A tip of the hat goes to InformationWeek for publicizing Microsoft’s Mobile World Congress invitation. (Alas, our resident blogger has been checking his inbox regularly but has yet to receive said invite.) But other than the invitation and the release and download date for the Consumer Preview, which is coming Feb. 29, 2012, there’s not much else to talk about. The VAR Guy wonders, What can we expect Microsoft to show off that it hasn’t already?

If you thought you got a decent window into Windows 8 during Microsoft’s BUILD conference, our resident blogger would be inclined to agree with you. But there is something slightly different here: Instead of the focus being on developers, Microsoft probably will be focusing on how Windows 8 fits around a consumer experience (duh), with home-use cases (photos, music, etc.) and a much-improved Metro interface with more native applications.

But why Mobile World Congress? Microsoft has no plans to put the Windows Phone 7 OS on tablets. Instead, Microsoft is revamping Windows 8 for a tablet/desktop “no compromise” experience. It’s arguably one of the most ambitious things Microsoft is doing in the consumer space. At Mobile World Congress 2012, the buzz likely will be around Android, with a pinch of iOS for good measure and maybe Windows Phone 7 at the tail end. But to have a whole event around Windows 8 at Mobile World Congress? Microsoft clearly wants Windows 8 in the spotlight.

Just take a look at all the Building Windows 8 blogs — between more streamlined network connectivity and push notifications, it’s clear Microsoft has one goal and one goal only: to show how mobile Windows 8 can be. The VAR Guy will reserve further speculation until the event, but he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t the least bit intrigued. Meanwhile, his suitcase stands at the ready. (Are you listening, Microsoft?)

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Simply put: Insight Venture Partners apparently paid far too much when it purchased Ziff Davis Enterprise for roughly $150 million to $160 million in 2007, or roughly 2X revenues, The VAR Guy believes.

Now, Quinstreet is apparently valuing those Ziff Davis Enterprise assets at $17.5 million. Still, those various figures may not represent an apples-to-apples comparison. After all, Quinstreet made an asset purchase but didn’t fully acquire Enterprise Media Group Inc. (Ziff Davis Enterprise’s parent).

The Ziff Davis Enterprise portfolio certainly had some great assets — eWeek, face-to-face and online events, and a big database of IT managers. But Insight Venture Partners apparently funded the 2007 Ziff Davis Enterprise buyout with a $137 million credit facility from GE Commercial Finance.

The situation was similar to a consumer paying too much — and taking out too big a mortgage — during the U.S. real estate housing bubble, The VAR Guy believes. From 2007 to 2011, Ziff Davis Enterprise worked to transform itself into a fully digital media company, but the journey included debt payments that hampered the company’s innovation efforts, our resident blogger believes.

Quinstreet Steps In

Last week, Ziff Davis Enterprise’s bubble finally popped. Quinstreet purchased the Ziff Davis Enterprise assets for $17.5 million in cash, according to that February 7 SEC filing. The move seeks to diversify Quinstreet beyond the education and financial services verticals and into the IT media market — though most of Quinstreet’s focus apparently will involve lead generation rather than content.

Company watchers say Quinstreet appears to be cutting roughly 100 of roughly 130 Ziff Davis Enterprise positions. The Quinstreet SEC filing was short on details but did offer the payment price on Ziff Davis Enterprise. It stated:

“On February 3, 2012, the Company acquired certain assets of Ziff Davis Enterprise from Enterprise Media Group, Inc., a New York-based online media and marketing company in the business-to-business technology market, for $17,526 in cash paid upon closing of the acquisition. The results of Ziff Davis Enterprise’s operations will be included in the consolidated financial statements following the acquisition date.

The Company is currently evaluating the purchase price allocation following the consummation of the transaction. It is not possible to disclose the preliminary purchase price allocation or unaudited pro forma combined financial information given the short period of time between the acquisition date and the filing date of this report.”

(Note: The $17,526 figure is “in thousands,” hence $17.5 million.)

More details of the Quinstreet-Ziff Davis Enterprise deal may gradually leak out in SEC filings over the next few months. But in the meantime, The VAR Guy wishes all Ziff Davis Enterprise veterans best wishes as they navigate the Quinstreet deal and/or pursue new opportunities.

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• Ziff Davis Enterprise, Channel Insider, eWeek Sold: Now What?

Imagine a PCI Express graphics card. Now imagine that instead of a GPU on the card, it’s covered in Flash memory modules. Welcome to EMC’s VFCache, AKA “Project Lightning.” VFCache essentially can be combined with any existing EMC FAST-enabled storage array servers (VMAX, VMAXe, VNX and VNXe) and instantantly improve performance and latencies in a variety of aforementioned use cases. EMC promises it will “deliver I/Os measured in millions and timed in microseconds.” That kind of speed is exciting, especially when it’s applied to disaster recovery and other mission-critical needs, but even more so in the virtualization and cloud world.

