Five Companies That Came To Win This Week
For the week ending May 2 CRN takes a look at the companies that brought their ‘A’ game to the channel including Palo Alto Networks, Cisco Systems, IBM, Rackspace Technology and Fivetran.
The Week Ending May 2
Topping this week’s Five Companies that Came to Win list is Palo Alto Networks for a strategic acquisition that will accelerate the company’s push into AI security.
Also making this week’s list are Cisco Systems for investing in an AI implementation startup, IBM for its $150 billion vow to maintain and expand its manufacturing in the U.S., Rackspace Technology for a major revamp of its partner program, and data movement tech developer Fivetran for its own strategic acquisition.
Palo Alto Networks To Acquire Protect AI For Deeper Push Into AI-SPM
Palo Alto Networks got everyone’s attention this week when it unveiled plans to acquire Protect AI, a startup focused on AI security, as the company looks to accelerate its protection of technologies including GenAI and agents.
The announcement came at the same time as Palo Alto Networks’ debut of a new AI security platform, Prisma AIRS. Capabilities on the platform include AI model scanning, posture management, AI red teaming and runtime security—along with security for AI agents.
Protect AI brings a focus on AI-SPM (AI security posture management) that aims to provide greater visibility, management and security for AI and machine learning environments, as well as providing remediation and governance capabilities.
Palo Alto Networks said that its efforts in AI security will receive a major boost from the acquisition by enabling the company to “more quickly and comprehensively accelerate its vision for Prisma AIRS,” the company said.
In July 2024, Protect AI unveiled the acquisition of SydeLabs, which brought capabilities for automation simulation of attacks against GenAI systems. Then in August, the startup closed $60 million in Series B funding led by Evolution Equity Partners, bringing the company to $108.5 million in total funding.
Palo Alto Networks also unveiled major enhancements to two of its key product areas with updates to Cortex XSIAM and Prisma SASE.
Cisco Unveils Investment In ‘Visionary’ Startup Gruve.ai
Speaking of savvy AI investments, Cisco has invested in Gruve.ai, a startup that provides services that help businesses implement and scale artificial intelligence and generative AI systems.
Cisco, which did not disclose the size of the investment, called Redwood City, Calif.-based Gruve an emerging “visionary” in helping enterprises harness outcome-based AI solutions.
The latest investment builds on Cisco’s ambitious plans to back budding companies within the AI startup ecosystem to further the development of secure, reliable AI solutions. Cisco in June 2024 announced the launch of a $1 billion AI investment fund targeting strategic investments in startup companies that build offerings based on Cisco’s strategy and infrastructure.
Cisco also has invested in startups such as Cohere, Mistral AI and Scale AI.
$150B Investment Ensures IBM ‘Remains The Epicenter’ Of AI And Innovation
IBM will invest $150 billion over the next five years in the U.S. with the goal of ensuring the company remains a global leader in IT manufacturing and innovation.
“We have been focused on American jobs and manufacturing since our founding 114 years ago, and with this investment and manufacturing commitment we are ensuring that IBM remains the epicenter of the world’s most advanced computing and AI capabilities,” Chairman and CEO Arvind Krishna said in a statement this week.
Of the $150 billion investment, more than $30 billion will go toward advancing American manufacturing of mainframe and quantum computers.
In its $150 billion announcement, IBM touted its Poughkeepsie, N.Y.-based mainframe manufacturing site. IBM also said it operates the world’s largest fleet of quantum computer systems and will continue to design, build and assemble quantum computers in America.
The news comes as President Donald Trump has undertaken an aggressive reciprocal tariff policy aimed at boosting U.S. manufacturing.
Rackspace Technology Revamps Partner Program With New Incentives, Growth Strategy
Rackspace Technology wins kudos for a major relaunch of its partner program that’s designed to provide long-term growth, predictability and deeper engagement for the company’s partners.
Dubbed the “Win More. Earn More. Accelerate Your Growth” initiative, the updated partner program signals Rackspace’s renewed focus on being a channel-first company. The program’s key enhancements include account ownership, its central initiative, which enables partners to earn commissions on customer workloads indefinitely, creating a sustainable revenue model.
“It’s all about a better recurring commission model,” Adrianna Bustamante, vice president of partnerships and demand generation, told CRN. “Even though we don’t talk specific numbers publicly, partners know what they earn on each opportunity and how that grows over time.”
New partner enablement offerings give partners access to new tools including marketing campaigns-in-a-box, technical resources and educational assets. The program also offers continued collaboration with cloud giants like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud and VMware, which are all integrated into the partner ecosystem.
The new model places a strong emphasis on transparency and predictable returns. Partners are rewarded based on a performance-tiered structure, giving them clarity on what to expect as they grow accounts alongside Rackspace.
Fivetran Adds ‘Reverse ETL’ Capabilities To Its Data Movement Portfolio With Acquisition
Data movement tech company Fivetran makes this week’s list for striking a deal to buy Census, a San Francisco-based developer of “reverse ETL” data activation and operational analytics technology.
Fivetran, based in Oakland, Calif., is a leading provider of automated data replication and data movement technology used to collect data from a broad range of operational systems and move it into data warehouses, data lakes and database systems.
The Census Reverse ETL platform and other company products provide a way to take organized, prepared data in a data warehouse and make it available for operational Software-as-a-Service applications, providing those systems with trusted, “single version of the truth,” data.
Fivetran said the Census acquisition will expand the capabilities of its product portfolio to enable businesses and organizations “to move governed, automated, and real-time data across their entire stack, from source systems to data platforms, and now back into the business applications that drive decision-making.”
