5 Companies That Came To Win This Week

The Week Ending Aug. 14

Topping this week's roundup of companies that came to win is Hewlett-Packard's move to turn a big chunk of customer accounts over to the channel, even saying it will no longer compensate its own sales reps for SMB and midmarket sales.

Also making the list is Verizon's move to make its Rapid Response Retainer cybersecurity portfolio available to the channel, Google's expanded big-data service offerings, a key sales and channel executive hire by F5 Networks, and Symantec's long-anticipated sale of Veritas.

Not everyone in the IT industry was making smart moves this week, of course. For a rundown of companies that were unfortunate, unsuccessful or just didn't make good decisions, check out this week's Five Companies That Had A Rough Week roundup.

HP Enterprise Shifts Thousands Of Customer Accounts To Partners

Hewlett Packard Enterprise said this week that it is moving thousands of customer accounts to its channel partners and will not pay its direct sales force for any SMB and midmarket deals effective Nov. 1.

Under a channel sales policy shift, Hewlett Packard Enterprise is reclassifying its SMB and Commercial Two midmarket segment as a 100 percent channel business, according to Scott Dunsire, group vice president and general manager of American sales, at The Channel Company's XChange 2015 conference this week.

Dunsire said the move, part of Hewlett Packard Enterprise's efforts to increase the percentage of sales it moves through the channel from about 70 percent to 80 percent, would result in "a significant amount of revenue" for the channel.

Verizon Rolls Out Rapid Response Retainer Program To The Channel

Hewlett Packard Enterprise wasn't the only vendor bearing good news for partners at XChange 2015. Verizon announced that its Rapid Response Retainer cybersecurity portfolio is now available for its VAR and master agent partners to sell to their customers.

Making Rapid Response Retainer available through the channel will allow VARs and agent partners to help their customers manage security risks and react to threats, said Adam Famularo (pictured), the communications company's global channel vice president.

The "Triple R" program combines Verizon's security offerings with its communications infrastructure, and includes cyber incident capability assessments and designated security experts who visit customer sites.

Google Steps Up Its Big Data Game

Google this week made generally available a pair of new software tools that significantly expands the big data capabilities of the Google Cloud Platform, which is increasingly focused on analytics and data processing.

The new Cloud Dataflow service ties together Google's Compute Engine Infrastructure-as-a-Service with the company's Cloud Storage and Big Query services, enabling users to execute massive-scale data processing jobs. The new Cloud Pub/Sub service provides asynchronous messaging between independent applications, making it easier to build applications that scale up to handle large volumes of data.

Big data is hot and companies like Google and Amazon Web Services have been expanding the range of big data cloud services they provide.

F5 Networks Snags Top Aruba/HP Sales Exec

F5 Networks made a savvy hire this week when it recruited Aruba Networks' top worldwide sales and services executive to lead its sales and channel strategy.

John DiLullo, currently executive vice president of sales and services at Aruba, will take over as head of F5's global sales organization starting Aug. 31. He will be tasked with overseeing the Seattle-based company's sales and channel strategy as it focuses on new areas such as application security, service provider solutions and cloud application deployment.

DiLullo has decades of sales and channel experience with companies like Cisco, Dell and Avaya. His recruitment is a big win for F5 and a loss for Aruba and HP, which acquired Aruba in May.

Symantec Sells Off Veritas For $8 Billion

Symantec this week announced a deal to sell off its Veritas information management business to a group of private investors for $8 billion.

Some observers would say the sale is less a smart move and more correcting a 10-year-old mistake. While combining two leading companies in storage and security seemed like a good idea in 2005, the merger never fulfilled its promise. Throw in the fact that Symantec originally paid $13.5 billion for Veritas and the sale looks even less like a win.

Still, selling Veritas is a good move for Symantec. It will allow the vendor to focus on its core security business, and the deal provides cash the company can use for possible acquisitions to expand its security technology portfolio.