The Sage Development Partner Program in the Sage Payment Solutions Division is getting an overhaul, with Sage inviting ISVs to submit their integrated software solutions to mitigate the hassle of the Payment Application Data Security Standard. Sage Exchange already provides that level of compliance, and as such the company believes the new program eliminates the middleman, so to speak, which saves money for ISVs.

Sage Payment Solutions President Greg Hammermaster said it best in a prepared statement:

“… Integration to Sage Exchange removes the ISV’s solutions from the scope of PCI (PA-DSS) saving them from the cost and complexities of coding to the rigors of PCI. Customers are an ISV’s most prized asset, and providing a secure and compliant payments environment is important to the overall offering.”

According to Sage, ISVs using Sage Exchange and taking part in the program automatically will bump up the security of their solutions and enable payment information to drop into “an accounting or ERP (enterprise resource planning) system to help businesses get paid faster and spend less time manually entering and reconciling payments data.”

If you’re anxious to get into the Sage Exchange party, you can get yourself ready by checking out Sage’s SDK and the development blog. Submitted software (once certified) will put the ISV on Sage’s searchable list of certified partners who can provide PCI solutions and more. Sounds like a good deal.

Meanwhile, be sure to check out the other emerging PCI trends, most notably Google Wallet rollout, which will likely expand as MDM training and proliferation ramps up across all industries.

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“Our mantra has been to change the rules of networking,” said Mike Banic, VP of Marketing at HP Networking. “We believe it’s a market starved for competition. We want to accelerate the pace of innovation.”

PartnerONE is HP’s all-encompassing partner program, but the changes announced at a media roundtable Dec. 8 focused mostly on HP’s Networking business. Specifically, HP has broken out its rebranded its “Elite” partner level to “Specialist” and broken it into two groups: Professional Networking Specialist and Advanced Networking Specialist. The moves are designed to enable partners of all sizes to meet their margin requirements regardless of size, said Armughan Ahmad, VP, Americas Channel Strategy and Alliance Sales, HP Networking.

“The Professional Networking Specialist designation is aimed at SMBs to allow those partners to get an entry into HP Networking PartnerONE program,” Ahmad said.

And for those former Elite partners, HP’s Advanced Networking Specialist program expands the margin opportunities for partners who have made an investment in certifications and sales, he said.

HP also is expanding its ExpertONE training program for partners, including now offering training through third-party training centers such as GlobalKnowledge and implementing a FastTrack program for partners who already have achieved networking certification for another vendor’s products.

The company also has reached out to colleges, universities and even high schools to train the next generation of IT workers before they graduate. The program, HP Institute, will offer certifications through “several thousands of institutions by 2014,” according to HP.

And, the company’s Catalyst for Change program, which was implemented in 2010 and rewarded partners for trading in Cisco networking equipment, has been expanded to include hardware from all networking vendors — including legacy HP networking equipment — and the current minimum deal size of $100,000 has been eliminated. Additionally, partners receive a 20 percent discount on replacement HP networking gear. “This has been a great program for us and now we’ve improved it tenfold,” Ahmad said.

Finally, HP Financial Services is offering partners to lease HP networking hardware for demo units for a monthly payment that is 1.5 percent of the list price for 18 months.

Certainly, none of these changes on their own are barn burners. But taken together, these moves show HP is taking steps to make it worth partners’ while to bring HP networking offerings to the table.

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During FOCUS, McAfee Senior Vice President of Worldwide Channels Alex Thurber outlined McAfee’s three pillars for helping partners succeed:

1. Investing in Partners
2. Growing Together
3. Optimize for Partners

To that end, McAfee announced three new partner initiatives. The first expands the McAfee SecurityAlliance Partner Program to include a new McAfee Managed Security Service Partner (MSSP) Program, giving McAfee MSP partners greater control over what they sell, as they can now market and deploy their own branded solutions. McAfee also created an automatic monthly renewal system for its MSP partners to help increase their monthly revenue.

The second initiative focuses on the SMB sector. The SMB Acceleration Deal Registration Program gives SMBs a 25 percent increase in their profit margins and will accelerate the approval process of SMBs to four hours. “I am very, very excited about the opportunity we have with SMBs,” Thurber said, adding more than 1,000 SMBs have already signed up for the program.

