The VAR Guy

What were the most read technology news and channel partner program stories across our blog network — The VAR Guy, MSPmentor and Talkin’ Cloud — for the week ending April 20, 2012? Glad you asked. Here’s the latest rundown…

When Oracle CEO Larry Ellison started poking around the Linux market way back in 1998 or so, he turned to Wim Coekaerts for help. Fast forward to the present, and more than 8,500 customers run Oracle Linux. But how did Oracle get to this point? And what’s next for Oracle Linux and the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel? The VAR Guy tracked down Coekaerts and gained some candid insights — plus some strong opinions about Red Hat, SUSE, Ubuntu and even Cisco Systems. Here’s the update.

Marseille, France is known for a lot of things, among them bouillabaisse stew, hostility toward centralized government and a flourishing drug trade. Yet on a recent trip there I discovered something unexpected: Ubuntu Linux running in a commercial environment. Here’s what I found, with some thoughts on where desktop Ubuntu might be headed among small businesses more generally.

As of next month, Canonical’s Ubuntu One file-syncing service will be 3 years old. Since its introduction it has evolved considerably and taken some unexpected turns. At this juncture, then, it seems appropriate to ask: What is Ubuntu One, exactly? What makes it different and where is it headed in the future? Read on for some thoughts.

When Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers and other executives take the stage at this week’s Cisco Partner Summit, The VAR Guy wonders: Will Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) executives be armed with Cius tablets? The answer to that question could reveal how Cisco is feeling about its purpose-built tablets, which run Google Android and leverage the Cisco AppHQ app store.

According to survey results released earlier this year, Ubuntu still has a lot of room to grow in the cloud space.  But it seems to be doing just that, the latest indicator being HP’s release of cloud products based partially on Ubuntu.  Here’s the scoop, and why it matters for the Ubuntu world in particular.

At Cisco Partner Summit 2012 (April 16-19, San Diego), the networking giant will evangelize its Unified Compute System (UCS) and a range of SMB technology products. Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) CEO John Chambers will rally channel partners against Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) and IBM (NYSE: IBM) in the data center. Amid that acronym soup, the one that matters most to Cisco partners is VIP — short for Cisco’s Value Incentive Program. Here’s why.

Can Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) ever leapfrog Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) and VMware (NYSE: VMW) in the Linux and virtualization markets? Hmmm… before The VAR Guy takes a stab at answering those questions, he needs to track down Wim Coekaerts, senior VP of Oracle’s Linux and virtualization initiatives. Here’s why.

As Linux users look forward to the release later in April 2012 of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, Canonical’s decision to cease sponsoring Kubuntu as an official Ubuntu variant has passed largely under the radar — a sign, perhaps, that Kubuntu’s user base is small. But as the first member of the Ubuntu family to lose official endorsement, where is Kubuntu headed? And more importantly, what does its departure mean for the Ubuntu brand as a whole? Read on for some analysis.

The VAR Guy has a knack for being in multiple places at the same time. But next week’s schedule is extremely challenging. Care to tag along with The VAR Guy as he attempts to cover (1) Cisco Partner Summit, (2) IBM Smart Cloud Symposium, (3) OpenStack Design Summit and Conference, (4) Synnex Varnex — and (5) a private gathering at Oracle Corp.’s headquarters? Here’s a sneak peek at the crazy week ahead, and the implications for channel partners.

How exactly did Citrix Systems (Nasdaq: CTXS) go from super-boring software (multi-user code and the ICA protocol) to extremely strategic (desktops as a service, virtualization, mobile computing, collaboration and cloud computing)? The VAR Guy has the oft-overlooked answer.

Protecting users (and their data) from themselves is tough enough within uniform computing environments, which is one of the big reasons many organizations hesitate to make the jump to non-Microsoft platforms on their workstations. But now securing data across different operating systems is a little easier with Endpoint Protector‘s announcement of Linux support. Here’s the scoop, and what it means for Linux in the workplace.

A Red Hat Storage 2.0 beta with Big Data and Apache Hadoop support is now available. So what is Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) trying to achieve in the storage market, and where do partners potentially fit into the story? The VAR Guy is so pleased that you continue to raise such timely questions. Here are the answers.

Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) recently became the world’s first $1 billion open source company. Now, the folks at SUSE, promoter of the rival Linux distribution, are seeking bragging rights of their own. Indeed, SUSE says it now has more than 9,200 certified third-party applications and supports over 13,500 hardware, storage and networking devices. Impressive. But is SUSE in growth mode?

Digium, promoter of Asterisk (the open source IP PBX), is making a deeper unified communications push into Europe. The Digium effort leverages EntaTech, a telephony distributor in the United Kingdom (U.K.). The big question: Can Digium expand its international pipelines to maintain the company’s growth?

When it comes to Ubuntu, Canonical’s Linux distribution, most pundits keep close tabs on April and October. Like clockwork, Canonical always releases Ubuntu upgrades during those months. Indeed, Canonical is beta testing Ubuntu 12.04 (code-named Precise Pangolin) now and expects to ship the new Linux release on April 26. Ubuntu 12.04 is a Long Term Support (LTS) release, which means it may appeal to businesses. But is Canonical doing enough to catch on with corporations?

The transformation of open source projects into business ventures doesn’t always proceed smoothly: Witness Mandriva Linux and OpenOffice.org, to name just a couple examples. But ownCloud, which began the launch of a commercial entity in December 2011, seems to be off to a decidedly successful start, with the release of the company’s first commercial products. Here are the details, and their implications for open source cloud computing.

SUSE has delivered a Linux distribution upgrade that could benefit VARs in the retail vertical. The new release, dubbed SUSE Linux Enterprise Point of Service 11 SP 2, specifically targets retail customers — including general merchandisers, specialty retailers, food and drug stores.

Wondering what comes after the cloud? Literally, usually sunshine — haha. But metaphorically speaking, the next great frontier may well be big-data. And Hadoop, an open-source project enjoying ever-increasing buzz as of late, will likely be at the fore as that niche evolves. If you don’t know much about Hadoop, it’s time to learn. Here are the basics.

The VAR Guy is celebrating the end of Q1 2012. So far, so good. But our resident blogger can’t rest on his laurels. Q2 will bring plenty of channel news. But before The VAR Guy looks too far ahead, here are the nine most read stories across the IT channel — from The VAR Guy, MSPmentor and Talkin’ Cloud — for the week ending March 30, 2012.

When Red Hat (RHT) announced strong quarterly results yesterday, the figures essentially ended a recent debate about Red Hat Enterprise Linux vs. Ubuntu Server. Canonical Founder Mark Shuttleworth recently suggested Ubuntu is more popular than RHEL for some server applications. But when it comes down to dollars and cents, business-centric applications, and partner engagement, most evidence still points to Red Hat as the overwhelming Linux market leader.

ownCloud Inc., which develops open-source software for building cloud infrastructure, has existed as a commercial entity for only a few short months.  But it has already begun racking up partnerships throughout the channel, highlighting the plentiful opportunities available at the juncture of the cloud and open-source. Read on for the scoop, and what it means for the open-source ecosystem more broadly.

Digium, promoter of Asterisk — the open source IP PBX –  has introduced new VoIP gateways to help integrators and partners deliver end-to-end communications solutions. The new Digium VoIP gateways — called the G100 and G200 — surface several weeks after Digium unveiled its first IP phones. The key twist: Channel partners say the new gateways are ideal for customers that run Asterisk on VMware (symbol: VMW) or in the cloud.