5 Companies That Came To Win This Week

The Week Ending Jan. 18

Topping this week's roundup of companies that came to win is Veeam, which pulled in a whopping $500 million in financing.

Also making the list this week are Microsoft for its strategic alliance with pharmacy giant Walgreens and for a significant military services contract award; IGEL for its Nvidia partnership and other moves in the endpoint protection space; Zix for its deal to buy email security provider AppRiver; and IBM for a shareholder vote of approval for its proposed $34 billion acquisition of Red Hat.

Not everyone in the IT industry was making smart moves this week, of course. For a rundown of companies that were unfortunate, unsuccessful or just didn't make good decisions, check out this week's 5 Companies That Had A Rough Week roundup.

Veeam Gets Massive $500 Million Funding, Sets Sights On R&D, Acquisitions For Future Growth

Cloud-focused data protection software developer Veeam caught everyone's attention this week when the company announced that it had raised $500 million in a new round of funding.

Until now Veeam had raised only $32 million in financing, some from the company's founders and $15 million from Insight Venture Partners. Because the company is profitable and generating cash, it didn't need to seek additional outside funding.

But the financing opportunity was too good to pass up, providing Veeam with lots of cash to accelerate R&D and possibly make strategic acquisitions, all with an eye toward expanding into new areas around cloud data management.

It was a big week for venture funding announcements: Earlier in the week Rubrik, another developer of cloud data management technology, said it had raised $261 million in Series E financing.

Microsoft Wins $1.76 Billion Military Services Contract, Forms Strategic Alliance With Walgreens

Microsoft scored big— twice—this week, winning a $1.76 billion contract to supply IT consulting and support services to the U.S. military and establishing a seven-year partnership with Walgreens to become the pharmacy’s strategic cloud service provider with the goal of developing new health-care delivery models.

As part of the Walgreens Boots Alliance, Microsoft will become Walgreen’s cloud service provider and Walgreens will migrate the majority of its IT infrastructure to Microsoft Azure and roll out Office 365 to more than 380,000 employees, according to the companies. Perhaps more importantly, the two companies will collaboratively develop health-care solutions that improve health-care delivery and lower health-care costs.

The alliance is widely seen as a countermove by both companies against Amazon, which is widely expected to get into the pharmacy and health-care businesses.

Under the $1.76 billion contract with the U.S. Department of Defense, Microsoft will provide a range of IT consulting and support services to various U.S. military branches, the U.S. Coast Guard and the intelligence community. The five-year contract, under the DoD’s Enterprise Software Initiative, calls for Microsoft to deliver product engineering services for military software developers.

IGEL Set To Shake Up Endpoint Market With Nvidia, AWS Integration And MSP/SI Program

IGEL made some savvy strategic moves this week that are raising the stakes in the endpoint protection and management arena. The company, which recently broke the $100 million revenue threshold, has an ambitious goal of becoming the undisputed No. 1 company in the software-defined endpoint market over the next 18 to 24 months.

Topping the list of IGEL's announcements is a blockbuster move to put the IGEL OS on a 64-bit ARM-based Nvidia chipset, creating an ARM solution that combines Nvidia's compute power with IGEL's endpoint OS and management platform.

IGEL has also formed a partnership with Teradici that provides IGEL integration with AWS Workspaces through the Teradici PCoIP protocol, responding to demand for deploying AWS Workspaces with IGEL.

A new partnership with LG will make the IGEL OS available on LG all-in-one thin-client devices. And a new MSP/Systems Integrator program that IGEL is preparing to roll out will provide partners with an opportunity to grow IGEL software licenses into wider endpoint managed services offerings.

IGEL is slated to formally unveil the new initiatives at its Disrupt 2019 End User Computing Forum next month.

Zix Buying AppRiver In Email Security Game-Changer

In a move that will shake up the email security arena, email encryption service provider Zix is acquiring email security provider AppRiver in a $275 million deal.

When completed, the acquisition will create a secure email juggernaut in the SMB market with $180 million in recurring revenue and a "game-changing application delivery" option for MSPs, Zix CEO David Wagner said.

The acquisition will also grow Zix's stable of channel partners 10-fold, meaning the company will suddenly become a major presence in the channel.

IBM Moves Closer To $34 Billion Red Hat Acquisition With Shareholder Approval

IBM's deal to acquire open-source software vendor Red Hat moved one step closer to completion Wednesday when Red Hat shareholders overwhelmingly approved the deal.

IBM plans to leverage Red Hat's software to become a leader in hybrid cloud systems.

IBM is paying $190 per share to acquire Red Hat in the deal that was announced on Oct. 28. The companies hope to wrap up the acquisition this year.