5 Companies That Came To Win This Week

For the week ending Nov. 19 CRN takes a look at the companies that brought their ‘A’ game to the channel.

The Week Ending Nov. 19

Topping this week’s Came to Win list is cloud security company Lacework for a round of financing that makes it one of the industry’s most valuable venture-backed cybersecurity companies.

Also making the list this week are cybersecurity startup Expel for its own impressive round of funding, DataCore for a savvy acquisition in the Kubernetes storage space, and AMD for another strong showing on the list of the world’s fastest supercomputers.

Also making this week’s list are AWS, Google, Microsoft and Oracle for all having a renewed shot at winning a new multibillion-dollar cloud services contract from the Pentagon.

Lacework Raises $1.3B On $8.3B Valuation To Expand Channel

Lacework became the third most valuable venture-backed cybersecurity company in the world this week when it raised $1.3 billion in Series D funding that boosted its valuation to $8.3 billion.

The San Jose, Calif.-based cloud security company wins kudos for its plans to use some of those financial resources to double down on the channel and work more efficiently with partners. That includes hiring more people with partner management experience for channel teams, expanding solution provider programs and working with partners to sharpen product messaging.

Channel partners have influenced more than 60 percent of Lacework’s new business in recent quarters, according to CFO Mike Staiger, either sourcing the opportunity themselves or executing a lead provided by the company. And the company wants to grow the share of partner-influenced business.

Expel Raises $140 Million In Google-Backed Funding To Grow Abroad

Lacework wasn’t the only cybersecurity startup that had a big week in raising capital. Expel, a managed detection and response technology developer, raised $140 million in Series E funding that boosted its valuation to $1 billion unicorn status.

Expel said it plans to use the capital infusion to strengthen the channel organization, expand international sales and extend the Kubernetes workload protection capabilities of its software.

And cloud data analytics tech provider ThoughtSpot also wins applause this week for raising $100 million in a Series F funding round that pushed the company’s valuation to $4.2 billion.

DataCore Acquires MayaData, Expands Into Container Technologies

Software-defined storage pioneer DataCore acquired MayaData this week, buying one of the leading independent developers of container-attached storage and the original developer of the OpenEBS open-source Kubernetes storage technology.

DataCore had previously invested $26 million in MayaData as part of a joint venture to develop storage container technology for Kubernetes.

The acquisition follows the same approach taken in the last year-plus by Veeam, which acquired Kasten in October 2020, and Pure Storage, which bought Portworx in September 2020.

AMD Continues To Gain Share Within The Top 500 Supercomputers

AMD continues to increase its presence among the world’s 500 fastest supercomputers, a sign of the chipmaker’s momentum in the high-performance computing space.

The latest (fall 2021) list of the top 500 supercomputers, released this week by the Top500 organization, said that AMD processors now power 73 of the top 500 supercomputers. That’s up from the 49 clusters AMDt powered in the previous (summer) ranking of supercomputers and more than triple the 21 clusters it powered one year ago.

The latest ranking also shows AMD powering four of the top 10 supercomputers and eight of the top 20.

The latest list did have some good news for AMD rival Intel in that 42 of the 70 new supercomputer clusters in the fall 2021 list were powered by Intel processors, while 28 were powered by AMD. But Intel’s overall share of the top 500 stands at 408, down from 459 one year earlier.

AWS, Google, Microsoft And Oracle Receive Solicitations For New Pentagon Cloud Contract

Cloud giants Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft and Oracle are all winners this week in that they all have a shot at winning a new multi-billion-dollar cloud services contract from the Pentagon.

This week the U.S. Department of Defense issued solicitations to the four companies as part of the multi-billion-dollar Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) cloud services project that will include multiple Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity contracts.

The new contract replaces the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud contract, potentially worth up to $10 billion, that the Pentagon awarded to Microsoft in October 2019, but had become mired in political controversy and legal challenges.