5 Companies That Came To Win This Week

The Week Ending Sept. 2

Topping this week's roundup of companies that came to win is Dell, which received the final approvals it needed to wrap up its $65 billion acquisition of EMC

Also making the list is Intel, which demonstrated its technology chops this week with the launch of its Kaby Lake processors; Salesforce, for working with its development partners to expand the range of analytical applications that work with its Wave Analytics platform; unified communications vendor Genesys Telecommunications for its acquisition of rival Interactive Intelligence; and a savvy hire by Trace3 as it expands its security practice.

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.

Dell Gets China's Approval For EMC Acquisition, Sets Date To Close Deal

Dell and EMC cleared the final hurdle to their blockbuster acquisition deal this week when China granted its anti-trust approval of the plan. Dell immediately said it would complete its acquisition of the data storage technology giant Sept. 7 and officially become Dell Technologies.

The news means that the two industry giants are finally closing the $65 billion deal – the biggest in IT industry history – that was announced in October 2015.

Of course, Dell Technologies faces some serious company integration challenges, and the closing of the acquisition is far from the end of the story. But this week's news means that Dell and EMC – and their channel partners – can move to the next stage.

Intel Debuts Seventh-Generation Kaby Lake Processors

Intel reminded everyone this week that it remains an innovative pillar of the IT industry when it unveiled its seventh-generation Kaby Lake processors that will power the next generation of modern PCs.

With their improved performance and new graphics capabilities, the processors are expected to deliver the functionality customers are increasingly demanding in the desktop and notebook PC markets. The 14-nm processors provide a 12 percent productivity increase over the sixth-generation Core processor and 10 times the performance and power efficiency of the first generation.

The chips are expected to be a boon for system builder partners with their faster I/O through support for third-generation PCIe and their ability to handle 4K UHD video. They also include the Intel Secure Key tool.

Salesforce Expands Its Analytics Application Offerings – With Help From Its Partners

CRM powerhouse Salesforce.com this week expanded the lineup of analytical applications that work with its Wave Analytics platform, offering more than 20 new industry-specific apps for crunching and visualizing business data.

Two of the new applications, one for the financial services industry and the other for analyzing business-to-business marketing data, were developed by Salesforce itself. The vendor also released new dashboard and dataset design tools for personalizing Wave applications.

But the rest of the new applications came from Salesforce's technology partners, a total of 19 applications that provide analytical capabilities across a cross-section of vertical industries, including retail, telecommunications and public healthcare.

Salesforce wins kudos not just for expanding its software lineup, but for effectively leveraging its ecosystem to do so.

Genesys To Acquire Rival Interactive Intelligence For $1.4B

The unified communications industry is rapidly consolidating and Genesys Telecommunications took a major step this week to make sure it's one of the remaining players.

Genesys, a provider of call center software, struck a deal to buy rival Interactive Intelligence for $1.4 billion. Genesys said the combination would allow it to field a broad product portfolio of unified communications and customer interaction center applications for both cloud and on-premise deployments.

Interactive Intelligence's product line includes the PureCloud contact center-as-a-service, an offering that has helped the company recruit 50 new channel partners this year.

Trace3 Hires SIGMAnet Vet As It Doubles Down On Security

Trace3 landed a longtime SIGMAnet executive for the newly created position of vice president of security as the solution provider ramps up its game in cloud security, behavioral analytics and threat prevention.

Trace3 this week said it had hired Tony Olzak (pictured), previously SIGMAnet's vice president of advanced technology solutions, to create the security operations center of the future by leveraging cognitive computing and machine learning to identify dangerous network patterns and respond to them in real time.

Trace3 - No. 54 on the CRN Solution Provider 500 - clearly sees security as a key component of its future and the company is aggressively hiring the talent it needs to make that happen. The company's coup in hiring Olzak is a big win and another indication of its determination to lead in the IT security arena.