Five Companies That Came To Win This Week

For the week ending May 16 CRN takes a look at the companies that brought their ‘A’ game to the channel including Proofpoint, Databricks, AMD, Ampere and FlexPoint.

The Week Ending May 16

Topping this week’s Five Companies that Came to Win list is cybersecurity provider Proofpoint for a strategic acquisition that will expand its offerings for MSP partners and SMB customers.

Also making this week’s list are Databricks for its own savvy acquisition in the Postgres database space that will fuel the development of AI agents.

AMD is here for its plans for a major channel push with its new EPYC 4005 server processors, while chip designer Ampere Computing is counting on its new systems builder program to make its products more accessible in the channel and provide partners with more flexibility around AI computing infrastructure.

And B2B payment platform provider FlexPoint raised $12 million in Series A funding this week, financing the company will use to usher in its next phase of growth with aggressive hiring, product development and expansion – including building out its partner program.

Proofpoint To Acquire Microsoft 365 Specialist Hornetsecurity For $1 Billion

Proofpoint tops this week’s Came to Win list with its announced plan to acquire Hornetsecurity Group, a company specializing in security for Microsoft 365, in a deal that will significantly expand Proofpoint’s capabilities for MSP partners and SMB customers.

The price tag for the acquisition is more than $1 billion, according to a report from CNBC, and sources close to the deal confirmed that the deal is well over $1 billion.

Based in London, Hornetsecurity works with more than 12,000 MSPs and other channel partners and has surpassed $160 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) with growth up more than 20 percent year-over-year, Proofpoint said.

The planned addition of Hornetsecurity is focused on helping Proofpoint to “better serve the unique needs of MSPs and SMBs,” Proofpoint CEO Sumit Dhawan said in a statement.

Hornetsecurity’s main offering is 365 Total Protection, which provides MSPs with a multi-tenant platform for delivery of “advanced” email security, backup and security awareness, as well as access and permission control and domain fraud protection, Proofpoint said in the release.

Proofpoint plans to position Hornetsecurity as the “central hub for all MSP and SMB customers” served by the vendor, according to the announcement.

Databricks To Boost AI Agent Development With $1B Neon Acquisition

One billion dollars seems to be the magic number this week. Data analytics and AI platform giant Databricks makes this week’s list for its $1-billion deal to acquire Neon, a startup Postgres database provider, with a goal of providing developers with a database platform for building AI agent-driven applications.

Neon, founded in 2021, provides a managed Postgres database-as-a-service that’s targeted toward developers. It competes against other Postgres database offerings such as MongoDB and Aurora from Amazon Web Services.

By acquiring San Francisco-based Neon, Databricks looks to provide developers with serverless Postgres technology that can “keep up with agentic speed, pay-as-you-go economics and the openness of the Postgres community,” Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi said in a statement.

“The era of AI-native, agent-driven applications is reshaping what a database must do,” Ghodsi said. “Neon proves it: Four out of every five databases on their platform are spun up by code, not humans.”

Databricks says it will provide more information about its plans for Neon at its Data + AI Summit in June.

AMD: ‘Big’ Channel Push For New EPYC 4005 CPUs Includes Windows Server Blitz Against Rival Intel

AMD is going on the offensive in the server arena, announcing a “big push” into the channel with its new EPYC 4005 processors – including positioning the new chips as a way for SMB customers to “fully utilize” Windows Server licenses and get more bang for their buck than what rival Intel can provide.

Representing the lowest tier in AMD’s server CPU lineup, the EPYC 4005 series features up to two times more cores, up to five times more cache, 40 percent more I/O lanes, 16 percent memory and 50 percent higher maximum memory at significantly lower cost per core compared to Intel’s Xeon E-2400 and Xeon 6300P processors, according to AMD.

Launched on Tuesday, they processors come with a full 512-bit data path with support for AVX-512 in contrast to the AVX2 support of the comparable Intel options, which is “really important for running these AI-type workloads efficiently,” said AMD product marketing manager Dennis McQueen in an announcement pre-briefing with journalists.

The chips will be supported by major OEMs like Lenovo and Supermicro as well as others such as ASRock Rack, Gigabyte, International Computer Concepts, MSI and MiTAC. They will also be supported by cloud service providers such as Vultr, Scaleway and several others.

Targeted use cases and markets for the chips include general-purpose computing, code development, content creation, web hosting, computer vision, video analytics, e-commerce, retail and AI-enhanced workloads.

Ampere Wants To Help The Channel Rein In AI Server Costs With New Systems Builder Program

Ampere Computing is looking to grow its Arm CPU business by enticing more channel partners to work with the chip designer through its new Systems Builders program, which seeks to create more flexibility and lower costs for AI and cloud computing infrastructure.

Unveiled this week, the Ampere Systems Builders program is bringing together several IT infrastructure players, including U.S.-based Supermicro, to speed up the development and delivery of server platforms for AI and cloud-native computing, with a focus on using standards such as the Open Compute Project’s data center modular hardware system (DC-MHS) to drive interoperability, customization and faster time to market.

In an interview with CRN, Ampere Chief Product Officer Jeff Wittich (pictured above) said the company’s Systems Builders program has two goals. The first goal is to make its products, including the AI-optimized AmpereOne M processors it released last year, more accessible in the channel.

While the company has previously worked with some systems integrators and other types of channel partners, it has largely focused in recent years on selling to hyperscalers and large OEMs.

While channel partners currently don’t represent a large percentage of Ampere’s sales volume now, Wittich said, he considers them “strategically” important and said the company hopes to grow its channel business “very fast.”

The other goal of the program is to provide channel partners and customers with more flexibility and choice for AI computing infrastructure. Wittich said it has become more difficult for original device manufacturers, systems integrators and distributors to innovate in the AI space due to major infrastructure providers like Nvidia focusing on vertical hardware solution stacks, where system designs are largely predetermined before reaching partners.

FlexPoint Secures $12M In Funding, Will Build Out Partner Program

B2B payment platform provider FlexPoint this week said it had raised $12 million in Series A funding to usher in its next phase of growth with aggressive hiring, product development and expansion.

“This funding allows us to accelerate what we’ve already proven in the market—that MSPs want better, integrated payments tools and we’re building exactly that,” FlexPoint co-founder and CEO Victor Lopez (pictured above) told CRN.

The New York-based company, which has seen 4X year-over-year revenue growth and now supports more than 40,000 businesses, plans to double or even triple its current 25-person team. Key hires will be made across engineering, product, customer support and sales and will all be U.S.-based, according to Lopez.

A major focus for the new funding is building out FlexPoint’s partner program, which allows MSPs to resell FlexPoint’s offerings to their own clients, generating new revenue streams in the process. While the program is currently in a limited rollout, broader availability is planned over the next six months.

The funding was led by Foundry Group with participation from Haymaker Ventures, Garuda Ventures, Techstars, Far Out Ventures and Cascade Seed Fund. This brings the company’s total funding to $19.5 million since its March 2023 launch.