5 Companies That Came To Win This Week

Moves By New Intel CEO Hint At Increased Focus On Mobile Computing

Newly appointed Intel CEO Brian Krzanich has begun reorganizing the giant chip maker, establishing a new business unit aimed at emerging products, particularly in the mobile computing market.

While Intel dominates the PC chip market, it has struggled competitively in the mobile device arena. Krzanich's moves likely signal that under his watch Intel will be more aggressive in pursuing that market against competitors AMD, Qualcomm and Samsung.

The "new devices group" will be run by Mike Bell, currently general manager of Intel's Mobile and Communications Group.

VMware Launches vCloud Hybrid Service

VMware launched its highly anticipated vCloud Hybrid Service this week, firing back against cloud service competitors Amazon and Microsoft, which recently have been making a lot of noise in the cloud arena.

The new Infrastructure-as-a-Service cloud offering is built on VMware's flagship vSphere software and extends the company's virtualization software into the public cloud. That allows customers to use VMware's virtualization and software-defined data center technologies for both on- and off-premise environments.

Partners applauded the vCloud Hybrid Service launch, noting that solution providers want to be able to offer cloud services to their customers without having to build their own public cloud systems.

Huawei Comes Out Swinging Against Its Detractors

Many had written off Huawei Enterprise U.S.A. after allegations last year that the Chinese telecom giant is a national security threat in the U.S., given its close ties to the Chinese government. And recent comments from a top Huawei executive suggesting the company had given up on the U.S. market wasn't exactly a confidence booster.

So it was something of a surprise when Huawei Enterprise channel executives came out swinging against the company's naysayers at the Huawei Partner Summit this week. Channels Vice President Rob Claus said competitors like Cisco have unfairly criticized Huawei and tried to set the tone of the company's brand.

"Our competitors are not being nice to us," Claus said. "We're not going to be nice to them." He touted the competitive advantages of his company's portfolio and said competitors such as Cisco, Dell and Hewlett-Packard can't out-innovate Huawei, arguing they have tried to innovate through acquisitions.

Hortonworks Expands Big Data Ecosystem Into The Windows Arena

Since Hadoop emerged as a key big data technology, much of the Hadoop-related development and optimization efforts have been around Linux. So while millions of users of Windows-based systems are also wrestling with big data challenges, the range of solutions available to them has been more limited.

This week big data software developer Hortonworks took a big step toward closing that technology gap when it began shipping a Windows edition of its Hadoop-based platform. That move, the company's channel partners said, would help them meet customer demand for Windows-based big data applications.

Since forming an alliance in 2011, Hortonworks and Microsoft have been working to bring Hadoop into the Windows ecosystem. Microsoft has developed implementations of Hadoop that run on Windows Server and Windows Azure, called HDInsight, that are currently available as public test builds.

Oklahoma Solution Providers Step Up To Help Tornado Victims Rebuild

It's hard to say that anyone involved in this week's devastating tornado in Oklahoma is a "winner," given the loss of life and widespread damage to homes and businesses. But whether it’s a catastrophe such as a hurricane in New Orleans or a tornado in Joplin, Mo., or a destructive fire that puts a business, government agency or facility like a hospital on the ropes, solution providers can find themselves in the role of first responder, helping customers recover from disaster as quickly as possible.

This week we were reminded of how critical solution providers can be as they step up when an area like Moore, Okla., suffers such devastation. Rob Bird, owner of Computers N Moore, estimated that 80 percent of his small-business clients in the town suffered damage and he was working flat out to help them recover. "We'll get back up," he said.

See CRN's 5 Companies That Dropped The Ball for the week ending May 24.