5 Companies That Came To Win This Week

The Week Ending Aug. 5

Topping this week's roundup of companies that came to win is Symantec, which took some major steps toward regaining its competitive mojo by wrapping up its $4.65 billion acquisition of Blue Coat and installing that company's CEO as its own.

Also making the list were a trio of companies (Pivotal, CloudGenix and Cloud4Wi) for launching their first channel programs, Juniper Networks for a savvy acquisition that will boost the technological competitiveness of its products, chipmaker ARM for its development efforts in Internet of Things security, and solution provider BCM One's acquisition that catapults it to the forefront of Microsoft cloud 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 Five Companies That Had A Rough Week roundup.

Symantec Completes Blue Coat Acquisition, Clark Assumes CEO Post

Symantec has had a rough ride in the last couple of years with seemingly never-ending restructurings, rounds of layoffs and changes in the CEO office. It's plan to divest its Veritas data management business, finally completed in January, took more than a year.

Early this week Symantec took a major step toward regaining its momentum when it completed its $4.65 billion acquisition of Blue Coat and that company's CEO, Greg Clark (pictured), officially became CEO of the newly combined companies.

On Thursday Clark, speaking on the company's fiscal 2017 first quarter earnings call, said the new Symantec offers a product portfolio that addresses more than 50 percent of enterprise security budgets – and the company plans to aggressively go after a bigger share of those budgets.

Trio Of Companies Launch Channel Programs

This week kudos go to Pivotal, Cloud4Wi and CloudGenix – three vendors that launched inaugural channel programs this week.

Pivotal, the EMC-VMware spin-off behind Cloud Foundry, introduced its first formal channel program this week as the open-source Platform-as-a-Service technology vendor looks to expand its customer base. Through the new Pivotal Ready Partner Program, the company will help partners – including a number of systems integrators it already works with – to jointly develop their businesses with the company.

CloudGenix, meanwhile, launched its first-ever global partner program and has been aggressively recruiting dozens of solution providers that work with rival Cisco to work with the company's software-defined WAN technology. And startup Cloud4Wi, a developer of advanced guest Wi-Fi technology, launched its new Volare Partner Program with an eye toward attracting partners who can work with large enterprise customers.

Juniper Acquires Aurrion, Gains Technology To Enhance Its Product Lines

Juniper Networks made a savvy acquisition this week, buying Aurrion, a developer of silicon photonics technology that Juniper plans to incorporate into its networking products.

Aurrion's technology can carry information over long distances at significantly lower costs. By building that technology into its networking system products, Juniper is expected to boost the performance and cost-effectiveness of those products, allowing the vendor to compete more effectively on price.

ARM Doubles Down On IoT Security

Chip designer ARM is nearly doubling its Israel-based Internet of Things engineering team, betting that the technologies being developed at the Kfar Netter facility will have a significant impact on the company's Internet of Things competitive stance.

ARM is known for having out-maneuvered chip giant Intel in the market for mobile processors. But now chip makers are turning their attention to the coming battles over the nascent Internet of Things market and ARM is betting that the system-on-a-chip intellectual property being developed in the Israeli lab, particularly as it relates to IoT security, will give it a competitive edge.

BCM One Strengthens Its Position In Microsoft Cloud Arena With Acquisition

Solution provider BCM One just became a significant player in the Microsoft cloud market this week when it announced a deal to acquire CloudStrategies Group, a Microsoft gold-lever partner that was one of the first Microsoft cloud product resellers.

New York-based BCM One, a silver-level Microsoft partner, just enrolled as an official Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider. But the company's expertise and certifications in the Microsoft cloud space were limited compared to those of Cedar Knolls, N.J.-based CloudStrategies.

With the acquisition BCM One gains the CloudStrategies' staff and its expertise in deploying and managing Microsoft Office 365, Skype for Business and Azure. Frank Ahearn, BCM One founder and co-CEO, told CRN that his goal is to seek gold-level status in every product category Microsoft will allow.