5 Companies That Came To Win This Week

For the week ending Aug. 19, CRN takes a look at the companies that brought their ‘A’ game to the channel.

The Week Ending Aug. 19

Topping this week’s Came to Win list is VMware for a significant upgrade to its partner program to spur SaaS and subscription license sales through the channel.

Also making this week’s list are Veracode for its own partner program revamp effort, database developer MariaDB for a strategic acquisition in the geospatial data space, hybrid data company Cloudera for a major data lakehouse platform launch, and CyberArk for its progress in expanding into SaaS applications and subscription licenses.

VMware Updates Partner Connect Program Targeting SaaS, Subscription Sales Growth

Virtualization giant VMware unveiled a number of changes and improvements to its Partner Connect channel program this week with a focus on helping partners maximize software-as-a-service sales growth and convert VMware customers to subscription licenses.

Tapping into the experience of its most profitable partners, VMware is offering partners assistance and resources – including customer success methodologies and frameworks – to help more partners sell more advanced services, focus on the entire lifecycle of the customer, and promote customer “stickiness.”

The improved partner program also changes up partner incentives, doing away with the current tier credits plan in favor of a new point system that rewards both partner performance and capabilities. The plan streamlines how VMware ranks partners and can help a partner orient its business model around expanding its VMware business into areas with higher profitability.

Veracode Revamps Partner Program To Boost Channel Sales

VMware isn’t the only vendor that gave its partner program a boost this week. Application security testing vendor Veracode unveiled a completely revamped channel program as the company continues to shift its business from direct sales to the channel.

The Veracode Velocity Partner Program is designed to help partners grow their security practice more quickly and profitably around Veracode’s cloud-native Continuous Software Security Platform.

The program offers new demand generation campaigns aligned to security initiatives and a new role-based partner training and certification program.

The program expands from two tiers to three with additional levels of available services for partners. And the company has redesigned its partner portal.

Veracode sales were heavily weighted toward direct sales when Chief Revenue Officer Pete Harteveld joined the company 18 months ago. But he told CRN that was holding back the company’s growth and Harteveld has been trying to shift more sales to the channel.

MariaDB Looks To Boost Geospatial Data Capabilities With Acquisition

Database and database-as-a-service provider MariaDB this week disclosed the strategic acquisition of a provider of advanced geospatial technology in a move that will make it easier for developers to incorporate geospatial data into their applications.

MariaDB’s acquisition of CubeWerx comes as the volume of geospatial data is exploding, including location-based and imagery data generated by satellites and drones, location-aware devices, sensors and IoT devices.

MariaDB will link the CubeWerx technology to its popular MariaDB database and make the capabilities available to users of MariaDB SkySQL, the company’s fully managed cloud database service.

While some database vendors have built geospatial capabilities directly into their database systems, MariaDB is taking what it calls a “developer-centric” and “cloud-native” approach to integrating the CubeWerx technology with MariaDB. The company will develop REST APIs, based on Open Geospatial Consortium standards, to provide application developers who use MariaDB and SkySQL with access to voluminous geospatial data that resides on low-cost cloud storage systems.

Cloudera Launches All-In-One Data Lakehouse Cloud Service

Hybrid data platform developer Cloudera demonstrated its technological prowess this week when it debuted Cloudera Data Platform One, the company’s new all-in-one data lakehouse software-as-a-service offering.

The new CDP One makes it easier for business and organizations to move analytical and data workloads to the cloud, according to the company. Cloudera is competing against industry heavyweights like Snowflake, Databricks and Amazon Web Services in the cloud data lakehouse and data management space.

CDP One provides self-service data analytics and exploratory data science capabilities for any type of data, according to the company. The platform has built-in enterprise security and machine learning and requires no cloud, security or monitoring staff for a reduced TCO.

CyberArk Sees ‘Huge Amount Of Momentum’ Around SaaS

CyberArk’s ongoing transition from its focus on privileged access management technology to becoming a broad-based identity security provider operating on a software-as-a-service and subscription model is picking up steam, channel chief Chris Moore told CRN this week.

CyberArk is now about halfway through its 36-month-long global channel transformation that includes a new emphasis on SaaS and subscription license sales, said Moore, who joined CyberArk two years ago as senior vice president of global channels.

Moore’s comments come a week after CyberArk announced impressive second-quarter sales and subscription revenue tied to its new products and SaaS strategies.

CyberArk’s three-year transition plan to get partners – particularly systems integrators, MSPs and other channel partners – to focus more on identity security as well as SaaS and subscription licenses, is playing a large role in that growth.