Five Companies That Came To Win This Week
For the week ending Feb. 9, CRN takes a look at the companies that brought their ‘A’ game to the channel including include Cohesity, Dell Technologies, NetBrain, D&H Distributing and Cisco Systems.
The Week Ending Feb. 9
Topping this week’s Came to Win list is Cohesity, which is becoming a heavyweight in the data management and security space with this week’s deal to buy Veritas’ data protection business.
Also making this week’s list are Dell Technologies for a number of significant enhancements to its partner program, NetBrain for making full-functionality licenses of its flagship platform available to the channel for customer demos, and D&H Distributing for launching a program that helps solution providers get started with AI.
And Cisco Systems makes this week’s list for launching Cisco Identity Intelligence that links identity, networking and security together to better protect businesses.
Cohesity To Acquire Veritas Unit, Forming $7B Data Security And Management Giant
Data security vendor Cohesity struck a deal this week to buy Veritas’ data protection business – a move that will create a new giant in the fast-growing market for data security and management technologies.
The combined organization, led by Cohesity CEO Sanjay Poonen, will be valued at about $7 billion and have annual recurring revenue of about $1.3 billion. The companies expect to complete the deal by the end of 2024.
The combined company aims to “lead the next era of AI-powered data security and management by bringing together the best of both product portfolios – Cohesity’s scale-out architecture ideally suited for modern workloads and strong Generative AI and security capabilities and Veritas’ broad workload support and significant global footprint,” Poonen said in a statement.
Dell Boosts Partner Program With New Apex, PC And Storage Incentives
As Dell Technologies celebrates its 40th anniversary in 2024 the company is doubling down on partners with new incentives this year under new Chief Partner Officer Denise Millard. The new partner incentives come as the company is anticipating a new PC refresh cycle this year.
Dell Apex, the company’s subscription infrastructure products, are now offered in two categories: Storage+ and Server+. Dell said that under the updated program incentive-eligible Apex products will now qualify for base rebates and behavioral incentives, increasing partners’ profit potential Additionally, the Dell Apex upfront incentive will continue to be available for partners who hold the Dell Apex Infrastructure competency.
Partners who have earned a metal tier inside Dell’s program and who hold a Client+ competency are now eligible for a five-times multiplier on the base rebate when selling Dell Client Peripherals and two-times the base rebate when selling Precisions workstations, Dell displays, docking stations, Dell Latitude rugged laptops and tablets. Dell said it is also increasing the rebate for partners who attach Dell Pro Support Plus when selling Client+ products.
Partners who invest in and hold the PowerFlex Design 2023 Certification will be eligible for a stackable 4 percent rebate kicker on New Business and Competitive Swap incentive opportunities.
NetBrain Adds Network Assessment, Automation Licenses To Partner Program
Staying on the topic of expanded partner programs, network automation specialist NetBrain Technologies makes this week’s Five Came to Win list by making full-functionality licenses, or "copies" of its flagship platform available to the channel for customer demos to demonstrate the power of automation and continuous network assessment.
The addition of the Partner Engineer Not For Resale (NFR) license to the company's partner program will help channel partners become recognized network automation experts in the eyes of their end customers, Alex Alvarez, NetBrain senior vice president of Worldwide Alliances and Partnerships, told CRN.
With the new licenses Alvarez said NetBrain is “taking partner enablement to a whole other level.”
NetBrain Next-Gen, a no-code network automation platform, gives network professionals the tools they need for troubleshooting, continuous network assessment and protected change across hybrid, multi-cloud networks. Many partners today do assessments as a regular part of their business.
NetBrain said any technical person inside a partner organization can use the new license to learn how to demonstrate no-code network automation to their clients.
Giving partners access to fully functional NFR versions of NetBrain for hands-on practice, training and demos will spur the sale of more value-added services, Alvarez said. It also can help partners transition their customers to the idea of "continuous" network assessment.
D&H’s ‘Go Big AI’ Program Makes AI ‘Tangible’ For MSPs
D&H Distributing’s newest “Go Big AI” program aims to help partners profit from the market transformation and opportunity artificial intelligence has to offer.
Through training, enablement and tools that focus on productivity-enhancing, AI-powered solutions, like Microsoft Copilot, the program helps to empower MSPs to harness AI in a more tangible way.
D&H launched the program because VARs are looking for repeatable solutions that they can deploy, said Marty Bauerlein, chief commercial and consumer officer. D&H estimates that 90 percent of organizations are still in early stages of maturity when it comes to utilizing AI.
“What partners are seeing in the market is that there's a lot of confusion about how they monetize AI,” Jason Bystrak, senior vice president of modern solutions business unit at D&H, told CRN. “Every vendor, every distributor…they're all talking about AI, but partners really struggle to understand how to monetize it. What products are out there? What services do I wrap around it? So we're really trying to demystify the whole opportunity around AI to make it tangible.”
The new program offers targeted trainings, a new SuccessPath “Getting Started with AI 101” course, community workshops, sales enablement tools and go-to-market strategies, lead generation and marketing support.
The program provides MSPs with an AI partner playbook, positioning statements, sales prospecting guides, customer targeting techniques, solution-building, deployment, cross-sales and provisioning strategies and services catalogs utilizing D&H’s methodology.
Cisco Security Cloud Gets Generative AI Booster; Identity Intelligence Launched
Cisco Systems is upping the profile of its security strategy once again with the introduction of Cisco Identity Intelligence, among other updates to its Security Cloud platform, the company revealed at Cisco Live EMEA in Amsterdam this week.
The networking giant continues to build up its security prowess with the goal of becoming as successful in the security space as it is in the networking arena. That momentum continued with Cisco Identity Intelligence, a new approach that links identity, networking and security together to better protect businesses, according to Jeetu Patel, Cisco executive vice president and general manager of security and collaboration.
Cisco Identity Intelligence works by running on top of customers’ existing identity stores. The feature lets IT administrators discover their whole identity population, clean up vulnerable accounts, eliminate unused and risky privileges, detect behavior anomalies and block high-risk access attempts. This can all be done without replacing any of their current cybersecurity tools, he said.
Cisco also unveiled a series of AI-powered updates to the Cisco Security Cloud platform including a new AI Assistant in Secure Access feature that automatically detects and protects intellectual property as it flows in and out of AI systems. Also new is Cisco Email Threat Defense for AI-based email threat detection.