The VAR Guy

The VAR Guy couldn’t make the trip to Avnet Technology Solutions’ New Frontiers Conference this week in Boulder Springs, Colorado. But he is monitoring the conference — which serves Sun Microsystems partners — from after. Here are four key trends for VARs at the event.

You can almost hear the Linux faithful screaming again, this time because Microsoft is sending another $100 million in Novell’s direction. The open source crowd has been fast to criticize the Microsoft-Novell relationship. But CIOs seems to welcome the relationship (no joke). For more on the relationship, check out what Matt Asay has to say over at CNet’s Open Road blog.

BusinessWeek says open source companies are struggling to monetize their products and show growth. But new channel strategies from companies like Compiere — an open source ERP and CRM application provider — could prove BusinessWeek wrong. Here’s why.

Talk about your awkward moments: The VAR Guy used an Apple MacBook to take notes while visiting Lenovo and hearing about the ThinkPad X300 notebook last week. It was like sipping Pepsi in Coca Cola’s headquarters. Instead of throwing The VAR Guy out of their offices, the Lenovo folks described why the ThinkPad X300 is a better option than Apple’s MacBook Air. So, who won this debate? Take a look.

Lots of IT-focused franchise opportunities are popping up. But experiences will certainly vary from franchise to franchise, and industry to industry. I’ve been in a national franchise for over six years. The franchise isn’t IT oriented, but my lessons learned may help VARs and solutions providers weigh their own franchise options.

Lenovo is leaping from Thinkpad notebooks to launch servers this September. Our sister site, TheVARguy.com, reports that the servers will come with either Windows Server or Linux.

Dell has launched a return policy for its certified partners. The VAR Guy is trying to think of something witty to say about the policy. But he’s a bit punchy from too much coffee and too little sleep. So, here’s more info about the return policy — direct from Dell’s channel blog.

Instead of waging a desktop Linux war, Red Hat continues to focus mainly on the server and open source middleware markets. I’ve always wondered why Red Hat isn’t competing more aggressively against Canonical/Ubuntu and Novell SuSE Linux for desktop and laptop OEM (original equipment manufacturer) agreements. I finally got my answer on Friday, when Red Hat explained its financial motivations, particularly when it comes to JBoss middleware. Here’s a look.

J Scott Di Valerio, president, Americas Group, Lenovo, commutes frequently between his home in Seattle and Lenovo’s headquarters in Morrisville, North Carolina. But when he’s not on the road, Di Valerio works from the ultimate home office — a tree house in his back yard. Take a look.

Lenovo is leaping from the desktop into the server market, and will launch its first Linux and Windows servers this September, The VAR Guy has learned. Here’s why solutions providers — and rivals like Dell and Hewlett-Packard — should care.

Ever wonder why Red Hat spends so much time focused on the JBoss middleware market and so little time trying to make Linux a desktop standard? The answer involves some simple but startling open source math. Check out this little piece of Red Hat financial info, uncovered by The VAR Guy.

If you’re a leader or voice in the Ubuntu community, we’d welcome the opportunity to speak with you about our podcasts. The Works With U podcasts, featuring the top voices from the Ubuntu movement, will debut in June.

The VAR Guy isn’t making any guarantees, but he hopes Sun Microsystems articulates its MySQL partner strategy next week at the Avnet New Frontiers Conference in Colorado. Here’s why.

There’s some buzz across the web this week as folks notice neither Oracle nor SAP has announced application support for Ubuntu Server Edition. Sure, it would be nice for Oracle and SAP to endorse Canonical and Ubuntu. But I don’t expect it to happen anytime soon. And that’s not a problem. Here’s why.

Most folks are casually covering Nortel Networks’ acquisition of Pingtel, which specializes in open source VoIP and unified communications solutions. But there’s a bigger story here — much bigger, folks — that most observers have overlooked.

Symantec already faces a formidable foe in Microsoft Corp. But now, the security and storage company must also defend itself from Red Hat Inc. and the open source market. In fact, Red Hat has launched an aggressive attack against Symantec’s Veritas business. Here’s the scoop.

First, The VAR Guy was a little early. Now he’s a little late. Our resident blogger reported rumors last week that Cisco was tweaking its Linksys partner strategy. The official announcement finally surfaced earlier today. Here’s what’s cooking.

Dell launched a bunch of new laptops this week — yada, yada, yada — with a bunch of new features. As part of the product launch, Dell also introduced a new online community called Digital Nomads. Generally speaking, Dell has had a lot of success launching social networks for customers and consumers. But this time around, The VAR Guy is a bit more skeptical of Dell’s efforts.

The VAR Guy’s sister site, MSPmentor, is hosting its next managed service provider Webcast on September 10 at 2:00 p.m. eastern. Please register now for the MSPmentor Live: CEO Exchange. You’ll join top managed service providers for this online conference, as we explore dozens of attendee questions throughout the event. Here’s more info about the MSP webcast.

One of my clients, Ken, runs a very successful service business. He has two employees who do administrative tasks. His problem: he hasn’t been able to free up enough time to pursue projects that capture his imagination and will propel the business forward — largely because he is not comfortable with delegating. Here’s what Ken was doing wrong, and how he’s moving forward.

Sure, Microsoft SharePoint remains a lucrative opportunity for solutions providers. But even SharePoint — one of Microsoft’s fastest-growing products — is under attack from open source. This time, the aggressor is Alfresco Software Inc. Here’s the scoop.

When IBM got cozy with Canonical, Novell and Red Hat to announce the Microsoft-Free PC initiative, at least one closely related company missed the party: Sun Microsystems, the original advocate of OpenOffice. I’m starting to wonder if IBM’s Lotus Symphony efforts are starting to eclipse Sun’s own office suite efforts.

For the first time in recent history, The VAR Guy was left speechless today. The rare event occurred when our resident blogger read a big feature story over on CRN, in which the trade pub made the following watershed statement: