The VAR Guy

First, the good news: Software as a service (SaaS) stocks performed better than the Dow Jones Industrial Average (down 8.84 percent) and the Standard & Poor’s 500 index (down 8.57 percent) in January 2009. Now the bad news: SaaS stocks still fell almost 7 percent during the month, according to our SaaS 20 Stock Index. Here’s a look at the biggest monthly SaaS winners and losers, plus a SaaS market forecast from IDC.

When Sun Microsystems announced financial results this week, The VAR Guy had a moment of clarity: Sun is looking more and more like a larger version of Novell. And The VAR Guy means that in a complimentary way. Here’s why.

In today’s episode, Fonality CEO Chris Lyman discusses Asterisk, open source, the IP PBX market and Fonality’s partner strategy. More specifically, The VAR Guy Live: Podcast covers the following five key topics…

Fonality CEO On Asterisk, Open Source and IP PBXes for VARs [ 11:33 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Want to know something you can do for free that will help you gain customer loyalty and generate new sales?  My best friend (even though he doesn’t know it) Seth Godin shared this idea and I love it. In fact I’m adding to it. Here it is:

Here’s a look at the top 10 stories managed services stories making headlines on MSPmentor (The VAR Guy’s sister site) this week.

1. Level Platforms, Managed Services Head for Home
2. Join Us: Meet the World’s Top 100 Managed Service Providers
3. Intel Europe Confirms Managed Services, SaaS Deal With N-able
4. The Utility Company’s Franchise Model Catches On
5. Facebook: Don’t Mix Business With Pleasure?
6. Managed Services Growth Rates: Mixed Views
7. Transform Data Protection Policies Into Deeper Customer Relationships
8. Intel: Building Two Managed Services Empires?
9. N-able’s European MSP Push
10. Managed Cloud Services: Build vs. Rent

Keep hanging out with The VAR Guy (he loves the company). But our resident blogger won’t be insulted if you occasionally stop by MSPmentor as well.

“And now, a special economic message from our channel chief.” That sums up recent moves by Microsoft, Dell and now Cisco Systems. All three companies have put their channel chiefs front-and-center with blog, podcast and video messages to partners in recent days. The latest nugget comes from Cisco Worldwide Channel Chief Keith Goodwin (pictured). Here’s the scoop (and the video).

In an interview with linuxdevices.com, Jim Zemlin of the Linux Foundation, a non-profit organization that promotes Linux, argues that Microsoft’s failure to anticipate the pace of hardware development over the long-term contributed substantially to the trouble that the company now finds itself in.  This is an interesting insight, and adds some precision to explanations of Linux’s penetration of the desktop operating-system market.

Are Dell and Hewlett-Packard trading blows in the enterprise networking market? Well, almost. Only a day after Hewlett-Packard launched a data center networking offensive, Dell fired back and rallied channel partners around Cisco Systems solutions. Here’s the scoop from The VAR Guy.

During the recession — as direct sales teams work overtime to close deals — I am sure many high-tech companies have asked themselves: “Why have channel partners?” While it is a valid question that elicits lots of healthy debate, there is really only one right answer – it’s the revenue. This may be obvious to some, but when you look closely at many partner programs — especially open source partner programs — it is sometimes difficult to determine how partner initiatives drive revenue for the company.

Microsoft’s partner blog on January 27 posted a somewhat dated letter from Channel Chief Allison Watson to the company’s partners. In the letter (from November 2008), Watson offers tips for beating the recession — and begins to educate partners about Windows Azure and Microsoft’s Software plus Services strategy. Sure, the letter is roughly two months old. But it’s as timely as ever.

Lotus Symphony 1.2.1 — IBM’s open source office suite — is now available for Mac OS X, according to a trusted source. The release — along with IBM’s expanding Red Hat and Canonical partnerships –  could give Microsoft Office a virtual (and real-world) headache. Here’s why.

You’re a networking company with traditional hardware trying to compete during the recession. How do you excite resellers while generating media buzz? In the case of Netgear, the company has launched ProSecure — a line of security appliances tied to a cloud service. The Netgear effort includes partnerships with Commtouch and Kaspersky Lab. Here’s the scoop.

Dean Darwin knows how to play an encore. Back at F5 Networks for the second time as channel chief, Darwin today described an expanded F5 relationship with Hewlett-Packard’s ProCurve ONE team. Here’s the scoop from The VAR Guy.

Now that we’ve launched The Open Source 50, I’ll help readers to explore, question, and understand how open source is changing the world of partner programs and channels as we know it today — and most importantly how we all adapt and continue to grow. What made a good partner program before may not make sense in the open source world and the drivers or reasons why companies partner may now be very different. Here’s why.

Canonical’s Ubuntu efforts for mobile Internet devices (MIDs) have yet to pay dividends. However, Ubuntu users continue to express strong interest in MIDs designed to run Ubuntu, according to WorksWithU’s weekly reader poll.

