For the week ending Nov. 22, CRN takes a look at the companies that brought their ‘A’ game to the channel including Wiz, Google Cloud, Descope, Nvidia, DXC and ServiceNow.

The Week Ending Nov. 22

Topping this week’s Came to Win list is fast-growing cloud security provider Wiz for a strategic acquisition around cloud remediation technology.

Also making this week’s list are Google Cloud for creating a new AI agent partner program and security startup Descope for launching its first channel program.

Nvidia is here for unveiling its new four-GPU “superchip” for advanced AI computing. And IT service provider DXC and workflow automation company ServiceNow make the list for teaming to create a new Center of Excellence to accelerate adoption of ServiceNow’s GenAI offerings.

Wiz To Acquire Cloud Remediation Startup Dazz For $450 Million

Cloud and AI security provider Wiz announced a deal this week to acquire channel-focused startup Dazz in a move to extend the vendor’s cloud and AI security platform with cloud remediation capabilities.

Calcalist reported the price tag for the planned acquisition of Dazz at $450 million. CRN has reached out to Wiz and Dazz for comment. A source familiar with the deal confirmed the figure to CRN.

Dazz offers a cloud security platform focused on remediation, including through capabilities such as application security posture management and continuous threat and exposure management.

In a post Thursday, Wiz co-founder and CEO Assaf Rappaport said Dazz brings an “industry-leading remediation engine” that will enable Wiz to “empower security teams to correlate data from multiple sources and manage application risks in one unified platform.”

In July, Dazz announced raising a $50 million round of funding, bringing the startup to $110 million in total funding since its launch in 2021.

It’s the second acquisition in 2024 for fast-growing Wiz, following its deal for cloud detection and response provider Gem Security in April, and its third acquisition overall.

Google Cloud Launches AI Agent Partner Program To Drive GenAI Sales, Customer Growth

Google Cloud makes this week’s Five Companies That Came to Win list with its plan to scale AI agent sales and customer adoption to new heights by launching the Google Cloud AI Agent ecosystem program to help partners build and co-innovate AI agents via new technical and go-to-market resources.

“Through this program, we’re enhancing the incentives, product support and co-selling opportunities to help our services and ISV partners bring these solutions to market faster, reach more customers and grow their AI agent businesses,” said Kevin Ichhpurani, president of Google Cloud’s Global Partner Organization, in a blog post.

In addition, the cloud giant launched a new AI Agent Space on the Google Cloud Marketplace with the goal of enabling customers to more easily find and deploy partner-built AI agents.

Google Cloud’s plan for its new AI Agent partner program is to increase the development and adoption of AI agents by supporting partners in three key areas: accelerated agent development, go-to-market success and increased customer visibility.

Descope Unveils First Channel Program To Shake Up Identity And Access Management With Partners

Staying on the topic of partner program launches, Descope is launching its first formal channel program to accelerate the growth of its simplified platform for customer identity and access management (CIAM) with the help of solution and service providers, Co-Founder Rishi Bhargava told CRN.

The startup is embracing a “partner-first” approach for its next phase of expansion and expecting to surpass its current rate of 30 percent of revenue generated through partners, Bhargava said.

“We are starting to see signs where channel partners are already bringing us into larger and larger opportunities,” he said. “We absolutely believe this will drive big growth.”

Descope is looking to scale up with the recruitment of more solution and service provider partners, who will gain a formalized process for engaging with the company as part of the new channel program, Bhargava said. Key benefits of the program include deal registration, incentives, presales support and joint marketing events.

Nvidia Reveals 4-GPU GB200 NVL4 Superchip

Nvidia makes this week’s list for debuting what is likely its biggest AI “chip” yet – the four-GPU Grace Blackwell GB200 NVL4 Superchip – in another sign of how the company is stretching the traditional definition of semiconductor chips to fuel its AI computing ambitions.

Announced at the Supercomputing 2024 event on Monday, the new product is a step up from Nvidia’s recently launched Grace Blackwell GB200 Superchip that was revealed in March.

The GB200 NVL4 Superchip is designed for “single server Blackwell solutions” running a mix of high-performance computing and AI workloads, said Dion Harris, director of accelerated computing at Nvidia, in a briefing with journalists.

DXC, ServiceNow Partner On New Center Of Excellence For Now Assist GenAI

Global technology service provider DXC unveiled a new Center of Excellence this week built with assistance from ServiceNow to help increase AI adoption using ServiceNow’s GenAI technologies.

The new Center of Excellence aims to show how the company’s customers can use the AI capabilities of ServiceNow in a practical way, said Howard Boville, DXC executive vice president of consulting and engineering services. That includes working with Now Assist, a generative AI-powered service within the Now Platform.

With the Center of Excellence, DXC can take advantage of all the knowledge it has built with customers around the world by bringing it all into a single location, Boville said.

Another benefit of the Center of Excellence is training opportunities for DXC personnel. ServiceNow has invested its own resources in the DXC Center, including providing its own experts to help train DXC employees.

Boville said the Center of Excellence builds on DXC’s 15-year-plus partnership with ServiceNow. Erica Volini, ServiceNow’s senior vice president for global partnerships and channels, told CRN that DXC is one of her company’s most aggressive partners in terms of GenAI.