Channel Madness Quarterfinal Results: Three Matchups Decided At The Buzzer

Round 3 of the CRN Channel Madness Tournament saw three of the four matchups decided by four points or less.

In the tightest quarterfinal round in the history of the CRN Channel Madness Tournament of Chiefs, three matchups were determined by margins of four points or less.

With titles up for grabs in the Infrastructure, Hardware, Cloud and Security regions, let’s look at which of the Enterprise Eight are advancing to the Field of Four.

Tournament veterans faired better than the rookies in this round, with Check Point’s Frank Rauch, who was a finalist last year, edging out newcomer Lori Cornmesser of CyCognito. Rauch nabbed 51 percent of the vote to Cornmesser’s 49 percent to win the Security crown.

Winning by the same margin in the Hardware region, Scale Computing’s Scott Mann bested tournament rookie Richard Vaughn of Dynabook Americas, 51 percent to 49 percent.

Schneider Electric’s Shannon Sbar orchestrated a come-from-behind win over Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s George Hope. Sbar brought in 52 percent of the vote to Hope’s 48 percent to win the Infrastructure title.

And in the Cloud region, Kevin Rooney of Veeam Sofware’s solid game plan earned him 64 percent of the vote over SolarWinds’ Jeff McCullough, who ended with 36 percent of the vote.

That means Rooney and Rauch will face each other in Round 4 for the third year in a row with that series tied 1-1, while Sbar takes on Mann in the other Field of Four matchup.

Voting in the semifinal round opens today, Thursday, March 31 at 4:00 PM ET and will remain open until Monday, April 4 at noon ET. Then get ready for the final round, which kicks off later Monday. Visit CRN.com/madness to cast your votes and choose your chief!