5 Companies That Came To Win This Week

The Week Ending Jan. 27

Topping this week's roundup of companies that came to win is Dell EMC, which committed to providing $150 million in new channel incentives for legacy EMC partners.

Also making the list are Cisco Systems for its blockbuster deal to acquire AppDynamics for $3.7 billion, Turbonomic for a big venture funding win, F5 Networks for expanding beyond its application delivery products into the highly competitive security arena, and cloud distributor Pax8 for a key channel hire intended to accelerate its partner on-boarding efforts.

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 EMC Commits $150M To Incentives, Stresses New Business Exclusivity In New Program

Dell EMC is pumping $150 million into channel incentives during its upcoming fiscal year with an emphasis on boosting back-end rebates for legacy EMC partners.

EMC had been steadily cutting back-end rebates, down to between 1 percent and 4 percent, before being acquired by Dell last year. Dell's additional investment in incentives, announced this week by channel chief John Byrne in a webcast followed by some 3,000 partners, means that Dell EMC partners could earn back-end rebates between 5 percent and 10 percent.

The $150 million investment comes along with a 1.25X "revenue multiplier" reward for partners who go all in with Dell EMC and sell only Dell EMC server, storage and networking products. That will accelerate partners through Dell EMC's program tiers at a faster rate.

Cisco Moves To Acquire AppDynamics For $3.7 Billion

Cisco made a bold move on the acquisition front this week, striking a deal to buy AppDynamics, a developer of cloud application and business monitoring software, for $3.7 billion.

The acquisition deal came just as AppDynamics was on the verge of issuing its initial public offering.

As businesses increasingly shift their IT resources to the cloud and rely on those resources for their digital transformation initiatives, cloud application performance has become a critical issue. Cisco said the AppDynamics acquisition would allow the vendor to offer its customers real-time visibility and system intelligence at the network, security and application layers.

The acquisition also supports Cisco's strategic transition toward emphasizing software-centric solutions.

Turbonomic Snags $50M In Venture Financing

Turbonomic, a fast-growing company in the cloud and virtualization technology space, caught everybody's attention this week when it said that it had raised $50 million in Series E financing. The company also said it had recruited former General Electric CIO Gary Reiner to its board.

Boston-based Turbonomic, which changed its name from VMTurbo last year, develops an autonomic platform for managing workloads in virtualized, private, public or hybrid cloud environments.

F5 Networks Expands Beyond Application Delivery With New Security Portfolio

F5 Networks made a bold move this week by diving into the security technology market with a new portfolio of security products that complement its application delivery technology.

The launch of the Herculon line of security products is an effort by F5 to complement its current load balancing and application delivery offerings.

The expanded product line is a boon for F5 partners who work with the vendor's current products as part of their IT infrastructure sales. Application security is an increasingly critical area for businesses, and the ability to address those needs with the Herculon products will help F5 partners become even more strategic to their customers.

Pax8 Lands Channel Leader From StorageCraft In Push To Double Partner Additions

Cloud software distributor Pax8 made a savvy personnel move this week in hiring Jennifer Bodell, a former StorageCraft channel executive, to spearhead the company's engagement with IT service providers.

Bodell, who spend nearly three years as channel marketing manager and inside channel account manager at StorageCraft, will serve as Pax8's director of emerging channel. She is also expected to help revamp Pax8's partner program to better leverage automation and forge tighter bonds with partners such as The ASCII Group and HTG.

Pax8 has ambitious plans to double the number of new partners it brings on board each month from the current 50 to about 100. Bodell will help the company meet that goal, as well as help current partners grow their recurring revenue from as little as 10 percent of their overall sales to a healthier range of 50 percent or even 75 percent.