The VAR Guy

To drive your profits to their highest levels possible, you can’t just focus on services. Instead, VARs and MSPs need to mix in products. That was the central message from Autotask CEO Bob Godgart this morning at the Autotask Community Live conference in Miami, where roughly 500 VARs and MSPs have gathered to talk strategy. No surprise, Godgart positioned VARStreet — a product sourcing dashboard — as a core service that can help solutions providers to bolster their profits. Here’s a recap.

Engadget has a quick little scoop on Dell’s foray into the tablet arena and it’s called the “Dell Streak.” There’s no word yet on a release date, and Dell has actually declined to comment on the official picture. But here are some observations.

There are plenty of resellers out there running Microsoft Windows on their servers but Linux on their storage appliance – making it a pain to protect all that data, let alone back it up to a cloud for disaster recovery. Well, now i365, a Seagate company, has announced a partnership with Microsoft in the form of EVault for Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager, designed to give channel partners a solution to do just that. Interested?

Intermedia, one of the largest and best known providers of Hosted Exchange, suffered a partial service outage on April 15. Business seemed to be getting back to normal by April 16. Here’s a look at what happened, and how Intermedia got its customers and partners back online. Plus, a look at the way Intermedia continued to communicate with the media during the outage, instead of going radio silent.

No doubt, it’s sometimes difficult to measure Ubuntu’s business success. Canonical says Ubuntu now has about 12 million Linux users — up from an estimated 8 million users in 2007. That sounds impressive, but what does that really mean in terms of Ubuntu’s market penetration, Canonical’s march to profitability and Ubuntu’s progress as a Linux distribution? In my mind, there are additional data points Canonical could share to further show Ubuntu’s momentum. Here they are.

One of the major new features to expect in future versions of Ubuntu is Gnome Activity Journal, which brings a very refreshing approach to the way users interact with files and data.  Here’s a look at how it works.

The VAR Guy spent considerable time in Silicon Valley this week, running from one meeting to the next. Our resident blogger is heading home now — before starting more business travel next week. Of course, there were multiple blogs The VAR Guy didn’t have time to write this week. Here are six channel partner blog entries that should have been written for the week ending April 16, 2010.

It’s official. The iPad is such a block-buster success that international customers will have to wait. (At least that’s Apple’s spin on the situation). Originally, the international delay was expected to be addressed by the end of April. Now, Apple won’t be taking international pre-orders ’till May 10th. Here’s the rest of those details…

GFI Software, which has been reaching out to MSPs over the past year or two, is launching a new product aimed at giving SMBs “comprehensive backup, restore and synchronization for all files across the network.” Here are the details.

Interesting news on the hosting front: Parallels has announced that they’re building Google Services for Websites into Plesk Panel 9.5, enabling hosting resellers to deploy trademark Google products like AdSense or Webmaster Tools and drive traffic and revenue to the sites under their care. Intrigued?

When it comes to Sun Microsystems’ technology, Oracle’s top partner priority is to promote Sun servers and storage. But if you listen closely to Oracle Channel Chief Judson Althoff, you’ll discover that he’s already contemplating channel partner strategies for Sun’s MySQL, Java and OpenOffice offerings. Here’s the scoop.

At the NetSuite SuiteCloud conference this morning, NetSuite VP of Channel Sales Craig West and Senior VP Worldwide Sales Marc Huffman (pictured) described four keys to the company’s cloud-centric channel partner strategy. Here’s what West and Huffman had to say, and a reality check for VARs that are sorting out their cloud strategies.

Everyone wants a piece of the Apple iPad pie, and Cisco Systems is no exception. They’ve created a WebEx App for the iPad, freeing you to manage conference calls without being locked to your office or desktop. I spent about 30 minutes with the WebEx for iPad app and was pretty impressed. Here are my thoughts and impressions…

Microsoft continues to evangelize the Windows Azure cloud platform to new and different audiences. The latest case in point: The Azure team was on hand at this week’s SugarCon — an open source conference in San Francisco that attracted more than 800 attendees. In fact, Microsoft was SugarCon’s top sponsor, and the company’s relationship with SugarCRM seems to be blossoming. Here’s what it means.

Microsoft’s BPOS SaaS software suite now has voice in the cloud — finally, a feature Google Apps has nothing to match. That’s not the only feather in Microsoft’s cap today, either, as they’re announcing that BPOS is launching in 17 new international markets later in April 2010. Here’s the scoop.

Panda Security has launched Internet Cloud Protection — the last piece in the company’s endpoint security solution. Here are some quick details for solutions providers mulling their security options.

iPhone OS version 4 has quickly gained recognition as being completely closed off to Adobe Flash in every shape and form. Developers are up in arms, Adobe apparently is planning on suing, and everything is generally unhappy. Well, almost. Here’s a few plain simple reason why — regardless if you’re a Flash apologist — it’s actually a smart move.

Instead of convincing Oracle partners to immediately sell every Sun product, Oracle Channel Chief Judson Althoff (pictured) is calling on solutions providers to focus their efforts on two key growth opportunities. What are they? Of course, The VAR Guy uncovered the answers today. Here’s the scoop.

During his keynote at the NetSuite SuiteCloud partner summit in San Francisco, CEO Zach Nelson attacked three SaaS and cloud myths that he claimed traditional software vendors continue to promote. And yes, Nelson specifically addressed SaaS opportunities for channel partners. He also talked about several new systems integrators working with NetSuite. Here’s the scoop.

The VAR Guy has gotten word that Microsoft Business Division President Stephen Elop is going to officially launch Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 in front of a live studio audience at New York City’s famous NBC Studios on May 12. But wait, there’s more.

At Brocade’s partner summit in Las Vegas, the company has launched a “wide range of new program elements” to show their commitment to partners and the channel. Here are some details about Brocade’s strategy, and the implications for VARs.

Abtech Systems, a provider of storage architecture and virtualization services in the enterprise, have joined forces with their manufacturing vendor partner Pano Logic. Their love-child is The Pano System and it’s been hailed as the the “greener answer” to desktop replacement and maintenance. Here’s the deal…

SpringSource, a VMware division specializing in Java application infrastructure and management, has acquired Rabbit Technologies, the UK-based provider of the open-source RabbitMQ messaging system. Here’s the scoop.