5 Companies That Came To Win This Week

The Week Ending April 21

Topping this week's roundup of companies that came to win is Riverbed, which strengthened its competitive position in the consolidating networking IT industry by striking a deal to acquire SD-WAN and cloud networking vendor Xirrus.

Also making the list are distributor Ingram Micro, for its plan to help solution providers work with more cloud service providers; Docker, for its program to help solution providers work with customers' legacy applications; Windstream, for creating a business continuity package that channel partners can more easily sell; and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, for closing its $1 billion acquisition of all-flash company Nimble.

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.

Riverbed To Acquire Xirrus To Boost SD-WAN And Cloud Networking Solutions

The networking IT industry is consolidating, and Riverbed Technology is determined to be one of the survivors. This week the company struck a deal to acquire wireless specialist Xirrus in a move the company said would expand its software-defined WAN and cloud networking capabilities.

Riverbed plans to leverage the Xirrus technology to further extend its SteelConnect SD-WAN offering to the wireless edge.

Partners applauded the acquisition deal, saying it would give the channel more firepower in the fast-growing software-defined WAN market.

Ingram Micro Unlocks Access To More Cloud Providers For The Channel

Distributor Ingram Micro made a significant move this week that will make it easier for the channel to carry more cloud service providers by allowing partners to tap into the distributor's own vendor agreements, eliminating the need for one-to-one contracts between the cloud vendors and the solution providers.

The distributor said the new Ingram Micro Federation program is intended to enable a hybrid cloud service catalog. As part of that program, solution providers would enjoy direct relationships with their most strategic cloud service suppliers while leveraging Ingram Micro's commercial relationships for remaining vendors.

Ingram also rolled out the Microsoft Surface and Surface Pro devices and the NCR Solver point-of-sale system on its cloud marketplace to help partners easily bundle computing devices and cloud services into holistic solutions.

Docker Offers Program To Containerize Legacy Apps, Help Customers Move To Microservice Architectures

Docker's technical proficiency was on full display this week at DockerCon where the company unveiled Modernize Traditional Applications (MTA), a program that helps solution providers and businesses bring the benefits of containers to legacy enterprise applications without modifying the source code.

Docker is offering MTA, which incorporates Docker Enterprise Edition, as a fixed-price service that can containerize one legacy application in five days or less.

The benefit for Docker is that it gets businesses started down the path toward adopting microservices architectures. That, in turn, creates recurring revenue opportunities for partners who can continuously improve software applications and services for clients, an alternative to huge, disruptive system updates.

Windstream Packages Business Continuity, Connectivity Into One System For Partners

Business continuity is a core requirement today. But to offer it to their customers, solution providers often have to cobble together a mashup of connectivity options – usually from multiple vendors – to ensure network reliability and resiliency in the face of network outages or service problems.

So telecom service provider Windstream wins kudos this week for making its business continuity system, Diverse Connect, officially available through its channel partners.

Diverse Connect combines multiple connectivity offerings, managed routers, and a service level agreement into a single package that's especially useful for midsized businesses that depend on cloud applications, such as voice, video and file-sharing applications.

By making Diverse Connect available through its partners, Windstream is providing a way for solution providers to sell a complete, integrated business continuity package.

HPE Completes $1B Nimble Acquisition, Readies All-Flash Offensive

Hewlett Packard Enterprise wrapped up its $1 billion acquisition of all-flash storage system superstar Nimble this week, setting the stage for HPE partners to play a bigger role in the disruptive all-flash market.

Solution providers said all-flash storage was a crucial missing component from HPE's enterprise product portfolio and they look forward to bringing the Nimble systems to their customers.

Along with Nimble's products, HPE is gaining the company's stable of 450 partners in North America – about 85 percent of whom are not currently HPE partners.