5 Vendors Who Came To Win This Week

1. Symantec's Big Consulting Services Bet

Symantec, we've called you out plenty of times on these pages, and for what we felt were for good reasons. But this time, Symantec, we're giving you a hearty thumbs-up over your decision to throw the majority of your consulting service business to channel partners.



There's obviously a mountain of work that lies ahead for you in helping partners make the transition. But Symantec, we're on board with your plan. Your partner-led services could very well boost channel loyalty and stimulate more product sales. It's a big bet, but given the competitive pressures in the security business, it's one that also makes sense as a potential differentiator.



Hey Symantec partners, Big Yellow just threw you a major frickin' bone. Now it's up to you to capitalize on the opportunity.

2. HP Steals High Ranking VMware Exec

HP isn't known as a shrinking rose when it comes to poaching corporate talent from competitors. After hiring away Stephen DiFranco from Lenovo in February, HP this week brought in one of VMware's top U.S. executives, Richard Geraffo Jr., as senior vice president and managing director of the Americas for HP's $54 billion Enterprise Business group.



DiFranco, meanwhile, is already having an impact: At the Varnex conference, he laid out HP's plan to simplify its approach to the channel and help partners become more profitable. When HP sees someone it thinks will help improve its business, the company doesn't hesitate, and VMware just learned that lesson the hard way.

3. Microsoft Goes Gaga With Product Launches

It was a manically busy week for Microsoft, which rolled out a voice-enabled version of its Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) and began talking about a pilot deal registration program it's running for its U.S. channel partners.



Oh, and the software giant also gave developers new tools for developing apps for the desktop all the way to the cloud, launching Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4. Finally, Microsoft released Silverlight 4 to manufacturing, a product that's going to get a whole lot more attention going forward as the platform for native Windows Phone 7 apps.



Even for Microsoft, this is an impressive week of achievements, and one that's no doubt getting the bubbly flowing this weekend.

4. IBM Tries To Blast Cloud Silos

IBM this week said its LotusLive SaaS collaboration suite will now integrate with cloud-based services from Salesforce.com, shipping giant UPS, Skype and Silanis e-signature. It's an aggressive move to get rid of the 'silos' separating cloud services that have been one of the obstacles of perception hindering companies' migration to the cloud.



Big Blue also unveiled a new cloud computing bundle of enterprise-class e-mail and social networking tools for only $7 per user, per month. Everyone's talking about cloud computing, but this week, IBM walked the talk.

5. Twitter Shows Us The Business Model

Twitter held its first ever developer conference this week and finally answered the question of how it plans to make money. Twitter's newly unveiled "Promoted Tweets" program generates ads related to search keywords linked to marketing campaigns.

Co-founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone revealed that Twitter is adding around 300,000 new users every day and had more than 105 million registered total users, and now they have a plan in place for turning that into revenue. Twitter also revealed a partnership with the U.S. Library of Congress to archive every Tweet that flows through its servers.

Some may perceive Twitter as kid's stuff, but this week the company took a significant step toward business credibility.