The VAR Guy

As CEO of Hewlett-Packard during the biggest scandal in the company’s history, Mark Hurd’s natural instinct is to try and save the day. But The VAR Guy has a bad feeling in his stomach. He’s starting to think HP made a mistake when it gave CEO Hurd the additional title of chairman.

Oops. The VAR Guy didn’t post his daily blog this morning because he was editing content for that old, reliable media format called a magazine. The paper edition, he’s proud to say, enjoys a growing following.

The VAR Guy must be getting a little older. He has taken far too long to solve a simple riddle: Where is Novell NetWare Pioneer Drew Major, the father of network operating systems? Has Major retired? No. Is he running another startup? Sort of.

Nortel is taking a close look at the world’s top 10 enterprise application providers and mulling new Unified Communication partnerships, The VAR Guy has learned.

The VAR Guy spent Tuesday at Interop in New York. Although smaller than the monster conferences from the 1990s, this Interop was a solid event with good mix of vendors on hand.

It’s been more than a decade since Novell’s glory days in the early 1990s, when the company promoted training, partnerships and its Yes campaign to achieve server software dominance.

During a consulting call on Friday, somebody asked The VAR Guy the following question: “What is CDW? A distributor? An online reseller? Something else?”

Symbol Technologies has put itself on the auction block. Motorola has apparently placed a bid. The VAR Guy suspects someone from Symbol leaked the story in order to bring other bidders to the table–fast.

Some name changes work out splendidly. Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali. Andersen Consulting to Accenture. The Highlanders to The New York Yankees. Great moves.

From its small but growing offices in Manhattan, Xandros is taking aim at Microsoft. The upstart Linux provider tells The VAR Guy that its channel program, launched in June, has attracted hundreds of VARs. Xandros VP Todd Kanfer expects “thousands” of partners to promote the company’s Linux offering as a reliable, secure alternative to Microsoft on the server … and even the desktop.

The VAR Guy has a reputation for losing pens, pencils, staplers … and USB drives. Then he heard about a USB Watch from Edge Technology. Sure it keeps time. But it also offers 256MB to 1GB of storage right on your wrist. Nifty but The VAR Guy typically doesn’t wear a watch. Maybe that’s why he always gets home late.

The VAR Guy has spotted the next big opportunity for solutions providers. Whether you call it city WiFi, public broadband or municipal wireless, there’s growing demand for VARs that know how to deploy, integrate and maintain wireless networks across towns and cities.

Cisco Systems made it official today, introducing the Master Security Specialization. Cisco says the Master Security Specialization offers further differentiation, growth opportunities and economic incentives, including higher Value Incentive Program rebates as a reward for building sophisticated security capabilities and for being committed to customer success. The VAR Guy expects Cisco to introduce a similar Master Specialization for Unified Communications within the next few months.

The VAR Guy has never been much of an investor. But he knows how to read a stock chart. And boy are the charts for Dell and Hewlett-Packard heading in opposite directions. Seems like Dell lost its way and HP got on track around April 2005–a few weeks after NCR veteran Mark Hurd arrived as HP’s new CEO.

Microsoft is earning praise for designing a school of the future in Philadelphia. But The VAR Guy took a closer look and saw an interesting sub-plot from Meru Networks. The company supplied the school district’s infrastructure, and has actually convinced a few enterprises and universities to deploy networks that have practically no wires.

Cisco Systems on Sept. 12 is expected to announce specific details about its Master program for IT security specialists.

The VAR Guy tried to unplug from work over the weekend but then he saw the following headline in his local paper: CA Turnover Continues.

One of The VAR Guy’s early mentors always said “software wants to be free.” Maybe “nearly free” is a better term to use. Somewhere between proprietary CRM software like Oracle/Siebel and modern hosted applications like Salesforce.com, a new market opportunity for channel partners is emerging.

Already a leader in enterprise wireless, Symbol Technologies continues to develop outdoor WiFi equipment for college and business campuses. And Symbol did bid on a municipal wireless project in California. But don’t expect Symbol to jump on the MuniWireless bandwagon.

It’s no secret that Cisco and Microsoft are on a collision course in the unified communications and security markets. The VAR Guy gives both companies credit for ensuring interoperability between their respective network access control technologies–which prevent infected systems from accessing network resources. But Cisco earns extra points in The VAR Guy’s book.

Shirley Turner kept her word. Intel’s director of North American channels marketing gave The VAR Guy a call right on schedule Tuesday–despite the fact that Intel was set to unveil a major restructuring in less than two hours.

Cisco CEO John Chambers and The VAR Guy will both be in Boston this week, attending The Security Standard. During this influential summit for CXOs, Chambers and other key company executives will describe Cisco’s overall security architecture. And watch for updates on Cisco’s Unified Communications strategy.