5 Companies That Came To Win This Week

The Week Ending Aug. 23

This week's roundup of companies that came to win include Lenovo ramping up notebook production, Dell winning a storage battle and Yahoo besting Google in U.S. Web traffic (for a month at least). Also, executive moves at HP has the channel optimistic and Intelisys unveiled a new partner program at UBM Channel's XChange event.

Lenovo To Ramp Up Notebook Production

Lenovo is doubling down on its in-house notebook production next year, according to a report from Digitimes. The company plans to increase its in-house notebook production from 25 percent to 60 percent in its facilities in China, Brazil and North Carolina. Lenovo also plans to decrease its outsourcing to Compal Electronics from 50 percent to 30 percent.

"Over the past several years, Lenovo has been investing in our own production capabilities as part of a 'hybrid' supply chain strategy that leverages a mix of both in-house resources and outsourcing partners. This strategy gives us better control over our end-to-end supply chain and enables us to accelerate time-to-market and better differentiate our products through innovation, while retaining strong financial flexibility," Mark Stanton, director, analyst relations for Lenovo, wrote in an email to CRN.

Dell No. 1 In Storage Capacity Shipped

In the ongoing storage wars, every victory is celebrated. And Dell is no exception. In a blog post on the company's website, storage executive Travis Vigil said that in the first quarter Dell became the largest storage vendor in terms of Terabytes shipped.

This occurred despite the fact that Dell's overall storage revenue has been in decline.

"This latest ranking demonstrates Dell's ability to successfully offer customers both traditional external arrays and, as storage continues to move closer to the compute node, internal storage from our server business. This is becoming increasingly important as technology advances and the IT industry evolves into one that appreciates a solutions approach to data center needs," he wrote in the blog.

Yahoo No. 1 In U.S. Web Traffic

For the first time in more than two years, Yahoo topped Google in U.S. Web traffic in July, according to comScore. The last time Yahoo beat out Google in that category was May 2011.

Yahoo's collection of sites generated 196.6 million unique visitors in July compared with 192.3 million for Google sites. Another good sign for Yahoo? The numbers don't include traffic for Tumblr, according to The Wall Street Journal. Yahoo acquired the social networking site in May for approximately $1.1 billion.

This is also the first time Yahoo topped the rankings under Marissa Mayer, a former Google executive who was named CEO in July 2012.

Partners Optimistic About HP Exec Shuffle

The game of executive musical chairs continued at HP Wednesday when the company said Enterprise Group Executive Vice President Dave Donatelli would be reassigned. It was later announced that COO Bill Veghte (pictured) will be charge of the company's struggling Enterprise Group business.

HP partners are optimistic Veghte's appointment will be positive for the channel.

"I am very excited for the change," said Bob Venero, CEO of Future Tech. "I believe this change comes because of [HP CEO] Meg Whitman's focus to enhance and provide a more channel-friendly and driven environment like the PPS [Printing and Personal Systems] organization has done under [HP channel chief] Scott Dunsire. Future Tech has struggled with HP and its enterprise team under Donatelli's leadership, whereas our HP PPS business has flourished under the supervision and guidance of Dunsire."

Intelisys Introduces New Partner Program

Intelisys Monday took to UBM Channel's XChange 2013 event to unveil a new partner program that helps solution providers dive into the recurring revenue model while offering cloud and carrier services.

The Advanced Commissions Program allows Intelisys partners to choose how they want to receive commissions. Intelisys' Andrew Pryfogle, senior vice president and general manager, Cloud Services and Complex Bids, said the company talked to hundreds of VARs around the country to hear ideas on how to tackle the recurring revenue idea.

"The biggest challenge for VARs has been how to adopt this recurring revenue idea without crushing the cash flow that they have today. That has been the biggest hurdle that most VARs have when they look at pivoting to a recurring revenue model," he said.