The VAR Guy

The VAR Guy is amped up at the Intel Solutions Summit 2011. Things are getting bigger and better yet smaller and faster, and ISVs have seemingly never had a better time to strike while the iron is hot. A sea change is about to occur in the hardware space, and The VAR Guy believes the channel is poised to take full advantage of the new technologies.

Tech Data is looking to make it easier for the channel to sell and distribute software. The distributor has debuted an application called “StreamOne License Selector” at TechData.com, which it hopes will be the first of many in a series of e-business services to help resellers distribute software that tend to get complex with licensing. Here’s the scoop:

I’ve gotten my hands on the new developer beta of Mac OS X Lion. Here are some quick impressions regarding the new OS and what users can expect should they decide to upgrade in the summer of 2011. There’s a lot more to this upgrade than a coat of GUI paint …

Intel’s Solutions Summit 2011 gets under way Feb. 27 at the Venetian Hotel in Fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada — a venue The VAR Guy knows well. This year’s event is to sure to have something for everyone, and while our resident blogger is no gambler, he’s willing to bet Intel will have an ace or two up its sleeve.

Apple has done some interesting things since releasing the official developer beta release of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion. For starters, sys admins don’t need to to buy a ‘server’ version of the operating system. All the server features are already there — users just flick a switch. Second, there’s no download image for the preview. No disc to burn. No nothing. It’s all via the Mac App Store. Industry implications? There are many. Read on for perspective …

Cisco has launched a barrage of video collaboration improvements and new technologies, and if you’re into TelePresence and video ubiquity, you may just be in heaven (if you love Cisco) …

It’s called Thunderbolt, and it was developed by Intel with some significant backing from other industry players. “But I just got used to USB 3.0,” you say? Well look alive, son. Thunderbolt promises twice the speed of USB 3.0 — 10 Gbps, to be exact. That’s why Apple just put Thunderbolt in its new MacBook Pros. And unlike USB, that’s promised bandwidth, not theoretical. Here are the details …

More bad news for Redmond: Windows Phone 7 updates for Samsung phones have been experiencing hiccups. The long-anticipated update that would bring the much-needed copy-paste feature has actually resulted in temporarily bricked phones. What is going on?

It’s finally here … Apple has sent out official invites to its iPad 2 event, to be held March 2, 2011. In case there was any doubt the event would be about the iPad 2, just take a look at the image to your left. That’s the official Apple invite picture. So what can we expect? I’ve been following the rumors for a while, and here’s a rundown …

Avnet Technology Solutions is now distributing Rorke Data’s Galaxy Archive, NAS and RAID storage solutions. Rorke Data is officially owned by Avnet, so this move is an effort to add new storage sales opportunities for Avnet’s channel partner customers. Here are the details …

The latest iteration of Centrify‘s Active Directory-integration software has debuted, bringing with it some particularly interesting features for Linux and OS X desktops. Here are the highlights, and what they mean for this rapidly evolving niche:

At Parallels Summit 2011 in Orlando, Fla., SoftLayer CEO Lance Crosby (pictured) called on VARs and channel partners to embrace growing opportunities around turnkey, white label cloud services. Crosby stepped into the spotlight at Parallels Summit roughly three months after SofLayer merged with The Planet, apparently forming the world’s largest privately held hosting provider. Here’s the update, from The VAR Guy, seated in the front row at Parallels Summit.

The cost of getting – and staying – healthy can be expensive. Just ask anyone who’s spent an afternoon in the emergency room, where one gauze pad can cost $5. But while hospitals are good at tracking inventory to ensure patients have what they need (and are charged appropriately), they aren’t as good at tracking other assets such as morphine dispensers, mobile x-ray units and, in some cases, even patients.

Lenovo is launching a new fleet of laptops built specifically for the workplace and designed for all the new mobile workplace needs. Voice and video are just some of the services Lenovo has centered their designs around. Here’s the scoop …

Hewlett-Packard may have just missed its expected earnings for Q1 2011 by a hair, but the shortfall was enough to send Wall Street into crisis mode and trigger a sell-off of HP stock.

The VAR Guy is no stranger to unified communications, so it piqued his interested when Polycom appointed Ari Bose to CIO. Polycom is putting its faith in Bose, a former telecom executive, to further its global and strategic transformation beyond its current boundaries. Here are the details …

IBM has Watson. Cisco Systems has Edison — as in Channel Chief Edison Peres. As Cisco Partner Summit 2011 gets set to kick off Feb. 28 in New Orleans, the networking giant faces a few question marks. On the upside, Peres, senior vice president of worldwide channels-go-to market, says four IT trends provide new opportunities for channel partners. But on the downside, Cisco itself seems to be facing intense competition and some questions on Wall Street. Here’s the update.

If you’re a SaaS vendor and you’re worried about offering some iOS services since the recent App Store subscription guidelines, don’t worry. You’re in the clear, according to Steve Jobs.

Feel like you’re locked into VMware and can’t move to Hyper-V? Maybe you’re looking to move to Xen, or maybe you want to consolidate the entire data center to any of the three platforms. Automation software vendor Racemi may have the solution to all your VM ailments with its DynaCenter offering. Read on for the details:

Fans of Enlightenment — the window manager, not the intellectual movement — have a treat to look forward to as Bodhi Linux, a new Ubuntu- and Enlightenment-based distribution, nears its first stable release. In anticipation, we gave Bodhi a spin. Here’s what we found.

Toward the end of January 2011, Lenovo sent a review unit of its latest ultraportable, the U260. While it’s a solid machine, there are a few caveats that could be deal-breakers for the road warrior. Still, in both design and aesthetics, Lenovo is winning big points and hitting some high notes other PC makers just aren’t. Here are the details:

The channel is where it’s at, but we were wondering what’s going on with Red Hat in the channel. Luckily, Mark Enzweiler, vice president of global channels and Roger Egan, vice president of the North America channel sales and development, were happy to discuss the Linux distribution vendor’s plans for the channel in light of emerging business models around virtualization and cloud computing. Here’s the deal:

The VAR Guy gets around the globe from time to time, and what blogger-at-large is good without his trusty laptop? But a recent New York Times article piqued The VAR Guy’s interest. The article, “Can You Frisk a Hard Drive?” discussed digital strip searches at U.S. borders. Luckily for us, there’s the cloud.