9. SAP Cloud Computing Strategy: SAP’s Greg Tomb made some lofty cloud strategy claims to contributing blogger Nicholas Mukhar. Catch up on the conversation here.

8. VMware Opens Up Cloud Foundry:  This VMware move could have key implications in the PaaS (platform as a service) market, according to contributing blogger Matt Weinberger.

7. Five Cloud Computing Experts to Watch: Our weekly update to the Talkin’ Cloud 200 — which tracks the top cloud computing experts in the IT channel — continues to build a loyal readership.

6. End of the World As We Know It: This catchy guest blog from PacketTrap MSP caught reader eyeballs on MSPmentor.

5. Apple OS X Errors: The Apple Mac OS X Lion 10.7.3 build, released February 1, caused more headaches than it fixed. Contributing blogger David Courbanou gave readers the details.

4. Big Move: Rackspace is planning to get into the remote monitoring business. Initial details surfaced at the CA MSP Symposium in Miami, Fla., this week.

3. What’s the Price Tag?: When MSPmentor explained why VARs and MSPs need sales proposal and quoting software, readers tuned in.

2. Microsoft’s Next Office: David Courbanou tracks Microsoft’s plans for Office 2012, and the implications for channel partners.

1. Google’s Plans for Motorola Mobility: The next step could involve a Google senior VP becoming CEO of Motorola Mobility.

Those are the top-read blogs for this week. But stick around. You never know when a few addition news surprises will surface on The VAR Guy.

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VARVID is perhaps best known for managing video production and video streaming at channel-centric conferences like last year’s Ingram Micro Cloud summit. But VARVID also helps VARs, MSPs and IT vendors with video marketing services.

Apparently, The VARVID team had a meeting of the minds with Brad and Arlin Sorensen. Arlin is best known as…

• CEO of Heartland Technology Solutions, an MSP and IT service provider.
• The man most closely associated with HTG Peer Groups — an organization for VARs and MSPs.
• Also building Heartland Technology Consultants, which will blend life coaching and business coaching for IT service providers.

Money Matters

Arlin and brother Brad are “making a sizable financial commitment to Varvid, a digital media services company, as part of a strategic alliance aimed at expanding business-changing educational content via an online video platform.”

Yes, the Sorensens intend to connect the dots between VARVID, HTC and HTS — “utilizing assets and personnel” across the companies. According to a press release, VARVID will use the money to “broaden its support of event services including turnkey solutions related to staging, lighting, sound and multi-camera coverage for both live and on-demand viewership.”

Who Does What?

VARVID President and Co-Founder Aaron Booker shifts to VARVID’s CEO post, overseeing strategic relationships and innovations. VARVID Creative Director and Co-founder Mike Simmons succeeds Booker as president, overseeing VARVID’s day-to-day business operations. Arlin and Brad Sorensen join VARVID’s board.

Financial terms of the Sorensen-VARVID investment were not disclosed, but The VAR Guy is hearing chatter that perhaps the Sorensens now have controlling interest in VARVID — though that’s unconfirmed chatter…. Updated, 2:04 p.m. ET, Jan. 18: The Sorensens have not gained controlling interest in VARVID, according to Booker.

Cross Sell and Upsell

It’s an interesting play for Arlin Sorensen in particular. With deep reach into the vendor community, Sorensen can potentially position VARVID as a resource for both vendors and VARs — especially as HTC ramps up coaching services in 2013. There are also potential synergies between VARVID and HTG Peer Groups… …

Side note: Booker deserves special mention. When The VAR Guy’s hard drive crashed during a 2011 conference, Booker stepped in and gave the system a close look, offering up advice and guidance during a desperate moment for our resident blogger.

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Bell officially will retire from Dell in late March 2012, at which point Felice will take the reins. The move is part of Dell’s larger plan to start “simplifying the company’s customer-facing activities.” Translation? Dell is shrinking the size of its corporate infrastructure to build “more customer-focused … solutions that meet customers’ needs.” According to Dell’s press release this move will meld sales and marketing into a single organization, which in turn should super-charge Dell’s go-to-market strategy.

Whether this “more collaborative” approach will turn around more innovative and customer-centric products remains to be seen. Dell’s moves seem indicative of a company looking to re-invent its consumer brand, which still seems like a computer company. Dell’s tablet efforts have made hardly a splash; meanwhile, its brand is underrepresented — or often absent — at most big box retailers.

Additionally, this new organization encompasses larger enterprise, SMB and public sector computing customers, so Dell is likely looking to strike a bigger leadership role with enterprise-centric technology. For example, check out Dell’s Fluid Storage campaign. Meanwhile, we’ll continue to monitor Dell’s 2012 moves closely on our radar.

