5 Companies That Came To Win This Week

For the week ending Aug. 13 CRN takes a look at the companies that brought their ‘A’ game to the channel.

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The Week Ending Aug. 13

Topping this week’s Came to Win list are NortonLifeLock and Avast for a planned merger that will create a consumer cybersecurity superpower.

Also making the list this week are machine learning company Dataiku for an impressive funding round, chipmaker Marvell for an acquisition that continues its push into data center technologies for hyperscalers, Alkira and Telarus for a master agent alliance around Networking-as-a-Service, and Arcserve for launching a new data protection appliance that incorporates technology from allies Nutanix and Sophos.

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NortonLifeLock To Acquire Avast In Cybersecurity Deal Potentially Worth $8 Billion

Cybersecurity vendors NortonLifeLock and Avast are merging in an acquisition deal that will create a global powerhouse in consumer security.

The deal, disclosed this week, brings together NortonLifeLock, the spin-off from security giant Symantec, and Prague, Czech Republic-based Avast, which has its U.S. headquarters in Redwood City, Calif.

Together NortonLifeLock and Avast will have greater scale in threat visibility, a geographically distributed cloud data platform, and advanced AI-based automation and classification capabilities, the companies said. There are more than 500 million users of the two companies’ complementary product portfolios.

The deal is valued around $8 billion – the final price depends on which mix of cash and NortonLifeLock stock Avast shareholders choose to accept. That would make the deal the cybersecurity industry’s third-largest acquisition after Thoma Bravo’s $12.3 billion proposed buy of Proofpoint and Broadcom’s $10.7 billion acquisition of Symantec’s enterprise business.

AI And Machine Learning Company Dataiku Raises $400 Million

Dataiku, a rising star in the data science, AI and machine learning space, raised an impressive $400 million in a Series E funding round this week that puts the company’s valuation at $4.6 billion.

The company plans to apply the funding to grow its employee roster, both to accelerate product development and expand its go-to-market activities.

The Dataiku platform is used by data scientists and data engineers to design, deploy and manage data-intensive AI and analytical applications.

Marvell’s $11-Billion Data Center Bet Continues With Innovium Buy

Fast-growing chipmaker Marvell Technology struck a deal this week to buy data center networking chip startup Innovium for $1.1 billion in a move to boost its hyperscale cloud data center market presence.

The Innovium acquisition comes just a few months after Marvell’s $10 billion acquisition of semiconductor maker Inphi, whose chips connect data center switches to fiber optic cables.

With the two acquisitions, Marvell is making a big bet on winning a share of the capex spending by hyperscale operators like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and Google. Data center capex spending by hyperscale operators reached $38 billion in just the first quarter of 2021.

Alkira, Telarus Team To Bring Cloud Networking To Agent Channel

Multi-cloud networking startup Alkira inked its first master agent deal this week, paving the way for the company to tap into the vibrant agent partner community.

Under the deal master agent Telarus now counts Alkira as one of its suppliers, providing its agent partners with access to a cloud Networking-as-a-Service specialist. That’s a boost for Telarus partners as the networking needs of their customers change and demand increases for hybrid solutions.

Telarus launched its cloud practice last year and has continued to build out its portfolio of cloud telecom and network services. That provides agent partners with access to the cloud vendors and technologies they need to meet customers’ changing requirements.

Arcserve N-Series Integrates Data Protection, Nutanix HCI And Sophos Security

Data protection software developer Arcserve wins kudos for taking a best-of-breed approach to developing its latest product. The company debuted a new line of integrated data backup, recovery and ransomware protection appliances this week that incorporate hyper-converged infrastructure technology from Nutanix and endpoint protection technology from Sophos.

The new N-series line of appliances, to be sold by Arcserve through its channels, combines Arcserve’s UDP data protection technology with the Nutanix Mine platform for private cloud storage and Sophos Intercept X Advanced for Server malware protection software.

The goal of the N-series appliances is to provide secure data protection, backup and recovery to enterprise customers with hyper-converged infrastructure environments.