Finally, McAfee made some changes to encourage partners to invest in training by creating the McAfee Accredited Channel Engineer (ACE) Program. Partners with ACE-certified engineers will receive:

• Increased sales opportunity through greater differentiation
• Enhanced customer relationships
• Free, hands-on technical training
• ability to leverage your ACE as your in-house McAfee technical resource

The company will give rewards credits for the following year’s certification requirements to companies with certified engineers. Additionally, McAfee is rolling out a new learning management system that will be available to partners in 2012. Finally, McAfee has pushed re-certification back to 2013 for partners that were supposed to be up for re-certification in 2012 so that they can get used to the new partner changes.

Keep in mind, this was a security conference. So McAfee didn’t send us away without rolling out a new security solution, McAfee Deep Defender, developed with Intel, which can detect almost all kernel-mode malware, according to the two companies. McAfee Deep Defender is the first solution built on top of McAfee’s DeepSAFE Technology and features real-time monitoring and central management in tandem with the McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator (ePO) and protection against known and unknown threats to environments.

In case you missed it, here are some highlights from day one of McAfee Focus 2011. See you all in Texas.

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Centrify Suite 2012 is now officially anointed by the Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) as compliant with “140-2 Level 1 validation from the Cryptographic Module Validation Program.” Yes, it’s a mouthful, but Centrify also claims it’s the first active directory unification “bridge” solution that meets these requirements. This security “benchmark” ensures the authentication and security management features of Centrify Suite 2012, a.k.a. the Centrify Cryptographic Module, have passed or exceeded a barrage of tests to ensure they’re secure enough for government work. These very tests also ensure Mac OS X and Linux operating systems are fully compliant with the FIPS standard.

Centrify noted it has seen recent success with governmental implementations, and “[an] expanding Federal channel” that has taken a liking to the company’s solutions. With this new certification, Centrify believes resellers have a newfound ability to attack government vertical opportunities where security and cross-platform computing are not just necessary but paramount. As channel players look to differentiate themselves and consumerization of IT grows across the entire IT industry, Centify Suite could be the unique tool that makes a difference.

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The SolutionsPath Data Center University is Avnet’s way to target solution providers who are looking to dive into all the opportunities in the data center, but aren’t quite sure where to start. The university will cover a full curriculum of mobility, networking, cloud computing, virtualization and storage needs in a data center, while also connecting partners with the solutions Avnet provides to satisfy the aforementioned data center categories.

The Data Center University program starts off with a three-day program offering a basic knowledge of the various technologies in the data center and help educate partners on which vertical markets and businesses need what kinds of solutions. Then, partners can graduate to one-on-one training to engage and educate partners “where they have [a] skills gap.” Those workshops are “available on more than 30 different data center topics,” so partners should have a good swath of stuff to chose from. Avnet also sees the training as a “gateway” to specialization, allowing partners to dive into new SolutionsPaths, most notably, CloudReady.

The impetus for Avnet’s Data Center University launch comes as Avnet sees a growing demand by partners who want to attack all aspects of data center needs and customers that frequently prefer a single solution provider to take care of their data center. It’s a smart strategy, especially since trends in the channel show virtualization often begets networking which begets storage and so on. Partners looking for an edge in the marketplace could find Avnet’s education package ideal for uncovering new opportunities.

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The AutoVirt Channel Partner Program is now broken into two tiers, Basic and Premiere. Basic partners will benefit from financial incentives, sales and tech certifications and training, marketing tools, referral leads, registration deals, margin protection, support from AutoVirt’s account team and access to the new AutoVirt Partner Portal. Premiere partners, meanwhile receive full access to AutoVirt’s AutoAssess, which helps them find and classify files across heterogeneous file storage environments, find opportunities to optimize their data centers and identify any migration obstacles.

