5 Companies That Came To Win This Week

For the week ending Feb. 26, CRN takes a look at the companies that brought their ‘A’ game to the channel.

ARTICLE TITLE HERE

The Week Ending Feb. 26

Topping this week’s Came to Win list is Hewlett Packard Enterprise for a key acquisition that will boost its hybrid cloud sales efforts – and those of its channel partners.

Also making the list are hybrid IT monitoring tech developer ScienceLogic for an impressive round of funding, Cybereason for a pair of savvy hires to boost the cybersecurity vendor’s channel management ranks, Perimeter 81 for its own key channel management hire, and Palo Alto Networks for making some substantive updates to its partner operations.

id
unit-1659132512259
type
Sponsored post

HPE Boosts Cloud Technology Portfolio With CloudPhysics Acquisition

Hewlett Packard Enterprise this week acquired CloudPhysics, developer of an AI-based hybrid cloud assessment tool, in a move that boosts the company’s cloud technology portfolio.

The acquisition provides HPE with a SaaS-based tool that analyzes on-premises IT environments and provides quick return on investment recommendations for cloud migrations, application modernization and infrastructure. The CloudPhysics tool will allow HPE – and its channel partners – to quickly assess customers’ IT environments and assist them with complex cloud migration and application modernization.

HPE also wins kudos for launching the Software Defined Opportunity Engine, a cloud-based machine learning platform that cuts the time it takes to evaluate prospective customers’ IT environments and quickly deliver custom sales proposals.

HPE this week also pledged a 25 percent reduction in total cost of ownership for telecom providers who implement the new HPE GreenLake Open RAN (Radio Access Network) cloud native solution stack.

ScienceLogic Raises $105 Million In Funding, Signals Company’s Rise In AIOps

AIOps and IT infrastructure monitoring software developer ScienceLogic raised $105 million this week in an impressive Series E round of financing. Silver Lake Waterman led the funding round.

ScienceLogic, based in Reston, Va., is a rising star in the rapidly growing hybrid-cloud IT management space. As businesses and organizations shift IT workloads to the cloud while continuing to run on-premises data centers, tools like those offered by ScienceLogic are in demand to maintain IT service visibility and speed problem resolution.

The company will use the new funding to accelerate its product development work and expand hiring in engineering, sales, marketing and customer support: In January the company disclosed plans to increase staff levels by nearly 40 percent this year.

ScienceLogic had previously raised a total of $109 million in funding.

Cybereason Builds Up Its Channel Management Ranks

Rising cybersecurity star Cybereason added to its channel management talent this week, announcing that the company had snagged channel leaders from Check Point Software Technologies and Fortinet.

Cybereason said it recruited Abigail Maines, Check Point’s Americas channel chief, and Stephen Tallent, who had overseen MSSPs and service enablement at Fortinet for about nine years. At Cybereason Maines will oversee traditional channels in North America while Tallent will manage the company’s relationships with MSSPs in North America.

Both started in their new jobs earlier this month. The new hires are expected to help Cybereason boost solution provider profitability, drive channel synergy with the commercial sales organization, and help identify partners interested in detection and response services.

Perimeter 81 Hires Channel Veteran Bob Kilbride As Its First Channel Chief

Sticking with the topic of savvy channel management hires, SASE specialist Perimeter 81 this week said it had hired Bob Kilbride to be the cloud networking startup’s first channel chief.

Channel veteran Kilbride joins Perimeter 81 from VMware-owned CloudHealth where he has been senior director of global channel sales for the past four years.

Perimeter 81, founded in 2018, is focused on cloud-based networking and security and more recently has expanded into the red-hot secure access service edge (SASE) arena.

Today the channel accounts for about 10 percent of Perimeter 81’s sales. Kilbride is charged with substantially growing that and eventually transform Perimeter 81 into a channel-first company.

Palo Alto Networks Details 5 Big Changes To Partner Program

Palo Alto Networks wins applause for rolling out what it called the most comprehensive update to its NextWave Partner Program in the program’s history.

Topping the list of changes is Palo Alto Network’s move to make its Prisma Cloud portfolio available for channel resale globally. That drops a contentious referral-only model the company has used for certain products such as RedLock cloud threat defense.

The company also debuted new partner specializations around its SASE, cloud and XDR/XSOAR technologies; announced that technical support for the company’s 40,000 SMB customers in the U.S. will be done exclusively through channel partners; and said it is investing more in MSP partner initiatives and MSP program automation.

And Palo Alto Networks is debuting a new partner enablement platform called Amplify that will provide more customized training resources for partners. The platform is, in part, spurred by the need for more training and certification options for partners in light of Palo Alto Networks’ dozen acquisitions since the start of 2018.