5 Companies That Came To Win This Week

For the week ending April 10, CRN takes a look at the companies that brought their 'A' game to the channel.

The Week Ending April 10

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to dominate the news, some of this week’s 5 Companies That Came To Win roundup remains focused on what IT companies are doing to help mitigate the pandemic’s impact. Topping this week’s list is Jack Dorsey, co-founder of both Twitter and Square, for stepping up and pledging $1 billion of his personal wealth to relief efforts.

Also making the list are Hewlett Packard Enterprise for its $2 billion payment relief program for customers and Intel for its $50 million pledge to COVID-19 pandemic relief efforts.

There was also news this week beyond the pandemic: Cohesity makes this week’s list for a very impressive funding round and solution provider SADA Systems wins applause for being named Google Cloud’s top reseller for the second year in a row.

Square, Twitter Co-Founder Jack Dorsey Pledges $1B To Coronavirus Relief

Jack Dorsey, the CEO and co-founder of both Twitter and Square, this week pledged $1 billion of his Square stock holdings to COVID-19 relief efforts.

The donation is about 28 percent of Dorsey’s total wealth.

The $1 billion donation, which Dorsey announced in a tweet, will be managed through the Start Small Foundation, which Dorsey also founded. He noted that his pledge goes beyond the COVID-19 pandemic in that once the crisis has passed the foundation will focus on girls’ health and education issues and universal basic income.

HPE Financial Services Mounts $2 Billion Coronavirus ‘Payment Relief’' Program

The financial services operation of Hewlett Packard Enterprise has launched a huge coronavirus relief effort with $2 billion in financing largely devoted to a customer deferred payment program.

The initiative is aimed at helping customers and the solution providers that serve them to get through the financial fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.

The new Payment Relief Program allows customers to defer more than 90 percent of the total contract value of products and services until 2021. Customers will also be allowed to pay just 1 percent of total contract value each month for the first eight months.

HPE also plans to offer “forebearance” programs that allow customers who have been hit hard by the crisis to temporarily stop making payments.

Cohesity Closes $250 Million Funding Round, Boosts Valuation To $2.5 Billion

Storage and data management technology developer Cohesity closed a $250 million Series E round of funding this week.

The additional financing brings Cohesity’s total funding to more than $650 million and its total valuation to $2.5 billion—double its valuation of June 2018 when the company closed its $250 million Series D funding round.

Also scoring big on the venture financing front this week were DevOps tech developer CircleCI, which raised $100 million in its own Series E funding round, and cloud networking specialist Cato Networks, which landed $77 million in its biggest funding round to date.

Intel Commits $50 Million To Combat Coronavirus Pandemic

Intel wins kudos this week for pledging $50 million for coronavirus relief efforts, focused on providing technology to improve the response to the pandemic and provide online education for underserved communities.

The chipmaker will provide roughly $40 million to fund two efforts, the Intel COVID-19 Response and Readiness and Online Learning initiatives, and $10 million for partner- and employee-led relief projects.

The Response and Readiness support includes funding for partner and customer deployment of artificial intelligence, high-performance computing and edge-to-cloud service delivery technologies for coronavirus diagnosis, treatment and vaccine development.

Applause also goes to Nvidia and AMD, which are teaming up with some of the world’s biggest cloud service providers to lend supercomputing resources to accelerate coronavirus research.

SADA Systems Named Google’s Top Reseller For Second Year Running

For the second year in a row, Los Angeles-based SADA Systems has been named Google Cloud’s top reseller, a distinction resulting from bold decisions and major investments in its Google practice after being named the top reseller in 2018.

SADA Systems’ back-to-back wins are especially impressive given the rapidly changing technology and market landscape in the cloud arena. One year ago the solution provider made the decision to divest from a large and successful Microsoft practice and focus exclusively on Google and its G Suite and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) offerings.

In the past year SADA has taken steps to scale its GCP business, which has achieved 400 percent annual growth. That included hiring former Google Cloud executive Miles Ward as SADA’s CTO.