expenses to focus on key growth areas. An uncertain economic macro environment was also blamed for more cautious customers in closing sales deals (In August Cisco announced plans to lay off an additional 7 percent of its workforce with restructuring costs reaching $1 billion).

SAP launched a restructuring plan in January, including job buyouts and position changes, that the Software giant initially said would impact 8,000 jobs. In August SAP said that number had increased to between 9,000 and 10,000 positions. SAP said the cuts were part of the company’s efforts to “transform its organizational setup” and focus on “key strategic growth areas” such as business AI. With hiring for new positions and employee re-training, the company expects to finish 2024 with about the same number of employees, more than 105,000, it started the year with.

In an example of how some layoffs are due to strategic restructuring, data protection technology developer Veeam said in January that it was cutting about 300 employees in sales, marketing and administration. But the company also said it planned to increase its engineering and development payroll by nearly 500 workers this year.

But some employee layoffs were blunt cost-cutting efforts. In August, chipmaker Intel said it would eliminate approximately 15,000 jobs as part of a plan to reduce fiscal 2025 spending by more than $10 billion. CEO Pat Gelsinger in an open letter to employees said Intel’s revenue had not grown as expected and the company had to “align its cost structure with its new operating model and fundamentally change how it operates.”

A number of companies within the crowded cybersecurity space have announced layoffs in 2024 including Proofpoint (280 employees), Okta (400 workers), and Orca Security (60 employees).

Information about other tech industry layoffs this year (so far), including at Xerox, OpenText, UiPath and Cloud Software Group, can be found here.

No. 4: The Ongoing Wave Of Ransomware Attacks And IT System Breaches

Cybersecurity has been a major subject of concern across the IT industry and within businesses and organizations that heavily rely on their IT systems. This year (so far) has been no different, with a number of high-visibility cyberattacks making headlines.

Health care providers and insurance companies were particularly in the crosshairs of attackers. Reports surfaced as early as February that Change Healthcare, a unit within UnitedHealth’s Optum subsidiary, was a victim of an attack that led to major disruptions for pharmacies and patients.

In April UnitedHealth confirmed that a potentially significant amount of data may have been stolen in the attack and “could cover a substantial proportion of people in America,” the company said in a statement. In May, Change Healthcare said exposed data included patient medical diagnoses, test results and prescriptions. Reports said UnitedHealth paid $22 million to cybercriminals to regain access to its system.

In May, the Ascension health system, with 140 hospitals and operations in 19 states and Washington D.C., said a data breach disrupted its clinical operations, making its electronic health records system unavailable and leading to the delay of non-emergency elective procedures.

On June 18 and 19 CDK Global, a provider of software used by thousands of car dealerships, shut down its systems following a pair of cyberattacks. Thousands of car dealerships that depended on CDK software were unable to access records, complete sales transactions, handle orders for repairs or schedule appointments. Disruptions for some lasted until the end of June.

IT system vulnerabilities and the attackers that exploit them have continued to be in the news. On January 30 the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) warned that malicious actors had found a way to bypass mitigations for widely exploited vulnerabilities in Ivanti VPN devices and recommend that Ivanti Connect Secure customers take steps to avoid being compromised or minimize damage from a breach. Ivanti issued patches for the vulnerabilities the next day, but on Feb. 1 CISA said U.S. government agencies had to disconnect their Ivanti Connect Secure VPNs as attackers continued to exploit multiple vulnerabilities in the devices.

Leading IT vendors were not immune from attack. In January Microsoft disclosed that a Russia-aligned threat actor known as Midnight Blizzard was able to steal emails from the company’s senior leadership team as well as employees on its cybersecurity and legal teams. In March, Microsoft said Midnight Blizzard had tried to exploit information shared by customers through emails. In April, CISA published an emergency order that said Midnight Blizzard had been able to steal emails from government federal agencies in connection with the breach of Microsoft executive accounts.

Reports of a major data breach at AT&T surfaced in March and in July the telecommunications giant acknowledged the breach affected records of nearly all of its customers. And throughout the first half of 2024 reports continued to surface of widespread attacks targeting Snowflake customers.

A more comprehensive list of cyberattacks and data breaches in the first half of 2024 can be found here.

No. 3: HPE Buying Juniper In $14B Blockbuster Deal

On Jan. 9 Hewlett Packard Enterprise, confirming reports that had been circulating for a couple of days, said it had struck a deal to buy Juniper Networks, a leading networking products and service provider, for $14 billion.

The acquisition deal, the IT industry’s largest announced so far this year, is expected to double HPE’s networking business and sets up a battle for network supremacy in the AI era between HPE Aruba Networking and market leader Cisco Systems.

HPE CEO Antonio Neri, in an email to employees, said the acquisition of Juniper Networks is a “transformative deal” that creates a “new HPE” with secure networking as its new core business to accelerate “AI-driven and hybrid cloud strategies.

