5 Companies That Came To Win This Week

For the week ending Aug. 20 CRN takes a look at the companies that brought their ‘A’ game to the channel.

The Week Ending Aug. 20

Topping this week’s Came to Win list is Intel for providing more details about its upcoming Alder Lake CPUs, the next generation of its Intel Core processors.

Also making the list this week are Hewlett Packard Enterprise for its push to accelerate development of its GreenLake as-a-service offerings, Mitel for a key hire for its channel operations, an impressive funding round from big data startup Monte Carlo, and Microsoft and Rubrik for a strategic alliance that will result in improved protection against ransomware for Azure solutions.

Intel Heralds New Era With Alder Lake Hybrid CPU Architecture

Intel this week disclosed more details about its next generation of Intel Core processors, code-named Alder Lake, heralding the hybrid architecture of the upcoming CPUs as a breakthrough in performance and efficiency for desktop PCs and laptops.

The new processors will utilize a hybrid CPU design that combines two x86 microarchitectures and will mark a significant change in how applications are assigned to CPU cores.

Speaking at this week’s Intel Architecture Day 2021, Intel executives said the new Alder Lake CPUs will initially be available for desktop PCs later this year.

Intel this week also put an exclamation mark on its intention to compete with Nvidia and AMD in the market for high-performance GPUs, unveiling a new brand called Intel Arc for the upcoming series of discrete GPU products that are due out in 2022.

HPE Launches New GreenLake Development Initiative

Hewlett Packard Enterprise is putting into place a new GreenLake cloud services development effort intended to accelerate the transformation to a more seamless and unified pay-per-use cloud services delivery model and customer experience.

The initiative includes the creation of a new GreenLake platform development team and the hiring of a new chief technology officer by September. The new CTO will take over the GreenLake software development effort from current CTO Kumar Sreekanti, who is retiring.

The new development team is tasked with delivering a unified GreenLake cloud platform through which all of HPE’s edge to cloud services will be delivered. The development organization brings together expertise from across HPE, building upon a core of Common Cloud Services and the Common Cloud Platform from HPE Aruba.

Mitel Names Channel Chief, New Senior Leadership To Pursue And Win UCaaS Opportunities

Unified communications tech developer Mitel made some big moves in the personnel department this week including hiring Daren Finney, former Citrix chief operating officer and sales executive, to be the company’s first-ever senior vice president of global channel sales.

Mitel also added new leaders in cloud operations, channel sales, service delivery and market intelligence.

The new hires—and particularly the newly created post being filled by Finney—are designed to strategically support Mitel’s diverse global channel, according to the company. Finney told CRN that he is charged with expanding on Mitel’s goals to go after cloud opportunities and win in the UCaaS space with partners.

Earlier this year Mitel launched a program that gives partners more control over the sale and management of cloud services for customers and to create customized offerings.

Data Observability Tech Startup Monte Carlo Raises $60M

Monte Carlo, a developer of data observability software used to monitor the health of an organization’s data, raised an impressive $60 million in Series C funding this week.

The financing marks the startup’s third funding round in less than a year and brings its total financing to $101 million.

Businesses have made huge investments in data management and data analytics technologies to become data-driven enterprises. But the data contained in those systems is often flawed and unreliable. Monte Carlo’s software is used to help businesses and organizations monitor the health of data stored in databases, data warehouses and data lake systems.

Microsoft-Rubrik Alliance Expands Ransomware Protection

Microsoft and data management and backup technology develop Rubrik are teaming up to jointly develop solutions on the Azure cloud platform aimed at improving data protection amid widespread ransomware attacks.

The strategic agreement also includes an equity investment Microsoft is making in Rubrik. The size of the investment was not disclosed.

The co-engineering projects are aimed at battling ransomware and promoting zero trust data protection, the companies said. The two will build offerings around Rubrik’s zero trust data management software, Azure and Microsoft 365.