So what’s the big deal? Leveraging PCI Express is a unique way to create high-performance technology that’s easily expandable but also much more safe and efficient. Since data is first dumped into VFCache storage through the PCI Express slot, the need for hot data to travel through the network to the storage array is eliminated. More simply, data that’s being accessed or demanded has instant clearance for landing, instead of waiting for the storage array to parse each chunk of data immediately.

VFCache is still hot and fresh, and an early access program for the card is expected in Q2 2012. Later in the year, EMC is planning to expand VFCache to support more capacity and advanced reduplication. As virtualization, cloud and storage needs all grow exponentially, the demand for superfast data-parsing technology such as this likely will expand. EMC VARs — or storage VARs in general — definitely should think about adding high-end storage solutions to their portfolio.

Also worth noting: Storage company XIO, formerly Xiotech, recently launched a similar flavor of sold state storage technology dubbed Hyper ISE.

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Both Data Storage Corp. and BUMI partnered with Asigra to build the cloud storage businesses. Now you can learn from leaders at each company:

• Matthew P. Grosso, executive VP, Data Storage Corp.
• Jennifer Walzer, CEO, BUMI (Backup My Info! Inc.)
• Eran Farajun, Executive VP, Asigra

Register now and join us Wednesday, Feb. 8 at 2:00 p.m. ET/11:00 a.m. PT. We look forward to your questions.

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Over the past decade, the Ziff Davis Enterprise team transitioned from print publications to web, digital and mobile editions. It was a sometimes painful process, but the ZDE team always seemed to rally. The deeper story here involves important lessons in corporate debt, company valuations, branding, seismic market shifts and the Ziff Davis Enterprise team’s incredible will to fight on.

First, some important notes:

• The sale of Ziff Davis Enterprise allegedly includes significant job cuts, according to those who were briefed about the deal today. The VAR Guy is not in a position to speculate about how Ziff Davis Enterprise’s brands may or may not evolve.
• Today’s news has nothing to do with Ziff Davis (a completely separate company) and ZDNet (the popular blog destination, also a separate business).

Now for the back story on how Ziff Davis Enterprise reached today’s exit sale.

Dot Com Boom Goes Bust

The story starts in December 1999, when Willis Stein — an investment firm — acquired Ziff Davis Publishing for $780 million. At first glance the deal looked promising. Ziff Davis Publishing, after all, produced massive magazines like PC Magazine, eWeek (formerly PCWeek), PC Computing and more.

But the deal was fundamentally flawed from the get-go. Willis Stein over-paid for Ziff Davis Publishing right before the dot-com implosion occurred and print advertising began to dry up. Further complicating matters Ziff Davis Publishing didn’t even control its own magazine websites. Indeed, CNet at the time oversaw the ZD Publishing online media sites. And CNet in 2000 ultimately paid $1.6 billion in stock to gain control of another Ziff Davis online component called ZDNet.

1999 to 2006

To Willis Stein’s credit, the investment firm helped Ziff Davis Publishing — at the time, rebranded as Ziff Davis Media — to shift away from print advertising, regain magazine website control from CNet, and generate new revenue streams from events and other areas. But debt payments continued to choke Ziff Davis Media while revenues spiraled downward. Indeed, revenues fell to $181 million in 2006, down from $535 million in 1999.

Still, there was a glimmer of hope. Under then-CEO Bob Callahan, Ziff Davis Media’s EBITDA actually rose to $27.1 million in 2006 from $17 million in 2005. Based on that uptick, Willis Stein decided it was time to exit the investment.

2006: Up for Sale

By late 2006 or early 2007, Willis Stein had positioned Ziff Davis Media so that it could be sold off in parts:

• The Enterprise Group (now known as Ziff Davis Enterprise)
• The Game Group
• Consumer/Small Business Group (now known as Ziff Davis, including the PCMag.com brand)

Brand Confusion

But the sale process raised as many questions as it answered:

• Ziff Davis Enterprise: In July 2007, Insight Venture Partners acquired the Enterprise Group and branded it as Ziff Davis Enterprise. But history repeated itself. Sources say Insight paid too much for the enterprise group and the business has since struggled to overcome debt issues. By 2008, Ziff Davis Enterprise had secured another $20 million in funding to set the stage for acquisitions and innovations. But no major acquisitions ever occurred, The VAR Guy believes.
• Ziff Davis: In 2010, Time Inc. Veteran Vivek Shah and Great Hill Partners essentially acquired the consumer/small business group of Ziff Davis, including PCMag.com. Shah has since led an impressive acquisition spree, accelerating the company’s all-digital strategy.
• ZDNet: It remains a popular online destination filled with top blog personalities.

