The VAR Guy

The VAR Guy feels compelled to hang out in an Apple Store today. He’s a little down after hearing Steve Jobs is taking a leave of absence for medical reasons. Some pundits say the empire Jobs rebuilt will fall again. But The VAR Guy says Jobs’ DNA is now permanently infused in the company. Oh, and here are five other reasons Apple won’t fall anytime soon.

When Google launched the Google Apps Reseller Program this week, the effort sounded strangely familiar to The VAR Guy. The reason: Zoho, a nimble Google Apps rival, has a similar effort called the Zoho Alliance & Partner Program. The VAR Guy reached out to Raju Vegesna, a Zoho evangelist, for some perspective. Here’s what Vegesna had to say about resellers promoting cloud-based applications.

The VAR Guy isn’t shocked or surprised to hear Nortel Networks has filed for bankruptcy protection. The bigger question on his mind: What does this mean for Microsoft, which hitched its wagon to Nortel’s unified communications strategy? Hmmm. Our resident blogger suspects Microsoft will do just fine even if Nortel drowns. For the best, most timely coverage of Nortel, check out Mark Evans’ All About Nortel blog. It’s a winner.

If you’re a solutions provider or VAR, Google is searching for you. The company’s new Google Apps Reseller program — described in the video below — is designed for VARs that want easy entry into the SaaS (software as a service) and Web 2.0 applications markets. The VAR Guy wonders: Will partners warm up to Google? Or is the IT channel universally skeptical of SaaS programs — from Google, Microsoft and others?

You just landed a meeting with a potential client and you have been working relentlessly to get this set up.  Before you go into that meeting and try to sell the client your services, there are five key messages you need to master.  Here they are.

SonicWALL is restructuring its channel program as part of an initiative dubbed Channel 2.0. The effort includes specializations for managed service providers and enterprise integrators. Here are some high-level details about the security company’s revamped channel program.

This blog entry is an annual ritual for The VAR Guy: As the National Retail Federation Convention 2009 starts in New York, many open source companies (Novell, Red Hat, Sun MySQL, Openbravo) appear to be absent. That’s a massive mistake for open source companies and their channel partners. Here’s why.

CompTIA (the Computing Technology Industry Association) has updated its Network+ certification exam for 2009. The association says more than 235,000 IT professionals are Network+ certified. Alas, The VAR Guy isn’t one of them. But perhaps it’s time for our resident blogger to brush up on his skills…

Microsoft on January 9 hit a few bumps meeting online demand for the Windows 7 public beta. But as January 10, the beta site seemed to be functioning fine and the software giant even removed some initial limits on the number of people who can test the Windows 7 public beta. Here’s the scoop.

Opengear, which specializes in infrastructure management solutions based on open source, will announce a formal partner program sometime this week, The VAR Guy hears. As soon as our resident blogger has the details he’ll share them with you.

Fonality, a small provider of open source unified communications software originally based on Asterisk (the IP PBX), has scored a distribution deal with Tech Data Corp. This is the latest in a growing list of channel wins for Fonality, and it reinforces Asterisks’ growing momentum among solutions providers. Here’s the scoop from The VAR Guy.

In what represents the final victory in the long struggle between the free-software community and Broadcom, the developers of the open-source b43 wireless driver announced a few days ago that they’ve succeeded in reverse-engineering firmware for Broadcom-based cards.

The New York Times ran a story today about Ubuntu and its prospects for beating Microsoft.  Focusing on Mark Shuttleworth, the South African billionaire who founded the Ubuntu project and leads Canonical, the Times reporter concludes that the idea of Linux on every desktop remains a bit “quixotic,” and suggests that Ubuntu has only come so far thanks to Shuttleworth’s wealth.  I don’t think that’s true.

Despite the weak economy, solutions providers are registering more deals with Symantec Corp. But before The VAR Guy offers up some details he has to toss in the following qualifier:

When The VAR Guy’s phone rang Thursday night, a rather upbeat voice was on the other line. “This is going to be our year,” crowed Maria Battaglia, senior VP of marketing at OnForce, an online marketplace for contract service professionals. Why was Battaglia so upbeat about OnForce and its partner community? The answer involves the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.

At Red Hat, Linux is old news. Sure, Red Hat Enterprise Linux sales continue to accelerate. But consider this: The company’s JBoss middleware business is growing twice as fast as Red Hat’s Linux infrastructure business, according to a company spokeswoman. For solutions providers there are some important lessons here.

What’s your revenue potential? How much can your business make from virtualization, software and mobility? Microsoft has introduced a series of partner profitability tools to answer those questions. Do the tools work? Hmmm.

It’s paper-writing time again, which means I’ve spent many long hours lately with OpenOffice Writer (for now, I’m still using version 2.4).  Writer is a great application and a useful tool for getting work done.  But there are some components that I continue to find endlessly frustrating, namely…

Chief Marketing Officer John Dragoon (pictured) clarified the status of Novell’s channel organization this morning, and disclosed former F5 Networks Channel Chief and Microsoft veteran Steve Hale has joined the company. Going forward, the following three people will be the key names driving Novell’s partner program.

Following a surprise New Years Eve reorganization at Dell, the company is reaching out to partners and assuring them the PC giant remains committed to their success. Greg Davis, who makes the leap from North America Channel Chief to Global Channel Chief, offered up this blog to offer peace of mind to the channel and Dell’s PartnerDirect members.

After less than four months as Novell’s channel chief, Javier Colado (pictured) has been promoted into a new position, and Novell’s partner program now reports to Chief Marketing Officer John Dragoon.

The VAR Guy looks scared today. Sure, he’s optimistic about his own media site and the long-term benefits of IT. But short term, the economy is going from bad to worse. Intel today said it expects Q4 revenue to drop 23% year over year. And something is up over at Lenovo, where trading in company shares were halted today.

The VAR Guy has had a bad feeling about Satyam and its business practices for several years. He told you so a few weeks ago. Now, the company’s CEO is leaving amid an alleged accounting scandal. Wall Street is shocked. Our resident blogger isn’t.