The VAR Guy

The VAR Guy has been drinking with two fists this week — Coca Cola in one hand, latte in the other. The steady diet of caffeine helped our resident blogger to drive plenty of web traffic. But The VAR Guy still couldn’t meet all of his deadlines. Here are six channel partner-related blog entries that The VAR Guy failed to write for the week ending March 12, 2010:

Citrix Systems continues to bolster its virtualization story. Sometime later this month, the company expects to ship XenApp 6, a virtualization and application “delivery product” that lets users connect to corporate applications. You can also host apps with XenApp, or stream them direct to the local user. Here are some more details.

Microsoft Channel Chief Allison Watson, in a FastChat Video with The VAR Guy, explains how VARs and managed services providers can potentially profit from Microsoft’s cloud offerings. But that’s not all…

Oh the Tablet buzz never ends. As we all know Apple’s iPad won’t support Flash anytime soon, but the HP Tablet (or Slate) will support Flash, naturally, because it’s running Windows 7. HP and Adobe intend to capitalize on that fact. In fact, Adobe showcased Flash on the HP tablet with it running AIR applications as well, and that got people thinking…

Wipro Technologies, the IT services arm of Indian megacorporation Wipro Limited, has announced says the company plans to actively promote Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) — which includes Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and other SaaS applications. The news comes less than a week after Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said he was betting the company on the cloud. Here’s how Wipro plans to assist Microsoft with that bet.

Friday announcements always tend to get smothered by the weekend. On March 5th 2010 Engadget reported some interesting new details and exclusive pictures about Microsoft’s dual-screen tablet, dubbed Courier. It’s got a lot of work-horse potential and productivity power. Here’s the scoop…

The VAR Guy doesn’t have time to attend the funeral… but he was expecting this death: Microsoft is discontinuing future development of Windows Essential Business Server, effective June 30th, 2010. Here’s the scoop.

In a speech to the student body University of Washington, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer elucidated the promises and perils of the cloud, shedding some light on Microsoft’s cloud strategy.  Gizmodo’s got the blow-by-blow – here’s a recap and our take.

Microsoft is getting ready to roll out Visual Studio 2010, the latest version of their pedigreed software development environment on April 12. If you’re a developer upgrading from an older version of Visual Studio, Microsoft has some good news for you. And if you’re looking into buying the professional edition at retail, there’s even better news — it’ll include 20 hours of Windows Azure. Interested?

Wyse Technology, one of the leaders in thin and zero client computing, has joined forces with Microsoft. The result? A sub-$100 zero client that works with Microsoft MultiPoint Server 2010. Aimed at the  education market and keeping costs low, education resellers and VARs may want to listen up.

AMD, the chip and card maker recently had a webcast emphasizing the importance of not neglecting that very unique specialized piece of hardware: your graphics card. Touting the performance and versatility of their ATI brand, they shared some knowledge on an otherwise unknown channel strategy.

The products aren’t even in the wild yet and the war is already brewing. Hewlett-Packard apparently wants their tablet (the HP Slate) to be cheaper than Apple’s iPad and still include 3G wireless. So, will VARs give the HP tablet a look? Here are some perspectives.

The ruckus began long  before Steve Job’s alleged “lazy” comment about Adobe Flash, but the issue certainly gained some more attention after the fact. Now, in an interview with All Things Digital, Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch has conceded a few criticisms about Flash’s overall optimization and shed some light on the future for the ubiquitous plug-in.

In your opinion, what’s the best netbook operating system you’ve used? Be honest. Tell us. Over at Lifehacker.com, they  already asked the same question. So far, the leading answer is… (drum roll, please…): Windows 7. The other results may surprise you…

It’s finally here, Windows Mobile 7, or as it more colloquially wants to be known: Windows Phone 7 Series. It doesn’t really roll off the tongue and it’s not exactly the seventh series of any kind of Windows Phone, but that’s what they’re sticking with. So what’s the scoop on the new dialer from Redmond? Well, it all started at the Mobile World Congress 2010 in Barcelona…

Ever wish you could debug something collaboratively? Maybe you wish you could actually debug a piece of software without actually having to be on the machine you were building the code on? DebugLive.com, which just launched, is a potential solution to those challenges.

Full disclosure: When I’m not digging into the cloud market for The VAR Guy, I play a lot of video games. That said, Kotaku, a game hobbyist blog, was the last place I ever expected to hit on what could be the next big trend for Microsoft partners serving the health care vertical: Microsoft’s Xbox 360 video game console. Sure, this requires some explanation. So here we go.

Is Microsoft Office coming to the iPad? It may be more likely than you think. Apple already positioned itself to make the iPad a bit of a content-creator by offering their iWork suite along with the keyboard dock. With MacWorld in session this week (February 8-13th) the Office for Mac Team had some interesting information to share.

There’s a few players in the arena right now for getting your UNIX and Linux boxes to play nice with Microsoft Active Directory, but Centrify wants your attention. They take securing your network seriously but do it with what claims to be a simple solution that VARs and MSPs might want to take note at, especially if you’re a VAR setting up and managing data centers.

Instead of a big bang, Microsoft’s new cloud platform Windows Azure, has made lots of small news since launching as a paid service on Feb. 1. In this regard, Microsoft is similar to cloud competitor Amazon Web Services, which only breaks radio silence when they have new features to launch. No doubt, Microsoft and Amazon have been trickling important news, so let’s take a look.

When it comes to SharePoint, there’s no middle ground: Folks are either profiting from the Microsoft platform, or competing fiercely with it. Microsoft sells at least $1 billion worth of SharePoint annually. And on Feb. 10, SharePoint customers and partners are going to converge on San Francisco for a major SharePoint conference. Here’s what to expect.

Just in time for 3DTV (no joke, Norton), Microsoft is set to launch a Digital Home competency for channel partners in May 2010, according to documentation on the company’s Web site. The Digital Home channel initiative is part of a broader Microsoft Partner Network competency overhaul. Here are the details.

Apple says their new iPhone update is going to be killer. Google’s Android Phone and OS proliferating is catching on like wild-fire. New rumors point to some groovy stuff for Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 7 experience. But the real story involves Steve Jobs’ preoccupation with Google. Here are the details.