“This announcement underscores AutoVirt’s passionate commitment to building and continuing to enhance a Channel Partner Program that provides our channel partners with all the resources necessary to meet and exceed their customers’ file data assessment, migration and management requirements,” AutoVirt Vice President of Sales Warren Mead said. AutoVirt has identified data migration challenges as the top obstacle businesses face when trying to optimize and consolidate their data centers. The company believes its trio of data migration solutions – AutoAssess, AutoMigrate and AutoManage – can help businesses overcome their data migration issues and ultimately save money through data center consolidation. Here’s a short breakdown of the three solutions:

1. AutoAssess helps administrators assess and identify file system errors such as missing permission shortcuts that can delay data migration.
2. AutoManage constantly manages users’ NAS environment. AutoVirt claims the solution creates a more efficient and flexible data migration management process.
3. AutoMigrate allows data migration to occur across heterogeneous NAS platforms without disrupting workflow.

So the new AutoVirt Channel Partner Program is an avenue for AutoVirt to get its solutions out to more business end users. Mead also said the channel partner program aims to shorten sales cycles and increase profitability for AutorVirt’s partners.

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• No Pain, No Gain: The VAR Guy Does Boot Camp

Dear Christine Hall: Thanks for reading The VAR Guy. You are raising some important questions about editorial freedom, editorial quality and the future of journalism. In a recent blog post, you wrote:

“Now would be the time, if the new masters with Penton want to maintain The VAR Guy’s credibility, to put a name and a face on the writer of the blog. If they want us to see the site as an actual source of opinion uninhibited by a secret agenda, like the mixing of editorial and advertising content, they need to show us some transparency and they need to do so sooner rather than later.”

Sorry, but The VAR Guy’s cloak of secrecy remains in place. Forever. But please give The VAR Guy a chance to explain why.

Our resident blogger has written about the open source and closed source software worlds since 1992. The VAR Guy’s own Website launched in January 2008, and has emerged as the leading IT Channel blog. By remaining anonymous, The VAR Guy gains far deeper access into the IT Channel. A few examples from recent weeks:

• The VAR Guy was first to report Red Hat’s virtualization certification push amid plans for a North America partner conference.
• The VAR Guy was first to report HP’s plans to shift a key SMB executive into a new role.
• The VAR Guy was first to report VCE Chairman Michael Capellas no longer carries the CEO title.

Maintaining Trust?

But how can you and the rest of The VAR Guy’s readers trust an anonymous blogger? The simple answer: Clear disclosures about sponsor relationships. For instance, The VAR Guy has always listed his sponsors — from day one — so that readers can make their own judgments about The VAR Guy’s business relationships. Yes, sponsors write monthly guest blogs. And they are disclosed as such.

If you read something on The VAR Guy that seems to pander to sponsors then please post a comment or send The VAR Guy an email (TheVARguy [at] NineLivesMediaInc [dot] com). The VAR Guy cares about reader perceptions. And he wants to maintain your trust.

It’s Not Open Source vs. Closed Source

Going forward, The VAR Guy will offer a mix of open source and closed source coverage — as he always has.

Imagine this: The VAR Guy’s home office includes a MacBook Pro, an Ubuntu Linux netbook from ZaReason, a Dell workstation running Ubuntu, and a Lenovo IdeaPad running Windows 7. The VAR Guy also has a Samsung tablet running Android, and an Apple iPad (version 1; our resident blogger didn’t open his wallet for iPad 2).

But here’s the thing: The VAR Guy won’t get caught in a religious war between open source and closed source. Instead, he judges each piece of technology on its business value. If Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) gains ground on VMware, The VAR Guy will report it. But if Microsoft gets a big win against Red Hat Enteprise Linux, The VAR Guy will report that as well.

Generally speaking you can count on the following from The VAR Guy and his team:

• The VAR Guy himself will write about closed source and open source.
• Contributing Blogger Christopher Tozzi will continue to cover Ubuntu and open source related issues.
• Contributing Blogger Dave Courbanou will continue to cover Apple, Windows, Linux and mobile issues.
• Senior Contributing Editor Charlene O’Hanlon continues to oversee day-to-day content on The VAR Guy.
• Site co-founders Amy Katz and Joe Panettieri (who the heck is that guy?) did not sell this web site and exit. Instead, Katz and Panettieri continue to drive The VAR Guy’s overall business and content, respectively, forward.

