5 Companies That Came To Win This Week

The Week Ending Jan. 29

Topping this week's roundup of companies that came to win is Symantec, which is finally wrapping up the long-planned spin-off of its Veritas data management business.

Also making the list this week are Pivot3's deal to acquire leading-edge storage system developer NexGen Storage, Five9's ambitious new partner initiative, Samsung's new partner training and marketing resources, and Eaton's plans to leverage its new power management software to grow service and software revenue for its partners.

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 5 Companies That Had A Rough Week roundup.

Symantec Set To Complete Its Long-Awaited Split From Veritas

It's been a long time coming, but security technology developer Symantec is set Friday to wrap up the sale of its Veritas data management business to The Carlyle Group for $7.4 billion.While the two have been operating independently since October, completing the deal frees Symantec to focus all of its energies around its security platform strategy. The split was first proposed back in October 2014.

Symantec partners have anxiously awaited the split, anticipating that Symantec will invest in rolling out new products and possibly make some acquisitions, as CEO Michael Brown outlined in an interview with CRN.

CRN Associate Editor Sarah Kuranda contributed to this report

Pivot3 To Acquire NexGen Storage

Hyper-converged infrastructure system developer Pivot3 made a bold move to broaden its product portfolio this week when it struck a deal to acquire NexGen Storage, a developer of tiered storage technology.

NexGen's dynamic tiering and performance capabilities provide a quality-of-service capability generally found only in very high-end storage systems. That's a key selling point for Nexgen and will be for Pivot3. The combination of their technologies should give a big boost to Pivot3's sales.

Five9 Launches Ambitious Partner Program

Contact center software specialist Five9 is launching its inaugural partner program, loaded with incentives, training resources and market development funds to recruit solution providers looking to make the jump to the cloud.

The San Ramon, Calif.-based vendor has hired industry veteran Wendell Black, who has held top sales posts with Oracle, Bright Pattern and Vocalcom, as its vice president of channel sales.

Black, in an interview with CRN, said his efforts focus on recruiting and training partners with a "legacy contact center" technology background and train them to win sales with Five9's cloud technology. He's recruiting resellers, systems integrators and master agents: A few dozen have already been signed and Black has identified 1,500 contact-center-focused solution providers in the U.S.

Partners Cheer New Samsung Channel Training Tools To Expand Sales Pipeline

Samsung wins kudos for this week's blitz of new marketing and education resources for partners, part of an effort to boost its Samsung Team of Empowered Partners (STEP) channel program.

The company, which held its partner summit in San Antonio this week, unveiled a new training and certification program for partners and new marketing concierge services.

The training program, called the Samsung Business Academy, goes beyond basic partner training to certify partners for advancing their business knowledge around various industries and technologies. Partners, for example, can learn about business-to-business solutions including security, outdoor displays, hospitality and health-care products.

Eaton Changes The Power Management Game With Sales Offensive

Eaton is releasing a new edition of its Intelligent Power Manager (IPM) software next week and the power management technology vendor is ramping up to drive software and service sales through the channel and boost recurring revenue for partners.

Along with the debut of the IPM 1.52 release, Eaton's data center business unit is launching a "monetizing software" initiative aimed at driving high-margin software and services sales growth for partners focused on midmarket data centers.

Under Eaton's plan partners will be able to generate revenue beyond the initial sale of a UPS system through software licenses, installation and consulting services, and power monitoring and business risk management.