The VAR Guy

Forgive The VAR Guy for being silent the past 24 hours. He’s been battling planes, trains and automobiles across the US. But now our resident blogger is home — wherever that is — and he’s sipping a latte. Within about 30 minutes, The VAR Guy should be completely recharged. And blogging like a madman again. Brace yourself.

Because I was traveling, I didn’t get around to upgrading my desktop to Ubuntu 9.04 until yesterday.  After what seemed like the fastest Ubuntu installation and quickest boot ever on my system, I was excited to log into Gnome and see what the stable release of Jaunty has to offer.  Instead, I was met with a lot of frustration and loss of faith in Ubuntu’s commitment to stability, due to egregious regressions in the performance of my Intel video card.

Discussions of Ubuntu with people outside (and sometimes inside) the free-software community often devolve into criticism of Linux advocates as arrogant elitists, endlessly singing the praises of their operating system of choice but frightening away potential new users with their snobbish and intolerant attitudes.  This reputation for pretension may be undeserved, but it’s something the Ubuntu community needs to deal with more actively.

The VAR Guy is enjoying some healthy industry debate. By now, you likely know that SpringSource acquired Hyperic, an open source systems management company. But the real fun started when Nimsoft CEO Gary Read offered his opinion on the deal.

The VAR Guy and Cisco Systems’ channel team now have two things in common. They both love Starbucks. And they both blog. Indeed, Cisco has launched a channel blog. Hmmm. Does The VAR Guy have new competition — or a new way to track Cisco’s channel news?

Two weeks ago, Magento made some major announcements related to a new, enterprise-focused product and a new partner program. Full disclosure: I have been involved in the formation, and launch of Magento’s new partner program. Now that it is launched and we are transitioning existing partners and recruiting new ones, I thought it would be interesting and insightful to provide a behind-the-scenes view into the challenges we faced and why a new partner program was critical to our future success.

Strong quarterly earnings from multiple Software as a Service (SaaS) stocks lifted our SaaS 20 Stock Index 5.7% for the week ended May 1. Winners beat losers, 17 to 3 — as investors sharply bid shares up at Athenahealth Inc., Concur Technologies Inc., SuccessFactors Inc., NetSuite Inc. and Ingram Micro Inc. Here’s a closer look at the weekly SaaS winners and losers.

The VAR Guy is hanging out today at SMB Nation, a conference for small business VARs — most of whom work with Microsoft. Still, open source companies like Untangle and xTuple have quietly found a home at the conference. Here’s the scoop.

Forgive The VAR Guy for being briefly confused. Symantec announced Managed Backup Services earlier this week. But the announcement made zero mention of Symantec Protection Network (SPN), a software as a service (SaaS) platform that offers managed backup and storage. So, what’s the difference between SPN and Managed Backup Services? The VAR Guy found the answer.

The release of Jaunty Jackalope (Ubuntu 9.04) on April 23 might have been the most celebrated open source operating system release to date — with 110 release parties taking place across the globe. But here’s the twist: This wasn’t the result of a corporate PR machine. Instead, the parties involved  the efforts of individual Ubuntu community members.

In-N-Out Burger is one of the most popular fast food chains on the US west coast. As a leader, what do you have in common with In-N-Out Burger zealots (a.k.a., their store managers)? You both have to manage employees effectively, retain top performers, and hold down costs while maintaining consistent quality. Here’s how to do so.