5 Companies That Came To Win This Week

The Week Ending May 11

Topping this week's roundup of companies that came to win is Dell Technologies for its plans to offer expanded rewards for partners that cross-sell products from the company's seven brands.

Also making the list this week is Microsoft for giving cloud service partners the ability to sell subscription licenses for Azure RI, Windows Server and SQL Server products. Nutanix makes the list for its new cloud management and security offerings that help manage the high costs of public cloud usage. And solution provider Atrion Communications is a winner for a savvy hire in cybersecurity while Presidio is on the list for a savvy acquisition.

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.

Dell Technologies Set To Launch 'Advantageous' Partner Rewards To Spur Cross-Selling

Channel leaders across Dell Technologies' seven brands are working together to create a new rewards program that will give partners more money to sell across its broad portfolio.

The rewards program, set to officially launch in early 2019, is focused on providing incremental rebates and incentives to Dell, Dell EMC, VMware, Pivotal, RSA, SecureWorks and Virtustream channel partners, Dell EMC channel chief Joyce Mullen told CRN this week.

Under the plan, partners that cross-sell Dell products or build solutions that incorporate products from across the Dell portfolio will earn greater rewards.

The news comes a week after Dell unveiled the Dell Technologies Advantage Framework that provides partners a way to more easily sell products and solutions across the entire portfolio of seven companies.

Microsoft Gives CSP Partners Subscription Licensing Power For Azure Reserved VMs, Other Products

Microsoft wins kudos for putting more licensing power in the hands of its partners. This week the company said it would give its Cloud Solution Provider partners full access to Azure Reserved Virtual Machine Instances (Azure RI).

Business customers are demanding less expensive solutions for their predictable cloud workloads, and being able to sell Azure RI, a one- or three-year pre-purchase of cloud compute resources, will help channel partners meet that need, Microsoft said.

Microsoft is also offering partners the ability to sell cloud subscriptions for Windows Server and Microsoft's popular SQL Server database.

For the channel, access to Azure RI and server subscriptions means more revenue, additional value-added offerings for customers, and greater ownership of the customer relationship.

Nutanix Launches New Tech To Combat "High Costs" Of Public Cloud

Nutanix, showing off its innovation chops this week at its .NEXT Conference, launched three products it says are designed to help businesses manage public cloud costs and security.

Topping the list was Nutanix Beam, a Software-as-a-Service offering that provides multi-cloud governance capabilities for managing cloud spending, security and regulatory compliance across almost any cloud platform. That gives organizations an analysis of exactly how they are consuming public cloud services.

The vendor also debuted Nutanix Flow, a software-defined networking system designed for multi-cloud environments. The software provides application-centric security to protect against internal and external threats that traditional perimeter-oriented security products might fail to pick up.

And the new Nutanix Era Platform-as-a-Service system automates database provisioning and life-cycle management, extending Nutanix's Enterprise Cloud OS software stack beyond core Infrastructure-as-a-Service capabilities for private cloud environments to platform-layer services.

Atrion Communications Doubles Down On Cybersecurity With Hire Of Insurance Security Exec As CISO

Solution provider Atrion Communications demonstrated just how serious it is about cybersecurity this week by hiring New York Life's former information security leader as its first-ever chief information security officer.

Rich Moore will be tasked with helping Atrion customers navigate the implementation and use of security services from multiple vendors. He will also build out a lab ecosystem where customers can see simulations of security products in action.

Moore brings a huge amount of technical expertise to Atrion. But even more important is the credibility he brings to his new role as a security executive who's been on the front lines – a reputation that will serve Altrion well in working with both customers and security technology vendors.

Presidio Acquires Fast-Growing Red Sky Solutions

Speaking of savvy channel moves, Presidio, a major nationwide solution provider, disclosed this week that it had acquired Red Sky Solutions, a small solution provider with a focus on cybersecurity services, managed services, and data center and cloud solutions.

Red Sky Solutions was No. 37 on the CRN 2017 Fast Growth 150 list. The Draper, Utah-based company focuses on cost-effective, security-forward IT strategy solutions, including consultation and implementation services centered around networking, storage, application delivery and virtualization.

Presidio, No. 21 on the CRN Solution Provider 500, has made other acquisitions in recent years including Emergent Networks last year and Netech in 2016.