5 Companies That Came To Win This Week

The Week Ending Nov. 14

This week's roundup of companies that came to win includes a new channel focus at CA Technologies, new channel program investments at Amazon Web Services, and a new channel program – and a pending IPO – from startup New Relic. Also making the list is a new cloud service offering from HP and an alliance between BlackBerry and Samsung.

CA Promises New Channel Commitment, Partner Program Overhaul

In a refreshing burst of candidness, CA Technologies executives at this week's CA World conference acknowledged that the vendor's channel efforts in the past have, to put it kindly, fallen short. Speaking before some 1,000 people from about 400 solution providers Sunday, channel chief Alyssa Fitzpatrick said she was "awed and honored that you're still here" and that the partner's "loyalty is cherished."

Fitzpatrick, worldwide sales and services head Adam Elster and other executives outlined plans to rebuild the company's channel program and really begin working with partners. Several partners expressed skepticism, saying they've heard this before from CA. And certainly changing CA's culture from one focused on direct sales to a more channel-friendly operation won't be easy. But Fitzpatrick and company sincerely sound like they intend to try.

Amazon Web Services To Boost Partner Ecosystem Investments In 2015

CA wasn't the only vendor promising big things for channel partners this week. In a keynote at the 2014 AWS re:Invent conference Terri Wise, AWS global partners and alliances chief, said AWS will double its investments in its partner ecosystem next year. The spending will go to ramped-up partner support and training, new go-to-market programs that include test drives of AWS services for customer prospects, and subsidized professional services focused on customer engagement.

AWS partners, including solution providers and ISVs, also heard about the company's plans to add new certifications and specialized competencies to its partner programs in 2015. The Amazon Partner Network has grown 75 percent in the last year: This week's moves will add even more fuel to that growth.

New Relic Files For IPO, Launches Partner Program

And the partner promises this week weren't limited to big, established vendors. Software-as-a-Service analytics company New Relic has been busy building a partner program to help systems integrator partners market the company's application performance management tools for mobile and cloud apps to enterprise clients. The program includes revenue-sharing opportunities, co-marketing resources, support services and sales leads.

New Relic gets a double high-five because the company, which has recorded impressive revenue growth, filed its Initial Public Offering applications with the Securities and Exchange Commission this week. The company plans to raise $100 million through the IPO.

Hewlett-Packard Launches Flexible Capacity Cloud IaaS

Hewett-Packard this week debuted its Flexible Capacity program that delivers public cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service with the benefits of on-premise IT. A component of HP's Datacenter Care line, Flexible Capacity provides customers with a pool of IT resources they can tap into – and pay for – on an as-needed basis.

By providing a way for solution providers to avoid the huge financial hit usually associated with multi-year, recurring revenue cloud deals, the Flexible Capacity plan paves the way for channel partners and their customers to more easily move into the cloud. Partners said that's a competitive win in HP's battle with rivals Cisco, Dell and IBM for cloud market share.

BlackBerry And Samsung Team For Mobile Security

It would be hard to find two companies whose fortunes have gone in such different directions in recent years. But this week BlackBerry and Samsung entered into a partnership in which the two companies will sell each other's mobile-security technology in an effort to win over more enterprise customers.

This is a win for Samsung because despite being the world's top smartphone, it doesn't have the deep roots in mobile security BlackBerry has. But BlackBerry may be the big winner here. This week the company showed off its new BlackBerry Enterprise Service 12 release, a key part of its plan to return to market prominence, and the Samsung deal highlights one of the vendor's key technology strengths.