The VAR Guy

At the Intermedia Partner Summit, the hosted Exchange provider told dozens of MSPs and VARs that they can potentially generate more profits from hosted unified communications. Intermedia’s pitch sounds accurate. But a few attendees raised questions about  getting into the hosted Unified Communications market. Here’s why.

The VAR Guy is listening for clues about the hosted Exchange industry. Are VARs embracing hosted Exchange opportunities and how are those efforts going so far? Bob Leibholz, VP of sales and business development at Intermedia, provided some key reality checks during the Intermedia Partner Summit this morning in Silicon Valley. Here are some details.

Recently, I sat down and had a chat with Zyxel’s Shawn Roger, product marketing manager and Jake Sailana, marcomm manager. The pitch? Have you considered ZyXel for your healthcare needs? Here’s what they want you to know…

Canonical’s CEO crown officially transitioned from Mark Shuttleworth to Jane Silber on March 1. During a phone discussion with The VAR Guy yesterday, Silber shared her top priorities for Canonical and Ubuntu. She also disclosed plans to make another key executive hire at Canonical. And, Silber shared some views on Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx), the cloud — and the potential sale of Linux rival Novell to a hedge fund. Here’s a recap of the discussion…

A couple weeks ago, we took a look at Lubuntu, a lightweight Linux distribution based on Ubuntu.  Since then, the operating system has undergone major changes that merit a revisit of its features.  Here’s a second look at the Ubuntu variant that just might replace Xubuntu.

On March 2nd 2010, Apple filed a suit against mobile phone maker HTC for patent infringement. HTC, who notably supports Android and the Google Nexus One is fighting back. What’s more, Google is backing HTC. Is this just another court-spat between companies, or the start of the oncoming mobile wars and Steve Jobs’ increasing hostility towards Google…?

The biggest news out of the the third day of the RSA Security Conference in San Francisco: a gamut of computing industry leaders, including Google, Verizon, and CA, announced the formation of the Open Identity Exchange, a non-profit organization dedicated to building trust in online identity credentials. Here’s the scoop, along with the rest of the day 3 highlights.

Microsoft is getting ready to roll out Visual Studio 2010, the latest version of their pedigreed software development environment on April 12. If you’re a developer upgrading from an older version of Visual Studio, Microsoft has some good news for you. And if you’re looking into buying the professional edition at retail, there’s even better news — it’ll include 20 hours of Windows Azure. Interested?

Back at the end of January we had our first little chat with Astaro and they gave us a heads-up on 3 new products they were working on in the unified threat management (UTM) market. Now that March has started, they’ve got some more official details on what’s coming out. If you’re even a little bit interested in networking, mail or web security, you many want to take a look…

With the upcoming release of Office 2010 expected in June, businesses at all levels are considering the upgrade to Microsoft’s latest iteration of productivity software. However, after the adoption problems of Office 2007, Office 2010 might be a hard sell. It’s likely that the many of your clients skipped 2007 altogether and are still using 2003 or perhaps even 2000.  Some clients may view the specter of a new version of Office with more trepidation than excitement.

If you’re out there working with the Tech Data Healthcare Specialized Business Unit (SBU), you’re in for some interesting new. Tech Data has now added a special service for members of the TechMed Alliance. It connects IT resellers to grant writing and tracking services. Here are some details.

Second verse, same as the first: cloud security continued to be a major theme at the second day of the RSA  Conference in San Francisco. Here are the highlights…

Tech Data is working with Sage North America Healthcare Division on the health care vertical. Also news: Sage the first member of the brand new TechMed Vendor Affiliate Program. The aim is to make it easy to build an Electronic Health Records Business. And what does that mean exactly? Well, VARs in healthcare might want to read on…

Cbeyond makes communications and IT solutions; ADTRAN makes networking and communication solutions. A match made in heaven? Maybe. ADTRAN has joined up with the Cbeyond PBX Platform Partner Program at the ‘Platinum’ Tier. Honors and mentions aside, here’s what it means for you, dear reader…

A hedge fund has offered to acquire Novell, developer of SUSE Linux, for $1.8 billion. Moments ago, Novell confirmed that it plans to review the unsolicited buyout offer. Now, Wall Street pundits wonder if folks like Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Oracle or SAP will step in and offer a higher bid for Novell. Here’s the chatter so far along with another software company that might make the perfect parent for Novell…

And so it begins. As Canonical puts the finishing touches on Ubuntu 10.04 — a long term support (LTS) release — the company also is reaching out to potential Linux server and desktop software partners. In fact, Canonical says there are at least 10 reasons why ISVs should embrace Ubuntu Desktop Edition, and nine reasons why developers should embrace Ubuntu Server Edition. Will partners embrace Canonical’s Ubuntu pitch? Here are some thoughts.

Call it an ERP partner cat fight. While the SAP Partner Summit wraps up in Las Vegas, rival NetSuite has launched a new SaaS partner program. The new NetSuite SP100 Program offers VARs 100 percent of first-year subscription revenue. But there’s a twist. Here are the details.

What’s the fastest way to generate more revenue within the SAP partner ecosystem? One answer may involve Softengine, an SAP hosting partner that is building business and SaaS relationships with dozens of VARs across North America. The VAR Guy spotted Softengine yesterday at the SAP Partner Summit in Las Vegas. Here’s the scoop.

Motorola is rolling out a potential solution to messy wireless networks. Dubbed “AirDefenese Infrastucture Managment” (or just ‘AirDefense’ for short), it’s a vendor-agnostic platform that strives to bring order to wireless access points. Here are the details for channel partners.

ViewSonic, that gaggle of birds that adorns at least one of your monitors, is rolling out a new digital signage reseller and partner program. The goal? Streamlined and easy access to a variety of products and digital signage solutions. Here’s the quick rundown.

The RSA Security Conference started up in San Francisco on March 1, gathering the best and brightest in the computer security field. It seems like everybody in attendance had their head in the cloud. Here’s a day 1 conference roundup.

Websense, known for their united web, data and email security solutions, has expanded its partnership with Juniper Networks. The move involves Websense content security technology melding with Juniper’s SRX Series Services Gateways. Here’s the nitty gritty…

At the SAP Partner Summit in Las Vegas, Business Objects partners expressed optimism about business intelligence opportunities for 2010, though some partners are keeping close tabs on BI moves by Oracle and open source upstarts like Pentaho and Jaspersoft. Here’s the chatter.