Five Companies That Came To Win This Week

HP Decides That Selling, Spinning Off PC Business Doesn't Make Sense

HP, after an intense and exhaustive analysis of the potential impact of selling or spinning off its Personal Systems Group, this week decided to stand pat and keep PSG in the company fold.

HP channel partners were relieved by the decision, even if some are still a bit peeved at the upheaval and uncertainty that former CEO Leo Apotheker's plans brought into their day-to-day business.

"We're well positioned to compete and win, and now it's time to get back to business," Todd Bradley, executive vice president of PSG, said in Thursday's conference call held to discuss the decision.

IBM Makes Smooth Leadership Transition With Rometty Appointment

Virginia "Ginni" Rometty, a 30-year IBM veteran will take over for Sam Palmisano as president and CEO of the company starting January 1. Under a succession plan approved by IBM's directors, Palmisano, who was named president and chief operating officer in 2000, CEO in 2002 and chairman in 2003, will remain as chairman.

Rometty, who will be IBM's ninth CEO since its founding, joined IBM in 1981 as a systems engineer and is currently the company's global sales leader, responsible for leading IBM's global strategy, marketing and communications functions.

ARM Gets Up In Intel's Grill With HP Server Chip Partnership

HP and Calxeda are partnering to bring ARM-based servers to large data centers, and one of their main goals is to reduce power consumption of server infrastructure, The Wall Street Journal reported this week.

The HP-Calxeda tie-up could represent a shot across the bow of Intel and AMD, which have enjoyed a relatively uncontested reign over the server processor market. Meanwhile, Intel told CRN this week that it's not concerned about the HP-Calxeda partnership, and that it is already addressing the microserver market with new versions of its Xeon and Atom processors.

Dropbox Sets Sights On SMBs With Cloud Storage Service

Dropbox made a bold move to bust out of the consumer cloud market with the launch of Dropbox for Teams, a new business-focused cloud storage services that's targeted at SMBs.

Dropbox for Teams adds administrative controls, centralized billing and phone support to the cloud storage package, and it's a response to competitors who've been depicting the Dropbox consumer services as a major liability to companies that use it.

Meanwhile, Dropbox also scored $250 million in Series B financing, which the company will use to accelerate its growth, make acquisitions, developer strategic partnerships and hire more staff.

Citrix Bolsters Cloud Portfolio With App-DNA Acquisition

Citrix added a key piece to its cloud computing and virtualization arsenal by acquiring App-DNA, whose AppTitude product handles app compatibility testing for Windows 7 migrations. App-DNA also makes AppTitude Virtual App Machine, a product that tests an application's suitability for virtualization in Microsoft App-V deployments and for Citrix XenApp.

According to Citrix, App-DNA technology will give a boost to its Citrix Desktop Transformation strategy, which is aimed at helping customers speed enterprise wide desktop virtualization deployments.