Five Companies That Came To Win This Week

Intel's Q3 Profit Jumps 17 Percent On Strong PC Sales

Strong notebook and desktop PC sales helped Intel post a 17 percent jump in profit during its fiscal third quarter, and Intel CEO Paul Otellini could hardly contain his glee in conveying the news to Wall Street analysts. "We were very pleased with the momentum in our notebook and PC business and consumer demand for our industry-leading and second-generation Intel core processor family," Otellini said during the Intel’s earnings call.

This is a promising development for Intel channel partners, and Todd Swank, VP of marketing at Nor-Tech, a system builder based in Burnsville, Minn., is optimistic about what the next quarter could bring.

"Intel’s notebook sales were strong, which was a bit of surprise to me," Swank said. "In our traditional client business, we see customers making a shift to mobile smartphones and tablets, but servers and high-computing solutions are still seeing great growth."

McAfee Unveils Deep Defender, First Joint Product With Intel

At its Focus 2011 conference in Las Vegas this week, McAfee officially unveiled Deep Defender, its first product to use the hardware-assisted security technology developed in conjunction with parent company Intel. Deep Defender is all about battling rootkits, and McAfee executives said it'll be capable of protecting customers from a wide range of stealthy threats.

Meanwhile, Renee James, McAfee chairman and senior vice president of Intel's software and services group, said she's impressed with what McAfee brings to the table and is confident in the future direction of the merged companies.

"We will continue to grow McAfee as standalone security company, and we will keep the management team intact," James said at McAfee's Partner Summit. "You should not be convinced that anything is going to change, unless it's for the better."

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Big Switch Networks Adds Two Industry Vets To Roster

Network virtualization startup Big Switch Networks this week added two industry veterans to its roster as part of its ongoing effort to become the 'VMware of the networking industry'.

Isabelle Guis, Big Switch's new vice president, outbound marketing, comes to the company from Avaya, where she was general manager, Enterprise Communications Business. She previously was at Cisco, and joined that company in its 2005 acquisition of Airespace.

Mansour Karam, Big Switch's new vice president of strategic alliances, comes to the company from Arista Networks, where he was director of business development. Karam's duties at Big Switch include oversight of the company's channel program.

EMC's Solid Q3 Driven By SMB, Channels

Solid SMB and channel business growth helped EMC achieve solid profit and revenue growth in its fiscal third quarter. "Our efforts to expand and deepen our channel relationships are paying off, both for us and for our partners," David Goulden, EMC executive vice president and CFO, said in the company's Q3 earnings call.

EMC has doubled its channel ranks in the past year and recruited over 1,300 new channel partners to join EMC since releasing its VNX/VNXe family of SMB storage appliances in January, Goulden said.

Cisco Bolsters Videoscape With BNI Video Acquisition

Cisco this week plunked down $99 million to acquire BNI Video, a privately held maker of video back-office and content delivery network analytics products. BNI's technology be directed to Cisco's Videoscape, a home entertainment platform for service providers that made its debut at CES this year.

"Service providers globally are embracing our Videoscape vision and today with the acquisition of BNI Video, we are augmenting our Videoscape platform and giving customers a clear migration path to Videoscape," said Marthin De Beer, senior vice president and general manager of Cisco's Emerging Business Group, in a statement.