5 Companies That Came To Win This Week

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

The Week Ending June 19

Topping this week’s Came to Win list is Intel,which launched a number of new processor and memory products for data center systems.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise makes the list for providing breakthrough edge security on popular HPE servers and HPE GreenLake through an alliance with public cloud disrupter Pensando Systems. Also making the list are Cisco Systems for its new Business Resiliency Portfolio, fast-growing cloud data platform provider Snowflake for launching its first formal partner program, and Dynabook Americas for the gains it is making in the U.S. market since launching a new partner program in the U.S. in February.

Intel Launches Third-Gen Xeon Scalable CPUs, New Optane Persistent Memory

Intel continued its blistering pace of new product introductions this week with a focus on the data center with new Xeon Scalable CPUs and Optane Persistent Memory modules.

The company launched its new Cooper Lake third-generation Xeon Scalable processors, initially releasing 14-nanometer chips that target four- and eight-socket servers, and debuted 10nm chips for one- and two-socket servers that will be available later this year. The latter is expected to create the most opportunities for channel partners within the x86 server market.

Intel also debuted the Optane Persistent Memory 200 series with an average of 25 percent more memory bandwidth compared with the earlier generation of the product, supporting capacities of up to 512 GB.

Intel also upgraded its 3-D NAND storage portfolio for servers with two new U.2 NVMe SSDs, the D7-P5500 and D7-P5600, supporting up to 7.6 TB of storage. And the company pitched the new Intel Stratix 10 NX as the chipmaker’s first FPGA that’s optimized for artificial intelligence applications.

HPE Provides Servers, GreenLake With Edge Security Through Its Alliance With Pensando Systems

Hewlett Packard Enterprise is teaming with public cloud disrupter Pensando Systems to provide breakthrough edge security capabilities on the most popular HPE servers and the HPE GreenLake pay-per-use platform by providing the Pensando Distributed Services Platform (DSP) as an option.

Under the HPE-Pensando deal unveiled this week DSP will be available as a partner factory requested option on the HPE ProLiant, Apollo and Edgeline servers and for GreenLake. HPE, an investor in Pensando, is the first major systems vendor to offer the Pensando DSP platform.

Pensando DSP provides partners with policy and services orchestration and provisioning, network automation, observability and analytics capabilities.

The ability to sell and support the Pensando DSP in the channel marks a major milestone for both vendors, which are combining to disrupt the traditional hyperscale public cloud providers with a new edge computing platform.

Cisco Launches Business Resiliency Portfolio, CEO Urges IT Infrastructure Buildout

It’s unclear just what a post-COVID-19 world will look like. So Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins, speaking at this week’s Cisco Live 2020 digital event, urged IT professionals and Cisco partners to take this time to build out more robust IT systems to prepare for whatever comes next.

Robbins said partners need to tackle IT “architectural debt” within some customer organizations, starting at the infrastructure level, such as moving WANs to cloud-managed networks and adding more automation capabilities.

To address the more immediate needs of businesses during these turbulent times, Cisco launched the Business Resiliency portfolio, which targets specific industries such as education and health care. The suite includes distance learning, remote contact center, flexible remote access and secure remote worker technologies. It offers a packaged IT infrastructure kit with wireless networking to access data, voice and video; integrated network security; and development guidance and support.

The Business Resiliency lineup even includes a temporary connected field hospital solution that Cisco developed working with partners with experience supporting temporary hospitals. And a new Social Density Monitoring and Insights feature, based on Cisco’s DNA Spaces, will help businesses support social distancing in the workplace.

Snowflake Launches First Partner Program, Creates Reseller And MSP Opportunities

Fast-growing cloud data platform provider Snowflake wins applause for launching its first official partner program. The move will expand the company’s partner ecosystem to include reseller and managed service provider opportunities for solution providers, better automate services provided by Snowflake to partners and offer a greater range of benefits and incentives.

The launch of the Snowflake Partner Network (SPN) comes as Snowflake is expanding its market vision, going beyond its original cloud data warehouse focus to define itself as a broad-based cloud data platform provider with services that touch on data engineering and data science tasks, data lakes management and data sharing.

The move comes one year after Snowflake hired channel veteran Colleen Kapase away from VMware to be the company’s new channel chief.

Snowflake already has a significant number of technology and ISV partnerships including with business analytics vendors, data integration and transformation tool vendors, and cloud platform companies. SPN will expand its partner outreach with a services track that’s targeted toward solution providers, MSPs and systems integrators who can now resell Snowflake’s services and build cloud data practices and solutions around them.

Dynabook Ramps Up U.S. Expansion With Focus On The Channel, Mobile Notebooks

Dynabooks Americas is accelerating its push with solution providers to expand the reach of its notebook PC line in the U.S., with the shift to work-from-home serving as a major tailwind to the efforts.

Dynabooks Americas, formerly Toshiba America Client Solutions, launched its Dynabook Preferred Partner Program in February shortly before the widespread move to remote work because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dynabooks Americas has seen strong growth thanks to its focus on business-ready laptops, according to the company. Laptops for business have been in huge demand since March because of work-from-home deployments.

The new partner program has led to an increase in the number of resellers working with Dynabook, in the number of laptops sold and in overall revenue.