The VAR Guy

It’s not often that relevant channel news that includes Apple computers graces my inbox, but here’s an interesting exception: Both Sophos and Centrify have announced support for OS X Lion out of the gate. What will they bring to the table, and what should VARs know? Read on for the scoop …

CompTIA’s Authorized Service Center (ASC) Program is getting a facelift with a brand new search engine to help pinpoint the right VAR for the job. Better visibility for VARs? The VAR Guy likes that. But what information will CompTIA’s ASC search return, and more importantly, is CompTIA’s offering the only game in town? Our resident blogger’s channel perspective follows …

Novell, now owned by Attachmate, is marching forward with its BrainShare conference (Oct. 10-14, Salt Lake City). But this won’t be any ordinary BrainShare. Instead, topics involving three Attachmate divisions — NetIQ, Novell and SUSE — are on the agenda. And The VAR Guy suspects SUSE will use BrainShare as a stage to launch or elevate its cloud strategy. But can one conference serve so many different masters? Hmmm…

Acquia, which develops commercial solutions for the Drupal content management system, has scored $15 million in series D funding. But the really interesting part of the story: Acquia’s partner ecosystem now includes 260 companies, up from 240 last year. Those partners have helped Acquia to lift its revenues 225 percent over the past 12 months. Impressive. But is there a real channel partner opportunity here?

Dell is buying Force 10 Networks after allegedly passing on Brocade Communications Systems. And Cisco Systems is chopping 6,500 employees. Is the next round of networking industry consolidation under way? Hmmm…

Lenovo is firing on all cylinders with a new lineup of three — yes three — new tablets, two running Android and another running Windows 7. Lenovo’s goal is to provide a tablet for every possible scenario, for every need, for every person in your household. Have they succeeded? Am I excited? All this and more, coming up …

When I have the good fortune to speak with Lenovo ThinkPad partners about our new ThinkPad X1 laptop there is invariably one overriding question that comes up: Why? There are other words wrapped around that question that may offer some form of variation, but distilled it is still simply a question of why? I’d like to try to answer some of those why questions here.

HP continues its virtualization story by adding another thin client to its burgeoning portfolio. Back in May 2011 we covered HP’s latest line of thin client solutions, but the company has no plans to settle down — the HP t5570e is here to bring a shade of green to virtualization strategies. If you’re looking to virtualize with an environmentally friendly twist, read on …

CompTIA is blaming a stalled economic recovery for a dip in IT spending. According to the organization’s Business Confidence Index, company investment in infrastructure and employment is at a standstill amid uneasiness about the direction the economy will take. Here’s a quick brief of the stats and figures …

The next MSPmentor Live webcast is today (Wednesday, July 20, 2:00 p.m. eastern). The topic: Key tips to help VARs and MSPs build, automate and scale their service desks to improve operational efficiency, customer support and customer loyalty.

Apple reported record-breaking results for its third quarter of 2011, showing the world it remains a force to be reckoned with in the IT space, thanks to ongoing love from the consumer space and a growing infatuation from the business market. Read on for the details and the perspective you can only get at The VAR Guy …

Sometimes, The VAR Guy’s views are just plain wrong. As Cisco Systems looks ahead to layoffs in August 2011, it’s time for The VAR Guy to look back at what went wrong at the networking giant. A case in point: The VAR Guy applauded — loudly — when Cisco acquired the Flip video camera in March 2009. And The VAR Guy cheered again in mid-2009, when Cisco prepared to hand out Flip cameras to all Cisco Partner Summit attendees. The strategy sounded so simple: Flip users would load the Internet up with more video, forcing enterprise customers to upgrade their bandwidth and network infrastructure. But in the end, The VAR Guy — heck, and John Chambers — overlooked some key challenges.

Perhaps The VAR Guy spoke too soon. Last week, our resident blogger openly wondered if portions of the open source market had missed an opportunity to connect with channel partners. But a closer look reveals some promising anecdotal momentum at SugarCRM and Pentaho, two of the better-known open source application providers working in the channel. Here’s the update.

Okay, so I just dated myself with that title. Worse yet, now I have that stupid song stuck in my head. But I digress. It used to be the case that some products were just too sexy for the business space — they were seen as consumer-focused, and therefore, not ideal for the typical solution provider to sell. You know the vendors: Apple, Logitech, Google. As consumers, you want them because they have tuned functionality and intuitive design. Plus, let’s face it, you just feel a whole lot cooler using them. Yet the channel traditionally hasn’t led with them or kept them top of mind. It made me stop and think: What makes a product sexy for the channel?

Red Hat is gearing up to host a major North America Partner Conference (Oct. 25-27, Miami). The event signals a shift for Red Hat, which previously lumped partners and customers together at the annual Red Hat Summit. Here’s the update along with some insights from The VAR Guy.

Polycom knows the next big market for video collaboration — and unified communications in general — is the almighty SMB. The consumerization of IT, coupled with a plethora of cloud and premise-based offerings designed to bring collaboration capabilities to companies of any size, are creating a perfect storm of opportunity for the channel to equip their SMB customers with UCC offerings previously only available to the big boys.

We’ve covered Enterasys in the past, most recently its wireless collaboration with Ascom. Now the networking vendor is focusing on both infrastructure and virtualization with the S-Series S6, designed to deal with the demanding loads of virtual desktops in the enterprise. Could Enterasys’ S6 be a perfect value-add for virtualization VARs? Read on for the tech specs and details …

Are you familiar with Gordon Summer? You probably are, just not under that name. To most of us, he’s Sting. Now storage vendor Data Robotics is taking a similar approach to its moniker since achieving rock-star popularity. The company is officially changing its name to Drobo, making both the company and the product one singular, eponymous brand. We heard a lot about branding during the recent Sage Summit 2011, so what can we expect now that Data Robotics is Drobo? Read on and find out …

The VAR Guy recently reported that Google‘s revenues aren’t really gaining ground on Microsoft‘s annual revenues, based on nearly a decade of financial data. Now, our resident blogger is back with an update — this time looking at GOOG vs. MSFT annual net income since 2002. Here again, the results may surprise you.

The other shoe nearly dropped today at Cisco Systems Inc. The networking giant confirmed plans to eliminate 6,500 employees worldwide. The twist: The impacted employees won’t be informed until August. Among the expected cuts: 15 percent of VP-level and above employees. The VAR Guy is checking to determine if any channel VPs are exiting the company. In the meantime, here’s the blow-by-blow.

The chasm between the open source and closed source channels can sometimes be a wide one, but that hasn’t stopped Rick Stevenson, formerly employed by McAfee, from making the jump to become CEO of OpenGear. Here’s the scoop.

I try and keep the Apple love here at The VAR Guy at an acceptable level, and not all Apple news is channel-worthy, but a few things have turned up during the last couple of weeks that are worth tracking. If the rumors are true, Apple could be gearing up for some very interesting mobile moves in the near future. Plus, if you’re an App Store developer, you might want to check on your app piracy. Read on for the details.

Most of my monthly guest blogs focus on vertical market strategies for VARs and MSPs. In this blog, I’ll focus on the banking and financial vertical. We’ve all lived through some tough economic times lately, but for those in the banking and finance community, business has been especially challenging. If you’re a growth-minded VAR, you’ll want to pay close attention in the coming months to news from the financial services world, as it could mean big profits for you. Here’s why.