Five Companies That Came To Win This Week

For the week ending Oct. 11, CRN takes a look at the companies that brought their ‘A’ game to the channel including Presidio, AMD, Intel, Microsoft and the winners of the CRN 2024 Triple Crown Award.

The Week Ending Oct. 11

Topping this week’s Came to Win list is solution provider Presidio for a strategic acquisition that expands both its geographical reach and its technology cross-sell opportunities.

Also making the list is AMD for its big move in the AI PC space with the debut of its Ryzen AI Pro 300 processors. Rival Intel also makes the list for the launch of an AI cloud service featuring its new Gaudi 3 accelerator chips. And Microsoft is here for allowing partners to sell professional services on its marketplace, a move that creates potential opportunities for solution providers looking for new ways to acquire and transact with customers.

Rounding out the list are the 47 solution providers that are CRN’s 2024 Triple Crown Award winners.

Presidio Extends Geographical Reach, Boosts Cross-Sell Opportunities With Strategic Acquisition

Solution provider all-star Presidio this week acquired Internetwork Engineering, a Charlotte, N.C.-based IT solution provider with an extensive presence across the Southeastern U.S.

Presidio CEO Bob Cagnazzi said his New York City-based company will now be in a better position to serve customers across the southeastern U.S. “This strategic acquisition provides the right mix of synergies and growth opportunities for both organizations and aligns perfectly with our focus on investing in opportunities that foster growth and innovation,” Cagnazzi said in a statement.

Internetwork Engineering specializes in collaboration, data center, networking and cybersecurity solutions.

In addition to strengthening Presidio’s scale in key markets, the acquisition provides an opportunity for Internetwork Engineering to cross-sell solutions, including cloud-based services and consumption, managed services and cybersecurity, that incorporate Presidio’s extensive portfolio.

AMD Dazzles With New Ryzen AI Pro, Touts Upcoming Instinct Chips

AMD this week called its newly launched Ryzen AI Pro 300 processors the “best AI PC platform” for businesses, saying they will bring new levels of security and manageability to Microsoft’s Copilot+ PCs that are set to hit the market through next year.

Unveiled at AMD’s Advancing AI Event in San Francisco, the Ryzen AI Pro 300 processors combine leadership performance and efficiency with new enterprise-level security features such as Cloud Bare Metal Recovery as well as remote management and deployment capabilities, according to the chip designer.

PC vendors are expected to use Ryzen AI Pro processors in more than 100 computer designs through 2025, according to AMD.

AMD is also playing competitive hardball with its forthcoming 256-GB Instinct MI325X GPU, which the company said can outperform Nvidia’s 141-GB H200 processor on AI inference workloads. When it comes to training AI models, AMD said the MI325X is on par or slightly better than the H200, the successor to Nvidia’s popular and powerful H100 GPU.

AMD also vowed that the next-generation MI350 accelerator chips will improve performance by magnitudes.

Intel Debuts AI Cloud With Gaudi 3 Chips, Inflection AI Partnership

Intel, meanwhile, was making some AI and processor noise of its own this week with the launch of an AI cloud service featuring its new Gaudi 3 accelerator chips, which the company said will help underpin a new enterprise AI solution with hybrid cloud capabilities from generative AI startup Inflection AI.

The service, called Intel Tiber AI Cloud, represents a rebrand and expansion in scope, effective at the beginning of the month, for Intel Tiber Developer Cloud. Launched about a year ago, Intel Tiber Developer Cloud gives customers and partners early access to new chips such as Gaudi 3 and Xeon 6 for development purposes.

With Intel Tiber AI Cloud, the chipmaker is expanding the service’s purview to production-level cloud instances that can be used for commercial purposes. The kinds of customers Intel is targeting are large AI startups and enterprises. On top of providing Gaudi 3 instances, the service also features instances powered by Gaudi 2 chips, Xeon CPUs, Core Ultra 200V CPUs and Max Series GPUs, according to Intel.

In tandem with the Intel Tiber AI Cloud announcement, the semiconductor giant said it is partnering with Inflection AI for a new enterprise AI solution that’s available on its cloud service and will be available as a server appliance early next year.

Called Inflection for Enterprise, the Gaudi 3-powered solution is designed to “deliver empathetic, conversational, employee-friendly AI capabilities and provide the control, customization and scalability required for complex, large-scale deployments,” according to the two companies.

Microsoft Allows Partners To Sell Professional Services On Marketplace

Microsoft has begun allowing partners to sell professional services on its marketplace in the U.S., Canada and United Kingdom, a potential opportunity for solution providers looking for a new way to acquire and transact with customers.

Partners can sell professional services as stand-alone private offers in AppSource or Azure Marketplace, Microsoft said this week. A transactable professional service on the marketplace can streamline the customer buying experience by merging the service onto the Azure invoice.

Partners can also attach services to a private offer with software if applicable, but partners can’t include services as part of a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) or other software offer, according to Microsoft. More geographies will become available for the offer in the future.

Microsoft’s professional services categories range from assessments to briefings, customer support, implementation, migration, proofs of concept and workshops.

Crowning Achievement: CRN’s 2024 Triple Crown Winners

And a round of applause for the 47 solution providers that made this year’s CRN Triple Crown Awards list.

Each year CRN celebrates the solution providers who pulled off the trifecta of making the Solution Provider 500, the largest solution providers operating in North America by revenue; the Fast Growth 150, ranking the fastest-growing solution providers; and the Tech Elite 250, a roundup of solution providers that achieved the highest partner levels and certifications from leading IT vendors.

Winslow Technology Group, a leading provider of IT solutions, managed services and cybersecurity services, made the Triple Crown list for a seventh year, more than any other company on this year’s list. Advanced Computer Concepts, ANM and Sterling Computers are all appearing on the list for the sixth year.

The Triple Crown class of 2024 also has 19 companies that are making the list for the first time, including Arctiq, GrayMatter, NetFabric Solutions and The Redesign Group.