5 Companies That Came To Win This Week

For the week ending July 14, CRN takes a look at the companies that brought their ‘A’ game to the channel including Broadcom, Google Cloud, Dell Technologies, Auvik Networks and Blue Mantis.

The Week Ending July 14

Topping this week’s Came to Win list is Broadcom for winning approval from European regulators for its $61 billion VMware acquisition deal.

Also making this week’s Came to Win roundup are Dell Technologies for launching a series of new professional consulting services that can help its partners grow in the market for Microsoft software and services. Google Cloud makes the list for a new series of Premier Partner badges around Workspace, Chrome and Google Cloud. And Auvik Networks wins applause for launching its first channel program with ambitious goals to grow its channel sales.

And GreenPages, the 31-year-old solution provider powerhouse, is rebranding itself as Blue Mantis in recognition of its transformation into a digital era service provider.

Broadcom Scores Victory as VMware Deal Gets Green Light From EU Regulators

European Union regulators gave their approval this week for Broadcom’s $61 billion bid to acquire virtualization giant VMware, clearing a major hurdle for one of the largest mergers in the history of the IT industry.

At times in late 2022 it appeared the deal might not win approval from the European Union—an outcome that would have likely killed the deal. The European Commission, the EU’s governing body, expressed fears the acquisition would restrict market competition by giving Broadcom the means to deny competitors’ access to VMware.

The European Commission approved the deal after Broadcom agreed to several conditions including providing competitors guaranteed access to VMware updates and technology advances, establishing a process to handle disputes, and naming a trustee to monitor Broadcom compliance. Broadcom also agreed to provide competitors with access to the source code for current and future Fibre Channel Host-Bus Adapters.

The deal is still being scrutinized by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and by Market Authority regulators in the U.K. Some VMware channel partners have expressed skepticism about whether the acquisition will be a win for the channel.

Broadcom continues to expect that it will complete the acquisition during its fiscal 2023.

Dell Technologies Takes On IT Skills Gap, Looks To Raise Up Partners In Azure, M365 And Dynamics

Dell Technologies this week unveiled plans to offer four categories of professional consultancy services that can help partners tackle deals in the Microsoft universe that might be beyond their current skill levels.

The services will provide partners with access to subject matter experts in each category who provide backup for partners when customers or prospects want to deploy solutions that are outside of a partner’s comfort zone.

Dell, which has a 35-year relationship with Microsoft, has built the new offerings around Microsoft’s cloud, applications, data, resiliency and security products and services. The new services alliance with Microsoft helps partners provide customers with the best data ecosystem for their needs, according to the companies.

Dell is also introducing new subscription-based offers around Azure, M365 and Dynamics. One of the most in-demand services has been Azure Stack HCI, which lets customers take an application written for the public cloud and bring it on-premises.

Google Cloud Launches Premier Partner Badges

Staying on the topic of offering channel partners a path to success, Google Cloud wins kudos this week for providing partners with the chance—for the first time—to obtain Premier Partner badges for Workspace, Chrome and Google Cloud, a move that will lead to more incentive dollars and new customer opportunities.

This week Google Cloud unveiled a total of eight new Premier badges that partners can attain and display to customers to show their top-level expertise for Google Workspace, Chrome and Google Cloud—or all three. Google partners can receive up to three Premier badges—Sell, Service, and Build—for Google Cloud and Workspace based on their business engagement model. There is also a Sell and Service Premier badge for Chrome.

Achieving a Premier badge will be based mostly on skills competency and customer references. The new badges are effective Aug. 1 within the company’s flagship Google Cloud Partner Advantage Program.

Google Cloud is also increasing the funding and incentives for partners who achieve Premier status, rewarding partners on both the product level and customer value fronts, and boosting investments in such areas as deal sourcing. New incentives based on these Premier levels will begin in January 2024.

Auvik Networks Unveils Official Partner Program To Capture $16B Enterprise Opportunity

Completing a trifecta of vendors giving their partners a boost, network management provider Auvik Networks launched its first official partner program this week aimed at significantly boosting its channel business and going after the enterprise.

The Waterloo, Ont.-based company historically has gone to market directly, a strategy that worked for the company for its first decade in business. But over the past year Auvik has experienced dramatic growth across its partner community marked by an increase in new partners and 150 percent more business coming in from the channel.

Now Auvik wants to ratchet up the roughly 20 percent of business it does through the channel to 80 percent, CRO Bob Gault told CRN.

The company has experience working with systems integrator partners and has treated MSPs as customers rather than partners. But now Auvik’s plan is to grow its MSP partner business by leaning into what the company believes is an untapped $16 billion enterprise market opportunity, Gault said.

The Auvik Partner Program will help partners serve up network assessments using the Auvik Network Monitoring platform. The network assessments give partners expanded revenue opportunities including services, software and hardware, while giving end customers a more complete view into the state of their network.

The value- and volume-based Auvik Partner Program will be structured in three tiers. The first rung of the ladder is Silver, which offers partner discounts, free sales and technical training, webinars and community access. The Gold level provides deeper partner discounts, a best practices library, lead sharing, virtual and in-person training, a dedicated account manager, customer success manager and assigned account executive, network assessments and proposal-based MDF. The Platinum level offers Gold-level benefits along with the deepest partner discounts and quarterly business plans and reviews.

GreenPages Rebrands As Blue Mantis, Signaling Transformation Into Digital Era Service Provider

GreenPages, the 31-year-old CRN Solution Provider 500 powerhouse, has changed its name to Blue Mantis in recognition of its transformation into a digital era service provider.

Blue Mantis President Josh Dinneen told CRN that the name change reflects the massive multimillion-dollar transformation the next-generation cloud and cybersecurity services company has undergone over the past several years with new internal operational systems, leadership changes and multiple acquisitions.

The solution provider is ready to drive an expected 50 percent increase in the company’s ability to generate market-qualified leads and close to a 30 percent increase in sales-qualified leads with a new corporate website, Dinneen said.

The ability to make technology a differentiator for its customers has been a key factor in Blue Mantis’ own dramatic growth. The company has added 154 net-new customers in the past year, accounting for $30 million in sales.

That sales growth comes in the wake of a multimillion-dollar investment over the past three years in an internal systems transformation leveraging ServiceNow, NetSuite, Salesforce.com and Marketo marketing automation, said Dinneen.

At the same time the company has increased its cybersecurity staff and FinOps teams over the last two years by a factor of five. It has also more than doubled its cloud services team over that period and grown its GitOps team—which is driving next-generation application life-cycle automation—by 10X.

In addition to moving into a new office in Portsmouth, N.H., Blue Mantis has built out a new technology innovation center in Pawtucket, R.I., and a new office in Charlestown, Mass. It has also opened a new office in India—in essence becoming an international company to bolster its managed services practice.