Still: For advertisers, sponsors and readers it became increasingly difficult to track all the different Ziff Davis properties — which ultimately had no real financial or business relationships with one another.

If one Ziff brand suffered from negative news — such as the Ziff Davis Media bankruptcy filing in 2008 — the other, unrelated Ziff companies had to communicate that they were not involved in the bad news.

Multiple sources say Ziff Davis Enterprise considered a complete brand change in 2008 but decided to stick with the good (Ziff Davis universal name recognition) with the bad (brand confusion with the other, unrelated companies).

Repositioning Ziff Davis Enterprise

Initially, Insight Venture Partners’ 2007 buyout of Ziff Davis Enterprise had promise. By January 2008, former CMP Media CEO Steve Weitzner joined Ziff Davis Enterprise as  CEO.

Weitzner and his evolving management team trimmed costs and focused on innovation. But sources say Ziff Davis Enterprise was always plagued by that lingering debt. Like a house purchased during the inflated real estate market,  Ziff Davis Enterprise was always hounded by those debt payments. In more recent years, sources say, Insight Venture Partners essentially exited Ziff Davis Enterprise, leaving the business for bankers and debt holders to monitor.

Through it all, the ZDE team marched forward and evolved — rebuilding its e-Seminars business and launching an aggressive mobile content strategy. But oh, that lingering debt.

Time to Sell

Judgment day approached in late 2011, when bankers may have ran out of patience and started shopping Ziff Davis Enterprise to potential suitors, The VAR Guy believes. The timing was ironic: Morale seemed pretty high within Ziff Davis Enterprise’s halls in 2011. But at some point today, Ziff Davis Enterprise employees were told the company had been sold and certain staff members were let go. And LinuxDevices.com, part of Ziff Davis Enterprise, leaked news of the sale today.

An official public announcement has yet to surface as of 5:17 p.m. eastern on Feb. 3, but some Ziff Davis Enterprise employees are informing their sources about job cuts and company ownership changes.

Where does the Ziff Davis Enterprise story go from here? Stay tuned.

Disclosure

Several of The VAR Guy’s team members are former Ziff Davis Media employees who worked in the business unit that ultimately became Ziff Davis Enterprise. The VAR Guy sends best wishes to current and former Ziff Davis Enterprise employees.

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Syncsort, as a reminder, focuses on data integration protection solutions. When we last checked in with Syncsort it had partnered with NetApp for NetApp Syncsort Backup offering. Now, it’s the company’s partners that are in the spotlight, earning accolades for aligning themselves with all that Syncsort has to offer, including training, certification and more, according to Syncsort.

Those winners are as follows:

Data Integration

• Global Systems Integrator Partner of the Year: Cognizant
• ISV Partner of the Year: Clerity Solutions
• Reseller Partner of the Year: Amdocs

Data Protection

• Channel Partner of the Year: SwishData
• Channel Partner Rookie of the Year: Zumasys
• NSB Technical Innovator Award: Voyant Strategies

“All of the winners really stood out for possessing a strong commitment to customer success and representing the same core values that guide Syncsort’s participation in the marketplace,” so noted Josh Rogers, Syncsort’s VP of worldwide sales.

You might be asking our resident blogger, “What do Syncsort’s partner awards have to do with the rest of the channel?” The VAR Guy thinks it’s an important reminder that while specialization and differentiation are keys to building success, ensuring customer satisfaction is also part of driving continued business growth and existing business stickiness.

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ownCloud, Inc.

Since 2010, ownCloud has existed as an open source project for developing cloud-based storage infrastructure. But the commercial component, announced late 2011 with former SUSE exec Markus Rex serving as CEO and CTO, added a new direction.

ownCloud 3.0

This week, the commercial side of ownCloud gained focus with the release of version 3.0 of the ownCloud software. The new release introduces several innovative new features, including:

• Editing of cloud-hosted text files via the browser. Support for other types of documents, such as .docx and ODT, is promised in future releases.
• Application Store for installing third-party applications and add-ons. As of today there are only three apps available, but it seems logical to assume ownCloud plans to develop this repository as a revenue stream.
• Photo-gallery application. The open source world may finally have a real answer to flickr.

Other new functionality, as well as enhancements engineered by the ownCloud community, are detailed in the press release.