“Our acquisition of Juniper puts one powerhouse networking player together with another, creating an industry leader that will catalyze innovation across the entire networking stack,” Neri said.

Artificial intelligence, as is true throughout much of the IT industry today, is a major driver of the deal. AI and hybrid cloud is driving demand for secure and unified networking offerings that can connect, protect, and analyze companies’ data from edge to cloud. Juniper today leads with its AI-powered Juniper Mist platform, which competes against Cisco Meraki and HPE Aruba’s own Edge Services Platform.

Juniper also has a significant presence in the service provider market and brings to the party a strong product portfolio that includes data center networking, security, and campus and branch networking products.

The acquisition has cleared regulatory hurdles in the European Union and U.K. and HPE looks to wrap up the acquisition sometime in early 2025.

No. 2: AI Wave Continues To Remake The IT Industry, Channel

The tsunami of activity around artificial intelligence that exploded in 2023 has accelerated in 2024, impacting all aspects of the IT industry, including new product development, startup activity, and mergers and acquisitions.

It seems that every new product, service or program announcement from IT vendors and solution providers has an AI or generative AI component to it. In April Amazon announced the general availability of its Amazon Q AI-powered personal assistant, for example, while Microsoft’s Copilot+ PCs hit the market in June. In May, next-generation database provider MongoDB debuted its MongoDB AI Applications Program (MAAP) to provide a complete technology stack, services and resources to help customers and partners develop AI-infused software.

In April CRN debuted its inaugural AI 100 list of 100 companies that are leading the AI revolution in 2024 by providing AI solutions for cloud computing, cybersecurity, data and analytics, edge computing, data centers, PCs and software.

A majority (62 percent) of solution providers reported seeing a “positive impact” to their overall business from AI with 13 percent calling the impact “significant,” according to an AI study from IPED, the channel consulting arm of CRN parent The Channel Company. AI, for example, is expected to be a major driver in anticipated PC refresh activity later this year and beyond.

In March IT services giant Cognizant launched its Advanced AI Lab to focus on “core AI research and breakthroughs,” Cognizant AI CTO Babak Hodjat told CRN.

IT vendors have launched numerous initiatives this year to assist partners with AI. In April at the Google Cloud Next 2024 event Google Cloud debuted a new generative AI specialization and AI delivery technical bootcamps for solution providers and increased its incentives by a factor of 10 for systems integrators and software vendors to implement Google Cloud’s generative AI solutions. In May Hewlett Packard Enterprise launched an AI Partner Ready Vantage pilot program to help partners capture the potentially massive AI market opportunity.

And leading IT vendors have been investing millions of dollars in AI startups. In May Microsoft said it was investing $1.5 billion in United Arab Emirates-based AI developer G42. In June Amazon Web Services committed to investing $230 million in startups taking AI applications to the next level. The same month Cisco Systems launched a $1 billion global AI investment fund targeting startups that build AI-related products based on Cisco’s technology.

No. 1: CrowdStrike Update Triggers Unprecedented Global IT System Outage

On the morning of Friday, July 19, Microsoft systems all around the world began failing, causing massive disruptions for major airlines, health care service providers, 911 emergency systems, retail and hotel payment systems—likely thousands of businesses and millions of people. Ultimately, it proved to be the most widespread, most impactful IT system outage ever.

While there were initial fears of a cyberattack, the problem was quickly traced to a defective Falcon software update for Microsoft Windows host servers from cybersecurity giant CrowdStrike. (On July 24 CrowdStrike said a bug in its content approval system slipped through the company’s validation process.)

While CrowdStrike quickly deployed a fix, system recovery in many cases took hours and even days because many of the impacted systems had to be restored and rebooted manually. One estimate put the number of impacted Windows devices at 8.5 million.

Airlines were hit especially hard with American Airlines, United Airlines, Delta Airlines and others cancelling hundreds of flights on the day of the outage and, ultimately, cancelling and delaying thousands of flights through the weekend and even into the start of the following week.

Many businesses and organizations managed to get their IT systems back up in hours after the outage. But some continued to struggle for days after the incident. Perhaps no business was hit harder than Delta, which struggled for nearly a week to resume normal operations: The airline estimated its lost revenue from cancelled flights alone at $500 million.

Cloud insurance firm Parametrix estimated that the outage cost U.S. Fortune 500 companies a collective $5.4 billion or an average of $44 million each.

CrowdStrike executives, including CEO George Kurtz and Chief Security Officer Shawn Henry, issued apologies and mea culpas in the hours and days following the outage. But there also has been a fair amount of finger-pointing in the wake of the disaster and lawsuits are all-but-inevitable.

And there have been questions about how a single software update could cause such widespread havoc and what – if anything – can be done to prevent it from happening again.