The VAR Guy

I traded email over the weekend with David Meerman Scott (pictured), best selling author of The New Rules of Marketing & PR. David is speaking at this week’s Cisco Partner Velocity 09, an event in Miami designed to help Cisco Systems partners with their marketing and PR strategies. I asked Meerman Scott if the Web 2.0 craze was over, and also pushed him for a few new tips on marketing and PR. Here are some quick excerpts from our email exchange.

This thought hit home when I was working to fix a sound issue on my computer, although the seeds had been sown quite some time ago with my upgrade to Ubuntu 7.04. My concern is not about FOSS philosophy, but rather about updates and version releases.

I wanted to view the Wikipedia article on OpenOffice recently, so I googled ‘openoffice’, correctly assuming that the link I was looking for would be near the top of the results.  While doing this, I noticed that a Google query for OpenOffice also turns up a couple of paid ‘sponsored links’ on the right side of the screen leading to websites offering dubious downloads of what purports to be OpenOffice, or something close to it.  Here’s a screenshot:

As it continues to develop and polish Windows 7, Microsoft has made three fatal mistakes that will kill the operating system’s chances for success on Netbooks. Skeptical? Take a look at this reasoning from The VAR Guy.

First, let me point out that I think Microsoft has done a reasonably good job developing Windows 7. Most early buzz about the operating system was positive. But when it comes to running Windows 7 on netbooks, Microsoft has made a fatal design decision that will open the door for more Linux netbooks. Skeptical? Consider the evidence.

Investors are worried about executive changes at Salesforce.com, but that didn’t stop a strong rally this week in software as a service (SaaS) stocks. Thanks to strong earnings from RightNow Technologies (RNOW) and several other companies, our SaaS 20 Stock Index jumped more than 7 percent for the week ended February 6. Here’s a look at the weekly SaaS winners and losers.

During the Kaspersky Lab Partner Summit, CEO Eugene Kaspersky (pictured, right) offered some hints about the company’s long-term financial strategy — and touched on the topics of potential acquisitions and a hypothetical initial public offering.

Despite the economic turmoil, antivirus specialist Kaspersky Lab’s quarterly bookings have pushed above $100 million for the first time, and annual sales were up 78 percent, according to Chief Operating Officer Eugene Buyakin (pictured, right). Here’s the scoop, live from the Kaspersky Partner Summit in Puerto Rico.

At first glance, SugarCRM has launched new programs to train customers on open source CRM (customer relationship management). But take a closer look and you’ll see the continued evolution of SugarCRM’s channel partner program and SaaS (software as a service) initiatives. Here’s the scoop.

Imagine you are Mark Shuttleworth. You run Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu Linux. You’re eager to line up more independent software vendors (ISVs) and server partners. Meanwhile, Michael “Monty” Widenius — one of MySQL’s founders — has resigned from Sun Microsystems. Hmmm. The VAR Guy thinks Shuttleworth needs to dial Monty and say “Let’s Make a Deal.” Here’s why.

The love affair between netbooks and Ubuntu continues, this time with Hewlett-Packard (pictured) and Toshiba launching new Ubuntu-driven portables. However, not all Ubuntu netbooks are created equally — especially when it comes to the graphical user interfaces. Here’s why.

tuxradar.com has published a well-done series of benchmarking tests comparing Ubuntu Intrepid and Jaunty with Windows Vista and 7, both on 32- and 64-bit platforms.  The results suggest that–surprise–Windows 7 is not noticeably faster than Vista.  Moreover, it’s much slower than Ubuntu.

When Canonical revealed the results of its Ubuntu Server Edition 2009 Survey, some pundits thought the news was designed to attract more customers to Canonical’s server software. In reality, I think Canoncial had a far different — and far wiser — goal for the survey. Here it is.

The VAR Guy is in New York, consuming New England clam chowder and heading to Puerto Rico for the Kaspersky Lab partner conference. (Hmmm. Our resident blogger is such a cultured guy.) You may know a bit about Kaspersky. But stay tuned. Our resident blogger expects plenty of news from the company on February 6. Here’s the early scoop.

Microsoft appears to be doing a lot of things right with Windows 7 — the forthcoming successor to Windows Vista. But The VAR Guy is still scratching his head of Microsoft’s decision to offer six versions of Windows 7.

Looking at most partner programs, you often see a matrix listing all of the “benefits” of partnering — neatly segmented into Gold, Silver & Bronze levels. While this looks nice on the website, the basic elements that ensure a valuable, productive, and mutually beneficial partnership are often overlooked. Here’s how channel chiefs and technology companies can correct that problem.

Google enjoys a pretty favorable image within the free-software community.  In some respects, it deserves this reputation, as it strongly supports many open-source projects.  On the other hand, Google is reluctant to open the code of most of its own software.  Given this hesitancy, can we trust the company to be always on Ubuntu’s side?

Google and freedom

Google does a lot of good for free software.  It has sponsored development of wine and contributes patches to Ubuntu.  Many of its employees use a modified version of Ubuntu on their company desktops.  And as one of Microsoft’s chief competitors, Google is an ally of Linux by the simple logic that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

SUSE Linux provider Novell has cut roughly 100 employees — or less than 3 percent of its workforce — but CEO Ron Hovsepian appears to be scouring the market for potential acquisitions. How’s that for a short-n-sweet update?

Instead of ignoring open source conferences, Microsoft continues to invade them. The latest example: John Frederiksen (pictured), general manager of Microsoft’s Response Point business, is scheduled to speak at Digium AsteriskWorld on February 3. Why is Microsoft paying such close attention to an event for open source IP PBX advocates? The answer is obvious.

Despite the recession, Cisco Systems and Digium (the upstart open source IP PBX specialist) are holding strategic partner and customer events within days of each other in Miami, Florida. Cisco’s agenda is all business. Digium’s agenda is mostly technology. The VAR Guy’s agenda: Stirring up some controversy.

Two Microsoft Business Solutions veterans have joined Openbravo, a fast-growing provider of open source enterprise resource planning (ERP) and point of sale (POS) software. The moves signal growing momentum for business-centric open source applications. The news also highlights Openbravo’s continued investments in its IT channel partners. Here’s the scoop.

There’s been some speculation (albeit with minimal supporting evidence) that Microsoft is crafting a ‘software center’ for Windows that will resemble the package-management system Ubuntu users have known and loved for years.  While I don’t doubt the possibility that Microsoft might try to implement something like that, I strongly suspect that it will fail.  Here’s why.