Five Companies That Came To Win This Week

For the week ending Nov. 7, CRN takes a look at the companies that brought their ‘A’ game to the channel including HPE, Cisco Systems, Zscaler, Netgear, AWS and OpenAI.

The Week Ending Nov. 7

Topping this week’s Five Companies that Came to Win list is HPE for launching its new Partner Ready Vantage channel program with a slew of new incentives and rewards for the company’s channel partners.

Cisco Systems likewise makes this week’s list for providing more details for its upcoming Cisco 360 partner program that’s slated to go live in January 2026. And networking product manufacturer Netgear is also on the list for launching its own new channel program through which the company looks to expand into the small and mid-size enterprise space.

Amazon Web Services and OpenAI got everyone’s attention this week with a deal valued at $38 billion for the AI superstar to utilize AWS’ cloud compute capacity to power OpenAI services.

And Zscaler made a savvy strategic acquisition this week, buying AI security startup SPLX as the zero-trust security vendor expands its platform for protecting GenAI and agentic adoption.

HPE Doubles Down On Partners With Lucrative New Sales Incentives In Partner Ready Vantage Program

HPE made waves in the channel this week with the launch of its $1 billion-plus Partner Ready Vantage program, including a new Triple Platinum Plus sales incentive for partners who achieve triple platinum status in compute, hybrid cloud and networking.

The new program also offers a New Business Opportunity booster of 10 percent on focus products and 6 percent for standard products for winning new accounts, a 50 percent increase in the rebate incentive in North America for Gold and Platinum partners for hybrid cloud products, and a simplified GreenLake Flex sales incentive of up to 20 percent.

“There are substantial changes here, but partners broadly have embraced the program and the opportunity they are going to have for growth, specialization and the opportunities they have to make money,” Simon Ewington, HPE Senior Vice President of Worldwide Channel and Partner Ecosystem Leader, told CRN. “Because that is what they are in it for: making money.”

HPE is also offering a 10 percent sales incentive for competency in areas like HPE CloudOps Software Suite (Morpheus Enterprise Software, HPE OpsRamp Software, HPE Zerto Software), HPE Private Cloud AI, HPE Zerto backup and recovery; and a number of Aruba offerings including HPE Aruba Networking SD-WAN and HPE Aruba Networking Secure Service Edge.

The program also goes a long way toward making it easier for partners to do business with HPE by consolidating 11 different programs into a single unified HPE Partner Ready Vantage program. Among the programs being consolidated under the Partner Ready sales track are Partner Ready, Partner Ready for Networking, Partner Ready for Service Provider and Partner Ready for Services.

Cisco Offers More Details On Long-Anticipated Cisco 360 Partner Program With New Incentives, Bonuses And Specializations

Cisco Systems used its flagship Cisco Partner Summit 2025 partner event this week to reveal long-awaited details about Cisco 360, the tech giant’s overhauled partner program that’s set to go live on Jan. 25, 2026.

Tim Coogan, senior vice president of global partner sales, announced a smattering of new specializations, incentives, and bonuses to reward partners and help them move towards more “durable growth.”

“The work that’s being done in the Cisco 360 partner program is anchored in the trust that we’ve established with our partners who trust that we mean well, we have good intent, and that we will evolve and co-design and maybe occasionally, fail, but we’ll do that together with the basis of trust,” Coogan said.

The idea is to simplify the complex previous partner structure with a focus on profitability and predictability. New features, such as the Partner Value Index (PVI) and the Cisco Partner Incentive (CPI), will measure and reward the investments that partners are making Cisco’s broad portfolio, Coogan said.

Cisco Preferred Partners can earn two new specializations – Secure AI Infrastructure and Secure Networking — beginning in February 2026, the company said this week. The new specializations will recognize partners who deliver full solutions from design through ongoing customer engagement using Cisco’s integrated hardware, software, and services, Cisco said.

Cisco also used the Cisco Partner Summit 2025 as a launch pad for a number of new AI, networking and security systems, most notably the Cisco Unified Edge, an integrated appliance with compute, networking, storage and security capabilities that the company said extends data center power and scale to the edge of IT networks.

Zscaler Acquires SPLX To Boost AI Security, Governance

Zscaler this week acquired AI security startup SPLX as the zero-trust security vendor expands its platform for protecting GenAI and agentic adoption.

The acquisition of the startup will bring capabilities in AI asset discovery as well as automated red teaming and governance, Zscaler said in a news release.

Through the integration of SPLX technologies with Zscaler’s Zero Trust Exchange, the cybersecurity vendor will be able to “secure the entire AI lifecycle on one platform,” Zscaler Founder and CEO Jay Chaudhry said in a quote included in the release.

During an interview with CRN in October, Chaudhry called AI security the “third big area” for the company going forward, in addition to zero-trust security and security operations.

AWS And OpenAI Ink $38B Cloud Computing Deal

Amazon Web Services and artificial intelligence innovator OpenAI got everyone’s attention this week when they announced a deal through which OpenAI will

Purchase a whopping $38 billion worth of cloud capacity.

OpenAI will immediately start running a large number of workloads on AWS infrastructure with huge capacity expansions planned over the next seven years.

AWS CEO Matt Garman said the multi-year deal between AWS and OpenAI will “fuel the next wave of AI innovation.” The executive said the deal will provide OpenAI with the computing power it needs for its popular ChatGPT and to scale AI agents faster.

“With this new $38B agreement, OpenAI will immediately start using our world-class infrastructure—including Amazon EC2 UltraServers packed with hundreds of thousands of state-of-the-art Nvidia GPUs and the ability to scale to tens of millions of CPUs,” said Garman in a LinkedIn post.

Netgear Launches Enterprise-Focused Partner Program, With Channel Chief Calling It A ‘Bold, New Chapter’

Returning to the topic of new partner programs, Netgear wins applause this week for launching its new global partner program through which the networking gear manufacturer, better known in the consumer networking product space, looks to expand into the small and mid-size enterprise arena.

The new Netgear Drive Partner Success Program aims to support VARs and MSPs in the SME markets by emphasizing simplicity, reliability and cost-effectiveness, Thomas Schwab, Netgear’s channel chief since December 2024, told CRN.

The program includes a tiered partner structure: Ignite, Apex and Apex MSP. Each tier offers benefits based on partner investment, as well as completion of training and certification milestones. The tiered structure will help partners stand out in a competitive market and align more closely with customer needs, with higher tiers requiring certification and MSP audits, according to the company.

The Netgear Drive Partner Success Program has been built to reward partners for service excellence and long-term co-investment, Schwab said.