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CRN’s end-of-year ranking put COVID-19 and its disruption of work and IT strategy at No. 1, followed by ransomware and the SolarWinds compromise. The 20 entries offer a channel-focused view of 2020: cloud dependence, cybersecurity, changing sales models, corporate deals, and technology’s growing role in public life.
This is CRN’s editorial selection, not a statistical ranking or a consensus list of the year’s biggest technology stories. It focuses on enterprise IT vendors, distributors, solution providers, managed service providers (MSPs), and their customers. Published at the end of 2020, it also captures events and plans that were still unfolding. CRN’s original ranked roundup is the source for the ranking and contemporary details below.
Why COVID-19 was the defining story
1. COVID-19, economic disruption, and work-from-home pivots. The pandemic was more than a sudden public-health crisis for the IT channel: it forced organizations to change how they operated and how they bought and delivered technology. Mobile World Congress was canceled on February 12, before its February 24 opening, and the pandemic was declared on March 11. As offices closed, businesses needed laptops, collaboration tools, cloud capacity, security, and remote support—often urgently.
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One free scan finds every outdated or missing driver and matches the right update for your exact hardware.Free scan · exact hardware matchFor solution providers, work shifted to remote delivery just as customers needed help. Vendors responded in different ways, including relaxed sales targets, financing support, certification extensions, and protections for partner programs. The effects were uneven: demand rose for some collaboration and cloud services, while event-dependent and economically exposed businesses took a hit. CRN reported Cisco’s account that Webex usage tripled from March to June 2020. The deeper change was acceleration: remote work, cloud adoption, managed services, and consumption-based models were already developing, but the crisis made them immediate operating priorities.
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Cybersecurity: extortion and hidden access
2. Ransomware attacks escalated, including against MSPs and integrators. Ransomware disrupted businesses, public services, and technology providers by locking systems, threatening data, and demanding payment. The channel faced particular exposure: MSPs use remote-management tools and privileged access to support many customers, so a compromise can create risks beyond a single organization. That does not mean every MSP incident spread to customers, but it makes access controls, separation of customer environments, backups, and incident plans especially consequential.
CRN cited incidents involving organizations including Cognizant, Conduent, Tyler Technologies, ISS World, Equinix, and Foxconn, and reported that ISS World’s recovery and mitigation costs reached $75 million or more. It also reported Tyler Technologies’ estimate of about $4 million in lost sales after its incident. These are figures reported by CRN, not universal measures of ransomware’s cost.
3. A state-sponsored cyberattack threatened government and businesses. The SolarWinds Orion compromise differed from ransomware. Rather than openly extorting victims, attackers inserted malicious code into software updates between March and June 2020, according to CRN’s account. The incident highlighted supply-chain risk: organizations can be exposed through software they trust, and a compromised vendor or update mechanism may provide a path into government or enterprise systems. The ransomware and SolarWinds stories belong together as cybersecurity warnings, but they were distinct attack patterns, not one campaign.
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4. Everything-as-a-Service gained momentum. The label covered more than subscription software. It included infrastructure paid for by use, hardware bundled with lifecycle management, managed services, recurring-revenue contracts, and vendor marketplaces. CRN pointed to initiatives such as Dell Technologies’ Project Apex, HPE GreenLake, Cisco’s subscription shift, NetApp’s partner strategy, Lenovo’s device-as-a-service plans, and Eaton’s power-management ambitions. These were company strategies and announcements, not proof that every customer would benefit equally. For partners, the opportunity—and challenge—was to build recurring services and manage ongoing customer outcomes rather than rely only on one-time product sales.
7. Edge computing rose as a channel opportunity. Edge computing brings processing and data handling closer to devices, users, and operational sites instead of sending every task to a distant data center. That can matter for industrial IoT, logistics, healthcare, retail, and other operations where connectivity, response time, or local control is important. It also adds integration, device management, monitoring, and security requirements—areas where solution providers can deliver more than hardware.
13. The industry accelerated 5G rollout. 5G and edge computing are related, but not interchangeable. 5G can provide greater network capacity and support more connected devices; edge computing determines where data is processed. Combined, they may support distributed applications and connected operations, but a faster network alone does not create a useful business service. Deployment, coverage, security, integration, and industry-specific applications determine whether the promise turns into value.