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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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How did the dude above wind up as a face pictured on dozens of IT websites? Fact is, many VARs use low-cost web designers who throw together a quick template, some generic art, and a few landing pages for a website. Instead of naming names, The VAR Guy is simply begging those design shops to find some new art.

And for VARs: There’s no need to spend a fortune on your web destination. But please: Can we all agree that it’s time for the channel to retire the photo above? Pretty please?

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The five tips include:

1) Send periodic emails – If a VAR has an email marketing system they can set up an email nurturing campaign that will sendperiodic emails to a selected list. Each email should have a specific call to action, and when the lead acts upon a set number of calls it can be passed on to one of the VAR’s sales reps. There are many email marketing systems available, ranging in price. A good, simple, choice like Constant Contact is an excellent beginner’s option.

2) Offer information – When sending out nurturing emails, try to provide links to whitepapers and other educational information rather than focusing on the features and capabilities of your product. Generally, interesting emails are read and obvious sales pitches are deleted. Following this tip will help ensure your emails land squarely in the former category.

3) Host a webinar -  Webinars are a great way to demonstrate a VAR’s expertise in a specific subject to a mass audience. They are also a great way to make leads more interested in a VAR’s offerings and give you an excuse to follow up with lead.

4) Use a telemarketing service – When a VAR would like to assess the value of a lead list quickly, they can use a telemarketing service to contact the leads prior to sending them to sales. They can also set up appointments for the sales team to follow up with a particular lead and determine what the needs of that lead are. That way, the sales team is better prepared for the call. While telemarketing services can be very useful, we recommend only using them after the lead has received a couple of emails from your nurturing process. That way, the lead is better prepared for the call as well.

5) Send a survey - The information gathered in a survey can be used to determine a lead’s interest level, what their pain points are, and how you should start the conversation. The information gathered in a survey is also a great ice breaker for telemarketers or your sales force to use when calling a lead for the first time.

The steps above will help you gauge the interest of each lead and help warm them up before the sales teams begin calling. This will save time and energy and help make your sales teams more efficient and effective.

Bob Darabant is VP of Astaro Americas. This monthly guest blog is part of The VAR Guy’s annual sponsorship program. Read all of Darabant’s guest blog entries here.

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First, a little background. Jobbins succeeded Luanne Tierney (now at Juniper) in July. Jobbins, a veteran of Cisco Europe, brings 22 years of marketing and technology experience to the post. As VP of partner marketing, Jobbins is part of an executive team that’s trying to jump-start Cisco’s growth. The company cut 6,500 employees in August and exited certain consumer markets in order to re-focus on its core networking, collaboration and communications markets. By September, CEO John Chambers and other executive leaders were telling the world that the “next” Cisco — a hungry and far more nimble Cisco — was emerging.

Five Key Priorities

As part of that effort, Jobbins is working to build closer links between Cisco and its channel partners. Her vision: “Make Cisco the world’s preferred partner marketing experience.” Jobbins is therefore focused on five core priorities.

1. Brand and Value: The goal is to simplify Cisco’s value proposition to partners, and then help partners to articulate that value proposition to end-customers. That effort will include specialized marketing campaigns, each of which could last a quarter or more. Potential campaigns will focus on (A) cloud computing (B) the data deluge and (C) the proliferation of devices. Cisco will offer partners co-marketing dollars to ensure VARs align their marketing messages with Cisco’s campaigns. However, it’s unclear whether Cisco will align the marketing programs with Cisco’s VIP (Value Incentive Program), which rewards partners for selling certain product categories.

Cisco will also  take steps to help end-customers find partners that have earned master specializations.

2. Online and Social Communities: Cisco is auditing its social media efforts right now and exploring partners’ preferred avenues for communications.

3. Marketing Enablement: Watch for new efforts in the areas of development, coverage and demand generation.

4. Demand Marketing: Cisco is looking to “build campaigns that will drive demand.”

5. Ecosystem: Here, Jobbins mentioned the growing complexity in the channel as VARs, MSPs and cloud services providers all emerge with different sales and delivery models. Cisco’s goal is to “leave gaps in the market for partners to plug in their services.” Jobbins also sees an opportunity to have Cisco certified marketing professions “drop in to partner businesses” to assist with marketing efforts.

Elsewhere within the ecosystem, Jobbins mentioned ISV (independent software vendor) relations multiple times, hinting that Cisco Systems is striving to work more closely with SAP, Microsoft and others. “Wendy Bahr and I are very strong proponents in terms of knowing we need to do more with ISVs.” Jobbins predicted that application-centric promotions, leveraging Cisco’s Unified Computing System, will likely emerge.

Global Perspective

Jobbins brings a global perspective to her position, having worked extensively in Europe before making the move to Cisco’s headquarters in San Jose, Calif., earlier this year.

