Five Companies That Came To Win This Week

For the week ending Sept. 6, CRN takes a look at the companies that brought their ‘A’ game to the channel including Verizon, Amazon Web services, Salesforce, Palo Alto Networks, and Couchbase.

The Week Ending Sept. 6

Topping this week’s Came to Win list is Verizon for striking a $20 billion acquisition deal that will boost its share of the telecommunications market.

Also making the list is Amazon Web Services for launching a program to help software and ISV partners expand internationally. Salesforce makes the list for announcing an acquisition deal with a $1.9 billion price tag while Palo Alto Networks is here for completing a strategic acquisition in the SIEM space.

And with AI application development still in its nascent stage, database provider Couchbase makes this week’s list with several enhancements to its Capella database-as-a-service that will help streamline AI application development.

Verizon Looks To Gain Telecommunications Market Share With $20B Frontier Acquisition

Verizon is acquiring Frontier Communications in a blockbuster all-cash deal valued at $20 billion with the ultimate goal of winning more telecommunications market share versus its largest competitors, including AT&T.

Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg said the acquisition will shake up the telecom industry as Frontier will boost Verizon’s ability to deliver premium offerings to millions of new customers.

Dallas-based Frontier has 2.2 million fiber subscribers in the U.S. that will join Verizon’s massive 7.4 million Fios connections. Verizon’s fiber network is mostly located in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic regions of America, while Frontier’s coverage region is mainly in the Midwest, California and Texas.

Basking Ridge, N.J.-based Verizon said it expects to realize at least $500 million in run-rate cost synergies by year three after the deal closes due to the benefits of increased scale and distribution and network integration.

The merger will help Verizon compete better against the largest telecommunications providers in the world by enabling it to provide more premium broadband services.

AWS Global Passport Program Aims For International Partner Growth

Amazon Web Services has launched a Global Passport Program aimed at growing a select number of software partners’ international business, promising to connect them to regional resellers and distributors to build local market pipelines.

Aimed at independent software vendors (ISVs), the new program connects participants with guidance, resources and strategic support in an effort to lower risk and accelerate time-to-revenue, according to AWS.

“Today’s software companies are up against a number of challenges that can hinder their ability to scale and expand into new regions as they look to accelerate growth,” said Miguel Alava, AWS’ general manager for software companies in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Six pilot participants supported by AWS in 2023 grew usage of the vendor’s cloud wares by 10 to 20 percent per new region within 18 months, according to the vendor. Participants so far have included Freshworks and Forta.

Resources for program members include market evaluation workshops, international expansion roadmaps, architectural best practices for multi-region deployments, software capacity planning, industry-certified assessors and co-selling and go-to-market support from AWS sales teams.

Participants go through three-part, half-day, in-person workshops and receive reports with next-step recommendations, a business plan, a technical framework and user-story level roadmap, among other resources. Participants also get AWS service credits for expansion-related workloads that meet an ROI threshold.

Salesforce To Buy Own For $1.9B In Data Protection Push

Speaking of big-money acquisitions, Salesforce plans to buy data protection and management vendor Own Co. for about $1.9 billion in cash amid the customer relationship management vendor’s big investments in the emerging artificial intelligence market and growing cybersecurity threats.

The Own acquisition should boost Salesforce’s Backup, Shield and Data Mask offerings, according to the CRM vendor.

Own, formerly known as OwnBackup and billing itself as the No. 1 cloud data protection platform for Salesforce, has about 7,000 customers today using its platform to archive data, secure it and run analytics, among other use cases.

News of the acquisition deal came just days after Salesforce revealed it had signed an agreement to buy AI-powered voice agents developer Tenyx.

Palo Alto Networks Completes IBM QRadar Deal

And to complete an acquisition trifecta, cybersecurity superstar Palo Alto Networks completed its $500 million acquisition of IBM’s QRadar assets this week with CEO Nikesh Arora saying the merger will significantly boost the adoption of the company’s Cortex ISIAM offering.

With the acquisition of IBM's QRadar Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) assets, Palo Alto Networks is now focused on enabling customer migrations to its Precision AI-powered Cortex XSIAM platform, while also speeding up its ability to become a larger player in the SIEM (security information and event management) market.

“Our partnership with IBM reinforces our commitment to innovation and our conviction in the tremendous benefit of QRadar customers adopting Cortex XSIAM for a robust, data-driven security platform that offers transformative efficiency and effectiveness in defending against evolving cyberthreats,” Arora said.

Palo Alto Networks and IBM will help global customers across industries shift from QRadar to Cortex XSIAM with no-cost migration services through IBM Consulting for eligible customers. The cybersecurity company’s Cortex XSIAM platform centralizes data and security operations capabilities into a single platform to streamline operations and prevent threats.

IBM and Palo Alto Networks have been working together for months to make sure IBM partners can quickly become official Palo Alto Networks partners and enable them to sell the Cortex XSIAM platform.

Couchbase Fuels AI Application Development With Cloud Database Advancements

Database developer Couchbase is setting the stage for developing next-generation enterprise applications – including those with AI capabilities – by boosting the combined operational and analytical capabilities of its Capella database-as-a-service with expanded columnar and vector search functionality.

Couchbase, one of the leading next-generation database providers, offers Capella as a platform for developing enterprise applications for performing operational, analytical, AI, search and mobile tasks.

This week Couchbase announced the general availability of Couchbase Mobile with vector search. Vector search, a key database functionality for data-hungry AI applications, indexes and stores data using vector embeddings that speed up data query, search and retrieval.

The company also announced the general availability of Capella Columnar on AWS, which makes it possible to develop enterprise applications that incorporate real-time data analysis capabilities alongside operational workloads within a single database.

Couchbase said the Capella Columnar and mobile vector search capabilities reduce the costs and complexities of developing enterprise applications, including applications that incorporate AI capabilities, that run from the cloud to the edge.