5 Companies That Came To Win This Week

The Week Ending June 15

Topping this week's roundup of companies that came to win is AT&T, which got the green light this week to proceed with its $85.4 billion acquisition of Time Warner.

Also making the list this week is Cohesity for its impressive $250 million financing round, Continuum for an acquisition that significantly boosts its position in the MSP security arena, Salesforce for expanding its e-commerce lineup with a new B2B offering, and Accenture and Optiv for savvy hires in security services.

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 Five Companies That Had A Rough Week roundup.

AT&T Overcomes Government Opposition To Its $85.4 Billion Acquisition Bid For Time Warner

AT&T will move to quickly wrap up its $85.4 billion deal to buy media giant Time Warner after the telecommunications giant decisively won a court battle against the U.S. Department of Justice this week.

Following a six-week trial, U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon ruled Wednesday that the acquisition can go ahead without any conditions or requirements. Some observers had expected that even if the judge had approved the deal, he might set conditions such as requiring AT&T to sell off its DirecTV business or Time Warner's broadcasting unit.

The ruling is seen as potentially clearing the way for similar "vertical" mergers between content producers and content distributors. Indeed, the same day of the ruling, Comcast made a $65 billion bid for 21st Century Fox, topping an existing offer by Disney to acquire the company.

Cohesity Closes Massive $250 Million Funding Round

Hyper-converged infrastructure technology developer Cohesity got everyone's attention this week when it announced that it had raised $250 million in funding from some big names including Softbank Vision Fund, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Cisco.

The new Series D round of funding brings the San Jose-based company's total financing to an impressive $410 million.

The company will use the additional funding to fuel its market expansion agenda, especially in Asia.

Continuum Acquires Carvir To Accelerate SIEM, SOC Capabilities

Making a big MSP security play, Continuum this week said it had acquired Carvir, an MSP-focused developer of monitored and managed security technology.

With the acquisition Continuum is significantly expanding its security business, including accelerating its plan to add a U.S.-based security operations center and SIEM (security information and event management) tools to its product and services portfolio.

The acquisition of Cumming, Ga.-based Carvir also brings Continuum about 580 MSP partners and more than 4,000 protected client sites. But Carvir's security expertise and its U.S.-based security operations center are the critical elements that will really accelerate Continuum's move to become a major provider of security services to MSPs.

Salesforce Jumps Into B2B Arena With New Commerce Cloud Offering

Leveraging the technology it gained in its acquisition of CloudCraze in March, Salesforce this week launched it’s new business-to-business e-commerce cloud application.

The CRM market leader unveiled B2B Commerce, an addition to its Commerce Cloud portfolio, that's derived from CloudCraze's e-commerce platform. The new product extends the Salesforce e-commerce cloud service lineup that began with the company's 2016 acquisition of Demandware.

The addition of the CloudCraze technology is expected to help Salesforce customers manage relationships with suppliers and business partners.

Accenture, Optiv Make Key Hires To Expand Their Security Services

Channel giants Accenture and Optiv both win kudos this week for making savvy hires that will help them expand their security service offerings for customers.

Accenture hired the founder and CEO of next-generation anti-virus software developer Invincea and charged him with growing the company's portfolio of security solutions delivered as a service.

Anup Ghosh will work to integrate a number of third-party security products and Accenture's own threat intelligence offerings into a single platform supported by the company's analytics engine.

Optiv, meanwhile, landed a prominent EY security strategist who will be tasked with developing a holistic security services strategy and help address industrywide execution challenges. Chad Holmes will build a business model through which Optiv will go beyond helping clients with IT security strategy and architecture, also taking them through the build and operate phases.

Optiv's goal with the hire is to offer a comprehensive portfolio of managed, strategic advisory and implementation services.