Five Companies That Came To Win This Week

For the week ending Sept. 20, CRN takes a look at the companies that brought their ‘A’ game to the channel including NWN Carousel, Veeam, Confluent, ClearScale and Salesforce.

The Week Ending Sept. 20

Topping this week’s Came to Win list is NWN Carousel for a strategic acquisition that expands its presence within the federal government IT services arena.

Also making the list is data protection provider Veeam for its own savvy acquisition that adds AI-based data protection and security technology to its portfolio. Solution provider and leading AWS partner ClearScale is here with the unveiling of its ClearScale One technology and services for migrating customers to the AWS cloud

Confluent is on this week’s list for launching a new OEM channel program specifically aimed at ISV and MSP partners who build Confluent’s data streaming tech into their own software and services. And Salesforce is here with its launch of the Agentforce Partner Network program to help partners bring AI agent to customers.

NWN Carousel Acquires Federal Market Superstar, Crosses $1 Sales Mark

NWN Carousel this week captured a leading position in the fast-growing federal government IT market – and crossed the $1 billion revenue mark – with the acquisition of Leverage Information Systems, one of the top Cisco Systems federal market partners in the country.

Seattle-based Leverage Information Systems, No. 380 on the 2024 CRN Solution Provider 500, has more than 60 federal contracts with over 200 customers. Among its key federal agency customers are the U.S. Navy, the Department of Energy and NASA.

Leverage Information Systems recently broke into the top 10 Cisco Systems federal partner rankings and has been Cisco’s No. 1 partner in the sciences market segment for seven consecutive years.

The deal also expands NWN’s strategic footprint into the Pacific Northwest market and brings a number of top commercial accounts in that area to NWN.

NWN Senior Vice President of Corporate Development Matt Curran, who leads the company’s M&A team, said the blockbuster deal brings NWN’s highly regarded AI-powered Experience Management Platform (EMP) into the federal government market.

Veeam Acquires Alcion, Names Startup’s CEO Its New CTO

Staying on the topic of strategic acquisitions, Veeam Software this week bought data management and protection startup Alcion startup and, in the process, brought back a previous employee to become Veeam’s new CTO.

Alcion is a Santa Clara, Calif.-based developer of AI-based technology that combines data protection and security in a single integrated offering.

While Veeam and Alcion are both focused on data protection, the two companies’ technologies complement each other, Brandt Urban, Veeam senior vice president of worldwide cloud sales, told CRN.

Veeam has had great momentum with its Veeam Data Cloud, which provides data resilience for Microsoft 365 and Azure workloads, and Alcion will accelerate that momentum, Urban said.

Veeam and Alcion have had a long relationship: Veeam was an investor in Alcion’s seed funding and the lead investor in Alcion’s $21 million Series A funding round, which closed last fall.

Alcion co-founder and CEO Niraj Tolia will become Veeam’s new CTO. Tolia previously worked at Veeam between October 2020 and March 2022 after Veeam acquired Kasten, a developer of Kubernetes-native container backup and data protection technologies, that Tolia founded.

Confluent Launches OEM Program To Help ISV And MSP Partners Build Data Streaming Into Their Offerings

Data streaming tech developer Confluent this week launched an OEM channel program to recruit managed service providers, cloud service providers and independent software vendors to build the Confluent platform into their software and service offerings.

The new program provides MSPs, CSPs and ISVs with a license to globally redistribute or embed Confluent’s technology, along with offering design review and development assistance, product certification, technical support and other benefits.

Over the last year Confluent has been expanding its channel efforts including launching the Connect with Confluent program to help software partners integrate their products with the Confluent platform, the Accelerate with Confluent and Build with Confluent programs for systems integrator partners, and an initiative to enlist and assist partners who help customers upgrade to Confluent.

This latest program is geared toward meeting the unique engineering needs of OEM partners, including cloud service providers and MSPs, that develop data streaming services and ISVs that embed data streaming software within their products. Through the program partners can develop and bring real-time data streaming products and services to market more quickly and monetize demand for data streaming with limited risk, according to the company.

The program offers design review, development support and expertise to help partners build data streaming into their software and services. It also provides Confluent certifications that back the partners’ data streaming offerings, flexible commercial terms to match the way partners sell, and technical support to help partners with customer inquiries.

AWS Partner ClearScale Unveils ‘Powerful’ Cloud Migration Platform

In a reminder that solution providers are frequently a source of innovation, ClearScale this week debuted ClearScale One, a system that provides customers with an end-to-end cloud migration and modernization strategy for moving to the Amazon Web Services platform without the financial and operational challenges usually associated with cloud projects.

ClearScale says ClearScale One is particularly geared toward helping customers who are wrestling with Microsoft software licenses move to AWS and customers with legacy on-premises IT systems looking to move to the cloud to improve ROI.

“It’s so overwhelming for a customer to think about a migration and then have to unwind all these pieces of the puzzle to make it happen,” ClearScale CEO Jimmy Chui told CR N. “ClearScale One is a repeatable program incorporating partners, technologies, methodologies and services that were carefully and strategically designed to help customers modernize their applications and infrastructure on AWS.”

ClearScale knows what it’s talking about: The company is an AWS Premier Tier Services Partner that has completed more than 400 AWS migrations and over 1,000 AWS cloud projects for clients.

ClearScale One helps customers design, implement and manage their way through a five-phase AWS cloud modernization journey. Those steps include developing a plan and creating the operating platform needed for AWS adoption—such as security infrastructure, landing zones and operational models. ClearScale professionals execute the implementation and migrate applications to AWS, pushing cloud optimization and modernization efforts while maintaining full management of the customer environment.

Salesforce Launches Agentforce Partner Network At Dreamforce

Cloud application giant Salesforce used this week’s Dreamforce conference as the launchpad for its Agentforce Partner Network program to enable a variety of partner types, including system integrators, to bring AI agents to customers and get to a billion AI agents enabled over the next year.

Salesforce plans to release partner-built agent actions and templates for native use through its AppExchange. The Agentforce Partner Network brings customers a catalog of third-party AI skills, actions and agents that can answer customer service inquiries, qualify sales leads, improve marketing campaigns and more, according to the vendor.

Among the first partners in the program are Accenture, Capgemini, Deloitte Digital, PwC and Slalom. Participating IT vendors include AWS, Google Cloud, IBM, OpenText, Workday and Zoom.

At Dreamforce Salesforce also announced expanded alliances with IBM and Google Cloud, updates to the Salesforce Data Cloud, and the availability of more third-party agents in the Slack Marketplace.