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.