The VAR Guy

During Symantec Partner Engage, Chief Operating Officer Enrique Salem said the company plans to spend roughly $1 billion annually on acquisitions — targeting roughly three to six companies per year — for the foreseeable future.

During Symantec Partner Engage, the company offered an update on the IT threat landscape and Symantec’s endpoint protection strategy. Here are some key takeaways from George Myers, director, product management, endpoint security, Symantec.

Within moments of taking the stage at the Symantec Partner Engage conference this morning, Chief Operating Officer Enrique Salem answered the unspoken question on The VAR Guy’s mind. Here’s what Salem said, along with five themes from his keynote.

The VAR Guy just downed his third Latte in six hours. He’s gearing up for extensive briefings at today’s Symantec Partner Engage in Washington, D.C. The theme: Partners, Symantec says, are the heartbeat of the company. It’s a strange moment in The VAR Guy’s online life: He’s surrounded by Symantec PR as he writes this.

The Global 2000 is nice. The Fortune 500 is very nice. But selling into the Fortune 50 — especially for a small open source company like Pentaho — is extra sweet. Pentaho, which recently launched version 2.0 of its open source business intelligence software, says it has won business with several Fortune 50 companies. And Pentaho’s partner network is expanding. Here’s the scoop.

We continue to expand our Works With U 1000 list, which identifies businesses and organizations across the globe that have made the move to Ubuntu on servers, desktops and/or mobile devices.

There’s been a lot of ink spilled—er, pixels fired—about Canonical’s decision not to offer a graphical interface in the server edition. The debate is understandable. After all, given Canonical’s professed commitment to ease of use, it might seem a bit strange that Ubuntu Server Edition should not come with some kind of desktop environment by default.

When Hewlett-Packard announced plans to acquire LeftHand Networks on October 1, some skeptics wondered how the deal would impact LeftHand’s partners. In order to address that concern head-on, LeftHand has sent a letter to its existing customer and partner base. Here’s the letter, in its entirety.

First, the good news for Canonical and its loyal followers: Yes, Wikimedia Foundation (the company behind Wikipedia) is embracing Ubuntu on its servers in a big way. This is the latest in a growing list of large and small organizations that are betting their back offices on Ubuntu. Now, the challenge: It sounds like there really isn’t much — if any — money flowing from Wikipedia to Canonical.

Digium, the poster child for open source IP phone systems based on Asterisk, has built a partner channel that now includes nearly 400 solutions providers. Back in May 2008, that figure stood closer to 250 partners. So, what’s driving Digium’s success in the IT channel? Take a look.

The next version of Windows isn’t fully baked, but it has an official name. As expected, the forthcoming successor to Windows Vista will be called Windows 7. Somewhere, George Costanza is complaining somebody stole his kid’s name … again.

One of the three fundamental principles of the Ubuntu philosophy is the availability of software in a user’s native language, whatever that happens to be. While those of us who grew up speaking one of the world’s top 10 languages might never give linguistic freedom a second thought, this is an area where Ubuntu clearly outperforms its proprietary competitors.

Well, after a couple of posts revealing how much of an Ubuntu fan boy I really am, I’m throwing a couple of gripes down the chute. I have two complaints that have been pretty consistent throughout my Ubuntu experience. One involves dual monitors; the other involves the Evolution personal information manager (PIM).

Sometimes the best way to deal with stress is to laugh at the situation — before regrouping to face new challenges head-on. The VAR Guy rather enjoyed this video spin on the US economy. A pal who works for a major US broadband provider sent him the link:

When The VAR Guy last month noticed Julie Parrish wasn’t scheduled to speak at Symantec Partner Engage, he started asking hard questions: Was Parrish — Symantec’s global channel chief — still with the company? Would she be at the event? At first, Symantec PR said all was well and Parrish would be present. But then the story changed dramatically.

It’s one small step for Dell and consumer Linux — and one giant leap for Canonical’s Ubuntu Linux efforts. Specifically, Dell is spending advertising dollars to promote PCs with Ubuntu Linux preinstalled. The move has significant implications for the business world as well. Here’s why.

Finally. Dell is spending some advertising dollars to promote PCs with Ubuntu preinstalled. The new print advertisements feature the Inspiron Mini 9 Netbook running Ubuntu 8.04. Complete details from our sister site, TheVARguy.com.

The VAR Guy is often skeptical of market studies that make bold statements about all the money technology companies lose to the high-tech underground. But our resident blogger loves statistics. And the latest stats about gray market high-tech products should be alarming to VARs.

Alas, The VAR Guy’s rumored vacation in Orlando, Florida, is nearly over. Assuming he’s really there, you can bet that he’s making a few more trips to the area’s most exciting rides. And you can also catch him sneaking onto these classic kiddie rides.

For a few months now, The VAR Guy has been predicting that Netbooks — otherwise known as sub-notebooks — would be the hot ticket in the PC market during the fourth quarter. He’s still sticking to that prediction. Here’s why.

Perhaps it’s time for The VAR Guy to eat more crow. A few days ago, he said that the Wall Street financial crisis would even hurt open source companies. But The Open Road blog, penned by Matt Asay, claims that open source companies are actually accelerating their growth during these stressful times. Take a look at Asay’s analysis. Then feel free to bash The VAR Guy.

In case you haven’t heard, The VAR Guy is rumored to be in Orlando, Florida, this week — driving recklessly in a mad race to visit all of the Disney World theme parks. It’s a week of magic, but there seems to be something missing. Ah, here it is: A list of the top four rides that Disney World eliminated — but needs to bring back.

Judson Althoff, group VP of worldwide alliances and channels at Oracle Corp., is putting a new spin on old partner training tactics. During a chat with The VAR Guy, Althoff says Oracle’s Enablement 2.0 partner strategy will leverage some lessons from the open source world.