Perhaps it’s time for The VAR Guy to buy a condo in Orlando, Fla. The move could help our resident blogger to save money as he travels to Orlando three times over the next few weeks — attending VMware Partner Exchange, IBM PartnerWorld and Parallels Summit. Naturally, The VAR Guy will arrive at each conference armed with plenty of questions. What’s on our resident blogger’s mind? Hmmm… let’s start with VMware Partner Exchange, which will attract anywhere from 4,000 to 6,000 partners, The VAR Guy hears. So, here are six key questions on The VAR Guy’s mind.

They include…

1. Saturated Channel?: The VAR Guy has heard from a few skeptics who think there’s less and less room to diversify and specialize within the VMware channel. Are the skeptics right or is there plenty of upside for VMware solutions providers?

2. Get the Message?: VMware acquired Zimbra, the open source email platform, in January 2010. And more recently, the VMware channel has been empowered to sell Zimbra heads-up against Microsoft Exchange. So, how are those partner sales efforts performing? And which Zimbra partners are generating the most profits through SaaS efforts? The VAR Guy wants to know.

3. Still Pals?: When Attachmate announced plans to acquire Novell in late 2010, Novell quickly assured customers and partners that the company’s strategic relationships remained in place. Among the strategic engagements: Novell’s SUSE Linux virtualization efforts with VMware. Rumor has it VMware had bid to acquire Novell’s SUSE Linux business before Attachmate stepped in to buy all of Novell. So The VAR Guy wonders: How are VMware and Novell planning to attack Red Hat Enterprise Linux and the fledgling Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization? This should be quite a battle…

4. Three Amigos: Cisco, EMC and VMware might be the most powerful trio since the Supremes or Rush. The VAR Guy wonders: Just how closely can the tech trio work together on the Vblock effort — particularly on channel strategies?

5. Cloud: How impressive. The VAR Guy has gone nearly an entire blog without mentioning the cloud. But the topic is bound to come up — over and over again — at VMware Partner Exchange. Heck, VMware says it can help customers build private clouds in 30 days or less. But will partners be involved in the party?

6. House of Mouse?: It’s been nearly two years since The VAR Guy has visited Disney and Universal theme parks to jump on five classic rides. That’s a pretty long time for our self-described Magic Kingdom fanatic. Alas, there won’t be time to visit Disney during the VMware Partner Exchange. And IBM PartnerWorld is only a day-trip for our resident blogger.

But maybe — just maybe — The VAR Guy will sneak away for a few hours during Parallels Summit later this month. In the meantime: Time to pack for VMware Partner Exchange.

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