2020 Year In Review
The last 12 months have seen an unprecedented amount of disruption in the IT industry, fueled in large part by the coronavirus pandemic. COVID-19 impacted nearly every aspect of the global economy, from supply chains to air travel to tourism. The IT industry wasn’t spared either, as event cancellations, layoffs and falling earnings affected legacy vendors and startups alike. And on top of all that, a hotly-contested United States presidential election will leave even more questions heading into 2021.
CRN takes a look back at the companies, executive moves, acquisitions, products and news stories that stole headlines in 2020.
THE BIGGEST STORIES OF 2020
The 20 Most Important Tech Executive Moves Of 2020
IBM, SAP, AT&T and Wipro were among the companies to see major leadership shakeups in 2020. Other companies that had big personnel moves included Intel, Nutanix and VMware.
10 Top Cybersecurity News Stories Of 2020
The cybersecurity industry in 2020 saw lots of outside money to address challenges around securing a remote workforce, with vendors tapping into the deep pockets of public investors and private equity, while solution provider giants found themselves being targeted with ransomware.
10 Top Microsoft Teams News Stories Of 2020
From massive user growth, to feature updates, to partner opportunities, here are the biggest news stories of the year about the Microsoft Teams collaboration platform.
The 10 Top Cisco News Stories Of 2020
In case the global pandemic and its far-reaching impacts didn’t keep Cisco busy enough this year, the tech giant also made a handful of acquisitions, shuffled around its executive leadership team and business units, and announced a $1B cost-cutting plan. Here are the ten biggest Cisco stories of 2020.
The 10 Top VMware News Stories Of 2020
From a new channel chief and partner program to VMware’s Kubernetes charge and COVID-19 response, here are the ten most important news story from VMware in 2020.
The 10 Top Dell Technologies News Stories Of 2020
From PowerStore and VxRail to a new global channel chief and Project Apex, CRN breaks down the top ten biggest Dell Technologies news stories of 2020.
The 10 Top IoT News Stories Of 2020
Private equity sales, vendors pushing pause on facial recognition and a massive semiconductor acquisition deal were among this year’s largest news stories in the IoT market.
The 10 Most Disruptive Technologies Of 2020
These technologies are shaking up the way people communicate, produce goods, accelerate AI models and develop IoT applications, among other things.
The 10 Biggest Apple Product News Stories Of 2020
From the iPhone 12, to the first M1-powered Macs, to new iPads and MacBooks, here are the Apple product news stories CRN was following this year.
The 20 Top News Stories Of 2020
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the IT industry’s response to the social justice movement, a failed corporate takeover attempt, the division of the oldest IT vendor into two companies, and the most extensive cyberattack in years. It has been a very tumultuous 2020.
THE HOTTEST PRODUCTS OF 2020
The 10 Coolest New Edge Computing Platforms Of 2020
Here are 10 platforms that are helping businesses collect, secure, and process the explosion of data being generated at the edge of the network.
The 10 Hottest SSD And Flash Storage Devices Of 2020
Innovations in flash storage hardware, from SSDs to the latest in all-flash storage arrays, continues as vendors including Dell EMC, Hitachi Vantara, NetApp and Pure Storage introduce the latest technologies including NVMe and low-cost QLC flash while using software to help squeeze even more performance.
The 10 Coolest New Big Data Tools Of 2020
With data volumes growing at a rapid clip, accessing, managing and analyzing big data has become a monumental task. Here are 10 big data tools that debuted in 2020 that can help.
The 10 Hottest New Cloud Security Tools Of 2020
The 10 top cloud security products to hit the market in 2020 can detect improper configurations, assess the risk around users seeking access to a cloud resource, and protect workloads in virtualized, private and hybrid environments.
The 10 Hottest New Wearable Devices Of 2020
This year’s big wearable device launches included smartwatches such as the Apple Watch Series 6 and smart assistant-equipped earbuds such as Samsung Galaxy Buds+.
The 10 Hottest Laptop Processors Of 2020
Thanks to new chips from AMD, Apple, Intel and Qualcomm, laptop buyers in every segment of the PC market had more choice in 2020 than perhaps ever before.
