5 Companies That Came To Win This Week

The Week Ending March 10

Topping this week's roundup of companies that came to win is Hewlett Packard Enterprise for its blockbuster deal to acquire flash technology developer Nimble Storage.

Also making the list are Cradlepoint for raising $89 million in financing and its plans to spend some of that money on channel initiatives, Extreme Networks for moving to acquire Avaya's networking business, Google and its new channel chief Bertrand Yansouni for outlining plans to step up the cloud company's channel game, and Puppet for its new partner portal and channel ambitions.

Not everyone in the IT industry was making smart moves this week, of course. For a rundown of companies that were unfortunate, unsuccessful or just didn't make good decisions, check out this week's 5 Companies That Had A Rough Week roundup.

HPE Strengthens Storage Lineup, Reshapes All-Flash Market With $1B Nimble Acquisition

Hewlett Packard Enterprise made a bold move in the flash storage system arena this week, striking a blockbuster deal to acquire Nimble Storage, the manufacturer of all-flash and hybrid-flash storage systems, for $1 billion.

The move could alter the balance of power in the all-flash data center market and will strengthen HPE's competitive position against rivals such as Dell EMC, NetApp and Pure Storage. It's also likely to have repercussions on Nimble's partnerships with HPE competitors such as Cisco.

As Michael Knight, president and CTO of solution provider Encore Technology Group, put it: "All the OEMs that work with Nimble are taking four steps backward right now thinking, 'What the hell just happened?'"

Cradlepoint Snags $89M In Funding, Plans Channel Program Expansion

Networking vendor Cradlepoint nabbed $89 million in Series C funding this week, bringing its total funding to an impressive $160 million. Technology Crossover Ventures was the sole investor.

A funding round of $89 million certainly gets people's attention and would, by itself, be enough to make the 5 Companies That Came To Win list. But Cradlepoint, which has a 100 percent channel go-to-market strategy, wins extra kudos for its plans to use some of the new funding to expand its channel initiatives.

Specifically the company plans to spend more on partner programs and incentives, including hiring additional staff for its channel team, and on partner incentives, lead generation and market development funds. Also planned are enhancements to the Cradlepoint University partner enablement and certification program.

Extreme Networks Bids For Avaya's Networking Business, Launches SMB Switches

Extreme Networks is the top bidder to acquire Avaya's networking business for $100 million, a deal that would broaden Extreme's enterprise offerings' capabilities, generate more than $200 million in annual revenue and increase the vendor's market share.

The move to acquire the Avaya networking business comes just months after Avaya filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The deal isn't final: While Extreme is the primary bidder for the networking asset, it's possible other bidders could come forward, leading to an auction overseen by the bankruptcy court.

News of Extreme's move came the same week that Extreme debuted a new line of low-end switching products for small and midsize businesses. The new products, announced at The Channel Company's XChange Solution Provider conference, can be managed on-premise or in the cloud and will provide partners with new opportunities to sell into vertical markets such as retail and hospitality.

New Google Channel Chief Outlines Channel Investment Plans To Compete With Microsoft, AWS

Google has less of a channel heritage than just about any enterprise tech vendor of its size and significance. So Bertrand Yansouni (pictured), who has been Google's channel chief for about three months, wins kudos for meeting with Google Cloud implementation, integration and reseller partners before the company's NEXT Cloud Conference this week and making a commitment to expanding and leveraging the company's partner ecosystem to challenge Microsoft and Amazon for cloud dominance.

In the meetings and in a blog post, Yansouni outlined plans to invest in Google's partner programs and partner relationships, adopting a more unified strategy rather than its current product-centric siloed approach.

Yansouni vowed to step up Google's game in providing more technical assistance, including establishing partner enablement engineering teams, revamping the Google Cloud certification program, and launching a specialization program to promote partner expertise and intellectual property in infrastructure, application development, data analytics and machine learning.

Puppet Launches New Partner Portal As Channel Push Heats Up

IT infrastructure automation company Puppet debuted an upgraded partner portal this week, the latest in a series of changes aimed at putting partners at the forefront of driving its business.

While a new partner portal might seem like a routine announcement, it's the latest signal that Puppet, which currently relies on the channel for less than 35 percent of its sales, intends to dramatically increase that number this fiscal year, John Schwan, Puppet vice president of global partner sales and programs, told CRN.

Puppet's software is used to provide a common language for defining applications and infrastructure – creating a standard way to manage infrastructure such as private and public cloud, containers, storage and networking. That puts it in a pivotal position in the IT industry and its expanded channel presence is a big deal.