It was a big week for big announcements, topped off by the long-awaited introduction of Dell EMC's unified partner program, five months after the two giants came together in the biggest merger in the history of the technology industry.

20 percent – Stackable payout potential for storage products under the new unified partner program at Dell EMC. The program, unveiled last week, nearly doubles the storage rebates from the legacy EMC program and rewards partners handsomely for selling hyper-converged and converged infrastructure solutions combining server, storage and networking products. Dell EMC's goal with the launch of the new program? Deliver partners the most profitable partner program in the industry. "This is a giant leap forward in what is an extremely compelling opportunity for all of us together," President and Chief Commercial Officer Marius Haas told CRN.

More than 10,000 – Number of devices that some national channel partners of Cisco say they have that have been impacted by a faulty component from the networking giant. Cisco is proactively providing replacement gear for eligible customers whose Cisco switches, firewalls, routers and cloud-managed switches that contain the component were discovered as having caused system failure, regardless of whether the customers' equipment has failed yet or not. But Cisco said it will cover the costs of onsite removal and installation services only in cases where it's replacing equipment that has already failed. Cisco said it's not proactively sending out engineers for affected products that haven't failed yet.

$370 million – Price that Nokia has agreed to pay to acquire telecom software specialist Comptel. Finland-based Nokia Finland-based Nokia said Comptel – based in the same country - will add critical solutions for catalogue-driven service orchestration and fulfillment, intelligent data processing, customer engagement, and agile service monetization. The planned acquisition is part of Nokia's strategy to build a standalone software business by expanding and strengthening its software portfolio and go-to-market capabilities with additional sales capacity and a strategic partner network, according to a statement.

8.8 percent – Gain in stock price last week for solution provider giant Cognizant as it reached an agreement with activist investor Elliott Management to appoint three new independent members to its board of directors and create a financial policy committee. Later in the week, CEO Francisco D'Souza said the accord will lead to higher operating margins, larger digital investments and more cash returned to shareholders. Cogizant stock, which opened the week at $52.75 a share on the NASDAQ exchange, closed the week at $57.40.

$964 billion – What businesses will spend on the Internet of Things this year, up from $847 billion in 2016, according to Gartner. The research firm said businesses will represent 57 percent of IoT spending in 2017. According to Gartner, applications tailored to specific vertical markets – such as manufacturing field devices, process sensors for electrical generating plants and real-time location tools for healthcare – will drive the use of connected things for business in 2017.