Five Companies That Came To Win This Week

For the week ending Jan. 17, CRN takes a look at the companies that brought their ‘A’ game to the channel including Lenovo, DoiT, Trellix, Cisco Systems and Nile.

The Week Ending Jan. 17

Topping this week’s Came to Win list is IT systems powerhouse Lenovo for its blockbuster deal to acquire high-performance storage system developer Infinidat.

Also making the list is DoiT, a leading AWS and Google partner, for its acquisition of cloud visualization and software analysis startup LiveDiagrams. Cybersecurity vendor Trellix wins kudos for unveiling new partner specializations and incentives as part of a major channel program overhaul.

Cisco Systems strengthened its competitive hand in AI security with its debut of AI Defense for partners and end customers. And NaaS startup Nile rolled out its AI-powered Nile Nav to help partners and end customers deploy and manage the company’s Nile Access Service.

Lenovo To Acquire Infinidat In Huge AI Storage Play

Lenovo tops this week’s Came to Win list with its blockbuster deal to buy Infinidat, a privately held developer of high-performance storage technology that has been growing its market share among enterprise customers.

Infinidat is focused on developing storage technology for high-performance workloads, particularly for AI. Last year the company developed a retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) workflow deployment architecture aimed at helping owners of its InfiniBox and InfiniBox SSA enterprise storage systems use them to optimize data for AI models.

Financial terms of the deal, which is still subject to regulatory approvals, were not disclosed.

Greg Huff, chief technology officer in Lenovo’s Infrastructure Solutions Group, said in a statement that the acquisition of Infinidat helps Lenovo accelerate innovation and deliver greater value for customers.

“Infinidat’s expertise in high-performance, high-end data storage solutions broadens the scope of our products, and together, we will drive new opportunities for growth,” Huff said.

Top AWS And Google Partner DoiT Buys Software Startup LiveDiagrams To Boost FinOps, Cloud Optimization

Staying on the subject of key acquisitions, DoiT, a leading AWS and Google partner, is boosting its FinOps and cloud optimization capabilities with its acquisition of cloud visualization and software analysis startup LiveDiagrams.

The solution provider said LiveDiagrams will provide customers of its DoiT Cloud Intelligence solution with advanced functionality to map, monitor and optimize their cloud architectures.

“This technology ensures FinOps professionals and CFOs can control cloud spending without complex labeling, while LiveDiagrams’ always-updated visual representations help teams quickly spot anomalies and uncover cost optimization opportunities,” said DoiT CEO Vadim Solovey.

Following the integration of LiveDiagrams’ technology into the DoiT platform, site reliability engineering and DevOps teams will gain real-time insight into cloud performance, helping them to streamline operations and reduce incident response times.

Trellix Revamps Partner Program, Promotes Channel Exec In ‘Transformative’ Moves

Cybersecurity vendor Trellix wins kudos for unveiling new partner specializations and incentives as part of a major channel program overhaul while also announcing the promotion of channel executive Kurt Mills to senior vice president and global channel chief.

The new Xtend Partner Program is aimed at doubling down on partner enablement through an array of new investments, amid a massive “opportunity for us to increase some of our channel routes to market,” Mills said. “We're working hard to add and expand our relationships.”

Trellix is moving from a flat partner program model to a three-tier system with platinum, gold and silver levels that bring corresponding incentives and benefits.

Another major update for Xtend is the debut of Trellix’s first partner specializations, which will be offered in five categories — data security, email collaboration, endpoint, NDR (network detection and response) and XDR (extended detection and response).

Trellix has also consolidated some of its training and enablement systems with the debut of a new portal and new learning management system.

Trellix CEO Bryan Palma said that the company’s aim for the new channel program is “deep enablement” with partners. “The investment overall in training and enablement has gone up significantly — multiple millions of dollars going into that,” Palma told CRN.

Cisco Amplifies AI Security With AI Defense

Cisco Systems knows that one of the biggest barriers holding up AI application development and deployment today is security. That’s why the tech giant, with the help of some technology from a recent acquisition, this week unveiled AI Defense for partners and end customers.

AI Defense, introduced during Cisco’s AI Summit in San Jose, Calif., safeguards enterprises against the misuse of AI tools, data leakage and increasing cyberthreats, all of which existing point security offerings are not equipped to handle during the development, deployment and ongoing use of AI apps, Jeetu Patel, Cisco executive vice president and chief product officer, told CRN.

“There’s going to be two types of companies in the world. There’s going to be companies that know how to make great use of AI, and then there are companies that will be irrelevant. The companies that are making great use of AI currently, they’re being held back by the safety and security of AI as one of the key impediments to accelerated adoption,” Patel said.

Similar to SaaS security solutions that protect the entire cloud environment, AI Defense will give enterprises a common layer of safety and security that protects every user and every application, something that is lacking in today’s AI landscape, Patel said.

The offering was designed using technology Cisco acquired in August from Robust Intelligence, a privately held AI security solutions company. AI Defense will be tightly integrated into Cisco’s Secure Access security service edge (SSE) Offering, Hypershield, and with Cisco Multicloud Defense.

Nile Launches AI App For Faster, Precise NaaS Deployments

Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) specialist Nile got noticed this week for furthering its mission to put AI at the front of its offerings with the rollout of a new application for iOS and Android called Nile Nav.

AI-powered Nile Nav will let qualified partners and end customers design, deploy and manage Nile’s Campus Network-as-a-Service offering, Nile Access Service, more quickly and with more precision, reducing the deployment time from weeks or months for traditional network architectures to days with improved accuracy, the startup told CRN.

The app can be used by partners and end customers to not only speed deployment of NaaS, but by also automating the entirety of the network life cycle. The app addresses that stem from design and deployment that impact about 60 percent of network issues, said Andrew Froelich, director of solutions marketing for Nile.

“The Nav app significantly streamlines and automates a large number of life-cycle tasks. A lot of manual processes go into the design and deployment process, and ultimately what ends up happening is, for whatever reason, the network [enterprises] build does not deliver on the performance, the reliability or the scalability that they envision. That’s the real driver behind why we built Nile Nav,” Froelich told CRN.