The VAR Guy

Plenty of people jumped on the bandwagon when Ubuntu 9.04 debuted on April 23. But independent software vendors (ISVs) were mostly absent from the launch party. Fast forward to Ubuntu 9.10‘s anticipated launch in October 2009, and Canonical hopes to deliver a far more impressive ISV story. Here’s the scoop.

Red Hat is hitting the road and shaking hands with channel partners. In fact, the Linux and open source middleware provider is launching a training road show for Red Hat Advanced Business Partners. But that’s not all. The VAR Guy thinks Red Hat’s annual channel revenues will potentially top $600 million within five years, up from about $326 million today. Here’s the math.

Talk about a strange move by Microsoft. The Windows 7 Release Candidate is now available for download to selected audiences, with broader availability expected May 5. Kudos, Microsoft. Solid progress. But why is Microsoft depending on endorsements from Corel Corp. to help evangelize Windows 7? Is the Windows ISV program stuck in 1995?

It’s not quite Roger Waters or David Gilmour, but if you’re interested in Pink Floyd and need to briefly escape from the high-tech market, take a journey to The Dark Side of the Moon with The VAR Guy. Here’s how.

Conventional wisdom says open source software providers are benefiting from the recession as businesses seek lower-cost IT solutions. But if open source is so darn hot, why are two major open source companies — GroundWork Open Source and SugarCRM — cutting prices and/or introducing lower-cost options?

When you hear a name like SAS Institute, casual listeners may assume you compete in the SaaS (software as a service) market. In reality, the folks at SAS run one of the world’s largest business intelligence software providers. Looking ahead, SAS Institute is preparing some SaaS surprises — and channel partners will be welcome to join the party. Here’s the scoop.

When Oracle announced plans to acquire Sun Microsystems (and by association, MySQL), some folks reacted with concern. Others reacted with delight. But one start-up company — named Continuent — certainly deserved to celebrate. Here’s why.

After a month of debate and experimentation, my employer has made the decision to use the open-source KVM virtualization infrastructure for migrating IT resources to a virtualized environment.  Below, I discuss why we chose KVM over its (mostly proprietary) alternatives.

Less than one week after Canonical debuted Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix edition, System76 is playing an encure by launching an Ubuntu 9.04 netbook. The move had been rumored for several weeks. And it’s certainly the first of many Ubuntu netbooks that will hit the market. Here’s a bit more about System76′s new device.

Zimbra, the open source email provider owned by Yahoo, plans to launch a formalized partner program in the next few weeks or so. More than 700 partners already sell or host Zimbra’s software, which is marching toward 50 million paid customers, The VAR Guy hears. But that’s not all. Here’s where Zimbra is heading next in the channel.

It sounds like a simple strategy: Host a contest to give one small business customer a free extreme technology makeover. And use all the publicity around the event to fuel your lead generation efforts. But here’s what can go right — and wrong — with the extreme technology makeover contests that VARs and managed service providers are hosting.

The Asterisk industry seems to be answering a loud, global call for open source IP PBX training. While Digium has started planning for the annual AstriCon conference, solutions providers and training centers are striving to educate the masses about the open source IP PBX. Here are some perspectives.

Some vendors pride themselves on the number of partners they recruit. Congratulations, are partners supposed to be excited about that? Welcome to our partner program! You now have more competition for your business then you did before you joined. I’m not saying vendors should have fewer partners, but let’s be reasonable: Don’t be so out of touch with your partners that you promote your partner list as a benefit to them. Instead, focus on these four secrets to success.

In the managed services market, a growing number of MSPs are partnering up and coordinating their business engagements. This so-called MSP-to-MSP Collaboration is the central topic for MSPmentor’s May 13 webcast. Here are some more details.

Unlike proprietary platforms–and some Linux distributions–Ubuntu doesn’t identify primarily with any single country or language.  The operating system’s developers are spread around the world, and aim to make their product equally accessible to all users, regardless of their locales.  But how well have the challenges of localization been met?

After a two-month hot streak, software as a service stocks cooled off for the week ending April 24. Our SaaS 20 Stock Index slipped 2.19 percent for the one-week period. Amazon.com and Salary.com were the index’s biggest weekly winners; Omniture and RightNow Technologies were the biggest weekly losers. Here’s what went wrong — and right — for SaaS during the week.

For more than two months now, the Symantec Protection Network (SPN) blog has been silent. The SPN blog tracks Symantec’s own SaaS (software as a service) strategy and larger industry trends. So, what’s behind the silence? And where is Symantec heading next with SaaS? The VAR Guy has found some clues.

I had to set up a Fedora 8 machine recently.  The installation process was simple enough, but configuring the system reminded me of several simple features that I take for granted when using Ubuntu, but which, when absent, make the user experience significantly more daunting.  Below are four of the features that provide an extra boost of user-friendliness to Ubuntu.

Professional services automation software — which helps VARs and managed service providers to run their businesses more effectively — appears to have reached mass adoption among leading MSPs. A key example: During the HTG 2009 Summit and Q2 peer group meeting in Dallas, virtually all of the 300-plus attending solutions providers indicated that they’re using PSA software.

The VAR Guy double-checked this rumor and got confirmation: Diskeeper may leap beyond Windows to offer disk defragmentation software on Linux and Mac OS X. What’s motivating the potential Diskeeper moves? Here’s the scoop.

After Canonical launches Ubuntu 9.04 on April 23, the company will play an encore by launching a series of training courses — for Ubuntu Server Edition and even cloud computing. Here’s the scoop, only from The VAR Guy.

After Canonical launches Ubuntu 9.04 on April 23, the company will play an encore by launching a series of training courses — for Ubuntu Server Edition and even cloud computing. Here’s the scoop, only from The VAR Guy.

So, The VAR Guy is seated with Karl Palachuk at the HTG Peer Group conference in Dallas. The conference, designed for VARs to share peer info with one another, has great content and great energy. But the real secret to success is Snackage.