Five Companies That Came To Win This Week

Ruckus Wireless Expands Channel As It Preps For IPO

Ruckus Wireless, which is reportedly adding 600 new channel partners every quarter, is ramping up its channel efforts as it prepares for an initial public offering.

Networking and storage vet David Zimmer joined in April, and Anita Pandey, Ruckus' director of channel marketing, came over this week from rival Meru, where she held a similar role. Channel partners, meanwhile, are hoping that Ruckus keeps heading in this promising direction.

Avnet Inks Savvis Deal, Launches Cloud Solutions

Avnet Technology Solutions this week inked a deal with Savvis to provide cloud solutions in North America and revealed plans to launch a dedicated cloud solutions team.

"They have enterprise-grade, global cloud and managed service offerings. We'll be really busy in the second half of 2012 [adding more cloud vendors]," Tim FitzGerald, vice president of the Avnet Cloud Solutions group, told CRN.

Storage Startup GreenBytes Lands $12 Million In VC Funding

SSD array developer GreenBytes raised $12 million in venture capital funding, which it plans to use to further development of its all-SSD and hybrid SSD hard drive storage products. The new B Round of funding brings the total venture capital investment in the company, which was founded in 2007, to about $20 million.

GreenBytes is also now installing its first all-SSD array into production environments.

Microsoft Aiming For 1 Billion Skype Users

Microsoft paid $8.5 billion for Skype, and the 250 million people currently using the service is nothing to sneeze at. But Skype President Tony Bates has much greater ambitions. "If we can get to a billion [users], I'd be very happy," Bates told the crowd at the D10 conference, as reported by AFP.

How will Microsoft get there? By teaming with Facebook and working to expand Skype's presence on mobile platforms, Bates said.

Verizon Dusting Competitors In 4G LTE Rollout

AT&T launched its 4G LTE service in Cleveland this week, the 39th such launch since the carrier began rolling out the technology. But that is still 219 less than Verizon, which is currently running in 258 markets nationwide, Cnet reported this week. OK, Sprint and T-Mobile don't have any LTE deployments, but AT&T has a long way to go.

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