5 Companies That Came To Win This Week
For the week ending Jan. 12, CRN takes a look at the companies that brought their ‘A’ game to the channel including Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Accenture, Trace3, IBM and Intel.
The Week Ending Jan. 12
Topping this week’s Came to Win list is Hewlett Packard Enterprise for its blockbuster deal to acquire Juniper Networks in a move that could have it competing more directly against Cisco Systems in the networking arena.
Also making the list are services giant Accenture for a pair of its own strategic acquisitions that will expand its cloud and product design service offerings; solution provider Trace3 for an acquisition in the data analytics space, IBM for expanding its Partner Plus program with a new services track, and Intel for unleashing a wave of new desktop and laptop CPUs at CES.
HPE Strikes $14B Blockbuster Deal To Buy Juniper Networks
Hewlett Packard Enterprise this week struck a deal to buy Juniper Networks for $14 billion in a bold move that could set up a battle for network supremacy between HPE and market leader Cisco Systems.
HPE is paying $40 per share in the all-cash acquisition deal that’s expected to be completed either in late calendar 2024 or early 2025.
The deal provides HPE with additional AI networking muscle and effectively doubles its networking business. Once acquired, Juniper Networks will be combined with HPE’s existing Aruba networking operations and Juniper CEO Rami Rahim will lead the combined networking entity.
The acquisition will not only increase the scope of HPE’s networking business, but will create more opportunities within Juniper’s installed base of customers, which include enterprises, service providers and tier-one cloud customers. The deal will also help HPE move deeper into adjacent networking segments including data center networking, firewalls and routers.
HPE will also gain Juniper’s AI-powered Mist platform, a competing product to Cisco Meraki.
Accenture Scores Two Acquisitions To Boost Cloud, Product Design Expertise
IT services and consulting giant Accenture announced two acquisitions this week, unveiling deals to buy Navisite, an Andover, Mass.-headquartered solutions and services provider, and Work & Co., a New York-based provider of product design and brand strategy services.
Accenture said the Navisite acquisition would bring about 1,500 employees – more than 400 of them cloud computing engineers – to Accenture, along with Navisite’s “deep experience across multiple cloud providers,” Accenture said. Navisite specializes in cloud services including system planning, migration and optimization across public, private and hybrid cloud deployments.
Other focus areas for Navisite include application services, data analytics, infrastructure services and security services, as well as managed services including managed security services. Accenture said the acquisition would advance its efforts to work with clients and their digital transformation initiatives.
Work & Co. and its nearly 400 employees bring to Accenture a wide range of skills around brand strategy, product strategy, product design, business intelligence, generative AI, data science and user experience. Work & Co.’s clients include IKEA, Gatorade, Apple, Disney, Airbnb and Google.
Accenture will add Work & Co. to its Accenture Song (previously known as Accenture Interactive) digital experience business.
Trace3 Acquires Tail Wind Informatics To Spearhead Data Strategy Consulting
Returning to the topic of strategic acquisitions, solutions provider Trace3 makes this week’s Came to Win list for acquiring Tail Wind Informatics, a Minnetonka, Minn.-based consultancy with expertise in business intelligence, cloud analytics, data and information management.
Tail Wind will be added to Trace3’s data and analytics business that provides consulting services in data strategy, data analytics, data architecture, data platforming, machine learning and automation.
“To optimize for AI, our clients must first harness their data,” Trace3 CEO Rich Fennessy told CRN. “Then, empowered by data-driven decision making, AI and automation can create new opportunities for business growth and competitive advantage.”
About 50 Tail Wind team members are coming over in the acquisition, more than doubling Trace3’s technical talent around data.
IBM Launches Partner Plus ‘Service’ Track
IBM has launched a “service” track in its Partner Plus program with the goal of providing more resources for co-creation, demand generation, skilling and more for MSPs, consultancies, systems integrators and other business models.
Kate Woolley, IBM’s channel chief, told CRN that the company created the track—the third available partner track alongside “sell” and “build”—because of how important service-led partners are to IBM customers and to better align with the unique needs of service partners as compared with ISVs and other partner types.
“We want to create more opportunities for IBM partners to grow their business with IBM,” Woolley said. “And this is a recognition of the influence that our service partners have in terms of how they drive the adoption of IBM’s technology in the market and how we make them even more successful.”
The new service track aims to help relevant solution providers access demand generation, co-creation resources for service offerings, and resources for IBM technology advocacy in the market, Woolley said.
The goal is deeper collaboration with service partners, assisting with success, and better alignment between IBM sellers and service partners. IBM also wants to provide more specialized courses and badges for partners to prove their technical skills.
Intel Expands 14th-Gen Core Lineup With New Laptop, Desktop CPUs
Intel used this week’s CES 2024 event to show off its latest offerings in the PC processor space, debuting more than two dozen desktop and laptop CPUs as part of an expanded 14th-Gen Core lineup and a new chip family for ultrathin laptops.
The new chip families consist of the Intel Core 14th Gen HX-series for high-performance laptops aimed at gamers, content creators and professionals; an expanded Intel Core 14th Gen lineup of desktop CPUs with more options for mainstream, business and power users; and the Intel Core U Processor Series 1 for mainstream thin-and-light laptops.
The Intel Core 14th Gen HX-series processors feature up to a 5.8GHz turbo frequency and as many as 24 cores and 32 threads. The company said the five processors in the new HX-series will be made available this year in more than 60 laptop designs from HP Inc., Lenovo, Asus, Dell, Acer and other OEMs.
After debuting the 14th-generation Core desktop CPU lineup last fall, the company expanded the processor family this week at CES with 18 new models, available through partners starting this week.
Designed for gaming, content creation, productivity and edge computing, the new processors range from the Core i9-14900 and its counterpart without integrated graphics to the low-end chip branded as Intel Processor 300 and its edge-optimized counterpart.
The new Intel Core U Processor Series 1 is a family of three chips designed to bring “the efficient, balanced performance mainstream mobile PC users desire in thin-and-light devices,” according to the company.
The processors represent the other half of Intel’s new client branding efforts, which started with last month’s launch of the Core Ultra “Meteor Lake” chips for AI-enabled PCs.
Intel has previously said that the Core Ultra name represents the company’s “most advanced client processors” while the Core name is used for “mainstream” offerings.