It’s hard to poke holes in Jobbins’ resume — she’s got a track record filled with success. But Cisco also faces some tall challenges. Competition with Hewlett-Packard and Juniper, in particular, remains intense. The next reality check will come November 9, when Cisco is scheduled to announce Q1 2012 results.

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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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Aside from all the standard perks of making life easier on the partner community, HP’s real focus for PartnerOne partners is ensuring “a continued strategy of predictability within the program structure.” The VAR Guy thinks this translates to mitigating any concerns from the announcement of the PSG spinoff, along with strengthening HP by making Meg Whitman CEO.

According to Matt Smith, director of the Americas channel marketing at HP, the new changes “enable partners to help customers drive innovation with more agile IT solutions.” Our resident blogger thinks the distilled essence of this statement shows HP wants its partners to be fluent in a few different specializations to help them succeed.

That idea is echoed exactly by the new PartnerOne tweaks HP is making, including:

• Specialist Designations: HP wants partners to be rewarded for their skills, by adding new partner designations in everything from virtualization to professional networking and managed print services. HP said with the new categories, HP can help partners “align” their “expertise to the evolving business requirements” in the IT world.
• Marketing Depot: Exactly what it sounds like, HP has launched a program giving partners access to demand generation tools and other ways to expand market presence. This also marks a “consolidation of multiple marketing repositories” into a one-stop-shop solution. Interesting to note: consolidation is an increasingly popular trend among programs.
• New Tools and Support: HP is offering more demo equipment for proof of concept or trial offers, special offers on printers and associated services, “sales realignment” on enterprise storage, servers and networking equipment, and new partner branding coding to help customers understand which HP partner is the right one for them.

Partners working HP should definitely take advantage of all HP is offering, as other vendors, especially Dell, have gone on an offensive to try and supplant HP technology. HP is clearly looking to hold its ground in the channel, and these very moves may help maintain HP loyalty among its channel partners as its future is figured out.

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Multiple organizations have launched social networks for channel partners. Existing destinations include PartnerPedia and some of the community components within CRN.com. And The VAR Guy itself is a socially-engaged web site, though it doesn’t strive to be a full-blown social network.

Meanwhile, ChannelEyes is working to carve out a unique niche for itself. According to a prepared statement, Godgart wants ChannelEyes to be a “ridiculously simple and secure way to engage all channel partners.” Godgart will end his position as Autotask chairman on October 1 in order to ensure ChannelEyes is a vendor-neutral effort.

According to the prepared statement, ChannelEyes will allow:

• Partners to control the programs they need to follow, filter the information they want to share and easily build social conversations around it.
• For suppliers like vendors, distributors, associations, franchises and other players in the ecosystem, it will be the place to engage with their entire channel. Organizations will be able to target the right person with the right information at the right time.

In addition to Godgart, the ChannelEyes team includes CTO David Geoghegan. Former Autotask Senior VP and Lenovo SMB channel leader Jay McBain has been involved in some of the press briefings for ChannelEyes, a potential indication that he’s consulting for the company.

It sounds like ChannelEyes will announce some key vendor, association and VAR relationships in the weeks ahead. The full-blown ChannelEyes is expected to launch before year’s end, according to the teaser press release.

Will The VAR Guy join? Yup… assuming ChannelEyes allows anonymous, opinionated, outspoken, tireless bloggers into the system.

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First, some background. Attachmate acquired Novell and the SUSE Linux business in April 2011. By May 2011, Attachmate CEO Jeff Hawn declared his commitment to SUSE customers and partners. And by July 2011, Microsoft agreed to pump $100 million into the SUSE relationship.

Now, Miller is adding his voice to the SUSE conversation. His two core messages:

1. SUSE Linux Is Here to Stay: “There’s a misperception in some places about whether SUSE is here to stay,” said Miller. “It’s a topic I address directly and proactively. We’re here to stay; we have a mandate to grow this business. If there’s a perception we’ll get stripped down and turned around and sold, that’s wrong. We’re here for growth.”

2. SUSE Linux Is a Global, International Business: “Our team is located internationally and our headquarters is in Germany,” said Miller. “But that doesn’t mean we’re Europe-only or Germany-only. We’re here for a global play. We’re seeing phenomenal growth in Asia Pacific and China in particular. And we’ve got good presence in Latin America, just to name a few regions generating momentum.”

Also of Note

Some other highlights from the conversation:

1. Business Starts With People: Miller emphasized the point that he’s been busy meeting with key executives and partners at Microsoft, SAP, VMware, IBM, Dell, HP, Fujitsu and more. “It’s really about connecting with our core alliance partners; we’ve got some exciting surprises coming with them.”

