The VAR Guy

Dear Mark: You’ve made Ubuntu the most popular Linux distribution on desktops. You’ve established a footprint on notebooks and netbooks. But a lot of people wonder why you’re marching Canonical — and Ubuntu — in new directions like the server. Don’t listen to your critics. Keep marching upward. Here’s why.

In separate but similar initiatives, Avnet Technology Solutions (the value-added distributor) and CompTIA (the Computing Technology Industry Association) are striving to connect solutions providers with IT projects fueled by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which totals nearly $800 billion. Here’s a look at the Avnet and CompTIA efforts.

Even as some Wall Street indexes hit 15-year lows, GroundWork Open Source has apparently lined up more funding and seems to be plotting a long-term IPO (initial public offering) strategy with a CEO change.

The VAR Guy doesn’t spend much time writing about systems builders, but this little tidbit of information deserves some ink: Puget Systems has announced a free Windows 7 upgrade strategy months before Microsoft formalizes its own upgrade pricing plans, according to PCWorld. Kudos to Puget for grabbing the Windows 7 spotlight — at least for today. But The VAR Guy wonders: Are system builders really hoping to profit from Windows 7?

As Hewlett-Packard shuts down Upline — an online storage service — some pundits may wonder if HP is retreating from cloud-based computing and software as a service (SaaS). Certainly not. Rising from Upline’s ashes, HP is set to announce a new SaaS industry relationship within two days, The VAR Guy hears.

Governments continue to march toward open source. The Dutch government last year committed to use open standards, the French government has deployed Kubuntu desktops to over 1,000 members of parliament and staff, and a few days ago the United Kingdom government announced an Open Source action plan. The plan, entitled ‘Open Source, Open Standards and Re-Use‘, calls to ensure that open source solutions be fully and fairly considered for public sector IT projects and emphasises the requirement for sharing and re-use of code to reduce costs and drive common solutions.