Deals, restructuring, and leadership shifts
6. AMD’s resurgence. AMD’s competitive gains against Intel made it a more prominent force in computing. Its planned acquisition of Xilinx also signaled ambitions beyond conventional processors, toward data-center and adaptive-computing markets. At the time of CRN’s roundup, the deal was a plan, not a completed outcome.
8. Dell considered spinning off VMware. A potential separation raised questions about the future of a major technology relationship and how Dell would position its infrastructure and software businesses. CRN covered consideration of a spin-off; readers should not mistake that 2020 discussion for a completed transaction at that point.
9. Channel consolidation continued. Acquisitions among systems integrators, solution providers, and Microsoft-focused partners reflected a push for greater scale and broader capabilities. Consolidation can expand a provider’s reach, but it can also reshape customer relationships and partner ecosystems.
11. IBM planned to split into two companies. In October, IBM announced plans to separate its managed infrastructure services business from its hybrid-cloud and software strategy. CRN’s contemporary account described a planned services company with roughly $19 billion in annual revenue, a $60 billion services backlog, and 4,600 clients in 115 countries. Those figures and the separation were part of the announced plan; the strategic effects were still ahead.
12. CEO and channel-management changes. Leadership turnover at companies including IBM, AT&T, Dell, VMware, Nutanix, and SAP made executive and channel appointments a story in their own right. Such changes can alter priorities, partner programs, and go-to-market plans, though a leadership change alone does not establish what strategy will follow.
14. Xerox pursued and abandoned a bid for HP. The proposed takeover illustrated pressure on established printing and hardware businesses to find scale amid structural change. The pandemic and market disruption complicated the effort, which Xerox ultimately abandoned.
17. Salesforce agreed to buy Slack for $27.7 billion. Announced on December 1, 2020, the deal was a major enterprise-software transaction and a direct challenge to Microsoft Teams’ place in workplace collaboration. The announced price described the transaction at the time; integration and competitive results were not yet known.
18. Snowflake made a high-profile IPO. Its shares priced at $245, raising approximately $3.36 billion according to CRN’s contemporary account. The debut reflected investor appetite for cloud-data platforms and high-growth software companies, not a guarantee of future performance.
20. Private-equity firms acquired Tech Data and Ingram Micro. The change in ownership at two major distributors underscored consolidation at a central layer of the IT channel. For vendors and solution providers, distributor ownership and scale can affect how products and services move through the market.
Government, elections, and public trust
5. IT leaders condemned racism and supported social-justice causes. Following George Floyd’s death and protests over racial injustice, technology leaders made public statements and supported causes. The story connected corporate leadership, employees, and public accountability. Statements or donations, however, should not be treated by themselves as evidence of lasting organizational change.
10. Technology played critical roles—and suffered a visible failure—in the 2020 U.S. election. Election technology, social media, and cybersecurity drew intense scrutiny. The Iowa caucus application failure disrupted the reporting and transmission of results; that is more precise than claiming every part of the voting process failed. The episode illustrated how a technical or operational breakdown can undermine public confidence even when its scope is limited.
16. The Pentagon’s JEDI cloud contract remained contested. Amazon Web Services challenged Microsoft’s award of the Defense Department’s Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract. The dispute combined cloud competition, procurement rules, litigation, and political controversy. The Pentagon reaffirmed Microsoft’s award on September 4, 2020, but the challenge meant the matter remained unsettled in CRN’s year-end account.
19. Google and Facebook faced U.S. government antitrust lawsuits. Litigation marked a shift from investigation toward formal legal challenges over the companies’ market power and conduct. These cases involved separate allegations and legal processes; they should not be collapsed into a single finding that either company had already been found liable.
How to read CRN’s ranking
The list mixes discrete events—such as the Slack deal and Snowflake IPO—with continuing crises, policy developments, and broad trends such as edge computing and as-a-service models. Its rank order reflects CRN’s editorial judgment; the article does not describe a scoring system based on readership, financial impact, market share, or survey results. The selection is also channel-centric and U.S.-oriented, not a universal inventory of consumer technology, gaming, semiconductor supply chains, or every global technology story.
Its central argument is nevertheless clear: 2020 accelerated changes in work, cloud dependence, cybersecurity, and how technology is sold and supported. Some entries were still projections or unresolved questions when published—including IBM’s planned separation, the JEDI dispute, and the long-term effects of pandemic-driven work changes. The roundup is most useful as a snapshot of what CRN considered consequential at the time, rather than a final verdict on how every story turned out.
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