Five Companies That Came To Win This Week

Google Beats Wall Street's Expectations, Revenue $9 Billion in Q2

After a so-so Q1, Google this week reported Q2 earnings that suggest the company is ready to zoom back to the stratospheric valuation heights to which Wall Street investors have become accustomed.

In addition to pulling in $9 billion in Q2 revenue, Google also revealed that it's activating some 550,000 Android devices daily, a big step up from the 400,000 devices daily it was activating just two months ago. Android is a mobile operating system, but it's fast becoming a force of nature as well. Let's just all hope these things don't turn on us someday, because that would make Hitchcock's The Birds look like Romper Room.

Cisco Refreshes Bread-And-Butter Catalyst 6500

Cisco in recent months has been dealing with a string of bad news than would have even Debbie Downer feeling sympathetic, but this week's unveiling of a long-awaited upgrade to its popular Catalyst 6500 switching line is a welcome ray of hope for channel partners. Cisco is positioning the Catalyst 6500 as a way for partners to sell the holy grail of investment protection.

"There's a lot of play partners can do with the existing installed base," said Scott Gainey, Cisco's director of switching solutions, told CRN this week.

Cisco is planning to ead a concerted sales charge> behind the Catalyst 6500, a 12-year old product that has generated in the neighborhood of $42 billion worldwide. More than 700,000 Catalyst 6500 chassis are deployed globally, Cisco said, and the line has more than 25,000 customers worldwide.

VMware Pumps Up Performance Of vSphere Virtual Machines

VMware introduced the concept of "Monster virtual machines" in its vSphere 5 launch this week, and looking at the specs, it's tough to argue. Sphere 5's virtual machines support up to 32 virtual CPUs, compared to 8 virtual CPUs in vSphere 4. vSphere 5's virtual machines can also hold up to one terabyte of virtual RAM, compared to 256 gigabytes for their predecessor.

Of course, VMware's vSphere 5 licensing changes could make it prohibitively expensive to run VMs of this size, but from a technical standpoint, VMware just blew out the walls and rebuilt an architecture that will serve as the basis of its cloud strategy for the next several years.

HP Launches ServiceONE Partner Services Push

HP this week threw channel partners a Tyrannosaurus Rex-sized bone with the launch of its ServiceONE specialization, under which HP's services partners can offer a full suite of HP professional and consulting services. It's widely viewed as HP's bid to capitalize on the growing attention being paid to services in the IT ecosystem, and it goes hand-in-hand with HP's cloud push.

With ServiceONE, HP partners will be able to increase their margin potential, gain annuity business opportunities and go after more clients, while also taking part in the installation and implementation.

"Partners need services for their financial health and to compete," Ken Archer, vice present of channels and alliances for HP's Technology Services group in the Americas, told CRN this week.

Citrix Acquires Cloud.com, Grabs Cloud Industry's Best URL

Citrix this week acquired cloud infrastructure upstart Cloud.com, a move Citrix says bolsters its public and private cloud technology portfolio. More importantly, it gives Citrix a domain name that no cloud competitor can match.

Cloud.com was founded in 2008 and makes the CloudStack open-source cloud computing platform for building and managing private and public cloud infrastructure. Citrix said Cloud.com's team will become part of its new Cloud Platforms Product Group, headed by Citrix General Manager Sameer Dholakia.

The Cloud.com domain might seem a minor part of this deal, but if this whole cloud computing is more than just a fad, Citrix may have just bought itself a storefront that will make it the envy of industry competitors.