The VAR Guy

At first glance, The VAR Guy was underwhelmed by Dell’s decision to offer Sun Solaris on selected servers. But after an hour of digesting the news — and his lunch — The VAR Guy thinks this deal is a rare triple play for Dell, Sun and customers.

The VAR Guy has warned you for several months: Cable companies will wind up competing with VARs far more frequently in the months ahead. The latest example: Comcast is offering a set of managed IP services to small business customers. It’s a smart move by the cable provider. But the approach makes you wonder: How long before they offer managed security and other capabilities tied to IP services?

A few years back, some proprietary hardware companies hit the panic button when Dell and Microsoft Windows moved into point-of-sale (POS) systems. Fast forward to the present, and open source is trying its hand at disrupting the POS market. You already know about Linux running on POS systems. Now, POS applications themselves are going open source. Here’s how.

Lofty oil prices. Sub-prime mortgage woes. Financial companies (Citigroup, Etrade) stumbling badly. Ouch. Ouch. And Ouch. Whispers of a potential recession ahead continue. That made The VAR Guy wonder: If the U.S. heads into a recession soon, are open source companies better positioned to weather the storm than their closed source counterparts? Let’s take a look.

The VAR Guy is starting to sound like a broken record (or a scratched CD, for those of you who don’t remember vinyl). Here’s the scoop: Avaya is the latest company to embrace the iPhone as a business device. Yes, a business device. Within the next year or so, as loyal readers here know, The VAR Guy expects the iPhone to emerge as major device for unified business communications.

Whenever The VAR Guy hears chatter about Novell, he thinks of Avis — the Number 2 rental car company that proudly declares “We try harder” as it pursues the market leader (Hertz, er, Red Hat). Hmmm. Is 2008 the year that all of Novell’s hard work in the open source market finally pushes the company into the fast lane? UBS, the Wall Street analyst firm seems to think so. But The VAR Guy isn’t so sure.

The iPhone remains The VAR Guy’s favorite digital device. But Flip, a $150 video camera from Pure Digital Technologies, has just made his favorites list as well. It’s a slick, simple device for solutions providers that want to make quick Web videos without spending a fortune doing so.

The VAR Guy is usually skeptical of software acquisitions. But IBM’s $5 billion buyout of Cognos, the business intelligence specialist, makes perfect sense. Here are four reasons why the pending deal, announced today, is a good fit for IBM.

Sorry if The VAR Guy has been a bit distracted lately. It seems he can’t stop playing with his iPhone. Business email. B2B website browsing. Business voicemail. Hmmm. Who says the iPhone is just for consumers? Certainly not The VAR Guy, who sees more and more business apps moving to the device. The latest example is an emergency notification system from MIR3.

Sometimes, reporters spend too much time looking at a tree and never see the bigger forest. For instance, lots of folks are writing about Novell changing its channel chief. Excuse The VAR Guy as he yawns. In fact, something far more strategic — and interesting — has occurred at Novell.