5 Companies That Came To Win This Week

For the week ending Oct. 18, CRN takes a look at the companies that brought their 'A' game to the channel.

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The Week Ending Oct. 18

Topping this week's roundup of companies that came to win is startup Pensando Systems, which emerged from stealth this week with next-generation edge technology and a big financing war chest.

Also making the "Came to Win" list is Intel for a savvy acquisition in the edge computing space, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella for getting a big raise in fiscal 2019, Commvault for an initiative targeting midrange and SMB customers, and Amazon for making good on its vow to purge Oracle databases from its IT operations.

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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 Five Companies That Had A Rough Week roundup.

Startup Pensando, With Financial Backing From HPE, Looks To Transform The Edge Computing Market

Pensando Systems, led by chairman (and former Cisco CEO) John Chambers (pictured), exited stealth this week and launched its software-defined edge services platform with which the startup intends to upend the 5G edge computing experience.

Pensando made IT industry waves this week when it debuted its system, based on a custom programmable processor optimized for edge computing, that is widely seen as challenging Amazon Web Services.

Pensando has gained a lot of attention because it was founded by a team of star engineers and a marketing executive who came from Cisco where they were responsible for much of that company’s success.

Also a winner this week: Hewlett Packard Enterprise, which has allied itself with Pensando and was one of two investors in this week’s $145-million Series C funding round for the company.

Intel Acquiring Edge Computing Platform To Address Coming 5G Network Wave

Intel is acquiring the edge computing platform business of Pivot Technology Solutions in a move to expand its edge computing offerings as businesses and organizations roll out 5G networks.

Intel’s acquisition of Pivot’s Smart Edge technology will help the chipmaker meet the growing demand for computing in the network and at the edge – an estimated $65 billion addressable silicon market by 2023, according to Intel.

Having a leading position in edge computing, according to Intel, enhances the company’s ability to address the 5G network transformation.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s Total Pay Grows To $42.9M As Cloud Business Booms

It’s been a good year for Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who saw his total compensation package increase 66 percent to $42.9 million in the last fiscal year as the software company’s stock soared and its cloud business boomed, according to a regulatory filing released this week.

Nadella’s pay package in fiscal 2019 (ended June 30) included $2.3 million in salary, $29.7 million in stock awards, $10.8 million in non-equity incentive plan compensation and $111,363 in other compensation.

Nadella reported $25.8 million in total pay in fiscal 2018.

Under Nadella’s leadership, Microsoft’s market capitalization has grown from $302 billion in February 2014 when he was named CEO to $1.07 trillion as of this week — the highest of any publicly traded company.

Commvault Targets Midrange, SMB Market With New ‘Metallic’ Division

Commvault, which has traditionally focused on large enterprises for its data protection and management software, this week made an ambitious bid to expand sales to small and mid-size customers – a move that will greatly benefit the company’s channel partners.

At its Commvault Go partner conference this week the vendor introduced its new Metallic division that will develop Software-as-a-Service data protection offerings targeting midrange and SMB customers.

The Metallic series leverages Commvault’s data protection expertise combined with innovations based on information gleaned from meetings with hundreds of midrange business and organizations, some Commvault customers and some not.

Amazon Reports ‘Migration Complete’ In Oracle Database Purge

E-commerce giant Amazon engaged in a bit of competitive trash-talking this week when it reported that it had completed its ambitious goal of moving all of its operations off of Oracle database software.

Oracle and Amazon Web Services, Amazon’s fast-growing Internet service business, have engaged in an increasingly bitter rivalry. Amazon vowed to move all of its operations – totaling 75 petabytes of internal Amazon data – off Oracle software and onto AWS services, such as Amazon DynamoDB and Relational Database Service. The Aurora PostgreSQL database underlies most of those services.

Tuesday AWS Chief Evangelist Jeff Barr reported that the last Oracle database powering Amazon’s consumer business had been turned off, completing the migration.

Amazon once stored 75 petabytes of data across nearly 7,500 Oracle databases and initially set a goal of completing the migration by the first quarter of next year. But the growing enmity between the companies might have accelerated the timeline.

AWS Chief Evangelist Jeff Barr announced the completion of the database migration project in a blog. While avoiding direct mentions of bad blood between the companies, Barr said the switch was driven by the need for performance improvements, cost savings and reductions in administrative overhead. “This included time spent dealing with complex and inefficient hardware provisioning, license management and many other issues that are now best handled by modern, managed database services.”