The VAR Guy

About a year ago, Cisco CEO John Chambers predicted his company’s competitive landscape would shift from networking firms to software and Web 2.0 companies. Apparently, Chambers was right: Recent financial results from numerous networking companies suggest many of Cisco’s old rivals are falling off a cliff. Here’s a look behind the numbers.

Last week, The VAR Guy outlined six trends he expected to generate some buzz at this week’s Interop conference in Las Vegas. Now that the show is in full swing, let’s take another look at those six trends to see how they’re shaping up.

Low-cost mini notebooks like the Asus Eee PC continue to win rave reviews. And now Fortune is praising a Hewlett-Packard mini-laptop that “packs a lot of punch.” You can almost see Steve Jobs writing on an white board somewhere at Apple, weighing the pros and cons of launching his own tiny notebook offensive.

Dell will host a webinar for its managed service provider partners on May 1. The VAR Guy spotted some early details about the Dell webinar over on his sister site, MSPmentor.

The VAR Guy is watching Interop Las Vegas from the comfort of his home office this year. The Interop news wire appears a bit lighter than previous years. And the keynote speaker lineup — while impressive — lacks Cisco CEO John Chambers and other industry titans. Is Interop still popular? Sure. But competition from a different type of event may be stealing some of Interop’s thunder. Here’s the scoop.

The VAR Guy has read some rather misleading headlines about Windows XP in recent weeks. While thousands — perhaps millions — of customers try to avoid Windows Vista, a myth about Windows XP seems to be spreading rapidly. And frankly, the XP myth is false. Here’s the scoop from The VAR Guy.

The VAR Guy can’t help but laugh a bit when he reads IT coverage that’s completely out of touch with Wall Street coverage. The latest example involves Netgear.

PC makers and their customers continue to push back against Windows Vista. Software as a service (SaaS) and open source are giving Microsoft fits. Yet, it’s far too early to bury Microsoft. Here are seven reasons why the software giant’s empire won’t completely fall anytime soon.

As he blogs from rainy New York, The VAR Guy is daydreaming about Las Vegas — which is hosting two big IT events this week: Juniper Networks’ J-Partner Summit as well as Interop. Here’s the scoop from J-Partner Summit so far.

When Symantec announces quarterly results on April 30, The VAR Guy will be listening closely. Our resident blogger was a big advocate of the 2005 Symantec-Veritas business combo. But so far, that merger has yielded mixed results. Here is one key piece of info The VAR Guy will be digging for as he looks through Symantec’s financial results.

A technology revolution started today. Most people don’t know about it. In fact, most folks won’t hear about today’s events for another five to seven years. But circle April 24, 2008 on your calendar. A decade from now, historians will say today was the day Ubuntu Linux reached its tipping point — especially on servers. Here are five reasons why.

When Avnet released disappointing earnings today, the distributor blamed weak server sales in the US and Europe. But don’t blame Avnet, and don’t blame the economy. Instead, The VAR Guy thinks virtualization is to blame. Here’s why.

Thanks to poor service and support from JetBlue and a Westin hotel, The VAR Guy estimates that he lost about 5 hours of personal productivity this week. Our resident blogger was pretty darn frustrated — until a trip to the Apple Store restored The VAR Guy’s faith in customer service. Here’s what happened.

The buzz involving Interop Las Vegas (April 27-May 2) is building. The VAR Guy has received briefing requests from Adtran, Cisco Systems, Nortel Networks and other networking vendors. Here are three messages he hopes to hear, and three messages he intends to ignore.

The VAR Guy couldn’t make it to Hawaii for Cisco’s recent partner summit. But now he hears that Cisco demonstrated Apple’s iPhone working on a unified communications network. Sweet. Some of the details about the demonstration surface in this April 24 Podcast on MSPmentor.net, The VAR Guy’s sister site.

The VAR Guy was in Dallas recently for the WordCamp blogger convention. He finally took a look at some of his photos from the trip. The snapshot shown above defies explanation.

It happened again: Another IT-related article declaring a specific technology industry segment “recession proof.” That’s a dangerous, misleading claim, The VAR Guy believes. Here’s why.

Within the next few weeks, Dell plans to launch a channel blog to help communicate the company’s partner strategy, and to interact more closely with solutions providers. Smart move. But The VAR Guy hopes Dell takes the following 5 steps with the blog.

The VAR Guy is in Chicago for a technology event, and his timing couldn’t be better. The native New Yorker just noticed that the Mets are in town to play the Cubs at Wrigley Field. First pitch is 1:20 p.m. local time. Should our resident blogger cancel his afternoon flight and head to the Friendly Confines?

I’ve watched SAS Institute quite a bit the past two years. First, as the company built a channel program for its business intelligence software. And more recently, during a road show on business analytics. Instead of pitching products, SAS has been evangelizing customer outcomes. It’s a strategy worth noting. Here’s why.

The VAR Guy loves JetBlue. And he’s willing to put up with their flight delays out of JetBlue’s terminal at JFK International Airport. But the “free” WiFi networks within JetBlue’s terminals are beyond bad. They’ve been pathetic for more than a year. Now, it’s time for JetBlue to change course.
More >

Hi Folks. The VAR Guy is testing some site layout tweaks. Please forgive The VAR Guy for all of those “Top 100 MSPs” boxes on the site. They do lead you to valuable info about the managed services market and the MSPmentor 100 list. But we’ll tone down the MSPmentor promos over the next few days as we continue testing site layout, speed and performance tweaks. Thanks for your understanding.

When Dell launched its own small business blog earlier this week, the PC giant had a golden opportunity to capture the attention of channel partners. Instead, Dell’s initial blog posts marketed directly to small business owners and their employees — and ignored the partner community. That was foolish. But Dell also made a very smart move.