The VAR Guy

If you’re a VAR leveraging Microsoft’s Windows Azure and you’ve been using their SQL Azure server, good news: SQL Azure Database Service Update 1 is now live. Here’s what it adds.

The products aren’t even in the wild yet and the war is already brewing. Hewlett-Packard apparently wants their tablet (the HP Slate) to be cheaper than Apple’s iPad and still include 3G wireless. So, will VARs give the HP tablet a look? Here are some perspectives.

The ruckus began long  before Steve Job’s alleged “lazy” comment about Adobe Flash, but the issue certainly gained some more attention after the fact. Now, in an interview with All Things Digital, Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch has conceded a few criticisms about Flash’s overall optimization and shed some light on the future for the ubiquitous plug-in.

So much for competing and cooperating. Cisco Systems and Hewlett-Packard are officially full-time competitors. According to a blog entry and video post from Cisco Channel Chief Keith Goodwin, Cisco “recently notified HP that we will not renew its System Integrator contract when it expires on April 30, 2010, resulting in HP no longer being a Cisco Certified Channel or Global Service Alliance partner.” Here’s the scoop.

Dell’s ongoing march into the systems management market has taken an interesting turn. As part of the KACE Networks buyout, Dell is now in position to sell systems management appliances. And those appliances, in turn, can help VARs and MSPs to proactively maintain Linux PCs and Apple Macintoshes. Here are the details.

When Novell Brainshare 2010 kicks off March 21 in Salt Lake City, the company will put several initiatives in the spotlight. Among the top two priorities. Promoting Novell Pulse (a real-time communication and social messaging platform for enterprises) and promoting SUSE Linux software partners. Here are the details.

Canonical has launched a new service, dubbed Ubuntu Single Sign On. The effort seeks to simplify and unify all login services for all Ubuntu-related sites. Sound like a good idea? Here’s the deal…

The Mobile World Congress 2010 is taking place this week (Feb 15th-18th) in Barcelona this year and there are tons of surprises, like the Windows Phone 7 series launching. But the latest surprise involves Opera, that ‘other browser’ that people tend to forget about. Opera has an interesting trick up their sleeve. They’ve developed an iPhone browser that’s 6 times faster than anything on the market.

Alteva claims to be the largest provider of enterprise hosted voice-over-IP (VoIP) providers in North America, so it’s no wonder that the company’s newly-announced porting capabilities for international numbers is rolling out in Canada first. But thanks to a strategic partnership with Microsoft, phone calls are only part of the hosted telephony solution they can offer VARs. Here’s the deal.

In your opinion, what’s the best netbook operating system you’ve used? Be honest. Tell us. Over at Lifehacker.com, they  already asked the same question. So far, the leading answer is… (drum roll, please…): Windows 7. The other results may surprise you…

For the second time in recent weeks, an Alfresco veteran is making an open source career move. The latest news involves Andrew P. King jumping from Alfresco to rival Magnolia International as its new U.S. director of business development — essentially becoming Magnolia’s U.S. channel chief. Never heard of Magnolia? Year-over-year U.S. sales reportedly are surging 60 percent. Here’s a bit more about Magnolia, King and the company’s partner program.

Hewlett-Packard’s latest quarterly results, announced today, beat Wall Street’s expectations and CEO Mark Hurd is raising earnings guidance for 2010. HP sounds downright bullish. Will Michael Dell be equally bullish when Dell announces earnings on Feb. 18? Here are some clues, some of which involve Dell’s PartnerDirect partner program.

If the American government invested as many resources rounding up violators of software licenses as it does fighting “terror” (and no, I don’t mean the Jacobin variety), I’d have been put away long ago, because all of my Ubuntu systems use patented multimedia software that I didn’t pay for.  But I’ve recently realized that it doesn’t have to be this way, and that legal codec support is easily available.  Here’s a look at some of those options.

Juniper Networks is expanding beyond its wired boundaries into the mobility space, with a slew of solutions at this year’s Mobile World Congress focusing on security, trafficking and applications development, among other things. Here are some details.

Intel and Nokia have merged their respective technologies: Moblin and Maemo, to create “MeeGo.” Simply put, it’s a Linux-based platform claiming support of hardware architectures from something as simple as a mobile hand-held device to in-dash car-computers and everything in between. Is this a Google Android alternative or wishful thinking on the part of two big-name companies?

It’s finally here, Windows Mobile 7, or as it more colloquially wants to be known: Windows Phone 7 Series. It doesn’t really roll off the tongue and it’s not exactly the seventh series of any kind of Windows Phone, but that’s what they’re sticking with. So what’s the scoop on the new dialer from Redmond? Well, it all started at the Mobile World Congress 2010 in Barcelona…

Ever wish you could debug something collaboratively? Maybe you wish you could actually debug a piece of software without actually having to be on the machine you were building the code on? DebugLive.com, which just launched, is a potential solution to those challenges.

If you’re not familiar, Adobe AIR is a platform-independent software development environment that’s positioning itself as the successor to Java. And like Java, AIR is moving into the mobile phone market, adding support for Android, BlackBerry, and, yes — iPhone. Here’s why independent software vendors (ISVs) should take note.

Canonical’s channel partner program for Ubuntu, the fast-growing Linux distribution, took two promising steps forward this week. One step involves a vote of confidence from a key consulting company. The other step involves a key move in the government market. Here are the details.

Call it a rare triple play in the open source server market. Lenovo, Red Hat and Tech Data are partnering to give resellers discounts on select Lenovo ThinkServers with Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced. Here are the details — and the implications for open source solutions providers.

Would you recognize if you were at the beginning of a technological tipping point? Welcome to 2010! The convergence of ubiquitous connectivity and cloud computing has one simple and very exciting output: the explosion of hardware gadgets we will use to access it anywhere and anytime. Don’t believe me? Check out the following trends plus a list of 20 computers I think you (and your customers) will own in the next 5 years.

Here’s a quick little snippet of information for those who haven’t been paying attention to recent chip moves. Intel’s latest and greatest processors aren’t Pentium processors, and they’re not the Core 2 brand either. Intel’s latest chip-line is the ‘Core i’ brand. Here’s an overview for system builders and solutions providers.

StorMagic, for the uninitiated, is involved in the iSCSI SAN (Storage Area Network) management software for virtualized server environments. The company says it has signed up over 60 resellers since launching the SvSAN storage virtual appliance last year. And during the recent VMWare Partner Exchange in Las Vegas, StorMagic made some new partner program moves. Here are the details.