The 10 Coolest Software-Defined Networking Tools Of 2020
With a healthy growth outlook predicted for the SDN market for the next seven years, here are 10 of the coolest software-defined networking tools of 2020.
The 10 Hottest New Cybersecurity Products Of 2020
The 10 cybersecurity products making noise in the market have emphasized workflow automation, downtime minimization and incident remediation to better safeguard endpoints, mobile devices, OT environments and containers.
The 10 Hottest New Enterprise Servers Of 2020
From Dell Technologies and HPE to SuperMicro and Lenovo, here are the hottest new enterprise servers of 2020.
The 10 Hottest New IoT Devices Of 2020.
This year’s hottest IoT devices include AI edge computers, crop and weather sensors, home health monitoring systems, IoT security scanners and multi-purpose trackers.
The 10 Coolest Hyperconverged (HCI) Systems Of 2020
From Dell and HPE to Microsoft and Nutanix, here are the ten hottest hyperconverged systems in 2020.
THE HOTTEST STARTUPS OF 2020
The 10 Hottest Database Startups Of 2020
Next-generation database companies are developing technologies to help businesses manage increasing volumes of data and increasingly complex data types.
The 10 Hottest Cloud Security Startups Of 2020
The 10 hottest cloud security startups include companies protecting containers and Kubernetes workloads on AWS, securing authentication and access policies in the cloud, and monitoring the binary code running inside a company’s cloud servers.
The 10 Hottest AI Startups Of 2020
Here’s a look at 10 artificial intelligence technology companies that caught our attention in 2020.
The 10 Coolest Big Data Startups Of 2020
Businesses and organizations today are turning to next-generation big data software and services startups to help them identify, integrate, prepare and manage the huge volumes of data they need for business analytics, digital transformation and other initiatives. Here’s a look at 10 startups that offer ground-breaking technology that help solution providers and their customers meet their big data challenges.
The 10 Coolest AI Chip Startups Of 2020
These AI chip startups are approaching the market with a variety of approaches to improve performance, efficiency and cost for AI, deep learning and machine learning workloads.
The 10 Hottest Cloud Computing Startups Of 2020
Cloud computing startups picking up traction this year offer solutions ranging from Apache Airflow as a service to a life sciences R&D cloud software platform, and include a newly emerged security company formed by former ‘white hat’ hackers.
The 10 Coolest Industrial IoT Startups Of 2020
CRN looks at industrial IoT startups that made big moves this year, between new funding rounds, product launches, partnerships and executive hires.
The 10 Hottest Data Storage Startups Of 2020
CRN presents the definitive list of 10 data storage startups that made recent headlines as they came out of stealth or unveiled their first cloud storage, disaster recovery, and other innovations.
The 10 Hottest Semiconductor Startups Of 2020
These semiconductor startups are, in some cases, competing with heavyweights like Intel and AMD or creating complementary hardware, such as storage accelerators or data processing units, that can improve system performance or even shake up the economics of data centers.
The 10 Coolest IoT Startups Of 2020
With new funding rounds, executive hires and product launches, these startups are making big moves this year as the demand for IoT offerings continues.
The 10 Coolest Networking Startups Of 2020
With digital transformation at an all-time high, here are ten of the hottest networking upstarts that made their mark in 2020.
The 12 Coolest Machine-Learning Startups Of 2020
The 12 coolest machine-learning startups include companies that are developing leading-edge technology for building machine-learning models and collecting and managing the vast amounts of data needed to train those models.
The 10 Coolest Cybersecurity Startups Of 2020
The 10 coolest cybersecurity startups include companies securing and isolating applications from the network, gaining visibility into where threat actors will strike next, and automating compliance with complex global privacy regulations.
The 12 Coolest Machine-Learning Startups Of 2020
The 12 coolest machine-learning startups include companies that are developing leading-edge technology for building machine-learning models and collecting and managing the vast amounts of data needed to train those models.
The 10 Coolest Edge Computing Startups Of 2020
From market newcomers, to edge computing and colocation, and SASE upstarts with a few years of experience under their belts, here are ten of the hottest edge computing startups that were on the scene this year.