The VAR Guy

The VAR Guy is nearly ready to unplug for the weekend. But before he exits for a bit, he’s trying to catch up on the channel news. So what is on his reading list? Here are the 15 most read blogs from across our sites (The VAR Guy, TalkinCloud and MSPmentor) for the week ending April 29, 2011. Take a look…

First, the good news for Microsoft and its channel partners: Corporations continue to spend heavily on Microsoft software. That’s great for VARs. But a bit of trouble could be brewing in the Windows sector, especially as cloud computing and tablet computing continue to take hold. There are even signs that the netbook boom has gone bust. Here’s why.

Rich Cheston has been in the PC business almost from the beginning –  long enough to earn his status of Master Inventor at Lenovo. In this post, he shares his most recent technical passion – the first solution to emerge from Lenovo’s cloud computing strategy.

Networking company Netgear and application delivery company Radware both announced a successful Q1 2011, attributing their positive earnings to new and first-to-market products that are propelling their growth in the marketplace.

The technology distribution sector is following the lead of many vendors, with Avnet and Ingram Micro showing mostly positive numbers for their previous quarters. Avnet, which announced its Q3 2011 earnings, showed strong growth across the board, while Ingram Micro took a net income dip but still posted decent Q1 2011 figures.

After spending only about 30 seconds with the BlackBerry Playbook, it’s hard to give it a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down compared to other tablet devices. RIM clearly had some moments of brilliance with the Playbook, but there are also some things that are woefully overlooked. But it’s almost unfair to directly compare it to the Motorola Xoom or the iPad based on the way the Playbook works. Read on and find out for yourself.

The VAR Guy sometimes finds strange press releases in his inbox, so today, he’s going to highlight one of them, since it seems useful. Picture it: You’re a VAR, MSP or even a small-business owner who happens to use a bunch of highly expensive software that validates licenses via USB dongles. Chances are, you keep those dongles locked up, or the computers they’re connected to locked down. But what if somehow those dongles get lost? Is there a safer or an easier way? DongleLockbox thinks so. Read on for the details …

Back in the day when telecommunications and IT were two separate technology categories, value distributor Westcon was one of the first to recognize the two would be one sooner rather than later. Its legacy in the communications space and its focus on networking have since put the distributor high on the list of top-line vendors looking to serve a reseller base that understands the meaning – and impact – of convergence.

With Ubuntu 11.04 nearly upon us, it’s time to take a look at the features which headline this latest and greatest version of the world’s most popular open source operating system. Here’s a look, broken down by Ubuntu flavor …

Technology distributor Arrow Electronics and virtualization stalwart Citrix both posted positive numbers for first quarter 2011, representing an ongoing trend of growth and financial gains in the tech sector. Read on for the details and the effect on the Wall Street milieu …

Apple has officially addressed the iPhone tracking conspiracies with a press release detailing a lengthy Q&A about what Apple is doing with the consolidated.db file.  Not surprising, the iPhone is not at all tracking you. More interesting is what the file is really used for. Read on for the straight facts without the hype …

Polycom is one of those companies whose offerings seemed ahead of their time — a few years ago, who’d have considered desktop telepresence? But rather than force the industry to adopt its solutions — and possibly experience utter failure as a result — Polycom kept a low profile, waiting for the marketplace to catch up. Now that unified communications technology is gaining in popularity, Polycom’s strategy has paid off well — Polycom’s first-quarter net income increased almost sevenfold to $34 million, compared with a paltry $5 million in net income a year ago. Wall Street is impressed with its earnings, customers are impressed with its technology and partners are impressed with its recently reworked channel program and its emphasis on video solutions.

Novell Channel Chief John Dragoon, who also served as Chief Marketing Officer, has left the company following Novell’s sale to Attachmate, which was completed earlier today. Dragoon disclosed his departure in a blog post. However, a Novell spokesman says channel partners are “valued just as much tomorrow as yesterday.” Here’s the update.

Talk about a busy few days for Linux channel partners. Oracle is making Linux partner specialization claims; Canonical is preparing the Ubuntu 11.04 release; Red Hat Summit kicks off within days; and the Attachmate-Novell business combination was approved earlier today while Novell continues to launch new cloud offerings. The upshot for channel partners: It’s time to push beyond the basic Linux wars and decide which Linux platform offers the best cloud and virtualization story. Here’s the update.

Cisco Systems is offering a voluntary early retirement package to a portion of the networking company’s U.S. and Canada employee base, a Cisco spokesperson confirms. Channel VPs and top Cisco salespeople — among other distinguished folks — will not be eligible for the offer. Here’s the update, along with insights from The VAR Guy.

Ending months of speculation, ERP vendor Lawson Software has agreed to a buyout by a group led by Infor, a competitor in the ERP space run by former Oracle co-president Charles Phillips.

In my previous blog I shared some social media marketing tips to help VARs more closely engage customers. This time, my focus is on sales growth. Finding and gaining new clients certainly will grow your business. But don’t overlook cross-selling opportunities, working closely with your top vendor partners. It’s important for VARs to carry a diverse line of products and partner with vendors that release fresh, innovative solutions on at least a semi-regular basis. But how do you go about introducing those new products to your established customer base? Here are five steps worth following…

Deploying Linux desktops across large organizations has been getting easier with each new release. However, in practice, installing, configuring and securing such deployments is not so simple. With this fact in mind, we recently got in touch with Likewise vice-president Ken Cheney for a hands-on look at using his company’s chief product to simply and secure corporate deployments.  Here’s what we found …

Motorola billed the Xoom as the end-all, be-all of tablets, sporting an Android Honeycomb OS and a plethora of apps for both business and personal use. And despite early reports that it wasn’t selling well, our 30-second test of the Xoom revealed at least a few redeeming qualities. Read on for some flavor:

VARs working in the POS space might want to check out Seiko Instruments’ Ascend ISV Program. Specifically aimed at integrating point-of-sale mobile printing and kiosk applications, the program offers POS VARs an additional resource and possible new revenue opportunities. Read on for the details.

Like Lenovo before it, Dell is making sure the PC isn’t dead yet. The company has released a line of robust workstations that reportedly can handle the heaviest of processing tasks, providing “uncompromised” performance and scalability. Read on for the details on the new machines …

The VAR Guy has seen his share of technology shifts as user preferences have moved from the desktop to the notebook to mobility devices. The latest shift has chip vendors working frantically to build processors that are smaller, faster and more efficient. AMD’s efforts, in particular,  have not gone unnoticed: AMD’s Q1 results were up, due in large part to its APUs. Now the company is looking to integrate the APUs with Express Logic’s ThreadX Real-Time Operating System software. What does that mean, and more importantly, how does this affect the channel? Read on for some perspective …

The release of Ubuntu 11.04 is imminent, and with it will come a radically new type of desktop interface in the form of Unity. Will users love it or hate? A recent report from Canonical’s design team provides some telling insights. Here are the highlights.