5 Companies That Came To Win This Week

The Week Ending Nov. 11

Topping this week's roundup of companies that came to win is Cisco Systems, which is giving its channel partners more incentives and firepower to win competitive deals for Cisco's Unified Computing System servers.

Also making the list is Oracle, which overcame opposition to its plans to acquire NetSuite and completed the buyout this week; solution provider NWN for its acquisition of contact center service provider Collabramind; SAP for doubling down on its HANA product by launching the second generation of the in-memory platform; and distributor Westcon-Comstor for its new alliance with Gigamon that brings that vendor's network monitoring and management platform to solution providers in North America.

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.

Cisco Gives Partners More Firepower To Win UCS Deals

Cisco is taking a more aggressive stance against rivals – including Hewlett Packard Enterprise – with its Unified Computing System servers. And Cisco partners stand to benefit.

This week Cisco launched the HPE Competitive Promo, an initiative aimed at boosting Cisco UCS sales by enabling channel partners to win business in highly competitive deals.

The program provides partners with competitive UCS pricing, deal protection and high gross margins when competing head-to-head against HPE products. The company also enhanced its Value Incentive Program rebates to make UCS deals more profitable for solution providers.

Oracle Wins NetSuite Share-Price Standoff, Completes $9.3B Acquisition

Battling shareholders who were holding out for a better offer, Oracle was able to convince a majority of unaffiliated NetSuite stockholders to tender their shares for its $109-per-share offer and officially complete its $9.3 billion acquisition of the cloud application company this week.

Oracle's bid faced opposition from T. Rowe Price, one of NetSuite's largest shareholders, which argued that NetSuite was really worth about $133 per share, or about $2 billion more, and refused to tender its shares. But Oracle executives said $109 per share was the company's best and final offer – leading to a standoff.

While T. Rowe price ultimately did not tender its shares, a total of 21,775,553 unaffiliated shares (those not owned by Oracle CTO Larry Ellison or his family) or 53.21 percent of all unaffiliated shares were tendered, giving Oracle a total of 76.39 percent. That allowed Oracle to close the deal Monday.

Closing the deal is also a win for NetSuite partners, who faced great uncertainty about the company's future if the acquisition failed to go through.

NWN Steps Up 'Phone Company Of The Future' Strategy With Acquisition Of Contact Center Service Provider Collabramind

Solution provider NWN, one of the top cloud-based VoIP and unified communications providers in the U.S., took a big step this week toward its goal of becoming the "phone company of the future" by acquiring Collabramind, a small but highly respected Cisco contact center services specialist.

With the deal, NWN, which has invested millions of dollars in building out a scalable VoIP and UC platform during the past five years, gains the engineering talent to provide a more robust cloud-based contact center service for its enterprise customers.

SAP Launches The Next Generation Of Its HANA In-Memory Database

SAP doubled-down on its HANA in-memory system this week, debuting HANA 2, the next generation of the database platform that has become the core of the vendor's entire product strategy.

The new HANA edition offers a slew of new capabilities in data management, analytical intelligence and application development. SAP, which held its annual Tech Ed conference in Barcelona this week, also debuted new business services for SAP HANA Cloud Platform, the company's HANA-based Platform-as-a-Service offering.

The HANA 2 launch comes one week after the company unveiled a major upgrade of SAP S/4HANA, the company's flagship ERP application suite that – what else? – runs on HANA.

Westcon-Comstor Deepens Security Portfolio With Gigamon Alliance

Distributor Westcon-Comstor deepened its portfolio of security offerings this week when it struck a deal with Gigamon to add that company's network monitoring and management platform to its line card in North America.

Gigamon's software works with security products from a number of leading vendors including Cisco, Palo Alto Networks and Check Point Software Technologies, helping solution providers more effectively spot and respond to network security threats.

Westcon-Comstor and Gigamon already have distribution deals in other parts of the world. Bringing the relationship to North America is a win for both companies – and for the solution providers they work with.