The VAR Guy

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.