5 Companies That Came To Win This Week

For the week ending Feb. 9, CRN takes a look at the companies that brought their 'A' game to the channel.

5 Companies That Came To Win This Week

For the week ending Feb. 9, CRN takes a look at the companies that brought their 'A' game to the channel.

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The Week Ending Feb. 9 2018

Microsoft tops this week's list of companies that came to win after announcing an aggressive plan to offer free OneDrive for Business use to customers of rival cloud storage providers.

Also making the list this week are HP Inc., which introduced a line of lower-cost 3-D printers and a new channel program to drive them to a wider range of customers; Dell EMC, which is seeking to push its Data Domain data protection product line into new territory with a model designed for small and midsize businesses; RSA, which launched a revamped channel partner program it says will help partners drive growth with existing customers, improve marketing efforts and foster development of managed services practices; and Scale Computing, which gave partners a new way to make money with a punched-up flagship HC3 hyper-convergence platform with the addition of Unitrends disaster recovery and backup for both on-premises and cloud deployments.

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.

Microsoft Plays Marketing Hardball In Cloud Storage

Microsoft, in a bid to convince customers to defect from other cloud storage providers, said this week that it would offer customers of rival providers free OneDrive for Business use until their contracts with those competitors expire.

The move essentially allows organizations to switch to OneDrive for free, Microsoft said. The offer applies to existing storage contracts for Box, Dropbox and Google Drive. It continues until June 30, and is only available to customers who commit to 500 seats.

Enterprises that choose to make a switch based on Microsoft's offer can use the free FastTrack migration services offered by Microsoft to on-board to Office 365.

HP Expands Channel's 3-D Print Opportunity With Launch Of Four Lower-Cost Jet Fusion 3-D Printers, New Program

HP Inc. this week unveiled four new Jet Fusion 3-D printer models built on the same technology as the originals, but with a smaller footprint and lower cost to reach a wider variety of customers.

The company says channel partners will be the focus of the sales strategy for the new Jet Fusion models, and a new program is being added to enhance margin opportunities that come with the sale of 3-D printers and related supplies.

The expanded Jet Fusion lineup includes models that can print full-color objects, along with models that print in black-and-white only. Capabilities include printing at speeds up to 52 parts in 15 hours. Pricing is expected to start in the $50,000 range and reach into the $100,000 range. Existing Multi Jet Fusion models sell in the $300,000 range.

Dell EMC Targets SMB Market With New Data Domain Platform

Dell EMC said this week that it is extending its successful Data Domain data protection line into the small- and midsize-business market with the new DD3300.

The new cloud-ready platform was designed specifically for SMBs and remote or branch offices with multi-site scalability that provides ongoing protection of data residing on it with data verification and encryption.

Dell EMC kicked off 2018 with a massive storage offensive, and said the DD3300 enables smaller IT environments to extend to the cloud for long-term retention with the Data Domain Cloud Tier. With the DD3300, customers can tier de-duplicated data to the cloud for long-term retention without the need for a separate cloud gateway or a virtual appliance. The system can send twice its capacity to the cloud, allowing for the management of up to 4.8 PB of logical capacity from a single appliance.

RSA Launches Revamped, Growth-Focused Partner Program

RSA rolled out updates to its channel program that reward partners for spurring growth with existing clients, building strong marketing proposals and provide incumbency renewal.

The Bedford, Mass., security firm is also adding a managed services program for its RSA NetWitness security incident event management and threat detection and response offering that provides MSPs with dedicated technical resources and a more flexible business model.

The program enhancements come as RSA significantly boosts the amount of business it does through the channel. About 70 percent of the company's revenue comes through the channel today compared to about 35 percent in 2014. The channel growth has come as RSA acquires direct-selling companies and introduces their products and services into the RSA channel program.

Scale Computing Teams With Unitrends To Drive Channel Hyper-Converged Sales

Scale Computing punched up its flagship HC3 hyper-convergence platform with the addition of Unitrends disaster recovery and backup for both on-premises and cloud deployments.

"This partnership is really all about the channel and our commitment to showing partners how they can make money," Scale co-founder and CEO Jeff Ready told CRN this week. "With our partnership with Google and our Cloud Unity product, you might be thinking, 'I've got applications running in the cloud on part of my Scale deployment, how do I back those up?' Unitrends is a very good solution for that," Ready said. "We're giving partners more tools for their tool chest."