Dollars Plus Good Editorial Sense

Yes, The VAR Guy is a business that generates sponsored revenue. But that’s been the case since January 2008, long before Penton Media acquired Nine Lives Media and this web site. And going forward, The VAR Guy expects to greatly benefit from the talented marketing, SEO and business leaders at Penton.

In the meantime, please give The VAR Guy a chance to maintain his voice and his editorial quality. And if you see quality slipping please raise your hand, post a comment and demand that we get things right. The VAR Guy appreciates your time. And your readership.

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Ubuntu Core, as its name implies, constitutes a very bare-bones Ubuntu system. It’s a minimalist version of Ubuntu that provides the most basic software around which developers can build a larger system to suit their needs.

Weighing in at only about 100 MB, and fewer than 35 MB compressed, the Ubuntu Core image is indeed lightweight. Since apt is among the approximately 100 packages that are built into it, however, additional applications can be easily downloaded and installed just as they are on any other Ubuntu system.

The first official release of Ubuntu Core is slated for this October, when the next version of Ubuntu, 11.10, debuts. For now, daily development builds of the Ubuntu Core image are available from Ubuntu’s website.

Ubuntu In Your Car

There are plenty of conceivable roles for Ubuntu Core to play beyond embedded devices — as its page on the Ubuntu Wiki points out, it could prove useful for creating custom builds of Ubuntu designed to showcase particular applications, for example.

But for now, Canonical seems to be pushing it above all as a solution for embedded systems. In the company’s own words:

Ubuntu Core is a sub-set of Ubuntu technologies ideally suited for the next generation of embedded devices where Internet connectivity is key. It takes advantage of the extensive hardware, architecture and component certification work done by Canonical so manufacturers can build great experiences for non-PC-based technologies such as set-top boxes, in-vehicle infotainment systems and digital devices for the home.

Canonical employee Victor Palau also recently wrote a blog post introducing Ubuntu Core and highlighting its utility for device developers interested in getting a Linux software stack running on their hardware.

This addition of yet another flavor to the Ubuntu family thus underlines Canonical’s commitment to the small-device market, even as it also continues to invest heavily in desktops, servers and the cloud.

It’s not yet clear what that will mean in concrete terms or which devices we might actually see shipping with Ubuntu Core, but Canonical’s current partners in the endeavor include Pelagicore, AllGo Embedded Systems, Mobica and CodeThink. These companies are involved in development for an array of different embedded devices, ranging from automotive entertainment systems to digital picture frames. Don’t be surprised, then, to find Ubuntu powering your car — or, at least, its stereo.

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For the uninitiated, the VMWare Ready certification means FalconStor’s NSS is now listed in the VMware catalog of “production”-ready technology for mission-critical virtualization environments, since it has met all of VMware’s testing and interoperability requirements. FalconStor also has the honor of being the “first software-based storage virtualization solution to enable VAAI in heterogeneous third-party SANs.” In English, this means FalconStor NSS server software is fully compatible working with various other arrayed storage appliances and servers to back up VMs to a centralized location without needing to install backup software on each VM.

Naturally, NSS is supporting the latest and greatest vSphere 5, meaning FalconStor’s NSS is fully interoperable with the swath of new virtualization features including data recovery, backup resource optimization and more. For VARs working with VMware, FalconStor or both, it’s another quality notch in their belt to deliver a unique and differentiating storage product to the market, especially when virtualization and storage integration is so critical in VM deployments.

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Sophos wants:

1. VARs that can expand their own portfolios as Sophos continues to expand its product offerings. (Side note: Keep an eye on the Sophos buyout of Astaro, the unified threat management specialist.
2. VARs who sell their own managed IT service to small businesses, and can sell Sophos security products as part of their offering.

Sophos offers its VARs free training, certification courses and technical sales assistance to help close deals. The company also offers partners incremental discounts based on the partner’s investment in the deal.

Sophos launched its managed service provider partner program in May, 2010. We’ll be speaking with Sophos this week to get details on the progress of both the MSP partner program and its virtualization investment plan.

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Among the key takeaways from each CompTIA executive…

Nancy Hammervik, senior VP of industry relations, noted:

• CompTIA  launched cloud and unified communications training in April, and the association is preparing mobility, social media and business foundations training for Q4, 2011.
• More than 1,000 people now participate in CompTIA’s ten communities.

