5 Companies That Came To Win This Week

The Week Ending Nov. 21

This week's roundup of companies that came to win includes Buffalo, N.Y.-area MSPs who served their clients above and beyond the call of duty despite the massive snowstorm, Cisco's moves to boost its collaboration offerings for SMBs, a significant personnel move by HP as it prepares to split into two companies, a strategic technology alliance between a Hadoop software company and a leading data warehouse system provider, and new website data protection technology from a nonprofit startup.

MSPs Keep Customers Running Despite Epic Snowstorm

Managed service providers in the Buffalo, N.Y., area came through this week by working to keep their customers -- and themselves -- up and running despite this week's massive snowfall that has exceeded 5 feet in some places.

Displaying the kind of dedication solution providers are known for, employees at such companies as MVP Network Consulting, Tonawanda and BrightPlanIT worked to serve their customers. While some employees were able to do their job from their homes, many struggled through the weather to reach their offices. MVP Network workers that needed to get to the company's data center even used snowmobiles to get to work.

Cisco Targets SMBs With New Collaboration Offerings

Cisco has been generating a lot of press in recent months in such emerging technology areas as the Internet of Everything and software-defined networking. But this week the company was squarely focused on collaboration, one of its bread-and-butter technology areas.

This week at the 2014 Cisco Collaboration Summit in Los Angeles, CEO John Chambers said the company has been too focused on collaboration products for big companies. Cisco unveiled Project Squared, a cloud-based mobile application for messaging, file sharing and other collaboration capabilities for companies of all sizes. The company also specifically took aim at the SMB market with its new Business Edition 6000S collaboration and unified communications platform.

MapR Hadoop Wins Teradata's Backing

Among developers offering a distribution of the Hadoop big data platform, MapR Technologies may not have the name recognition of rivals Cloudera or Hortonworks. But this week MapR gained some serious visibility when data warehouse giant Teradata said it is tightly integrating MapR's Hadoop into the Teradata unified data architecture.

Solution providers told CRN that the deal should expand the market demand for MapR's Hadoop, particularly among businesses that are trying to leverage big data within their existing data warehouse environments. Teradata said it was seeing a growing demand for the integration from its customers who had chosen MapR for their Hadoop infrastructure.

Let's Encrypt Developing Simple, Free Way To Protect Data

With so many cyberthreats and online fraud lurking out there, Internet users need all the help they can get. This week Let's Encrypt came out of stealth mode to preview its certificate authority development project that aims to foster a safer World Wide Web.

Most websites today are using no encryption at all. Let's Encrypt, still in development, will make the process of obtaining the TLS certificates that protect data flowing between websites and users both simple and free. Let's Encrypt is the work of a nonprofit formed earlier this year called the Internet Security Research Group, backed by some industry heavyweights, including Mozilla, Cisco, Akamai Technologies and IdenTrust, the latter a consortium of some of the world's largest banks.

VMware Boosts Cloud Migration, DevOps Expertise With Acquisition

Cloud computing and DevOps are two of the hottest areas of the IT industry right now. VMware has strengthened its hand in both areas by acquiring MomentumSI, a professional services firm focused on public cloud migrations, OpenStack and rapid software development.

Austin, Texas-based MomentumSI has deep expertise in moving customers' on-premise systems to VMware-based public clouds, in addition to Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure clouds and the Google Cloud Platform. The company's DevOps practice helps development and IT teams work more closely to speed new software deployment. Sources told CRN the acquisition brings to VMware the kind of technological expertise it needs to expand its hybrid cloud services.