The VAR Guy

The VAR Guy didn’t travel this week. But our resident blogger is still running out of gas and running out of time. Here are six channel partner blog entries The VAR Guy didn’t have time to write for the week ending May 28, 2010.

In the PC market, the rising economic tide is lifting numerous ships. But Lenovo claims to be enjoying the biggest lift of all. A case in point: Based on their latest quarterly results, Lenovo says the company’s PC sales grew faster than its top four PC rivals for the second consecutive quarter. Here are the details.

Here’s an upbeat economic report on IT spending: System, storage and networking solutions are leading the IT spending rebound, according to new research from the Global Technology Distribution Council. Here are some data points that show continued IT progress.

It’s a small detail that reveals big plans. ConnectWise has quietly renamed its annual partner conference. The 2010 event, scheduled for Nov. 4-6 in Orlando, will be called IT Nation 2010. Previous events were dubbed ConnectWise Partner Summit. What’s behind the name change? Here are some educated guesses from The VAR Guy.

Talari Networks has just signed a deal with UK-based value-add distributor Zycko to supply their enterprise WAN solution across Europe for the very first time. Here are some quick details.

Red Hat is preparing to announce several virtualization and cloud initiatives at the Red Hat Summit, scheduled for June 22-25 in Boston. The VAR Guy poked around and learned about some Red Hat channel partner efforts scheduled for June 21-22. Here are some preliminary details from Red Hat Global Channel Chief Mark Enzweiler.

Most technology companies offer co-marketing, co-branding and MDF programs to help channel partners jointly market a product and services value proposition. But if you’re a technology vendor, there is a fundamental shift in the types of marketing resources your partners need. It involves social media. Here’s the problem — and some recommendations.

At our recent Partner Summit in San Francisco, the managed services buzz was around cloud-based services. Our partners’ questions were: how will Cisco assist them in developing their own cloud solutions, and what role will Cisco play in enabling them to bring these offers to market? Here are some perspectives.

A new iPhone. More iPad sales figures. It’s safe to expect plenty of buzz when Apple CEO Steve Jobs speaks at the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) 2010 in June. But beyond buzz and hype, what can we really expect from Apple at WWDC10 starting on June 7? Here’s my personal perspective.

Cloud-delivered file-sharing hub solution vendor (and lower case letter enthusiast) ftopia has launched a reseller program — and ftopia offering partners a 40 percent commission rate as they try to build channel buzz. Here’s the scoop.

The Astaro RED solution (which we’ve written about a few times) is finally here. Here’s the scoop on how it can potentially simplify remote office networking.

Amid heightened competition in the Linux market, Canonical — the promoter of Ubuntu Linux — is growing up and pushing beyond the massive shadow of founder Mark Shuttleworth (pictured). Here’s the evidence and some perspective from The VAR Guy.

gloStream spent much of 2009 promoting its health care IT solutions during managed services conferences. Now, the company is making a broader channel move. Indeed, gloStream and Tech Data are partnering to promote solutions that help VARs address electronic medical records, practice-management software and other health care solutions. Here’s some perspective.

When Canonical launched Landscape 1.5 this week, it was a timely reminder that the software company is trying to develop multiple revenue streams beyond Ubuntu services. Moreover, Landscape 1.5 represents Canonical’s latest attempt to make Ubuntu easier for businesses and solutions providers to remotely manage. Here’s a closer look at the Landscape strategy.

Ubuntu 10.04′s release last month brought a number of much-discussed changes to desktops.  But the latest LTS (Long Term Support) release also marked an important milestone for Ubuntu Server Edition.  Here’s a look at Ubuntu 10.04 on servers, with some thoughts on what works well and where there’s room for improvement.

Enterprises operate in heterogeneous applications environments. That is a simple statement, but one that conveys significant challenges and complications, especially for companies that develop and sell software solutions and must determine how to effectively co-exist and interoperate within such environments. There is no shortage of methodologies or technologies, not to mention customer philosophies, when it comes to software integration. But how do the best channel partners address software integration? Here are some clues.

Wireless networking vendor Meru Networks has unveiled a set of wired and wireless management, spectrum analysis, and security and compliance services designed to bring some stability and security to the corporate 802.11 network.

Dell officially announced what we already knew — the Dell Streak 5 inch tablet is coming this June 2010. But not on the US side of the pond; it will debut in the United Kingdom first. Dell Streak isn’t so much a tablet /Apple iPad competitor. Rather, it’s more of an intermediary device between a smart phone and a tablet. Here’s the specs on Dell’s new Google Android device and some implications…

Pano Logic, developers of the zero-client box you see here, has unveiled a new way to deploy up to 50 virtual machines. It’s called Pano Express — an all-in-one zero-client desktop virtualization suite, and it starts at a $489 a user. Here’s the scoop and some channel implications.

Amazon Web Services improves its offering incrementally yet again with the announcement that they’ve added support for their Relational Database Service (RDS) in the AWS Management Console, allegedly making it easier for VARs to launch and manage databases in the cloud. Here’s the scoop.

Laplink Software, the data migration solution vendor we previously discussed here, today launches the PCmover Image Assistant, a solution that can restore a disk image (or the contents of an actual hard drive) to a machine running a completely different operating system. Here’s how Laplink partners can benefit.

At the Juniper Americas Partner Summit in Phoenix, the networking and security specialist is unveiling several new offerings for channel partners. The new efforts include a Juniper Networks Learning Academy and the Juniper Networks Global Marketing Resource Center. Here are some quick details.

After gaining expanded mid-market responsibilities at McAfee today, Channel Chief Alex Thurber is set to meet with roughly 40 North American channel partners in New York on May 26. Here’s why.