The VAR Guy

CIOs plan to increase IT spending 5.2 percent this year and 4.8 percent in 2007, according to a survey by Merrill Lynch.

Talk about a triple whammy. CA surprised investors today by delaying 4Q financial results, restating 3Q results and delaying a June 8 Financial Analyst Day with Wall Street’s power brokers.

Dell’s decision to preinstall Google search software on some of its desktops is a watershed event in the PC industry.

Gartner and IDC have released their latest sales estimates for the server market, and most major vendors are declaring victory. Let’s check the claims vs. market realities.

Keep a close eye on this week’s Retail Systems Conference in Chicago. That’s where NCR, Novell and other major vendors are unveiling their latest retail-related solutions.

Talk about delivering cradle-to-grave services. BearingPoint says it has helped Texas offer online ordering for birth and death certificates.

For the second time this month, Unisys has made an open source move that warrants your attention. The company has signed a worldwide distribution agreement with MySQL Inc. to support the open source database. The deal comes three weeks after Unisys signed a similar deal with JBoss, a leading provider of open source middleware.

Eager to cash in on the SMB sector? Want to ride the IBM brand into the enterprise? Distributors are happy to help. Ingram Micro today introduced flexible finance and leasing options, face-to-face regional seminars and other services to help solutions providers support SMB organizations. Separately, Tech Data unveiled new services to help integrators develop, sell and support IBM solutions.

For the third time in a month, a prominent CA Inc. executive is leaving the company. The latest departure involves CFO Robert Davis, who is departing “under mutual agreement.” Other recent defections include CTO Mark Barrenechea and COO Jeff Clarke. CA has already warned that its quarterly results, to be announced May 30, won’t meet expectations.

Okay, we admit it. Some of us were Carly Fiorina fans. She made big promises … developed a grand vision for HP’s merger with Compaq … but failed to deliver the financial goods at HP.