For the week ending April 10, CRN takes a look at the companies that brought their ‘A’ game to the channel including Lenovo, Amazon Web Services, Caylent, NWN and Plugable.
The Week Ending April 10
Topping this week’s Five Companies that Came to Win list is Lenovo for concluding its acquisition of high-performance storage technology developer Infinidat in a move that could reshape the enterprise storage space.
Also making the list is Amazon Web Services for launching a wave of new and updated channel initiatives and partner incentives. Leading AWS partner Caylent is here for its acquisition of Pronetx, a customer experience consulting firm with next-level Amazon Connect expertise. And solution provider NWN wins applause for launching a suite of managed security services, NWN Cybersecurity, which aims to boost cyber defense for staff-constrained customers.
And laptop peripherals vendor Plugable is doubling down on the channel, upping its product ambitions following a new minority equity stake it has received from Taiwanese PC maker Acer.
Lenovo Closes Infinidat Acquisition, Instantly Becomes A Top Enterprise Storage Player
Lenovo tops this week’s Came to Win list as the IT giant closed its blockbuster acquisition of high-performance enterprise storage provider Infinidat.
Lenovo, which provides servers and PCs to customers ranging from small businesses to enterprises, has long offered SMB-focused storage products, but has not matched its enterprise server market with corresponding storage.
That now changes with Lenovo’s new Infinidat storage business.
Last year Lenovo unveiled its plan to acquire Israel-based Infinidat, a privately held developer of high-performance storage technology founded in 2011.
Terms of the deal have never been disclosed.
Infinidat raised $370 million in total funding from multiple investors including Goldman Sachs’ growth equity unit, TPG, and Israel-based ION Asset Management. At one point, in 2017, the company had a market valuation of $1.6 billion.
Lenovo, on its website, said the Infinidat acquisition strengthens the company’s position in enterprise storage and enhances its ability to deliver resilient, intelligent, AI-ready data infrastructure.
Infinidat’s storage business is centered on its InfiniBox SSA all-flash storage arrays, InfiniBox high-performance hybrid flash and disk arrays, InfiniBox high-performance hybrid storage for data protection use cases, and InfiniGuard purpose-built backup appliances.
AWS Launches New Partner Programs, Incentives And AI Tech
Amazon Web Services tops this week’s came to Win list with a slew of new and updated partner programs, channel incentives and AI capabilities for its army of 130,000 partners.
AWS debuted a unified, revamped Partner Central hub that’s powered by Amazon Bedrock AgentCore with AI agents that work 24/7. The platform automates opportunity management, surfaces real-time funding eligibility, and eliminates administrative friction that slows deals. It consolidates what were previously fragmented systems and separate portals for co-sell, AWS Marketplace, funding, and support into one platform.
The new Partner Revenue Measurement system allows AWS for the first time to precisely attribute revenue partners drive through both resell and influence, making it possible to see and credit the full scope of value a partner creates.
The new Partner Greenfield Program provides a simple, predictable blueprint that combines enablement, funding, and co-sell support to help partners prospect, activate, and grow new AWS customers. And new benefits for the Think Big for Small Business (TBSB) program include go-to-market funding with tiered lead generation that deliver qualified leads directly to partners.
For the first time AWS is paying partners direct cash benefits for delivering managed services. And a new AI assessment fund will help partners accelerate AI deal pipeline development.
AWS AI Star Caylent Buys Amazon Connect Firm Pronetx To Drive ‘AI-First Services’ Into Customer Experience
Caylent, a leading AWS partner, took a big step to differentiate itself in the AWS ecosystem this week with the acquisition of Pronetx, a customer experience consulting firm with next-level Amazon Connect expertise.
The acquisition deal extends Caylent’s AI-first services into customer experience, offering organizations a single partner to design, migrate, operate, and continuously evolve their CX systems on AWS.
Amazon Connect is AWS’ flagship AI-powered contact center services offering.
Irvine, Calif.-based Caylent is an AWS Premier Tier Services Partner that won AWS’ 2025 global consulting partner of the year for GenAI, migration, and security, as well as Canadian consulting partner of the year.
Pronetx has deep specialization in Amazon Connect and AWS native omnichannel solutions.
Caylent CEO Valerie Henderson said the “intelligent enterprise is not complete until customer experience catches up.”
NWN Adds Managed Security Services With MDR Partnership, Penetration Testing And vCISO
NWN wins kudos this week for launching a suite of managed security services, NWN Cybersecurity, which aims to boost cyber defense for staff-constrained customers through human expertise and AI augmentation, NWN executives told CRN.
The Boston-based company, No. 59 on CRN’s 2025 Solution Provider 500, said that NWN Cybersecurity combines new in-house managed security services such as penetration testing and vCISO with MDR (managed detection and response) delivered through a partnership with Arctic Wolf.
With the NWN Cybersecurity offering, “now you have full-stack managed services, along with a managed security player, all embedded into one pane of glass,” NWN CEO Jim Sullivan said. “It addresses safer environments for customers—whether it’s on-prem or in the cloud, across multiple domains, along with multiple different security solutions that we’re integrating to.”
The MDR offering will provide 24/7 agentic-enhanced protection to customers including continuous detection, mitigation and resolution of threats and attacks.
NWN also unveiled a “fully managed penetration testing as-a-service platform that’s ours that we’re deploying. And we have ransomware protection as-a-service, which is built in-house here,” said NWN CMO Andrew Gilman.
NWN’s new vCISO service comprises “new strategic security consulting capabilities—where we can come in and help our customers and augment their leadership capabilities in the CISO realm—to really prepare for what’s next while continuing to help them operate at scale,” Gilman said.
With New Acer Investment, Peripherals Company Plugable Eyes Channel Growth
Laptop peripherals vendor Plugable is doubling down on the channel, upping its product ambitions and boosting its supply as the result of a new minority equity stake it has received from Taiwanese PC maker Acer.
In an exclusive interview with CRN, Plugable CEO Lynn Smurthwaite-Murphy (pictured) said the investment from Acer Gadget, a subsidiary of Acer, represents a “strategic partnership” between the two vendors, which is already helping her company invest in the channel.
“With the investment, we were able to almost double our channel and field sales team, so we’ve been expanding distribution and our channel partners—and that’s been our fastest growing part of our business,” she said.
Founded in 2009, Plugable is a 55-employee, channel-centric company that makes a variety of peripherals for PCs, including docking stations and, more recently, external GPU enclosures that bring extra computing power to laptops via Thunderbolt connectivity.
Plugable now works with three of the largest U.S. distributors: TD Synnex, Ingram Micro and D&H Distributing, and nearly 700 channel partners, including SHI, CDW and Insight.
On top of growing Plugable’s channel and field sales team, the company is boosting spending in channel marketing and incentive programs, according to the CEO.
