5 Companies That Came To Win This Week

For the week ending Feb. 18 CRN takes a look at the companies that brought their ‘A’ game to the channel.

The Week Ending Feb. 18

Topping this week’s Came to Win list is digital services provider Akamai Technologies for its savvy acquisition deal to buy Linode in a cloud development services play.

Also making this week’s list are AMD for officially wrapping up its blockbuster acquisition of FPGA manufacturer Xilinx, Intel for setting aggressive product development and financial performance goals, Informatica for its own ambitious financial goals for subscription annual recurring revenue in 2022, and MSP Softchoice for obtaining Google Cloud’s highest partner designation.

Akamai To Buy Cloud Computing Provider Linode For $900 Million

Content delivery, cybersecurity and cloud service company Akamai Technologies struck a $900 million deal this week to acquire Linode, a provider of cloud development and related services.

With the acquisition, Akamai plans to create a unique cloud platform for building, running and securing applications from the cloud to the edge. Akamai said the addition of Linode’s technology to its service portfolio will make cloud computing simpler, more affordable and more accessible.

Linode offers compute, storage, cloud orchestration, and developer tools. Akamai plans to combine Linode’s technology with the company’s existing edge application and net storage capabilities to form a new compute division.

Akamai expects its combined offering with Linode to appeal to developers by offering the core cloud compute functionality, ease of use and tools they need, and to enterprises by providing the security, uptime, and reliability they require.

AMD Completes $49 Billion Xilinx Acquisition, Largest Chip Deal In History

AMD wrapped up its $49 billion acquisition of Xilinx this week in a move that expands AMD technology realm of CPUs and GPUs to include a large portfolio of field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs).

The blockbuster acquisition expands AMD’s opportunities in data centers, embedded computing and telecommunications. Xilinx also has a footprint in other markets, like defense, broadcast and consumer electronics,

The $49 billion price tag for the all-stock deal was far more than the initial $35 billion figure given in October 2020 when the acquisition agreement was announced. That’s due to the double-digit growth of AMD’s stock price since then.

“The acquisition of Xilinx brings together a highly complementary set of products, customers and markets combined with differentiated IP and world-class talent to create the industry’s high-performance and adaptive computing leader,” AMD CEO Lisa Su said in a statement.

With the acquisition AMD also boasts an engineering staff of more than 15,000.

Intel Details Product Road Maps, Promises Financial Performance Gains

While rival AMD was making news with its Xilinx acquisition, Intel was holding its Intel Investor Day event this week where CEO Pat Gelsinger promised to make Intel the “unquestioned leader” in the semiconductor industry once again.

Intel outlined a new roadmap for Xeon CPUs through 2024 that will bifurcate server processor development into two tracks to optimize CPU performance for mainstream servers and cloud infrastructure.

Intel also plans to deliver new CPU-GPU hybrids for PCs and supercomputers – the latter including a new architecture called Falcon Shores – and unveiled what Intel said is the first GPU with a hardware-based AV1 encoder for media processing. The company also disclosed that it expects to ship 4 million discrete GPUs this year.

Gelsinger promised that Intel will double its revenue and quadruple total shareholder value over the next several years. Intel said software revenue reached $100 million in 2021 – a number which the company expects to grow “substantially” – and is forecasting that its Accelerated Compute Systems and Graphics Group will generate $10 billion in revenue by 2026 and

Informatica Eyes $1 Billion Subscription ARR In 2022

Speaking of setting bold financial goals, Informatica is aiming to reach $1 billion in subscription annualized recurring revenue (ARR) in 2022, a milestone for cloud software developers.

The $1 billion subscription ARR forecast was part of Informatica’s Wednesday report of its 2021 fourth-quarter and full-year financial results – the company’s first since the enterprise data management platform vendor went public Oct. 27.

Informatica is one of the industry’s leading developers of data integration, data governance, data quality and master data management software. The company’s Intelligent Data Management Cloud, which combines many of those capabilities in a single cloud platform, has become the company’s flagship offering.

“This is going to be a milestone year for us,” Informatica CEO Amit Walia said in an interview with CRN. “This is the year subscription annual recurring revenue will be $1 billion. There are a handful of billion-dollar ARR subscription companies across the globe. That’s where we will be by the end of this year.”

Informatica reported that for all of 2021 revenue grew 9 percent year over year to $1.4 billion. During the company’s fourth quarter (ended Dec. 31, 2021) subscription ARR was up 32 percent year over year to $802 million. And cloud ARR in the quarter grew 40 percent year over year to $317 million.

Softchoice Wins Google Cloud MSP Designation In Big Multi-Cloud Play

MSP and Google Cloud channel partner Softchoice was a big winner this week by receiving a Google Cloud Managed Services Provider designation as part of the Google Cloud Partner Advantage program, making it one of just a handful of companies worldwide to be so recognized.

The designation, Google’s highest for advanced solution providers, is a significant achievement in that partners must not only have the technical capabilities and capacity to provide Google Cloud services, they must provide evidence that they can deliver the services to many customers with successful business outcomes.

Softchoice executives said the designation shows that Google has objectively recognized the MSP for its ability to build solutions on Google Cloud. It also illustrates that Softchoice has a strong multi-cloud strategy given that the company is also an Expert MSP for Microsoft Azure – that cloud provider’s highest designation – and has a strategic collaboration agreement with Amazon Web Services.