The VAR Guy

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 — also known as the economic stimulus package — includes $19 billion for health care information technology. Avnet Technology Solutions sees a particularly big opportunity for VARs to focus on storage solutions for medical images and electronic health records (EHR). Here’s how.

One good sale deserves another. That’s one way to think of the Ubuntu PC market, where ZaReason is the latest company to offer special Cyber Monday sales to Ubuntu desktop and notebook shoppers. Here are some details.

From Washington, D.C., to Silicon Valley, senators and software industry CEOs are pressuring the European Union to make a decision on Oracle’s proposed buyout of Sun Microsystems and the MySQL open source database. Here’s the latest chatter, including a letter from Jaspersoft CEO Brian Gentile to the EU.

It’s not often that we get to talk to one-man reseller operations here at The VAR Guy, let alone one-man software vendors. Regardless, when Chuck Wegrzyn, CTO of the solely-owned-and-operated Twisted Storage, told us that his open-source cloud storage product does everything ParaScale can, but for free, The VAR Guy had to follow up. Here’s the scoop.

My tiny apartment in one of the outer boroughs of New York City isn’t really set up to receive phone service without punching through more walls than my landlord would be comfortable with — but I still needed a desk phone for business. That’s when I decided that voice-over-IP (VoIP) Internet telephony might be the answer, since I didn’t need a phone jack and, at least in theory, it’d drive my phone bills down. So far, I’ve had the chance to try out MagicJack and netTALK. Here are my conclusions after weeks spent experimenting.

Even as distributors reinvent themselves for managed services and open source VARs, they aren’t ready to abandon their logistics heritage. A case in point: Ingram Micro says it will ship more than 3 million products during peak holiday weeks. Here’s how.

Rackspace Hosting Inc. (RAX) has replaced Omniture in our SaaS 20 Stock Index, which tracks publicly held companies that have software as a service (SaaS) business practices. Here’s a quick look at the SaaS 20 Stock Index, its members and its overall performance in 2009.

System76, the Ubuntu PC maker, continues to offer special holiday pricing on selected systems through Monday evening, November 30. Here’s a look at System76′s Ubuntu PC and notebook discounts, which are part of an ongoing Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales promotion.

For the Ubuntu cloud strategy to succeed, Canonical is going to need a big assist from Eucalyptus Systems — which makes the engine within the Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC). But who exactly is Eucalyptus and is the company making progress with its own cloud efforts? Here’s an update.

Cisco Systems has done quite a lot to promote the Flip video camera since acquiring the Flip business in March 2009. Cisco partners that attend Cisco Partner Summit in mid-2009 and Cisco Partner Velocity in November 2009 all received the Flip camera. That’s smart viral marketing. Now, it’s time for Cisco to take the next step: Add the Cisco brand to all Flip products. Here’s why.

Physical infrastructure provider SharkRack and data access networking provider Gigamon have announced a partnership in which SharkRack will incorporate Gigamon’s GigaVUE intelligent enterprise management platform in its data center equipment, offering a centralized monitoring and analyzing solution that the companies claim will provide visibility to any data.

Opportunity is knocking in the government market for Canonical’s Landscape, a systems management and monitoring tool for Ubuntu systems. Specifically, Autonomic Resources — an integrator that serves the U.S. federal government — is now approved to offer Landscape to government customers running Ubuntu, WorksWithU has learned. Here are some quick details.

Occasional criticism of Ubuntu as a less-than-perfect Linux distribution, and of Canonical as a selfish member of the free-software ecosystem, is nothing new.  But no matter how many flaws one can find with Ubuntu and its developers, they have succeeded in respects where every similar endeavor to date has failed; namely, they’ve achieved a public image that blows every other Linux distribution out of the water.

For quite a long time Apple Stores depended on Windows CE-based point of sale (POS) devices from Motorola’s Symbol Technologies business. But in November 2009, Apple Stores started to replace those wireless point of sale devices with fancy new iPod Touches wearing a veritable suit of armor. It begs the question: Will Apple ever promote and sell its own POS handhelds to third-party retail stores?

CompTIA, an association serving IT vendors, users and solutions providers, seems to be making progress with a Security Trustmark accreditation program. To wit, a dozen new companies have earned the CompTIA Security Trustmark. Here’s the update.

Those who think 3Com will rest easy while Hewlett-Packard digests the company might want to think again. Specifically, 3Com has introduced a new technology that enables both wired and wireless LANs to run on a single layer, potentially eliminating a whole host of headaches for solution providers installing or managing separate wired and wireless networks.

In this economy, SMBs are holding tight to old equipment. But there’s a potential silver lining for VARs: Cashing in on maintenance contracts. But how can you track scores of contracts across your customer base? That’s where Managed Maintenance, Inc. (MMI) — maker of the OneView SaaS portal — hopes to help. Here’s the scoop.

It’s not exactly VAR-related news, but it’s interesting news none the less. The latest viral video poking around the web is a mock-up of a digital magazine coming from Condé Nast. It’s an edition of WIRED potentially running on the long-rumored Apple Tablet. Apparently Wired isn’t alone. Rumor has it that the New York Times has already been approached for producing material custom-tailored for the holy-grail of Apple devices.

Roughly a year ago, MySQL stood near the top of The VAR Guy’s Open Source 50 — which tracks the world’s most promising open source partner programs. Fast forward to the present and MySQL’s ownership remains in doubt. The reason: The European Union continues to scrutinize Oracle’s planned takeover of Sun and MySQL. For MySQL channel partners what does the future hold?

So much for relaxing on Thanksgiving. Oracle Channel Chief Judson Althoff (pictured) and his team are preparing to launch Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) Specialized during a virtual event on Dec. 2. Here are some quick details.

Zoho, the SaaS provider and Google Apps competitor that offers online office suites and other business applications, has launched Zoho Recruit. The VAR Guy wonders: Will solutions providers use Recruit to fill their own vacancies?

PC and computer makers continue to launch new multi-touch offerings. The latest example: HP has released some TouchSmart development programs to help ISVs and VARs create unique TouchSmart applications, in addition to interactive digital signage for both the consumer and commercial end of the spectrum. Here’s the quick and dirty details for solutions providers.

Has anyone formed a Channel Support Group yet?  We all know that The Channel has always been seen as secondary to corporate activities and marketing. The Channel gets less budget for marketing activities or has to re-purpose the corporate marketing content that was not exactly partner friendly or has to defend their partners against channel conflict with the direct sales team.  It is a huge struggle and one that we, as channel professionals, take in stride. But is a shift starting?