The VAR Guy

As you may have heard, Psion allegedly holds a trademark on the Netbook term and is sending cease and desist letters to some IT companies. But here’s a new twist on the Netbook soap opera: Apparently, Intel owns and uses the Netbook URL (www.netbook.com), which redirects to Intel’s home page. Does a showdown loom between the two companies?

As Hewlett-Packard, Apple and other companies prepare to launch new home servers, The VAR Guy offers this concern: Do consumers really want anything branded as a “server”? Many consumers don’t understand server jargon. And those who actually understand a server’s purpose think they are complex, difficult-to-manage boxes that are locked away in a closet or data center. So, what’s the proper label for a home server?

A test release of Windows 7 spilled onto the Internet over the weekend, reports ars technica. The VAR Guy has no plans to track down and test the beta release. But as Windows 7 becomes more stable and nears release (late 2009 or early 2010), our resident blogger may lower his guard and give Windows 7 a spin. In the meantime, he seems perfectly happy with Mac OS X and Ubuntu Linux.

As you may have heard, Ubuntu is leaping from desktop computers all the way to Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). Although Ubuntu Server Edition 8.10 on Amazon EC2 remains in beta, the Amazon relationship could energize Canonical’s server strategy, WorksWithU believes. Here’s why.

As Cisco Systems gears up to launch a range of consumer electronics for the home, some industry pundits think the networking giant’s consumer focus will fail miserably. GigaOm calls it a “misguided foray into the living room.” On the contrary, The VAR Guy thinks Cisco would be foolish to ignore consumers. Here’s why.

Strange: Most IT consulting blogs have overlooked or ignored Satyam‘s recent meltdown. The Indian IT outsourcing firm imploded earlier this month after a botched acquisition involving company insiders. But the story doesn’t end there.

Psion (the mobile device maker that eventually fell off a cliff) may wind up haunting netbook makers. Apparently, Psion Teklogix holds a trademark on the netbook term and is sending cease and desist letters to some folks.  The story first surfaced on jkOnTheRun, a blog that covers mobile devices. So what does that mean to major PC companies that market Netbook-braded products? Hmmm…

Linux-based Netbooks — many of them with Ubuntu pre-installed — continue to sell fast. But could there be a potential legal snag with some of those Netbooks? Apparently, Psion claims to hold a trademark on the Netbook term. So what does that mean for Netbook-named products from Lenovo and others? Here’s some speculation from WorksWithU’s sister site, TheVARguy.com.

For a long time, ndiswrapper, which uses Windows wireless drivers to make wireless cards work on Linux, was a vitally important component of many Ubuntu systems.  In many cases, it was the only way for users to access wireless Internet. Unfortunately, the ndiswrapper project’s pulse has seemed to go from faint to non-existent over the last several months.

The VAR Guy often crows about his successful predictions. But some of his blog posts — including a few about emerging open source solutions like Google Android and Ubuntu Server Edition — missed the mark badly in 2008. Time for The VAR Guy to take a break from holiday meals. Instead, he needs to eat some crow for these five open source statements that were off target in 2008.

What’s the biggest secret to Red Hat’s success in a down economy? Plenty of pundits think it’s Linux and JBoss open source middleware. But The VAR Guy has another theory: One of Red Hat’s smartest moves is promoting a particularly influential magazine article. The VAR Guy suspects the magazine article — which is updated annually — helps Red Hat to sign millions of dollars in new business every year. Here’s the scoop.

It’s the story that won’t go away: Cisco Systems plans to launch blade servers. GigaOm reported that way back in March 2008. Network World furthered the story about the so-called “Cisco California Server” on December 12 and December 16. And now CRN on December 23 is confirming the Cisco blade server strategy, though CRN did little more than quote the same Yankee Group analyst — Senior VP Zeus Kerravala — that Network World reached two weeks ago. Hmmm: great job, Scoop Brady. Next time, though: Link out to Network World and give credit where credit is due.

USA Today and other major media outlets are starting to suggest that Windows 7 — the successor to Windows Vista — could arrive in time for Christmas 2009. Frankly, that sounds like a holiday nightmare to The VAR Guy. Here’s why.