The great management guru Peter Drucker said it the best: “profit is not the explanation, cause, or rationale of business behavior and business decisions, but rather the test of their validity.”  In other words, profit is a reward. Here’s what you should focus on first.

Nine Lives Media Inc. — TheVARguy.com’s parent company — is seeking at least three contributing bloggers who can offer balanced coverage of Microsoft and Windows 7, Apple and Mac OS X, and Canonical’s Ubuntu Linux. Here’s what we’re seeking.

Nine Lives Media Inc. — WorksWithU.com’s parent company — is seeking at least three contributing bloggers who can offer balanced coverage of Microsoft and Windows 7, Apple and Mac OS X, and Canonical’s Ubuntu Linux. Here’s what we’re seeking.

We’re still brainstorming a few ideas related to Ubuntu podcasts. In the meantime, our sister site TheVARguy.com produced this recent podcast interview with Red Hat North American Channel Chief Roger Egan. During the discussion Egan answers six key questions about Red Hat’s partner strategy for the new Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 and JBoss Middleware.

Microsoft has extended access to the Windows 7 beta by more than two weeks, suggesting that the software giant has not reached its anticipated goal of 2.5 million beta testers. But let’s not weep for the software giant. Here’s why.

Our SaaS 20 stock index, which tracks software as a service stocks, is now down more than 5 percent in 2009, having slipped a nominal 1.22 percent for the week ended January 23. Here’s a look at the weekly SaaS winners and losers.

Very few Ubuntu users, at least outside of the enterprise, pay for support.  Instead, they turn to various free resources, ranging from IRC channels to the documentation wiki to the official Ubuntu Forums, when they run into trouble.  While free support in the Ubuntu world is often quite good, it could be improved if those providing it paid more attention to a few key guidelines.

I’ve spent many hours doing my best to support people new to Ubuntu (because it’s a great way to procrastinate on real work), especially in the forums.  A lot of users give positive feedback on the clarity, courtesy and competence available in Ubuntu’s community-based support channels, where no one is paid and problems are solved by volunteers.  But I also see a lot of forum threads or wiki pages that are, in my view, confusing and inadequate.  With those in mind, here are some brief thoughts on how to provide better support, based on my own humble experiences:

1. Reduce as much as possible to bash commands.  While new Ubuntu users may not feel comfortable working in the terminal on their own, most are perfectly willing to copy-and-paste commands, and giving them specific lines to type in is usually more efficient and easier than providing vague instructions that involve a GUI.  Instead of saying, “Install the Adobe flash plugin from Synaptic,” for example, write, “Type this command to install flash: sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree.”
2. Don’t say “become root.”  It may be perfectly obvious to you what “become root” means, but most new Ubuntu users have no idea, and people who have used other Linux distributions may not understand the differences between Ubuntu’s sudo and the su command common in other Linux flavors.  Instead of telling users to do things like “log in as root,” give them the specific command that they need to type.
3. Use clear, concise English.  Good grammar and punctuation can go a long way in making instructions easier to follow, especially for non-native speakers of English who aren’t used to colloquial language.  This doesn’t mean you have to have a Ph.D. to post on the forums, but at least make an effort to do your best; the fact that it’s a community-supported site isn’t a license to forget to capitalize or ignore Firefox’s built-in spellchecker.
4. Instead of simply linking to another thread or website in order to tell a user how to solve a problem, explain specifically where he or she should look on the page.  Or, better, translate the third-party instructions into bash commands and give them to the user yourself, if possible.
5. Do as much work as possible for the user, within reason.  When helping someone get ndiswrapper working, for example, don’t give vague instructions like “find the Windows driver for your card and load the .inf into ndiswrapper.”  Instead, figure out what the PCI ID of the user’s card is and look up the appropriate Windows driver yourself, then provide a link and specific instructions for extracting the .inf and installing it into ndiswrapper.  This involves a few extra minutes of work for you, but could save an Ubunu neophyte from hours of mucking around Google looking for something that she only vaguely understands.
6. If you’re out of ideas for solving a particular problem, admit it.  Don’t abandon the thread without an explanation, and don’t tell users to do things that you know won’t work just to keep them busy.  When you can’t help any more, politely inform the user, recommend other resources if possible, and leave the thread.

Every support situation is unique, and it’s obviously not always possible to adhere to these guidelines.  Moreover, these represent merely my personal conception of providing good support; I have no doubt that others have very different ideas.

But the fact that most Ubuntu support is given for free doesn’t mean that those seeking it don’t deserve professional service.  You don’t call Microsoft with a problem only to be given a link to vague, poorly written instructions that assume a high level of technical skill on the part of the user (on the other hand, you have to go through the hassle of proving that you didn’t steal your copy of Windows before Microsoft will help you, but that’s another issue).  Ubuntu should be no different.

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Some people are scratching their heads over recent Windows 7-related comments attributed to Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth. But Shuttleworth’s words provide an important reminder that innovation and competition from Microsoft will help to propel Ubuntu and Linux forward. Skeptical? Read on.