5 Companies That Came To Win This Week Feb 25

For the week ending Feb. 25 CRN takes a look at the companies that brought their ‘A’ game to the channel.

The Week Ending Feb. 25

Topping this week’s Came to Win list is Intel for debuting its new 12th-Gen Core processors for laptops that the company says can outperform competing chips from AMD and Apple.

Also making this week’s list are Cloudflare for a strategic acquisition in the email security space, big data transformation tech developer dbt Labs for an impressive funding round, Rubrik for expanding its $5 million ransomware warranty offer, and a key acquisition by The Channel Company – CRN’s parent company – in channel marketing services.

Intel Takes On Apple, AMD With 12th-Gen Core P- And U-Series CPUs For Laptops

Demonstrating its technical prowess in the laptop chip arena, Intel this week launched its 12th-generation Core P-series and U-series CPUs, which the chipmaker said can outperform Apple’s M1 and AMD’s Ryzen 5000 processors in multiple cases.

The new processors bring Intel’s Alder Lake hybrid architecture to thin-and-light laptop computers. While Intel has previously released U-series processors for previous generations, the P-series represents a new performance class of mobile processor for the chipmaker.

The CPUs are expected to be used in more than 250 laptop designs this year from such manufacturers as Acer, Dell Technologies, HP Inc., Lenovo, Samsung and other OEMs.

Cloudflare To Buy Area 1 Security To Boost Email Defense Capabilities

Web performance and security provider Cloudflare struck a deal this week to acquire Area 1 Security, a developer of phishing protection and threat intelligence technology, for $162 million.

Email is the largest cyberattack vector on the internet, making email security critical to any Zero Trust network, said Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince. With the acquisition Cloudflare can help businesses stop corporate phishing attacks by preemptively discovering and eliminating them before they can inflict damage.

Cloudflare entered the email security space last year with tools to manage incoming email routing and to prevent email spoofing and phishing on outgoing emails. The Area 1 Security acquisition will expand those offerings.

Staying on the topic of strategic acquisitions in the security realm, Darktrace is buying attack surface management vendor Cybersprint for $53.7 million in a move to provide customers with insights that help identify risks and eliminate security blind spots.

dbt Labs Raises $222M, Boosts Valuation To $4.2B

Data transformation tech developer dbt Labs raised an impressive $222 million in a Series D round of funding this week that put the Philadelphia-based startup’s valuation at $4.2 billion.

Also impressive was the fact that investors in the funding round included data lakehouse platform company Databricks, data cloud services provider Snowflake and cloud application giant Salesforce – three of the fastest growing companies in the IT industry.

The round was led by Altimeter with participation from Amplify Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia, Coatue, Tiger Global, ICONIQ Growth, GV and GIC

Founded in 2016, dbt Labs offers a development framework and tools that data engineers and analysts use to transform, test and document data in cloud data warehouse systems.

Rubrik Extends $5M Ransomware Warranty To Data Stored On Microsoft Azure

Less than five months after launching its $5 million data protection warranty, data protection appliance and cloud developer Rubrik wins kudos for extending that guarantee to include Rubrik-protected data on Microsoft Azure.

This week Rubrik said it will pay up to $5 million to recover data stored on Azure via Rubrik’s Cloud Vault technology. Rubrik introduced Rubrik Cloud Vault, a fully managed isolated cloud archival service built on Azure, in December

The latest move extends the $5 million warranty Rubrik began offering in October to customers who suffer losses from ransomware attacks on data protected by the company. Last May, Rubrik first introduced protection against ransomware attacks on data stored on its technology.

The Channel Company Expands Its Global Footprint With bChannels Acquisition

And speaking of significant channel acquisitions this week, The Channel Company acquired bChannels, a 23-year-old global channel marketing powerhouse, in a move that expands The Channel Company’s digital marketing services reach.

bChannels operates a breakthrough AI-based precision marketing platform for “to partner” and “through partner” marketing initiatives and has what is considered the largest global partner database with more than 660,000 partners across 208 countries, translated into 38 languages.

The acquisition of bChannels adds considerable international muscle to The Channel Company with bChannel’s 150 employees focused on digital marketing services in the U.K., Spain, Malaysia, Australia and the U.S. The combined companies have more than 400 employees worldwide.

The Channel Company, parent company of CRN and crn.com, operates a best-in-class U.S. channel database and provides a robust set of content and creative digital marketing services that will complement the marketing capabilities of bChannels. Blaine Reddon, CEO of The Channel Company, said channel digital marketing services is the fastest growing part of the company’s business.