The VAR Guy

I’m not predicting a turnaround at Sun. But I do respect some of the company’s top brass, including CIO Bill Vass. Effective today, Vass is moving over to Sun’s Federal subsidiary, where he will help government organizations to maintain military-grade built-in security products.

The heat wave continues in my home state of New York, where temperatures are approaching 100 degrees or more during the day. I’ve decided to cool off this week…in Orlando, where temps are expected to top out at 95 degrees this week.

Skype is making the jump from your PC to your phone. Indeed, WiFi phones from Belkin, EdgeCore, NetGear and SMC will come with embedded Skype software.

A week after landing a $1 billion networking deal with Microsoft, Nortel is reaching out to North American channel partners.The company signed SMB distribution agreements with Ingram Micro, SYNNEX Corporation and Westcon Group, and also announced new plans to bolster partners’ profitability.

Symantec is making some noise today with updates to its unified Symantec Partner Program. The program includes five new, complimentary sales training modules and assessment tools on Symantec’s partner portal, dubbed PartnerNet.

Dell disappointed investors again today with a weak sales forecast. The company’s stock is trading near a five-year low. Critics say Dell was slow to embrace AMD processors; failed to scale its support organization; and didn’t keep pace with Apple on innovation. Heck, even I have switched from a Dell to a MacBook.

Microsoft has honored Accenture and Avanade with a “2006 Global Enterprise Partner of the Year Special Recognition Award.”

Accenture plans to pump $450 million into service-oriented architecture (SOA) technologies over the next three years.

Microsoft isn’t quite ready to develop applications for Linux, but the company is finally willing to co-exist with the open source operating system. The software giant is partnering with XenSource to bridge “Windows and Linux with virtualization interoperability.”

Johnny Depp isn’t the only pirate on the run this summer. Microsoft has filed 26 lawsuits accusing U.S. companies of selling pirated software, the latest move in its ramped-up efforts to boost sales by cracking down on illegal copies, according to the Associated Press.

I’m not hitting the panic button. And I’m not saying we’re heading for another tech slowdown. But be sure to watch tech earnings over the next few weeks. Already, we’ve seen warnings from SAP, AMD, EMC and numerous smaller companies.

You know the drill: You need to offer managed services and software services to bolster your margins. And it wouldn’t hurt to have some vertical market expertise as well.

Citrix Systems has signed up 3,000 resellers to support its SMB push, and is seeking even more partners across North America, EMEA, Latin America and the Caribbean. I have to tip my hat to the company: When Microsoft announced plans to introduce multi-user Windows NT software a decade ago, I figured Citrix was toast. Boy was I wrong. The company expects to generate revenue of $259 million to $265 million for its quarter ended June 30. Official results will be announced July 19.

If you haven’t embraced managed services yet, Microsoft may give you the push you need. At its partner conference today in Boston, the software giant vowed to introduce a hosted CRM software suite, dubbed Dynamics CRM Live, in North America within the next year.

Way back in January 2001, I predicted that Cisco, Lucent and Nortel would greatly increase their focus on software development and software licensing.