Several of the features listed above are novel not just to ownCloud, but also to the world of open source cloud software as a whole. No other open source project — and perhaps no organization in the proprietary ecosystem, either — is bringing innovation to the cloud as rapidly as ownCloud.

Nor is any other project so quickly expanding the functionality of cloud-based infrastructures beyond the basics of cloud-based file storage à la Dropbox. ownCloud is now about much more than just hosting files — it’s building a complete set of tools for accessing and managing data without ever leaving the cloud.

Of course, ownCloud, Inc. remains very young, and the open source code on which it’s founded also hasn’t been around for too long. Whether both ventures will succeed in the long run remains to be seen. But they certainly appear to be off to a great start, and the open source channel is better off because of it.

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9. Cloud Computing Experts You Gotta Know: Each Friday, Talkin’ Cloud profiles five cloud computing experts who work closely with cloud services providers, cloud aggregators, cloud brokers and the IT channel. Last week’s edition attracted lots of eyeballs. And all of the folks ultimately wind up on the Talkin’ Cloud 200 list.

8. Favorite Read?: Check MSPmentor each Friday and you’ll find managed services providers flocking to our best-read weekly column: Seven Blogs MSPmentor Didn’t Write.

7. Microsoft’s Latest Cloud Win: Sure, JetBlue has embraced Office 365. But Talkin’ Cloud coverage analyzed whether Microsoft is doing enough to promote channel partners that are succeeding with Office 365.

6. A CEO Encore: Former Nimsoft CEO Gary Read is now CEO at Boundary — a SaaS startup focused on IT monitoring. MSPmentor Contributing Blogger Nicholas Mukhar took notice — and so did readers.

5. Calling All Cloud Services Providers: When we launched our second-annual Talkin’ Cloud 50 survey, numerous cloud services providers flooded our website to participate. If you haven’t completed the survey yet it’s open until April 27, 2012, with results coming in Q2.

4. Smart SEO?: What are the three top SMB trends for 2012? Axicent’s guest blog on MSPmentor scored with readers.

3. Apple and e-Publishing: Contributing Blogger David Courbanou’s latest Apple coverage is required reading for all VARs in the education vertical.

2. What If Linux Ran for President?: Contributing Blogger Christopher Tozzi offers us a break from the real world and compares Linux distributions to presidential candidates. Oh my.

1. Linux as a Desktop Option: Contributing Blogger Christopher Tozzi scores again with this timely look at six features that have made Linux a true desktop option for VARs.

That’s all for now. But The VAR Guy will be back — really fast — if any major chatter or channel news surfaces later today or over the weekend.

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Among the earnings worth watching…

ADTRAN — Q4 2011 for the networking company:

• Quarterly Revenue: $175.3 million, up from $165.3 million last quarter, representing a near 6 percent increase year over year.
• Net Income: Net income was $31.2 million for the quarter compared to $36.9 million for the fourth quarter of 2010, representing a 13 percent dip year over year. However, the earnings results beat analyst expectations.
• Outlook: ADTRAN’s outlook is optimistic, with CEO Tom Stanton attributing ADTRAN’s sales of broadband access technology as a major growth factor, but expenses were incurred from the acquisition of Bluesocket.

F5 Networks — Q1 2012 for the applications delivery specialist:

• Quarterly Revenue: (GAAP) Revenue was $322.4 million, up from $268.9 million in the corresponding quarter last year, representing a 19.9 percent jump year over year.
• Net Income: (GAAP) Net income was $66.5 million up from $55.7 million in the first quarter a year ago, showing a bump of 17.6 percent year over year. Analysts were impressed and F5′s stock jumped sharply.
• Outlook: Strengthened sales in North America, EMEA and APAC “exceeded expectations” and helped propel F5 Networks to continuing growth.

IBM — Q4 2011 results:

• Quarterly Revenue: (non-GAAP) Revenue hit $29.5 billion, a jump of 2 percent year over year.
• Net Income: (non-GAAP): Net income hit $5.6 billion, up 5 percent year over year.
• Outlook: New IBM CEO Ginni Rometty believes IBM is well equipped to meet all 2012 expectations, and the company’s stock jumped based on IBM’s strong outlook.

Intel — Q4 2011 results:

• Quarterly Revenue:  (non-GAAP) Revenue hit $13.9 billion, representing a boost of 22 percent year over year.
• Income Growth: (non-GAAP) Net income came in at $3.4 billion, showing growth of 11 percent year over year.
• Outlook: Despite worries that hard drive shortages would damage earnings, Intel had a record year, “eclipsing all annual revenue and earnings records,” according to Intel CEO Paul Otellini.

