5 Companies That Came To Win This Week
For the week ending Sept. 24 CRN takes a look at the companies that brought their ‘A’ game to the channel.
The Week Ending Sept. 24
Topping this week’s Came to Win list is Cisco Systems’ AppDynamics business, which said that it is adopting an all-channel sales model.
Also making the list this week are HP Inc. for launching a “channel intelligence” resource to help partners increase sales, ServiceNow partner Thirdera for a strategic acquisition in UX/UI capabilities, Nutanix for launching a new release of its flagship AOS hyperconverged infrastructure software and other products at the Nutanix .NEXT digital conference, and data integration tech developer Fivetran for a strategic acquisition and an impressive funding round.
Cisco’s AppDynamics Goes 100 Percent Channel
AppDynamics, Cisco Systems’ application performance monitoring arm, wins applause this week for its decision to do 100 percent of its business through the channel. The move is in keeping with parent company Cisco’s channel-first sales motion.
AppDynamics has historically done about 70 percent of its business through channel partners, a number that ticked up to more than 80 percent in 2020.
This week Mark Maslach, AppDynamics vice president of global channels and alliances, told CRN of the decision to follow Cisco’s lead and become fully partner-centric, giving partners more confidence to invest in their AppDynamics practices.
To support the extended channel efforts, AppDynamics has updated its profitability model using “stackable margins” that reward partners for developing and selling complex solutions based on AppDynamics. And the AppDynamics Global Partner Program will add a new Elite tier to provide more engineering, sales and marketing resources to the most involved partners.
HP Launches Amplify Data Insights To Equip Partners With Analytics, Growth Opportunities
HP Inc. also made some smart channel moves this week when it launched HP Amplify Data Insights, a “channel intelligence” resource aimed at providing partners with powerful data analytics to help them increase sales.
The Amplify Data Insights initiative provides partners with access to an analytics dashboard in the HP Partner Portal with information that can improve targeting of customer opportunities.
Amplify Data Insights combines data from partners, HP’s own data sources, and third-party data and market research to provide partners with descriptive, predictive and prescriptive insight. It offers a way for partners to benchmark performance, anticipate customer purchasing and optimize campaigns.
The program, which has been pilot-tested with select solution providers, is now available to partners in the Power tier of the HP Amplify partner program. The initiative requires that participating partners opt in by sharing certain data.
Leading ServiceNow Partner Thirdera Expands Digital Design Expertise With Acquisition.
Thirdera, a fast-growing solution provider in the ServiceNow arena, made a savvy acquisition this week that will extend its services portfolio into the user experience/user interface design realm.
Thirdera acquired UX/UI designer Appoxio and is building a digital experience business unit around the Appoxio staff and technology.
Thirdera launched earlier this year following the merger of three ServiceNow solution provider partners: Evergreen Systems, Cerna Solutions and NovoScale.
Appoxio, a Premier-level ServiceNow partner, provides UX/UI design, portal development, and custom application and integration services for the ServiceNow platform.
The addition of Appoxio’s UI/UX capabilities to Thirdera’s service offerings will allow Thirdera to provide customers with more application and content design services, making ServiceNow-based solutions more “people-focused” and accessible.
Nutanix Launches AOS 6, Offers Business Continuity For Cloud Platform
Hyperconverged infrastructure company Nutanix used its Nutanix .NEXT digital conference as the launch pad for a slew of new software products, services and features that will help partners and customers address challenges in hybrid, multi-cloud environments.
Topping the list is AOS 6, a new release of Nutanix’s flagship AOS hyperconverged infrastructure software with Flow Networking, a new network virtualization offering on the AHV hypervisor that simplifies networking and can create virtual private clouds.
Also built into AOS 6 are new business continuity and disaster recovery capabilities for Nutanix Cloud deployments and a disaster recovery dashboard.
Nutanix also unveiled a strategic partnership with Citrix Systems through which the vendors will integrate their products to provide user access to applications, desktops and data from any device at scale. This access will come through the Nutanix hyperconverged infrastructure and hybrid, multi-cloud deployments of Citrix Device as a Service, virtual applications and desktop services.
In addition, Nutanix debuted Nutanix Data Lens, an unstructured data governance service, and a new automated zero trust security policy feature.
Fivetran To Acquire HVR, Raises $565 Million
Data integration technology developer Fivetran scored big in the acquisition and venture funding realms this week: Fivetran struck a deal to buy HVR, a developer of data replication software, and raised $565 million in Series D funding.
Fivetran and HVR provide technology for building pipelines that move data between systems, such as operational applications and cloud-based data warehouses. Fivetran’s forte is developing tools and data connectors for automating data integration tasks while HVR markets real-time data replication software that can effectively move huge volumes of data between systems.
By adding HVR’s capabilities to its own, Fivetran is stepping up its game in the all-important data integration space.
Fivetran is paying $700 million in cash and stock to acquire HVR. The $565 million in funding, which boosts Fivetran’s pre-money valuation to an impressive $5.6 billion, was planned and negotiated in tandem with the acquisition and most of the financing will go to cover the acquisition’s price tag.