5 Companies That Came To Win This Week

The Week Ending Feb. 16

Topping this week's roundup of companies that came to win is Carbonite, which saw an opportunity to acquire rival Mozy and expand its customer and partner base.

Also making the list this week are DevOps tech developer XebiaLabs for raising $100 million in funding from investors, Intel for launching a bug bounty program to better respond to discovered code vulnerabilities, Okta and Turbonomic for making a pair of savvy channel executive hires, and Xerox for launching a ground-breaking package of managed print solutions to drive more channel sales through the SMB market.

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.

Carbonite Buys Mozy From Dell, Anticipates Growth Opportunities And Channel Expansion

Carbonite knows an opportunity when it sees one. So this week the cloud-based storage service provider struck a deal to acquire rival Mozy from Dell Technologies for $146 million.

The acquisition comes as Dell, looking for ways to improve its balance sheet with the debt it took on to acquire EMC in 2016, is examining its business units to see what can be sold to raise cash.

Carbonite said the acquisition would create growth opportunities for itself and its channel partners. Mozy has about 35,000 SMB customers and more than 2,000 channel partners – both offering cross-sell potential for Carbonite's data protection platform, Carbonite President and CEO Mohamad Ali said.

DevOps Tech Provider XebiaLabs Raises $100 Million In Financing

XebiaLabs, a Boston-based developer of enterprise-scale DevOps and continuous delivery software, caught everyone's attention this week when it raised $100 million in Series B funding from investors. The financing brought the company's total capital investment to $121.5 million.

Founded in 2008, XebiaLabs said it would use the additional funds to hire more staff, especially in its product development operations.

The investments came from Susquehanna Growth Equity and Accel, along with existing shareholders.

XebiaLabs said new business grew 117 percent in 2017, without disclosing specific numbers, and it added "dozens of new Global 2000" customers including Toyota, Bank of America and NASA, according to a company statement.

Intel Launches Bug Bounty Program To Find New Spectre-Related Vulnerabilities

Intel, which has taken a beating this year over the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities, wins applause this week for launching a new bug bounty program focused on finding side-channel vulnerabilities similar to Spectre.

The new program will run through Dec. 31 and will pay rewards of up to $250,000 for finding critical issues relating to side-channel.

Intel has been criticized for its slow response to the Spectre and Meltdown crisis and initially providing fixes that caused problems with Intel chips. Intel says the new bug bounty program is designed to improve the likelihood that fixes will be available when security issues are made public.

Intel has apparently learned from the Spectre/Meltdown debacle and deserves credit for taking steps to prevent any repeats.

Microsoft also earns kudos this week for rolling out new security capabilities in its Windows Analytics service that the company says will help IT professionals protect Windows devices against the Spectre and Meltdown exploits.

Okta, Turbonomic Elevate Channel Efforts With Key Hires

Okta, a developer of identity management software, and Turbonomic, a supplier of workload automation software for hybrid clouds, both win applause this week for making savvy hires that will boost both companies' channel operations.

San Francisco-based Okta hired Patrick McCue (pictured), previously Gigya's global channel chief, as its new senior vice president of worldwide partners. McCue is charged with helping the company gain a foothold with digital agencies focused on digital transformation and driving partnerships between systems integrators and ISVs with common customers.

Turbonomic, meanwhile, hired former VCE and Hortonworks channel executive Christopher Sullivan as its new senior vice president of global alliances and channels. Recruiting Sullivan boosts Turbonomic's already substantial channel prowess, which last year hired Microsoft sales leader Jennifer Heard as channel chief. (Heard, now senior vice president of cloud partnerships, will focus exclusively on relationships with cloud providers such as AWS and Microsoft.)

Xerox Unveils Game-Changing Managed Print Solutions Bundle, Promising More SMB Wins For Channel Partners

Xerox may be in the midst of a deal to merge with Fujifilm Holdings, but the company isn't allowing itself to be distracted from working with its channel partners.

This week the company, in support of its campaign to drive more channel sales through the SMB market, debuted a pioneering package of ConnectKey software to better enable customer adoption of apps and services from Managed Print Solutions accredited partners.

The new MPS Essentials Suite is a bundle of core managed print offerings that includes cloud-based mobile print management, advanced scanning solutions, secure authentication features, and partner productivity and support capabilities. MPS Essentials is the first of what will eventually be multiple bundles for the channel, Xerox said.