Five Companies That Came To Win This Week

Intel Throws Support Behind Android, Teams With Motorola

Intel delivered one of the biggest surprises at CES by unveiling a "multiyear, multidevice" strategic partnership with Motorola Mobility around smartphones and tablets.

The partnership will combine Intel's newest Atom Z2460 processor, Medfield, with Motorola's Android-based devices. This, and Lenovo's new K800 Android smartphone, which runs on the Atom Z2460 processor, represent the clearest signs to date that Wintel's old dominance of the industry is fading quickly into the rearview mirror.

Box Hitting On All Cylinders In Enterprise Cloud Storage

Box, the company previously known as Box.net, this week said it tripled its revenue from enterprise customers in 2011, a promising development for a company that's trying to expand beyond its initial base of consumers.

Privately held Box said it doubled its enterprise customer base last year and now has more than 8 million users. The company also raised $129 million in VC funding, which enabled it to hire 215 new employees in 2011, bringing its overall headcount to 340.

Avaya Poaches Longtime Cisco Exec For Networking Division

Avaya this week brought in Marc Randall, a former vice president of engineering at Cisco who recently had been overseeing its core routing business unit, as senior vice president and general manager for the Avaya Networking division. Randall was previously president and CEO of Force10 Networks and senior vice president of products and offerings at Brocade.

Avaya also confirmed that Gary Barnett has been promoted to senior vice president and general manager for Avaya Collaboration Infrastructure. Barnett joined Avaya in April 2011 following stints as CEO of Prospect Software and CEO of Aspect Communications, and most recently led its unified communications applications team.

Synnex Beats Street's Forecast By 23 Cents Per Share

Strong retail demand in the U.S. propelled Synnex to its 98th consecutive profitable quarter. Synnex earned $50.2 million, or $1.37 per diluted share, on sales of $2.84 billion in the quarter ended Nov. 30. Wall Street was expecting earnings of $1.14 per share on $2.82 billion in sales.

On the commercial side, Synnex CEO Kevin Murai said the CloudSolv and RenewSolv services platforms are helping to drive growth, along with the enterprise server, storage and networking, telephony and wide format printer categories.

Looking ahead, the looming arrival of Windows 8, combined with the arrival of Ultrabooks on the market, could help Synnex hit the century mark in profitable quarters next year.

Cloud MSPs Merge, Form Major Cloud Player

OutsourceIT and GoBeyondIT this week merged to form one of the largest privately held cloud service providers and MSPs in the U.S. The move creates a single cloud and managed service provider that will be based in La Plata, Md., with support center hubs in Winston-Salem, N.C, and Baltimore.

OutsourceIT co-founder and CEO Craig Guice will continue to serve as CEO, but he'll cede the role of president to Mark Vilent, OutsourceIT's vice president and CTO. GoBeyondIT CEO Richard Crane will become executive vice president of corporate development, and GoBeyondIT Partner David Web will take the position of executive vice president of enterprise and strategy accounts.

"This is an exciting time at OutsourceIT; we believe combining forces with GoBeyondIT will accelerate our already fast growth rate," Guice said in a statement.