5 Companies That Came To Win This Week

The Week Ending Sept. 1

This week's roundup of companies that came to win is headed up by VMware, which made waves at its annual VMWorld conference in Las Vegas with the introduction of a plan to offer Kubernetes containers as a service on an enterprise scale. The virtualization kingpin also got rave reviews from channel partners when it announced the pricing structure for its VMware on AWS Cloud service.

Also making the list are Dell EMC, which said it had patched up its partner portal sufficiently to reinstate training requirements for federal partners, as well as Hewlett Packard Enterprise, which was all smiles when CEO Meg Whitman confirmed that she won't be leaving the company to head up Uber.

Of course, not every company in the IT industry was celebrating this week. For a rundown of companies that were unfortunate, unsuccessful, or just made plain-old bad decisions, check out this week's 5 Companies That Had A Rough Week roundup.

VMware, Pivotal, Google Unveil Enterprise Container Service

VMware and Pivotal, two members of the Dell EMC family of businesses, unveiled a partnership this week with Google Cloud to develop technology to offer Kubernetes containers as a service to enterprise customers.

The partnership is known as Pivotal Container Service, or PKS, and the company said it will bring production-ready Kubernetes to enterprises and service providers on VMware vSphere and Google Cloud Platform with full-time compatibility with Google Container Engine.

PKS is a commercial release of the open-source Kubo project launched last spring by Pivotal and Google Cloud. PKS is slated to be available beginning in the fourth quarter and is expected to ship as a stand-alone product that can integrate with Pivotal Cloud Foundry and VMware's software-defined data center infrastructure.

Western Digital To Acquire Tegile

Storage giant Western Digital made a splash this week with the news that it would acquire data center flash storage startup Tegile, and would complete the deal as early as next week.

Western Digital's acquisition of Tegile follows HPE's $1 billion acquisition of all-flash storage vendor Nimble last spring. Tegile will become part of Western's Data Center Systems business unit, and its products will complement Western's ActiveScale product line, which focuses on big data applications.

In an interview with CRN, Tegile CEO Rohit Kshertrapal said the combined company will mean big margin opportunities for partners and would provide a more focused channel relationship than IT giants like Dell EMC and HPE.

Dell EMC Reinstates Training Requirements For Federal Partners

Little more than a month ago, it didn't look like Dell EMC had the wherewithal to provide training to its federal partners via its new online partner portal. But now the Round Rock, Texas, company says it has made the necessary fixes to the portal to allow federal partners to complete training requirements and advance through the program.

In late July, Dell EMC said training requirements for federal partners would be suspended until the beginning of the company's 2019 fiscal year, which begins in February. The glitchy portal had been problematic from its beginnings last February, and many partners were unable to complete, and is some cases start, training programs.

Dell EMC was scrambling to fix the problems, and got the portal sorted out so quickly that training requirements for federal partners are back in force and on their original schedule.

Whitman To Stay With HPE

Hewlett Packard Enterprise partners said they were ecstatic that HPE CEO Meg Whitman had decided to stay at the helm of the Palo Alto, Calif., company she's led since its split from Hewlett Packard Inc. in 2015.

Whitman was on the short list of executives being considered for the CEO job at ride-sharing company Uber reportedly up until this week when that company's board met to select a new leader.

HPE partners told CRN this week that they were "overjoyed" that Whitman would stay with the company. They credited Whitman with HPE's channel renaissance, and said Whitman had transformed HPE from a debt-ridden company with stale products and a demoralized partner network to a smaller, more nimble company with a re-ignited innovation engine and an enthusiastic channel.

VMware On AWS Pricing

Channel partners said VMware Cloud On AWS has what it takes to reshape the cloud landscape with pricing that will draw customers evaluating public and private cloud alternatives.

Partners told CRN that VMware on AWS can beat on-premises private cloud on total cost of ownership, and could even be in line with public cloud options, including AWS.

AWS CEO Andy Jassy said this week that VMware Cloud on AWS is "much more cost-effective" than rival hybrid cloud options currently on the market. Unveiled this week at the annual VMWorld conference in Las Vegas, the service's pricing is set at $8.37 per hour, per host, or roughly $6,100 a year. There's a minimum of four hosts for any cluster. Each host offers 2 CPUs with 36 cores, 512 GB of RAM and a 3.6 TB cache, plus 10.7 TB of raw capacity flash storage.