Five Companies That Came To Win This Week

Virtualization Startup Wanova Launches Channel Program

Wanova, a San Jose, Calif.-based virtualization vendor founded in 2008, is looking for channel partners with virtualization chops to help build its global customer base. Wanova's flagship product, Mirage, is designed for companies with mobile work forces and sits somewhere between client and server virtualization -- Wanova refers to it as "hybrid" desktop virtualization.

The idea is to give IT departments full control over endpoints while allowing users to customize their machines. This last point has been a stickler for IT, which often finds itself enforcing draconian policies for mobile workers. Wanova centralizes the entire content of each endpoint in the data center, making it easy for IT to manage, and its core IP is focused on moving data across a small pipe quickly and efficiently.

Adtran Jumps Into Unified Threat Management Space

The unified threat management (UTM) space has long been a lucrative play for VARs, and this week Adtran unveiled its NetVanta 2000 series appliances for small and medium businesses.

Adtran is partnering with SonicWall and all of its NetVanta 2000 appliances come with a limited lifetime warranty and 12 months of continuous threat protection, SSL and IPSec VPN clients, anti-virus and anti-spyware clients, and management under a centralized management system. Smaller companies aren’t immune to security threats, and Adtran is betting that affordable UTM will resonate with customers in this relatively untapped segment.

"We think cloud is going to be really applicable to SMB -- places where there's a small IT staff and they can have some of the computing resources in the cloud," said Todd Luttanzi, senior product manager, Adtran Enterprise Networks Division, told CRN this week.

CA Vows To Continue Cloud Acquisition Campaign

CA Technologies has been snapping up cloud startups left and right for over a year now, spending $1 billion to bring in key cloud technologies. But CA isn't done yet -- this week, the company signaled its intention to keep on trucking with more cloud computing acquisitions in the coming year.

"You will see us continue to acquire companies in this space," CA's cloud computing general manager Adam Famularo told CRN this week. "This is an area we're going to keep investing in."

Managed service providers that partner with CA are sitting in the proverbial catbird's seat, as they're the ones who will reap the most fruits from CA's cloud assault. "We're seeing a lot of momentum in the MSP community," Famularo said. "When it comes to cloud computing, I see a big gravitational pull to managed service providers."

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RIM Beats The Street's Expectations

Research In Motion's Blackberry Torch is starting to have a major positive impact on the company's bottom line. So much so that Apple CEO Steve Jobs may have to find a new rival company to belittle. RIM's sales jumped 40 percent to $5.49 billion and earnings per share was $1.75, compared to the Street's forecast of $5.41 billion and $1.65.

RIM beat the Street's revenue and profit expectations in its Q3, adding 5.1 million new subscribers and tapping into new markets in Brazil and Indonesia. Forecasting RIM's demise has become something of a sport these days, but RIM just silenced the critics in a big way.

Rackspace Adds To Cloud Management Portfolio

Rackspace this week acquired Cloudkick, a San Francisco-based purveyor of cloud management and monitoring technology. It's a move that will help Rackspace up the ante in its battle with Amazon Web Services, as Cloudkick has worked closely with both companies. Cloudkick's technology allows cloud computing users to manage their cloud server environments from a single pane of glass and across multiple providers.

Calling itself a "cockpit for navigating complex cloud environments," Cloudkick's offerings put all the information and controls in a single panel to help developers and system administrators deploy and manage their cloud environments. Rackspace said the Cloudkick buy will help it to deliver better support through new cloud management tools that will be available directly to customers and also as a service via Rackspace.