Five companies on top this week

Lenovo reported strong fourth-quarter and full-year earnings last week that show it's the fastest-growing PC maker among the world’s top four vendors for the tenth consecutive quarter. Strong sales of its notebook and desktop PCs, particularly in North America, were key drivers of growth.

Lenovo's notebook business grew 41 percent year-over-year, accounting for $US4.2 billion and representing 56 percent of the company's overall sales. Lenovo's desktop business grew 43 percent compared to the same period last year.

Google last week announced it had sealed the $US12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility, officially entering the hardware market. It's a big price, but those mobile patents could be a major advantage in the looming mobile legal wars.

Meanwhile, a jury in Oracle's patent infringement lawsuit against Google ruled that the search firm did not step on Java patents in developing Android, settling one of the key questions in the case and decreasing the likelihood that Oracle will be able to obtain a massive payout in the case.

EMC last week unveiled initiatives designed to make it easier for partners to build cloud practices and take advantage of new services offerings. At EMC's Global Partner Summit, the company also showed how it plans to turn its direct sales reps into allies of the channel.

"One rule is to bring a partner into a deal no later than the second sales call," Gregg Ambulos, EMC's senior vice president of global channel sales, told CRN. "Or if a partner has a registered deal, EMC [sales reps] cannot take it direct. If they do, then there's ramifications for the sales team. All these rules have been tied into the EMC sales comp plan."

VMware has added a big management piece to its end-user computing portfolio by acquiring desktop virtualization startup Wanova.

Wanova's flagship product, Mirage, centralises image management by using layering technology in the data centre. Mirage blends elements of client and server virtualisation, giving IT departments full control over endpoints while allowing users to customise their machines as they see fit.

VMware is planning to integrate Mirage with View, its own desktop virtualisation product. Mirage's ability to centrally manage both physical and virtual PCs, regardless of whether they're connected to the network, is seen in the channel as an important addition to the VMware portfolio.

SAP will acquire Ariba, a developer of cloud-based business commerce network software, in a $US4.3 billion deal that underscores its goal of expanding beyond its traditional ERP on-premise application roots and into cloud computing, mobile computing and business analytics.

Ariba develops cloud-based, business-to-business commerce applications. SAP said the acquisition would establish it as "the leading business network" by adding collaborative commerce applications to its product lineup.

The announcement follows SAP's $US3.4 billion acquisition of SuccessFactors, earlier this year.