Five Companies That Came To Win this Week

HP's Bradley Ready To Fight Everyone In Tablets

Walking into a bar and announcing your intention to fight everyone there could lead to an emergency room trip. But in the context of the tablet market, it may be an effective way for a newcomer to rally channel partners around a new mobile platform.

This week at the HP's Americas Partner Conference, Todd Bradley didn't mince words when sizing up the tablet competition. "We’re going to fight everybody. This is not an Apple and HP scenario," Bradley said at the event. Bradley also mentioned Samsung, Dell and Lenovo as tablet competitors that HP sees on its radar. "The list is long, but they should be more worried about how they're going to compete with HP," he said.

HP faces an uphill climb in the tablet space, but it's got big ambitions for WebOS. When the TouchPad arrives sometime this summer, we'll see if Bradley's bravado will translate into market success.

Google Brings Java Founder James Gosling On Board

CRN called out Oracle last April for letting James Gosling get away but we're giving Google props this week for bringing the former Sun Microsystems executive and 'Father Of Java' into the fold.

"I don't know what I'll be working on," Gosling wrote in a blog post announcing his new Google gig. "I expect it'll be a bit of everything, seasoned with a large dose of grumpy curmudgeon."

Google is embroiled in a lawsuit filed by Oracle last August which claims that Android violates Java patents and copyrights. Google denies that this is the case, and bringing in Gosling, who probably knows more about Java than anyone on the planet, is an interesting tactic.

VCE Taps 20-year EMC Exec Hauck As New President

As reported by CRN, Frank Hauck, EMC executive vice president and a member of the EMC executive office of the Chairman, is moving to a new role as president of VCE. As president of VCE, Hauck will focus on such areas as customer service, new product delivery, and adoption of new technologies, sources told CRN.

So far, VCE partners are reacting positively to this development. Jamie Shepard, executive vice president of technology solutions at ICI, a Marlborough, Mass.-based solution provider and VCE partner, said Hauck is perfect for the job.

"VCE is a data center play," Shepard told CRN this week. "Having a data center person like Frank is the right thing for the company."

Salesforce Adds Social Networking To Mix With Radian6 Buy

Salesforce.com this week acquired Radian6, a developer of technology for monitoring social media networks, for $276 million in cash and $50 million in stock. Radian6's technology is used by businesses to monitor hundreds of millions of conversations every day on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, blogs and other online communities

It's a move that'll help Salesforce bolster its Sales Cloud CRM application, Service Cloud and Chatter applications and Force.com cloud development platform.

HTC ThunderBolt Giving iPhone Run For Money On Verizon

HTC's Evo 4G smartphone has been a hit since launching on Sprint last year, and now it looks like the handset maker could have another big bat in the lineup. According to BTIG Research analyst Walter Piecyk, who called 150 Verizon stores nationwide, the ThunderBolt is keeping pace, and in some cases outselling the iPhone.

Boy Genius Report, in its review of the ThunderBolt, praised the device's blazing speed. Sort of ironic that Verizon finally gets the iPhone and then has a smartphone newcomer steal its thunder (OK, that was bad). For Verizon, of course, this is a good problem to have.