5 Companies That Came To Win This Week May 13

For the week ending May 13 CRN takes a look at the companies that brought their ‘A’ game to the channel.

The Week Ending May 13

Topping this week’s Came to Win list is Intel for launching a wave of new products—and providing a peek at the company’s technology future—at its Vision conference.

Also making this week’s list are Google Cloud for CEO Thomas Kurian’s vows of channel support, Avant for its acquisition of fellow telecom master agent PlanetOne to create a new industry heavyweight, decision intelligence software developer Pyramid Analytics for an impressive funding round, and CyberArk for creating its own fund to invest in startups with breakthrough cybersecurity technologies.

Intel Unveils AI Gaudi2 Chip, 4th Generation Xeon At Vision Event

Intel gave partners and customers a glimpse of the semiconductor future this week at its inaugural Vision event—the company’s first in-person event in more than two years—and unveiled a wave of new products.

Topping the list of moves was the debut of the company’s second-generation Habana AI deep learning processors, including the Habana Gaudi2 and Habana Greco chips based on 7-nanometer technology.

Intel also used the Vision event as the launch pad for its 4th generation Xeon Scalable processors, new 12th Gen Core HX processors for hybrid work laptops, a new GPU solution, an IPU road map extending through 2026, and the Project Apollo AI program in conjunction with systems integrator giant Accenture.

Intel also unveiled Project Amber, a cloud security subscription service, with the first component a multi-cloud, federated security service with provable integrity of its verification processes.

Google Cloud To ‘Attach Partners To 100 Percent’ Of Customer Engagements

Kudos to Google Cloud CEO who this week said his channel goal is to attach 100 percent of Google Cloud customer engagements to a partner and added that his company has “zero channel conflict” in the sales field.

Kurian made the comments in an interview this week during The Channel Company’s Best of Breed Virtual 2022 conference. The Channel Company is the parent of CRN.

Google Cloud sales through the company’s tens of thousands of channel partners are growing at a triple-digit rate, according to Kurian. The CEO said his goal is to “attach partners to 100 percent” of every customer engagement regardless of whether the partner plays a role in discovering the customer, driving the deal or closing the customer win.

Kurian also said Google Cloud is a product and solution company, not a services company, and that the company has effectively “eliminated channel conflict.”

Avant Acquires PlanetOne In Telecom Service Broker Blockbuster

Avant acquired PlanetOne in a deal disclosed this week that continues the consolidation in the telecom service broker/master agent space.

The acquisition combines the two companies’ strengths including Avant and its Pathfinder sales tool and PlanetOne with its focus on partner enablement, strong back-office capabilities and AI-power Sentient partner/supplier/master agent communication and sales platform.

The companies will operate under the Avant brand. Avant co-founder and CEO Ian Kieninger said the combination of Chicago-based Avant and Scottsdale, Ariz.-based PlanetOne “creates an unstoppable force” in the industry that will create new opportunities for agent partners.

Pyramid Analytics Raises $120 Million In New Funding, Plans Channel Expansion

Decision intelligence software developer Pyramid Analytics raised an impressive $120 million in a Series E round of funding this week, which the company will apply to accelerating development of its business analytics software and to expanding its channel partnerships. The new round brings the company’s total venture capital funding to $211 million.

Pyramid said the funding will be used to continue developing the company’s decision intelligence platform to “maintain a technology advantage” over such competitors as Tableau Software, Qlik and Microsoft’s Power BI.

The Amsterdam-based company also plans to leverage the additional funding to expand its global presence (about 40 percent of its sales are in North America) and capture a larger share of the big data and business analytics addressable market, which market research firm IDC calculated at $215.7 billion in 2021.

The funding news Monday comes on the heels of Pyramid Analytics’ recent move to join Amazon Web Services’ ISV Accelerate program through which Pyramid and AWS will co-sell and support the Pyramid Decision Intelligence Platform on the AWS cloud.

CyberArk Launches $30 Million Fund To Invest In Startups

CyberArk has created its own in-house venture capital fund with a plan to invest in “disruptive” startups developing cutting-edge security technologies that might one day be shared with channel partners.

CyberArk, which develops privileged access management technology, said the $30 million global investment fund has been built using money entirely from the company’s own operating budget. The fund is being operated as an in-house fund rather than a free-standing subsidiary.

The company said it has already invested in three Israel-based cybersecurity startups: Dig Security, developer of threat protection solutions for data in the public cloud; Enso Security, developer of application security posture management; and Zero Networks, a provider of identity-based micro-segmentation technology.