The VAR Guy

Former hedge-fund manager Andrew Lahde recently published a “goodbye letter” to his investors in which he philosophizes on everything from the financial crisis to marijuana. Interestingly, in advocating reforms to the United States government that would make authorities less susceptible to corruption, Lahde remarks in passing that this new state should be planned by a group “similar to the one used to create the operating system, Linux, which competes with Microsoft’s near monopoly.”

For at least the third time in recent weeks, prominent Dell newspaper advertisements feature the Inspiron Mini 9 Netbook running Canonical’s Ubuntu 8.04 (that’s a small Linux notebook, folks). The VAR Guy hears Microsoft “has gone postal” over the Linux notebook ads. You might even say this is Microsoft’s nightmare before Christmas. Here’s the complete scoop.

Somewhere between Cisco Systems and disruptive startups like Digium, there is a wasteland of networking companies that tried — and failed — to compete against Cisco. Still, a few nimble firms carve out solid networking niches for themselves. The VAR Guy will spend Nov. 17 through 19 with one such company: ADTRAN Inc. Here are four key issues he expects to explore during the visit.

Open source operating systems, applications and middleware continue to disrupt and infiltrate the IT channel. But which open source companies are truly committed to VARs, solutions providers and managed service providers? You’ll find out in December when The VAR Guy unveils The Open 50: the top companies — from across the world — building the open source channel.

CA Inc. (formerly Computer Associates International) is in Las Vegas this week, hosting its CA World partner and customer conference. It’s an opportune time for The VAR Guy to ask: Can partners trust this latest iteration of CA — which includes a new managed services and SaaS (software as a service) push? The VAR Guy sure seems to think so. Here’s why.

Attention bargain bin shoppers: Software as a Service (SaaS) stocks have declined more than 50 percent from January through Nov. 14, 2008, reports MSPmentor — The VAR Guy’s sister site. Our resident blogger doesn’t make buy, sell or hold recommendations. But isn’t SaaS supposed to be the future of software???

I recently decided to upgrade to OpenOffice 3. As many users know, the Ubuntu developers made the controversial decision not to include OO 3, released in mid-October 2008, in Ubuntu 8.10 (a.k.a “Intrepid Ibex”), out of concerns that it would not be stable enough and would disrupt the Intrepid development schedule (which is strange given the decision to ship 8.04 with Firefox 3 beta as the default browser). But I still made the move to OpenOffice 3.

Lenovo has an offer for VARs, solutions providers — and small businesses — that want to give the company’s new ThinkServers a try. It involves a 60-day money back guarantee when the servers are purchased through Synnex, The VAR Guy has learned.

Openbravo, the open source ERP and POS specialist, at LinuxWorld shared plans to offer better native support for MySQL, the wildly popular open source database. Well, The VAR Guy just got an update on the effort. Here’s the scoop, straight from Openbravo Chief Products Officer Paolo Juvara.

Once again, financial analysts are a day late and a dollar short. Google’s stock has fallen sharply in 2008, and now Wall Street bulls are finally turning bearish on Google’s stock, according to Barron’s.

As Microsoft debuts Windows Small Business Server 2008 today, The VAR Guy is flashing back to a recent conversation he had with a top Microsoft partner in Australia. During that chat, our resident blogger was converted from an SBS 2008 skeptic into a true believer. Here’s why.

Novell is reaching out to Red Hat customers and Microsoft channel partners with a new offer. The strategy: Train Microsoft solutions providers to replace Red Hat Enterprise Linux with Novell SUSE Linux. Here’s the scoop on the strategy.

The VAR Guy has spent the last two years evangelizing software as a service (SaaS) and open source as a killer combination that VARs need to master. But now Trip Chowdhry from Global Equities Research says SaaS and open source companies will suffer greatly amid the economic turmoil. Here are Chowdhry’s perspectives and The VAR Guy’s observations.

Unison Technologies, which develops unified communications software for Linux servers, is gearing up to launch a partner program for solutions providers and managed service providers. Here’s the scoop, only from The VAR Guy.

Ubuntu 8.10, released at the end of October, includes several notable enhancements to the Server Edition.  These new features augment the usability and versatility of Ubuntu on servers, but given the short lifespan of Ubuntu 8.10, I’m left wondering how many system administrators are going to use it.

Openbravo — maker of open source ERP (enterprise resource planning) and POS (point of sale) software — is taking a bow. The company, which is approaching 100 channel partners, says its ERP and POS software together have generated more than 1 million downloads. But are businesses really running open source ERP and POS? The VAR Guy sure thinks so.

Dell has revamped its channel blog with more community features, including familiar Web 2.0 capabilities that allow you to see who else is logged into the site. Of course, The VAR Guy was pleased to see MSPmentor — his sister site — mentioned in a post about the managed services industry.

Red Hat has found a way to link open source with Star Wars. Sci-Fi Geeks across the galaxy must be celebrating as Red Hat seeks to conquer the digital entertainment universe. Here’s the scoop.

How will big box PC retailers conquer the managed services market when they can’t even run their own businesses? That question came to The VAR Guy’s mind when he heard Circuit City filed for bankruptcy protection today.

When Sun Microsystems announced its so-called Open Storage Appliances (code-named Amber Road) today, The VAR Guy noticed an interesting trend: Open source companies from A to Z (Alfresco to Zmanda) lined up to endorse the product family. Hmmm. Sun hasn’t exactly set the world on fire lately. But Amber Road shows partner promise. Here’s why.

During a gathering of channel media in Portugal, Cisco Systems has so far made two major announcements. First up, the company unveiled a global partner collaboration strategy that allows VARs to become sales agents for one another. Next up, Cisco announced a $100 million initiative focused on small businesses with fewer than 100 employees. Here’s the scoop.

Hmmm. It seems there’s no escaping from The VAR Guy — or Cisco PR. Our resident blogger uses the latest Web 2.0 marketing and communication tools. But Cisco isn’t far behind. In fact, the networking giant’s channel team has launched a Twitter-based news feed (http://twitter.com/CSCOChannelNews). Oh, and you can find The VAR Guy’s Twitter feed at http://twitter.com/thevarguy.

As Sun Microsystems polishes its channel strategy for MySQL and open source, Avnet Technology Solutions (ATS) is evaluating ways to work more closely with Sun and its partners on the open source initiatives. Here’s the scoop, only from The VAR Guy.