The VAR Guy

Do you like developing virtual servers and helping the open-source community?  Do you also enjoy winning money and/or the esteem of your peers?  If so, TurnKey Linux’s appliance development contest might be just the way for you to put your leisure time to good use this summer.  Read on for details.

The health care sector is set for a technology-driven transformation as the federal government pushes adoption of electronic health records and pursues national health information exchange. Hardly surprising, the Open Source Convention (OSCON) has a health care track that will focus on open EHR/EMR software and the government’s standards-based Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN) among other topics. What’s in it for VARs? Here are some clues.

Networking switch vendor Netgear claims it has bridged the gap between the robustness of an enterprise-grade switch and the simplicity and low-cost of SMB IP solutions with a new switch designed to offer the best of both worlds. Here are details.

At the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC10), the software giant is busy explaining how channel partners can potentially profit from Windows Azure, SQL Azure and a forthcoming Windows Azure appliance for private clouds backed by partners like Dell, eBay, Fujitsu and Hewlett-Packard. Here are the details.

What a difference 12 months makes. At last year’s Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC09), the software giant spent most of the show evangelizing Office 2010 and Windows 7. Fast forward to this week’s WPC10, and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is rallying channel partners around the All In cloud computing strategy, which includes Windows Azure and Microsoft BPOS. Here are 22 highlights from Ballmer’s keynote this morning.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is set to take the stage in a few minutes at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC10) in Washington, D.C. Roughly 14,000 attendees — including 9,500 channel partners — are at the event. Ballmer is expected to rally those partners around Microsoft’s All In cloud computing strategy, which includes Windows Azure, BPOS (Business Productivity Online Suite) and new offerings like Windows Intune. Update: The VAR Guy just posted a Ballmer keynote recap. Plus, you’ll find complete Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference coverage at www.thevarguy.com/tag/wpc10 and www.mspmentor.net/tag/wpc10 throughout the week.

When the Open Source Convention (OSCON 2010) starts July 19 in Portland, Ore., the conference will provide a stage for Microsoft and Google to continue their cloud computing debate. What cloud messages should you expect from the two IT giants? And what are the implications for VARs that are polishing their SaaS and cloud computing strategies? Here are some early clues from The VAR Guy.

The VAR Guy spent most of today poking around the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC10), checking in with trusted sources and listening for channel chatter — especially chatter involving Microsoft’s SaaS and cloud computing strategies. Based on those conversations, here are seven highlights from Day One (Sunday, July 11) of Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference 2010.

The VAR Guy has awoken from a deep one-week sleep — otherwise known as a vacation. Our resident blogger will arrive at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC10) in less than 24 hours. But before The VAR Guy covers all-things Microsoft, here are six channel partner blog entries he didn’t have time to write during the week of July 9, 2010.

Solution providers serving the SMB space often don’t have the breadth of technology choices that their enterprise brethren do. Many times their customers have to settle with what’s available, receiving far fewer benefits of the technology than what larger customers enjoy.

CompTIA survey results show IT companies are feeling optimistic about the second half of 2010. In the study, six in 10 IT firms expect Q3 and Q4 revenues to either significantly, or moderately exceed their Q1 and Q2 revenues. Read on for the full scoop…

Ingram Micro’s “house brand” — dubbed “V7″ — has unveiled a line of unmanaged networking switches for the masses. They’re designed to be affordable high-performance units for the SMB or home network. Here’s the scoop…

What do software developers, VARs, and managed services providers all have in common? They’re all trying to figure out how to make recurring revenue models work. NetSuite, a highly visible cloud ERP solution vendor, and cloud billing specialists Zuora, have announced a partnership designed to give the IT channel an answer. Here’s the scoop.

CCRM.com already provides automated email logging for Salesforce.com, providing better visibility into the sales cycle for users of the CRM platform. Today, though, the company launches CCRM Pro, a commercial SaaS offering that offers administrators better control over what gets logged, a domain manager, and more updates. Here’s the scoop.

Want to steal some secrets to sales success from two of the world’s most successful managed services providers? Our next MSPmentor Live Webcast (July 21 at 2:00 p.m. eastern) should do the trick. The topic is 5 Sales Tips From Two MSPmentor 100 Companies. Here’s a look at what we’ll cover during the webcast, plus some background on each one of our guest speakers.

In its latest step towards virtualized data centers, Dell is acquiring Scalent Technology. But what exactly does Scalent bring to Dell’s table? And will Dell PartnerDirect VARs also benefit? Here are some quick observations.

Zoho, which strives to out-SaaS Google Apps in the enterprise space, has announced that Zoho Calendar steps out of beta and into production with its latest update. Here’s the scoop.

You know the big names in the virtualization market. But smaller names often pop into our inbox as well. One recent example: ServerPark, based in Malaysia, focuses on distributed desktop virtualization. How is this different from the rest of the virtualization world? Read on…

Avnet has completed the acquisition of Bell Micro for roughly $631 million. The acquisition is the largest in Avnet’s history on a revenue basis, and will strengthen Avnet’s position in three target markets: Americas and Europe, and Latin America, according to Avnet Chairman and CEO Roy Vallee. Here are some quick details about the Avnet-Bell Micro combination, and Vallee’s global ambitions.

In some cases, Apple seems to have home field advantage in the USA, where many of its products remain wildly popular. But can Apple dominate China? Lenovo’s chairman seems to doubt it. Here’s why, plus a look at rising competition between Apple and Lenovo on a global scale.

Electronic signature specialists DocuSign took last week’s ESIGN summit in San Francisco as a major opportunity to show off what they’ve been working on since last we spoke — and heading that list is integration with the SaaS Salesforce.com Chatter social networking platform. DocuSign says it’s just the first step in getting their electronic signature solutions into the hands of businesses everywhere. Here’s the scoop.

Like it or not, dealing with Microsoft Active Directory is unavoidable these days for many Ubuntu users and administrators.  Luckily, there are a variety of solutions for integrating Linux systems within an AD environment.  I recently spoke with representatives from Centrify, one organization that develops tools for this purpose.  Here’s what they had to say about Ubuntu, Active Directory, enterprise computing and the future.

A few days ago, we published an overview of virtualization from the desktop user’s perspective.  As a follow-up, we’ll use this post to discuss some of the most popular virtualization tools for Ubuntu workstations and laptops.