5 Companies That Came To Win This Week

Intel Taps 31-Year Veteran To Replace Departing Otellini As CEO

Intel tapped COO Brian Krzanich to succeed the departing Paul Otellini as CEO, continuing its longstanding tradition of promoting top leadership from within. Krzanich, 52, will officially take over at Intel's annual stockholders' meeting on May 16, becoming the sixth CEO in the company's storied history.

Krzanich, who began his Intel career in 1982, has held a variety of technical and management roles, including vice president and general manager of manufacturing and supply chain. He's well acquainted with the ins and outs of Intel's manufacturing business, and is credited with overhauling the chip maker's factory processes and supply chain in 2006.

Amazon Web Services Chief Says Public Cloud Is Where It's At

At the AWS Summit 2013 in San Francisco, Andy Jassy, senior vice president of Amazon Web Services, said his company has learned much since launching its first cloud services in 2006 and expects to wreak havoc on the enterprise software space in the coming years.

RedShift, the data warehousing service Amazon introduced in February, which costs one-tenth of what traditional data warehousing vendors are charging for their wares, is one example. Eventually, Jassy said, the whole notion of private clouds is going to seem unnecessary.

"Why are so many old-guard tech companies telling enterprises to build private clouds? Because the model Amazon Web Services is pursuing is very disruptive to them," Jassy said.

Dell Says It's Gaining On HP In Server Share, Cites Data

Dell Enterprise Solutions President Marius Haas told CRN it is gaining ground on rival HP in the server market, and he's got data to back up this claim. Dell's unit server shipment share grew 2.6 percent year-over-year in the first calendar quarter, while HP's share during the same period dropped 15.2 percent, according to preliminary worldwide first-quarter data from Gartner.

"From a data perspective based on what we are seeing and based on the information from the market that we are getting, we are highly confident that we are in a 'take share' position both from the data being shown, as well as from the customers that are asking us to partner with them more aggressively," Haas told CRN.

HP Rallies Partners To Capitalize On IBM Server Uncertainty

Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Group chief Dave Donatelli is urging partners to take advantage of the uncertainty surrounding IBM's potential sale of its x86 server business to Lenovo. "Everybody who works at HP will tell you that certainty is very important in the enterprise," Donatelli told partners in a webcast. "We have certainly learned that ourselves. Anytime you have lack of clarity and you have concern about what the future is, it is a great business opportunity. Our strategy is very clear."

HP believes its Moonshot server, software-defined networking product set and 3Par storage line are assets that competitors can't match. "We have a very clear product road map," Donatelli told partners. "And we think the potential impact here is that we can go get customers who are concerned about the future of their platforms and then sell them our next-generation products."

Avaya Touts Networking, Video In Partner Road Show

Avaya wrapped up its latest partner road show, which attracted more than 800 Avaya partners from around the U.S. The overarching theme was that partners should complement their voice portfolios with the data networking and video technologies gained in Avaya's 2009 acquisition of Nortel and 2012 acquisition of Radvision.

Karl Soderlund, vice president, Americas Channel Sales at Avaya, told CRN that selling both networking and video gives partners a single point of contact for their training and pre- and post-sales support needs. "We are trying to make it simple and profitable for them," he said.