Terry Erdle, executive VP, skills certification, noted:

• There are 400,000 IT jobs available in the U.S.
• CompTIA developed three of the top 10 certifications that impact IT hiring; they are A+, Network+ and Security+
• CompTIA is developing certifications to assist IT professionals with data storage and cloud computing expertise.

Elizabeth Hyman, VP of public advocacy, noted:

• CompTIA has launched a monthly Policy Watch newsletter to help members track public policy issues.
• CompTIA intends to work with the new Congressional Small Business Information Technology Caucus, led by Illinois Congressman Peter Roskam and California Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez.

Charles Eaton, executive director, Creating IT Futures, shared a video case study showing how CompTIA is giving back to the IT community and empowering IT professionals to build careers.

Team Building

Side note: Each of the four speakers who followed Thibodeaux are relatively recent recruits to CompTIA.

• Hammervik joined CompTIA in March 2011 after a 23-year career at Everything Channel.
• Erdle joined CompTIA in 2008 after working in various online education roles and also serving as VP of services at Sun Microsystems.
• Hyman joined CompTIA in April 2010; she previously worked in Lenovo’s government relations group.
• Eaton joined CompTIA in June 2010 after holding a range of association positions elsewhere.

Thibodeaux only spoke for a few minutes. By shifting the spotlight from himself to the CompTIA executive team, Thibodeaux essentially signaled that he believes the association’s leadership is ready to assist VARs, MSPs and IT service providers.

Changing Times

Still, The VAR Guy isn’t suggesting that CompTIA is now a perfectly performing association. The Breakaway event, in particular, continues to evolve. Some attendees say the event is a bit heavy on vendors and a bit light on channel partners. But this morning’s keynote session was well-attended by CompTIA community members — roughly half the room stood up and confirmed their community engagement when polled.

Bottom line: Gone are the days when CompTIA members receive perks to attend vendor presentations. Instead, Thibodeaux is linking CompTIA’s DNA (Education, Certification, Advocacy and Philanthropy) to trends in social media and community collaboration. The VAR Guy will continue to chart CompTIA’s progress…

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Even before the new Access Partner Program launched, ForeScout’s momentum was building, according to Brant Kennedy, ForeScout’s VP of worldwide sales. “We’ve had good success,” he said. “We grew 40% last year. We’re at a 52% growth pace for 2011.”

Much of ForeScout’s momentum involves the government vertical, where ForeScout has a plethora of military-standard certifications. A whopping 93% of that booming business is channel driven, according to Kennedy. “We’ve done so well in federal that [the] DoD uses us. That helps a lot,” said Kennedy, adding that the US Army and Air Force also use ForeScout. “[That helps us] have good relationships with VARs and more, since ForeScout [becomes] a counted-on revenue stream.”

The new Access Partner Program is an evolution of ForeScout’s previous partner program, Lead generation, coupled with tiered partner levels promising “attractive” margin opportunities, apparently are here to stay.

In addition, offerings like online deal registration and co-marketing tools are receiving facelifts and enhancements. There are also new consulting services, and a hands-on web portal to help VARs and partners actively search for potential leads.

Partners are also privy to a portal that provides customer protection information, enabling partners to see if organizations are meeting corporate compliance standards (are mobile devices securely connected?) and how ForeScout technology is holding up against threats (are all endpoints reporting green?).

“We’ve beefed up deal registrations, we’ve made it industry standard and more streamlined and more simple. Our intent is to enable partners to find business opportunities that [ForeScout] couldn’t find on our own,” Kennedy said.

Meanwhile, ForeScout has also evolved its product portfolio, expanding from an appliance-based solution to a software-only version that works in VMware environments. Next up, ForeScout plans to offer updated granular security controls inside CounterACT. And in 2012, watch for ForeScoute to increasingly focus on service provider solutions, eventually leading to a form of CounterACT in the cloud.

Bottom line: The VAR Guy asked Kennedy why partners should embrace ForeScout. His answer: The ForeScout win-ratio. “It’s extremely high,” he said. “We’re always in the finals and normally, we’re the winner.”

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