The VAR Guy

Please congratulate The VAR Guy. He’s made it through this entire week without mentioning that new mobile device from Steve Jobs. And while everyone else focuses on that darn device this week, The VAR Guy would prefer to mention Steve’s other big technical achievement…

The VAR Guy visited Avaya’s headquarters in New Jersey earlier this week. Sure, he was tempted to take a detour to the local Six Flags theme park or the Atlantic City casinos. But he’s glad he didn’t. In fact, The VAR Guy learned seven key traits about Avaya during the executive briefing.

The VAR Guy tried to keep his mouth shut. For several days he has known that a distribution deal was brewing between Ingram Micro and Google. He promised not to tell anyone — but Google itself spilled the beans on this one. Here are the details.

For those of you who remember the early days of networking, you’ll recall LANtastic — the peer-to-peer networking system that allowed DOS, Windows and OS/2 PCs to share files without a central server. It was pretty cool for its time. The VAR Guy was immediately reminded of LANtastic when he saw a nifty peer-to-peer IP phone system for small businesses from Avaya.

Forgive The VAR Guy for his silence today. He was on a road trip from New York to New Jersey, visiting Avaya’s channel team. The VAR Guy is still organizing his notes from the two-hour meeting. There’s a hefty amount of info to boil down — but three key words come to mind: Small business software. Surprised? So was The VAR Guy. Check back on June 27 to get a complete recap of the Avaya visit and an update on the networking company’s channel strategy.

Cisco CEO John Chambers is a tough act to follow. Unless — of course — you spit blood, host a reality TV show and wear more makeup than Michael Jackson. In the ultimate sign of unexpected convergence, KISS has signed on to headline Cisco’s Networkers event in late July.

Earlier this year, The VAR Guy spent considerable time blogging about Zimbra’s open source email platform. He suspected that the collaboration suite would gain momentum with colleges. Boy was he right. In recent months, Zimbra deployments have more than doubled in higher education. For Exchange and Lotus Domino/Notes VARs serving higher education, it might be time to give Zimbra a look.

Imagine buying a Porsche and getting a free Harley-Davidson. Here’s a similar offer — though on a much smaller scale — from Apple to college students.

It’s time to put an end to bloated software. You know the kind: Big applications, operating systems and utilities that consume gobs of memory and slow down your PC. In a refreshingly honest statement, Trend Micro — the security software provider — concedes that its software is too fat and needs to slim down.

The VAR Guy finally received his Ubuntu Linux PC from Dell today. He hasn’t had time to test the system yet but it sounds like power users are generally happy with the new systems. Here’s some initial feedback from Len Sandy, lead blogger at All About Ubuntu.