The VAR Guy

Are you a Symantec partner? Are you looking for an easy way to — no pun intended — ‘whiteboard’ your ideas? Symantec has you covered with their new Symantec Whiteboard IP. Demoed by VP of Digital Marketing Michael Parker at Symantec Partner Engage 2010, Whiteboard has some interesting potentials, but is it a big deal?

As you may guess from the name, Cloud Sherpas has built its business around leading enterprises from legacy deployments to the cloud- specifically, to managed Google Apps cloud productivity solutions. It’s a business model that’s garnered them some attention from VCs, with Cloud Sherpas announcing that they’ve completed a $1.6 million round of Series A-1 financing. The VAR Guy sees it as a potential vote of confidence in the future of Google Apps. Here’s the scoop.

The virtual-appliance ecosystem is poised to become a little larger in the near future as TurnKey Linux prepares a new release, which will sport new features while also doubling the size of the TurnKey appliance library.  And that’s good news for VARs interested in easily deployable, open-source solutions for their needs in the cloud and elsewhere.  Read on for details.

I am just back from a few weeks on the road presenting at several partner events. I was energized not only from meeting lots of our customers in person, but seeing the energy in the community. Everyone in attendance had one thing in mind, and that is: “How do I improve my business?” Whether it was by getting into the latest technology to support their client’s business needs, understanding what the cloud is all about, or finding the right solution to help their own IT business run better, the search was on. I led one session on pricing your hybrid product and service catalog. Based on the attendance, and the discussions that followed, pricing managed services and other IT services delivered by the channel is still a major interest point.

The distribution giant Ingram Micro has noticed an increasing trend in the demand for the iPad, and with that, there are reports that Apple is letting Ingram sell the iPad directly to businesses instead of distributing it to retailers. Surely, Ingram CEO Greg Spierkel (pictured) must be pleased. Here’s the update.

I arrived in Las Vegas last night for Symantec’s Partner Engage 2010, and I’m picking up on a few trends floating around. Some of them might surprise you. Read on for the three quick notes. One hint: Apple is everywhere.

How can VARs and MSPs effectively brand and market their first SaaS solutions? Find the answers by joining us today (Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2:00 p.m. eastern) for The VAR Guy Live webcast. The topic: How to Market and Brand Your First SaaS Services. The marketing pros from Robin Robins’ Technology Marketing Toolkit will join the discussion. During the event we’ll cover dozens of live questions from attendees. Thanks to those who join us. We look forward to your questions and a lively discussion.

What do you do when you find out your product is wildly popular in markets you initially didn’t plan to target? That was the situation Parallels found itself in when it turned out its Plesk hosted service dashboard was gaining traction with VARs that wanted to monitor customer servers. That’s why Parallels Plesk Panel 10 has been streamlined and revamped with new features, many aimed at VARs.

Apparent Networks usually specializes in solutions for monitoring the health of a VAR’s network services, distributed applications, and your own cloud services. But now the company has turned the magnifying glass outwards with the launch of the Cloud Performance Center, a free tool for examining the health of public cloud services like Amazon Web Services, Google, GoGrid, Salesforce, and others. Here’s the scoop on a potentially handy tool for picking a cloud provider.

IBM has launched the “Federal Community Cloud” targeted at — who else? — the federal government. The new tech is designed for secure and private cloud environments. Here are the quick details…

Did you wake up an hour earlier yesterday morning? I did, because my iPhone alarm unexpectedly went off an hour earlier than it was set for. Not long ago we covered how the iPhone 4.1 daylight savings time bug hurt Australians and New Zealanders. November 1st, 2010, the very same bug plagued Europe and oddly– some Americans, like myself. What’s the deal?

How can channel partners safeguard customer workloads across physical, virtual and cloud environments? One potential answer comes from Novell, which touts its own Novell Sentinel Log Manager 1.1 as solution for log management, corporate compliance and enhanced IT security. Rick Wagner (pictured), senior product manager, security, describes Novell’s channel partner strategy for Sentinel Log Manager in this FastChat Video.

I’m packing my bags and getting ready to head to Cologne, Germany for the Open-Xchange Partner Summit on Thursday. While there, Open-Xchange — an open source alternative to Microsoft Exchange — is going to talk about its partner successes and monetizing SaaS deployments. But here are my six main questions going into the event.

I’m heading off to “Fabulous” Las Vegas for the Symantec Partner Engage Conference this year. What can we expect Symantec to talk about this year, and where is the Symantec channel partner program headed? Here are some questions I’m looking to answer during the next few days…

Bocada’s Prism data protection and management suite is getting an overhaul with Prism R2. Designed to intuitive and provide useful information at a glance, Prism R2 is being touted as the first and only “multi-phased Data Protection Service Management model.” Here’s the details…

Our next Webcast is this Wednesday (Nov. 3) at 2:00 p.m. eastern. During the webcast we’ll cover How to Market and Brand Your First SaaS Services. But that’s not all we’re working on. On November 17, our webcast will cover Managed Services Pricing Strategies (per user, or per device… or something else?) and we’ll wrap up 2010 webcasts on December 8 but sitting down and exploring ConnectWise’s 2011 Vision for MSPs. In the meantime, we hope you join MSPmentor and The VAR Guy this Wednesday, November 3 for the SaaS marketing and branding webcast. Thanks for your time and for visiting MSPmentor.

It has been roughly eight months since Autotask acquired VARStreet, a SaaS platform that allows VARs and MSPs to source, quote, purchase and fulfill IT product sales. So how is VARStreet evolving? Patrick Burns, director of innovation, provides some clues — including an enhanced focus on “world-class” quoting capabilities. Burns shares those details and more in this FastChat video.

Last week, The VAR Guy had the chance to sit down with Eucalyptus Systems CEO Marten Mickos for ten minutes — and what a ten minutes they were. That got your resident blogger thinking: are there any other IT industry CEOs who want to take ten minutes out of their day to shoot the breeze with The VAR Guy and talk channel?

At VMware World in Copenhagen, Scott Davis, CTO of End User Computing, showed off the VMware iPad application. It looks as though VMware is hoping to innovate and also disrupt the market with their portal application, which is slated for a 2011 launch. Read on for the details and impressions…

Angel, provider of cloud-based call center and interactive voice response (IVR) customer experience solutions, has launched smartphone and “slate” PC applications designed to give management capabilities to call center administrators no matter where they are. Here are some details.

This blogger (that is, yours truly) sat down before the weekend and had a chat with The VAR Guy about Apple. We agreed that Apple has overwhelming momentum. So, a question worth asking: Will Apple ever slow down? The last 10 years have been Apple’s greatest ‘second act’ ever. Re-enforcing that claim is an IDC report putting Apple Inc. as the 4th largest phone maker in America, bumping RIM down the 5 spot. What are the implications? Here are some clues.

Even as Intel acquires McAfee, the chip giant continues to partner with McAfee rivals like Symantec. The latest Intel-Symantec deal deal brings with it Backup Exec 2010 to system builder partners. Here’s a look at the relationship.

Microsoft is hoping it’s a November to remember. The software giant today launched the Microsoft Partner Network — an overhaul to the company’s channel partner program — and a range of new cloud computing initiatives for channel partners. Here’s a closer look at the Microsoft Partner Network, plus new moves like Cloud Accelerate and Cloud Essentials. But the old question remains: Are Microsoft’s partners ready — and willing — to embrace the terms of Microsoft’s cloud strategy? Here’s the update.