The VAR Guy

Greetings from 30,000 feet. The VAR Guy is blogging away while he flies from San Francisco to New York. But alas, our resident blogger isn’t riding with his favorite carrier today — JetBlue. In fact, The VAR Guy may stop flying JetBlue all together. Here’s why.

When Canonical officially launched Ubuntu 10.04 on April 29, I reached out to System76 President Carl Richell (pictured) to see when the Ubuntu-centric PC maker would begin offering the new distribution on netbooks, notebooks, PCs and servers. Here are some updates and insights from Richell and System76.

The Cisco Partner Summit and HP Americas Partner Conferences have ended. The VAR Guy is packing his bags and heading for home. But before he gets cleared for takeoff, here are six channel partner blog entries The VAR Guy didn’t write for the week ended April 30, 2010. Some of them are quite juicy, if The VAR Guy says so himself.

So, you want to grow your IT business. You have a fair amount of clients but would love to add more. Chances are you’ve taken the plunge with SEO, a website redesign, and a full blown pay per click campaign. Perhaps you’ve even stuck your toe into the social media waters. But have you taken the time to track where your leads are coming from? And more importantly, where your newest customers are coming from?

With three quarters of the world’s IT products and services being sold through the channel ,many companies are shifting from a direct only model to pushing more business through their partners.  Anyone who has been through this knows it’s not an easy transition. The most important thing is to keep partner interests top of mind. A case in point: Check out ongoing moves by Peer 1 Hosting, a hosting provider with 17 data centers in the US, Canada, and Europe. Here are the details.

VARs and managed services providers from across North America and the United Kingdom converged in Dallas this week for the second annual HTG Summit. If you’re not familiar with HTG and its strategy to help solutions providers strengthen their businesses, here’s an overview. 

Avnet has announced their third quarter earnings. The over-arching theme? Growth, and dramatic “year over year” increases in revenue. Here’s the quick rundown on the facts and figures Avent put out for its most recently completed quarter…

Not too long ago we covered a little story regarding Linxter Inc., which provides message-oriented cloud middleware. Now, they’re launching an Amazon SQS cloud connector. It lets developers who work with SQS leverage “local encrypted transactional queues…” Here’s the deal.

Best Selling Author Jason Jennings (pictured) is keynoting the Cisco Partner Summit in San Francisco at this moment. He’s sharing five rules for long-term business success. Of course, The VAR Guy is taking notes like a madman. Here are the five rules…

Every once in a blue moon, something a bit different pops up in our inbox. This time, it happened to be Cellcrypt. To be clear, Cellcrypt isn’t a place where you toss your dead cell phones, it’s actually a play on words for ‘encryption’. As you might have guessed, it’s encryption for cell phones. Here’s how it works, and why VARs working with the government might be interested…

During a briefing at Cisco Partner Summit in San Francisco, CEO John Chambers said the company has emerged as the top player in every market Cisco has entered. And he intends to continue that winning streak without entering commodity markets — an indirect reference to HP. Chambers and CTO Padmasree Warrior offered additional insights during a media briefing that ended moments ago. Here are the top 18 highlights from the discussion.

Each time Canonical ships a new Ubuntu release, I’m inclined to reach out to two specific PC companies: ZaReason and System76. Both companies focus intensely on Ubuntu netbooks, notebooks, PCs and servers. Here’s a look at ZaReason’s Ubuntu 10.04 strategy — according to CEO Cathy Malmrose and CTO Earl Malmrose (pictured).

Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers is set to sit down with The VAR Guy (and a few dozen other media members…) today at Cisco Partner Summit. Stay tuned for a FastChat video with Chambers. In the meantime, here are the top 10 highlights at Cisco Partner Summit from Wednesday, April 28.

No doubt, you know Ubuntu 10.04 debuts today. Most Ubuntu trackers are focused on the desktop and server editions — where Canonical seems to be making progress with ISVs and partners. But during a recent discussion with Canonical Chief Operating Officer Matt Asay (pictured), it became clear to me that Canonical thinks Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud may unlock key revenue opportunities for the company. Here’s why.

With the release of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, Canonical is rolling out their brand new “Ubuntu Certified Professional Certification.” And it’s kind of a big deal, especially when this shows that Ubuntu is gaining traction and adoption. Here’s the full details…

While Oracle’s acquisition of Sun is old news, one question has still been hanging overhead: What about Sun’s channel partners? Well, as of today, at least part of the answer stands revealed as Oracle announces an expansion of their OPN Specialized program to encompass several key parts of Sun’s portfolio. I had the chance to talk to Oracle Senior VP of Worldwide Alliances and Channels Judson Althoff (pictured) for details.

Is HP reuniting Palm and 3Com? That was a clever joke (and reality…) that was passed around the web, but the truth is that Palm finally has been sold, and Hewlett-Packard (a recent buyer of 3Com) is the victor — or are they? Does Palm have a lot to offer HP, or is HP  merely scooping up the last dregs of a once great company? Here’s the scoop on the purchase and some implications that go along with it…

BlueArc, the network storage and data management company, has announced that they’re enhancing their channel program. If you were thinking ‘new tools,’ you’d be right. Here’s the scoop on the boost…

Open-Xchange, the open source Microsoft Exchange competitor and collaboration platform that’s been turning heads in the hosted application market, has announced a simplified SaaS partner pricing structure that comes in two flavors: guaranteed revenue and flat rate. Here’s the scoop on what could be a sign of things to come for the cloud market and the IT channel.

The market for channel consulting services is getting pretty darn interesting — especially as key industry pundits make career moves. The latest example involves IPED veteran Ryan Morris (pictured), who is launching Morris Management Partners while maintaining a close relationship with IPED (Institute for Partner Education and Development). Here are the details.

At the Cisco Partner Summit this morning, top executives spent roughly two hours sharing their vision for Cisco Systems working in a collaborative world. But the session’s most telling comment came at the very end — when executives indirectly compared Cisco’s future direction to Apple’s heritage. In some ways, Cisco’s statement was a jab at Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard. Here’s the scoop.

At the Cisco Partner Summit this morning in San Francisco, CTO Padmasree Warrior and several top executives took the stage to demonstrate a range of “innovations” that have little to do with traditional switches and routers. Hardly surprising, video and telepresence dominated much of the discussion. Here are the details.

The hype. The noise. The lunacy. Frankly, The VAR Guy is getting a bit tired of media companies pumping up the competitive drama between Cisco Systems and Hewlett-Packard. Are these two tech giants really at war 24×7? And how do their views on the channel differ? Here, at last, is a simple reality check for channel partners.