The VAR Guy

The VAR Guy couldn’t make the trip to Avnet Technology Solutions’ New Frontiers Conference this week in Boulder Springs, Colorado. But he is monitoring the conference — which serves Sun Microsystems partners — from after. Here are four key trends for VARs at the event.

When The VAR Guy heads to CompTIA Breakaway, he’ll be sure to poke around to see what Dell’s up to at the show. In the meantime, here’s some color commentary regarding Dell and its managed service strategy from our sister site, MSPmentor.

The news isn’t all bad at Symantec this week. The company has been working overtime to address controversial channel comments from COO Enrique Salem. But on the other hand, there’s some promising developments involving Symantec Protection Network, the company’s software as a service platform. Here’s the scoop from our sister site, MSPmentor.

If you work for Symantec’s channel organization this week, coming to work isn’t much fun. Two channel media sites are claiming that Symantec is taking its large business engagements direct and leaving partners out of the loop.

Where do you see this world in the next five to 10 years? How did the last five or 10 years play out for you? Like you expected? The world as we know it is constantly changing, new economic factors are affecting the way we do business, the price of energy is creating second thoughts in the minds of a lot of people, demand on an individual’s time combined with many other factors are shaping the way we look at our lives and our business.

In a single day, legacy channel publication Computer Reseller News posted two glowing stories about Dell’s progress in the laptop and government markets, respectively. Has hell frozen over? Is Dell that hot — or has CRN finally put the deep freeze on all the negative Dell coverage?

Some folks say VARs are dead. After checking his own pulse and web site traffic, The VAR Guy disagrees. Instead, he believes channel pros are reinventing themselves via managed services and new software stacks. In fact, a new survey by Channel Insider suggests that Red Hat Linux is now the most popular platform among VARs.

Even if you’re a small managed service provider or VAR, you still need effective PR strategies. At least, that’s the stance from PR expert Cheryl Snapp Conner. In the May 15, 2008 podcast on MSPmentor, Conner describes some simple ways to launch and measure your viral PR campaigns.

On June 12, executives representing managed service providers will gather for a Webcast aptly named MSPmentor Live: CEO Exchange. During the fast-moving online event, MSPs will be able to ask peers and experts their most pressing questions about pricing and service level agreement strategies.

Better late than never. Symantec, nearly three years after acquiring Veritas, appears to be hitting its stride. At least that’s the spin Symantec gave after announcing surprisingly strong earnings on April 30.