Five Companies That Came To Win This Week

For the week ending March 7, CRN takes a look at the companies that brought their ‘A’ game to the channel including SpecterOps, Salesforce, Armis, Vertiv and Aryaka.

The Week Ending March 7

Topping this week’s Five Companies that Came to Win is cybersecurity startup SpecterOps for an impressive funding round that included Cisco as an investor.

Also making this week’s list is cloud application giant Salesforce for launching an AI Agents marketplace, helping partners build and sell agentic artificial intelligence components. Armis is here for its acquisition of Otorio, a startup that provides security for operational technology.

Vertiv wins applause for stepping up its training and enablement to help partners sell its AI offerings. And Aryaka is staffing up with global and regional channel managers as the company looks to expand sales of its SASE offerings into new territories.

Cisco-Backed Cybersecurity Startup SpecterOps Raises $75M In Series B Funding

Cybersecurity startup SpecterOps on Wednesday said it has raised $75 million in a Series B financing round that will go towards scaling its flagship platform for detecting and removing identity-based attack paths.

SpecterOps BloodHound Enterprise is the industry’s first platform for comprehensively removing identity-based attack paths, according to the Alexandria, Va.-based upstart.

SpecterOps, founded in 2017, also has developed open-source tools including BloodHound Community Edition, which maps Active Directory attack paths.

The latest funding round, led by Insight Partners, also included Cisco Investments. Other investors in the funding round include Ansa Capital, M12, Ballistic Ventures and Decibel.

Soo Jin Park, Cisco Investments and corporate development leader, called SpecterOps a “pioneer” in adversary-focused cybersecurity solutions.

Salesforce Launches AI Agents Marketplace

Salesforce made a big move around AI agents this week, launching an online marketplace for its Agentforce AI platform that should allow partners to build and monetize agentic artificial intelligence components.

The marketplace, AgentExchange, is billed as accelerating AI agent deployment with a library of templates and add-ons meant to save users time and resources, according to the cloud enterprise applications vendor.

The marketplace launched with more than 200 initial partners and hundreds of actions. Salesforce announced the marketplace ahead of its TDX developer conference this week in San Francisco.

Brian Landsman, Salesforce’s executive vice president and general manager of global business development and partnerships, told CRN in an interview that AgentExchange builds on the foundation of Salesforce’s AppExchange marketplace – now about 20 years old with more than 7,000 partners, 9,000 listings and 13 million app installs to date.

AgentExchange helps bring enterprise-level trust to the agent era, said Alice Steinglass, Salesforce’s executive vice president and general manager for developer experience and AppExchange, in an interview with CRN.

Armis Acquires OT Security Startup Otorio In Lead-Up To Planned IPO

Armis this week announced its acquisition of Otorio, a startup that provides security for operational technology (OT) and cyber-physical systems.

Otorio, founded in 2018, has focused on developing proactive security against attacks targeting “heavy industry and critical infrastructure,” including customers in the oil and gas, utilities and manufacturing industries.

Armis said it plana to integrate Ortorio’s technology into its cyber exposure management platform, Armis Centrix.

The Otorio acquisition is the third to date for cybersecurity unicorn Armis – all of which have been completed roughly within the past year. The deal follows Armis’ acquisition of risk priori­tization startup Silk Security in April 2024 and the acquisition of Cyber Threat Cognitive Intelligence, which tracks real-world exploits of vulnerabilities, in February 2024.

Armis also suggested that the move is the latest that will help lay the groundwork for its planned pursuit of an initial public offering.

Vertiv Unleashes New Channel Program To Accelerate AI Builds

Vertiv, a leading developer of data center infrastructure equipment, wins kudos for working with its top partners to sell the AI capabilities of its product portfolio.

Many of Vertiv’s customers are demanding expertise in high-density, accelerated computing in the data center, the type used by cloud service providers, enterprise, and hyperscalers to drive AI workloads.

This week Alex Johnson, Vertiv senior director of North American partner sales, told CRN that Vertiv just finished certifying 11 of its larger solution partners to work with the AI-enabled products and another class of partners is about to start. About 60 solution architects, sales engineers and technical executives from the partners participated in the first round.

Vertiv’s AI product lineup includes AI devices from technology partners such as Nvidia’s SuperPOD turnkey data center modernization system.

The company is using its recently launched Accelerated Compute Partner Program as the vehicle for the AI training and enablement. The program pairs training with real-world expertise to enable partners to sell the most advanced offerings in its product stack with a focus on delivering the highest possible uptime.

Aryaka Readies Worldwide SASE Expansion, Hires New Global Channel Chief

SASE specialist Aryaka makes this week’s list for announcing a significant investment in its go-to-market efforts in the Asia-Pacific region – including hiring a new global channel chief and new channel managers for Asia-Pacific – as the company looks to extend the reach of its unified SASE-as-a-service messaging to more partners in new regions.

Aryaka said it has hired long-time cybersecurity and channel leader Nick Alagna as the company’s vice president of global channels. Alagna came to Aryaka from akamai Technologies where he worked 12 years in several different roles, most recently area vice president of channel sales and strategic partners. He previously held positions at Oracle and Cisco Systems.

The company has also hired Nitin Ahuja as vice president and general manager of asia pacific, who joined the company from cybersecurity software and services provider Imperva, and William Ho as a strategic advisor in the Asia-Pacific region.

In his new role with Aryaka Alagna will build and scale the company's global channel ecosystem. Last month Aryaka introduced new pricing and packaging of its offerings with the intention of helping partners boost the as-a-service sales model.

As part of the company's global expansion plans, Aryaka has added new partnerships with NI+C in Japan, a joint venture founded by NTT and IBM, and ASV Platforms in Australia, an exclusive Aryaka partner offering SASE solutions to businesses in Australia and New Zealand to further Aryaka's sale reach in those countries, the companies said.