The VAR Guy

Forgive The VAR Guy for having Cisco Systems on the brain. Our resident blogger just booked travel to the 2009 Cisco Partner Summit in Boston, scheduled for June 2-4. But even before he packs for Beantown, The VAR Guy is hearing Cisco rumors — especially when it comes to small business channel initiatives.

If you’re looking to understand how managed service providers partner with peer MSPs, join us today, May 13 for the MSPmentor Live webcast. During the one-hour webcast, which starts at 2:00 p.m. eastern, we’ll explore how MSPs are finding each other, and how you can coordinate projects — service tickets, billing and more — between multiple MSPs.

They aren’t household names. But in the world of open source business intelligence (BI) software, Jaspersoft and Pentaho are trading some impressive blows and building out their partner programs. Here’s the scoop from The VAR Guy.

The VAR Guy enjoys Barron’s and The Motley Fool — two fantastic financial websites. But when it comes to rumors about Red Hat’s future, The VAR Guy has to side with irreverent Fools rather than the traditional Barron’s. Here’s why.

During a Partner Operations Advisory Board (POAB) meeting last week in New Orleans, the folks at Cisco Systems spent considerable time listening to (rather than talking to) channel partners. And when it came time to discuss how Cisco communicates with partners, the networking giant heard two clear messages:

Canonical has begun beta testing a managed storage service — known as Ubuntu One (pictured) — that allows Ubuntu 9.04 users to share and sync files between multiple Ubuntu PCs. Here’s the scoop from The VAR Guy.

Is Sophos the George Costanza of the endpoint security market? Potentially yes. Did The VAR Guy just insult Sophos? Absolutely not. Feeling a little confused? Read a bit more and you’ll understand The VAR Guy’s (unconventional) wisdom regarding the Sophos channel partner program.

Canonical has begun beta testing a managed storage service — known as Ubuntu One (pictured) — that allows Ubuntu 9.04 users to share and sync files between multiple Ubuntu PCs. Here’s the scoop from The VAR Guy.

For the second time in two weeks, business service management (BSM) is converging with resellers and managed service providers (MSPs). The latest example involves Zyrion Inc., a Sunnyvale, Calif.-based start-up that has landed on several “up-and-comer” media watch lists in recent months. Still, not all BSM software providers are making major channel moves. Here’s the scoop.

Welcome to the WorksWithU vodcast, produced by contributing bloggers Joshua Chase and Nick Ali. Here are some details about this week’s video, plus some hints about where we’re heading next.

Sure, customers across most market segments are cutting back their IT spending. With increased competition for this smaller opportunity, it is a critical time for technology resellers to focus on their core competencies. Many resellers traditionally specializing in hardware sales, including PCs, have diversified their offerings to include services like remote monitoring and software as a service (SaaS).  Other resellers are trying to define a niche in Managed Services and Consulting practices. Here’s how you can keep your profits flowing.

In my previous post, I described Magento’s new partner program in an effort to provide a behind the scenes perspective into some of the challenges we faced and insight into what we were hoping to accomplish with the changes. I discussed the need to create meaningful distinction between the partner levels that ultimately drives value for partners, customers and Magento. But there were other needs that we needed to address.

When SugarCRM announced co-founder John Roberts’ (pictured) exit last week, some folks viewed the news in a vacuum — wondering what’s right (and wrong) with the open source CRM provider. But The VAR Guy is looking at the bigger open source picture and he sees some reasons for concern.

If you’re looking to understand how managed service providers partner with peer MSPs, join us this Wednesday, May 13 for the MSPmentor Live webcast. During the one-hour webcast, which starts at 2:00 p.m. eastern, we’ll explore how MSPs are finding each other, and how you can coordinate projects — service tickets, billing and more — between multiple MSPs.

And now for something slightly different: If you’re a solutions provider or managed service provider, check out our sister site’s MSPmentor Live webcast, scheduled for Wednesday, May 13 at 2:00 p.m. eastern. During the event, we’ll discuss how MSPs can partner with one another to drive profits, coordinate trouble tickets and speed customer projects.

The poor experience of many users upgrading to Jaunty has prompted calls for a less ambitious Ubuntu release cycle (for examples, see the comments on my recent post about video-driver problems).  Instead of pushing out an updated version of Ubuntu with a new feature set every six months, some have argued, developers should issue new releases less frequently, or recommend that only LTS versions be used for production.  I disagree.  Here’s why.

It’s a moon shot. A big hairy audacious goal in the unified communications market. A bet-your-business statement: Within the next three years, the Siemens Enterprise Communications Group hopes to generate 75 percent of its revenue through channel partners, up from a scant 15 percent today. Here’s the scoop from the unified communications specialist.

Mark Shuttleworth made some interesting comments recently about the role of the Wine compatibility layer in fostering the migration of Windows users to Ubuntu.  Shuttleworth views Wine, and binary compatibility with Windows applications in general, as a distraction from the real goal of making the free-software world “thrive on its own rules,” not those borrowed from the proprietary ecosystem.  I disagree.  Here’s why.

Three separate solutions providers reached out to The VAR Guy this week, expressing concerns about alleged SonicWALL staff cuts and price changes. Instead of sounding the alarm and pressing the panic button, let’s give SonicWALL equal time to offer some perspectives and clarifications, especially amid the recession. Here’s the scoop.

Consolidation continues across the IT channel and the open source software market. The latest example involves Sparxent, a mid-market solutions provider, buying XAware, an open source data integration specialist. XAware is the second open source company to get gobbled up this week. And in both cases, venture capitalists seem to be consolidating their financial bets. Here’s the scoop.

Generally speaking, The VAR Guy avoids the temptation to evangelize Netbooks, because he thinks the Netbook market is mostly consumer-driven hype. But here’s an interesting business spin: Netbook purchases among small and midsize businesses (SMBs) will more than triple in 2010 vs. 2009, according to a new report. Does that spell opportunity for VARs? Perhaps so, especially when it comes to hardware as a service (HaaS) and managed services. Here’s why.

By now, you know all about the social media hype: Blogs, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. But if you examine how some IT vendors promote their partner programs across social media, you’ll discover some vendors are very late to the game.

When Cisco Systems announced financial results May 6, The Wall Street Journal noted that the networking giant now has 13,000 bloggers. That’s incredibly impressive — or is it a waste of time and energy? Here are some thoughts from The VAR Guy.