Lead Ubuntu developer Mark Shuttleworth posted an item on his blog yesterday about the future of notifications in Ubuntu.  This (or at least something similar) is what users can expect to see in Ubuntu 9.04 when it’s released in April:

Cornell College of Mount Vernon, Iowa is the latest institute of higher education to embrace Ubuntu Server Edition, WorksWithU has learned. It’s not a huge deployment, but Cornell’s targeted Ubuntu use reinforces a growing trend at colleges and universities worldwide, according to the WorksWithU 1000 — a survey that aims to track one thousand Ubuntu deployments.

Cornell College began using Ubuntu in May 2007, when Web Developer/Programmer Brian Steere was hired as a full-time employee. “We realized that many of our Web applications were created and designed for Linux and ill-suited for running on a Windows/IIS [Internet Information Server] stack,” wrote Steere in an email to WorksWithU.

Fast forward to December 2008, and Ubuntu currently hosts Cornell College’s:

• Wordpress-Mu install (http://blogs.cornellcollege.edu)
• News center (wordpress @ http://news.cornellcollege.edu)
• Master calendar (http://webapps.cornellcollege.edu/events)
• and Moodle installation (http://moodle.cornellcollege.edu)

What’s next for Ubuntu at Cornell College? “We may migrate our MySQL install to Ubuntu, but that is currently undetermined,” writes Steere in email.

Ubuntu On Campus

To date, more than 10 percent of the organizations completing our WorksWithU 1000 survey are K-12 schools, colleges and universities.

No doubt, Ubuntu will spill over from college IT departments out to student populations as more and more Netbooks (preloaded with Ubuntu) arrive on college campuses.

Still, I suspect Fedora, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, OpenSUSE and Novell SUSE Linux each have larger followings than Ubuntu in college IT departments. But that’s just a hunch based on writing about Red Hat and Novell for more than a decade.

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Even as some VARs begin to embrace open source applications, they must deal with a new force: The shift of open source applications into the cloud and SaaS (software as a service) models. A case in point: JumpBox has pushed a dozen open source applications into the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service. Here are the implications for VARs.

Like a steady drumbeat, Oracle seems to be hitting the right tempo with its channel program in recent months. Instead of flooding The VAR Guy with pointless “news,” the database giant checks in every few weeks with another tidbit of info. The latest example: Nearly 40 value added distributors are now backing Oracle’s products. Hmmm. Isn’t Oracle a direct sales giant?

And how was your weekend? As the image suggests, The VAR Guy has been sick since Friday. But the miracle of endless sleep combined with a few gallons of Gatorade got our resident blogger back on his feet today. Timeless (and sometimes tasteless) blogging resumes today. Happy Holidays.

Jeremy Allison of the Samba project made some interesting remarks in an interview last week about the nationalist flavors of Linux distributions.  To sum up: SUSE is popular with Germans and other Europeans; Red Hat and Fedora are for Americans; the Chinese have Red Flag Linux; and Ubuntu “seems to be more third world.”

The VAR Guy’s sister site — MSPmentor — offers non-stop coverage of the managed services market, where more and more VARs are generating recurring monthly revenue from customers. Here’s a look at the top 10 stories making headlines on MSPmentor this week.

Time for The VAR Guy to eat a little crow. A few days ago, he pointed out all the challenges facing Telepresence (next-generation video conferencing) and one particular vendor’s struggles (Polycom). Now, for the flip side of the story: Polycom and Alteva have an intriguing partnership that pushes TelePresence into small business. Here’s the scoop.

Compiere Inc., an open source ERP (enterprise resource planning) and CRM (customer relationship management) provider, is launching training courses to help strengthen the company’s customer and partner ranks. Backed by 65 channel partners, Compiere hopes more integrators will master the company’s software. Here are the details from The VAR Guy.

As the economy went off a cliff from September to December 2008, Digium says Asterisk downloads rose by 32 percent compared to the same period in 2007. But that’s not all. Digium — which promotes Asterisk, the open source IP PBX — has about 550 channel partners and resellers, up from about 170 in December 2007, The VAR Guy has learned. Here’s the scoop.