2. Marketing and Partner Relationships: “Our key priority is to grow our business through strategic alliances. And on the marketing side, we really want to promote and unleash the SUSE brand. We’ll define who we are and what we’re going to do with SUSE. We’ll have more details at BrainShare but in short we’re focused on profitable growth.”

3. SUSE and Cloud Computing: “We see a real demand from both partners and customers; there’s real demand for a flexible, open and open-source-based cloud infrastructure for both public and private clouds. We’re very interested in seeing SUSE Linux as the foundation for those trends.”

In recent months, he adds, SUSE on Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) has experienced double-digit month over month growth in terms of utilization rates.

4. SUSE Desktop and Mobile: “Those are more of a niche, to be really direct, particularly in the mobile space. We’re really focused on the enterprise, business and server running in the cloud. We want to help customers and partners run the most demanding, data intensive workloads.”

5. Management Team: Miller indicated that SUSE has the right management expertise in place, and the team is working closely with Attachmate CEO Jeff Hawn, he added. “We’ve got the right team to march forward. Our team has been in place since right after the close of the transaction. It’s a great team of practical minded people. Everyone is firing on all cylinders.

Key Competition

Miller certainly sounds upbeat. But SUSE faces entrenched competition from Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Plus, Red Hat is connecting the dots between multiple efforts (RHEL, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, OpenShift and CloudForms) to build a comprehensive cloud strategy.

Can SUSE carve out unique market and partner opportunities? The VAR Guy expects to hear more during Novell BrainShare in October 2011.

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The term social media covers so many channels of internet communication it’s easy to get overwhelmed, so it’s important to come up with a plan that is both realistic and achievable.  Here are some words of advice that will hopefully help you create a successful social media strategy.

1. Define your goals

Need to grow your customer base, but don’t have the operating funds to cover the additional sales headcount?   That’s where a solid strategy and making smart decisions with your marketing investments can cover a lot of ground that your team can’t.

Word of mouth has shown up time and again in studies as one of the top influencers of purchasing decisions.  Social media is a creative way to get people talking and can help you create new brand advocates for business.

But not everyone is ready to evangelize the amazing-ness of your product, service, idea… etc.  For instance, is your business new to the market?  Are you in the RFP phase and wanting the customer to pull the trigger?  There could be different objectives depending on where your product is in your customer’s mindset and what you want them to do next.

Top of mind, consideration, conversion and loyalty all play a factor in getting customers to not only know you exist, but get them to buy and to keep coming back.  The conversations for each phase of the funnel are different as well.  If you take a step back and think about how you learn about a product and make purchasing decisions, it can help guide you on where to go next.

2. Be honest with yourself

Many businesses and marketers jump on the social media bandwagon, because unlike other means of connecting with customers, you don’t have to pay for it.  But what people don’t realize is that social media is a time investment, and when you are starting out, it can be a huge chunk of your day.

Establishing a social media presence, whether it’s Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or blogging (to name a few options) takes a substantial amount of time.  But once you get a presence and people are consistently exchanging ideas with you and your community, it will take the pressure of constantly having to create content off of you.  And the more invested people are with your brand, the more it will pay-off in the long run when you don’t have to pay people to say good things about you.

3. It is not all rainbows and butterflies

One of the “risks” with social media is that you don’t control the content. And if you try to control it, it’s not very social and it’s definitely going to be counterproductive to your efforts.  The good news is that if a customer has an issue with your company or product, you can address the problem right away if you are keeping your finger on the pulse.  It’s important to keep an open mind to what people are saying and proactively reaching out to customers to give them more information, help resolve an issue and just letting them know you are listening can go a long way.

4. Don’t leave them hanging

If you decide to take the leap and create a Facebook page or a LinkedIn group, then you need to make sure that you are in it for the long haul.  You may miss something important a customer is trying to tell you, like one of your services could be better if you did xyz, and everyone will be reading it, current customers, potential customers, competitors… everyone except you.

Put yourself in your customers’ shoes—If one of them started talking to you, then turned around and walked away in the middle of it, what would you do?  You probably wouldn’t have a good impression of them and wouldn’t want to engage in the same conversation with them later.

5. Now what?

Take some time to think about what it is that you are trying to do, and then think about what you have to say and how much time you have to say it.  If you like quick, 140-character conversations, then go set up a Twitter account!  If you want the world to see all of the pictures of last year’s office party, post them up on your new Flickr account.   And if you want the world to know that you know everything there is to know about hot-swapping hard-drives in less than 5 minutes, then get blogging.

Don’t spread yourself to thin, and most importantly, LISTEN.

Sarah Mercer is a marketing operations consultant at Dell. Find Dell PartnerDirect channel partner program information here. Monthly guest blogs such as this one are part of The VAR Guy’s annual sponsorship program.

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