Five Companies That Came To Win This Week

Oracle's Hurd Bangs Best-Of-Breed Drum At OpenWorld

At Oracle OpenWorld, President Mark Hurd seemed to deflect attention away from Oracle's new 12c database and Exadata X3 machine, focusing instead on how these offerings fit into the Oracle stack of technologies.

"Best-of-breed technology at every level of the stack," Hurd said in a press conference at the event. "Our objective is for each of those levels of the stack, each of those layers of the stack, to be the absolute best at the job they perform."

Intel Launches NAS Storage For Consumers, SMBs

Intel launched an Intel Atom processor-based NAS platform for consumers and SMB customers, as part of its push to provide a "personal storage cloud" that users can access from wherever they happen to be via mobile devices.

The new personal storage cloud NAS platform is built on the Intel Atom processor D2550 or D2500. Unlike previous versions of the Atom processor Intel has used for its NAS platforms for nearly four years, these new processors include integrated high-definition video and HDMI capabilities, David Tuhy, general manager for the Intel Storage Division, told CRN.

Palo Alto, Citrix Team Up to Battle F5 Networks

In an apparent bid to stall the growing influence of F5 Networks, Citrix Systems and Palo Alto Networks forged a strategic alliance to jointly develop products and channel strategies.

The vendors will also share reference architectures for integrating their application delivery and network security capabilities into solutions.

"I think the important thing here is that Citrix offers a holistic view of application delivery networking and we have a holistic view of network security," Chris King, Palo Alto Networks director of product marketing, told CRN. "It doesn't matter what type of application infrastructure, on-premise, virtual, what device the end user might be using. It can be delivered by Citrix and secured by Palo Alto Networks."

Cisco Clears Up Leadership Plans With Two Exec Promotions

Cisco addressed questions about its succession plans for CEO John Chambers by promoting two longtime executives.

Cisco COO Gary Moore is now president and COO, accountable for operations and alignment of company resources to support long-term strategies. Rob Lloyd, Cisco's executive vice president of worldwide operations, is now president of development and sales.

Meanwhile, Cisco acquired vCider, a virtual networking vendor, as part of its push into software-defined networking.

T-Mobile, MetroPCS Plan Merger To Take On Verizon, AT&T

Deutsche Telekom inked a deal to merge its T-Mobile USA unit with rival MetroPCS, in a bid to grow T-Mobile's subscriber base and challenge established incumbents.

Pending FCC approval, Deutsche Telekom will hold a 74 percent stake in the combined entity, while MetroPCS will hold 26 percent and pay out $1.5 billion to its shareholders. Deutsche Telekom says the merged company will have a base of 42.5 million subscribers and would generate around $2.8 billion in revenue this year.