The VAR Guy has just one thing to say: Those late 2011 financial results and earnings statements suggest 2012 is off to a strong start, a good sign for VARs as they seek to boost their own sales going forward.

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According to DistroWatch, there are 118 Linux distributions based on Ubuntu. These include both the official variants like Kubuntu and a wide range of lesser known spins created by community members. It’s this latter group, comprised mostly of operating systems that are not so well-known, that I’m interested in here.

Going through the DistroWatch list — which is not exhaustive — one finds an impressive variety of different custom versions of Ubuntu, many of which I didn’t even know existed. Most of them cater to specific tasks: there’s Ubuntu Studio for multimedia production, nUbuntu for security testing, Ubuntu Rescue Remix for (you guessed it) rescuing broken systems, and so on.

At the same time, there are also several spins dedicated to specific groups of users: gNewSense and Trisquel for those who want to run only 100 percent open source software, Vinux for the blind and visually impaired and even distributions dedicated to followers of particular religions, specifically Ubuntu Christian Edition and Sabily (for Muslims). (Not on the DistroWatch list is Ubuntu Satantic Edition, which I’ve yet to determine to be either a joke or a serious project.)

Community Spinoffs and the Open Source Ecosystem

Granted, it’s not too surprising that there are so many variants of Ubuntu. After all, if there’s one thing open source users are known for, it’s forking software into myriad different spins to align with everyone’s peculiar personal preferences. In addition, tweaking Ubuntu into a new distribution is very easy from a technical perspective, thanks to tools such as Remastersys, which makes it so easy to create custom live CDs even I can do it.

What’s more interesting to consider than the number of Ubuntu variants is the role they play in the broader channel. Viewed from one perspective, they’re an affirmation of the extensive choice and personalization that open source software makes possible. On the other hand, though, one might conclude that they detract from Ubuntu by drawing followers away from the mother distribution, by making it harder to support users who are basically running Ubuntu but whose versions have been tweaked in unpredictable ways and by spreading the Linux community’s finite resources too thinly.

Personally, I don’t think the collection of custom distributions is doing any harm. Most of them have small followings, and although they theoretically could fracture the broader Ubuntu and Linux communities in a negative way, they clearly haven’t done that so far.

One trend worth noting, however, is that many of these Ubuntu spins are no longer being developed. For example, gNewSense, Ubuntu Christian Edition, EasyPeasy, gOS, and Linspire — all of which were once notable distributions, some even of commercial importance — have gone dormant or been officially discontinued. In all, only 80 of the Ubuntu-based distributions on the DistroWatch list remain actively developed.

What does it mean that these spinoffs have reached their ends of life? Without a doubt, the specific story of each one is different. But more broadly speaking, it seems to me this relative decline in the diversity of Ubuntu’s sub-ecosystem could signal broader consensus around Ubuntu itself. People are no longer spinning it off because they’re happy enough with the base distribution. And that’s good for Canonical.

On the other hand, maybe this trend just means Ubuntu is no longer as popular as it once was, at least as a platform on which to build newer spins. That would align with other indicators suggesting that interest is growing in different distributions relative to Ubuntu.  But I doubt that’s the case, since the proportion of active remixes based on Ubuntu is significantly higher than that for other distributions including Fedora — meaning that Ubuntu remains more popular as a base distribution.

Either way, even if some Ubuntu variants are going dark, and whatever that might mean for the larger ecosystem, don’t expect users to stop remixing Linux distributions altogether. It’s a pretty safe bet that as long as open source software exists, there will be someone wanting to fork it.

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With Kofax DotImage Enterprise Edition, business customers now can capture information at its point of origination in any web portal application. So the solution now extends beyond firewalls and includes all lines of business applications.

Kofax has has roughly 700 channel partners worldwide, many of which offer SAP and Microsoft SharePoint services within the financial services and insurance verticals.

“By extending our capture platform directly to the user, businesses can better leverage capture enabled BPM solutions that automate critical business processes throughout the enterprise and deliver a faster return on investment,” Kofax Chief Marketing Officer Martyn Christian said in a prepared statement.

The release of the Kofax DotImage Enterprise Edition comes less than a month after the Association for Image and Information Management (AIIM), a non-profit information management research firm, released a white paper titled, “Capturing Data to Multiple Business Processes — What’s Holding You Back?” Among other findings, AIIM found that 62 percent of organizations internationally either improved or equaled their expected ROI payback periods with scan-to-process solutions. And of those companies, 62 percent said they are looking to expand their use of their current information-capturing solutions.

So Kofax’s DotImage Enterprise Edition appears to be a response to the demand noted in the study. It also has major international implications, as Kofax  delivers its solutions to businesses in the banking, insurance and government verticals throughout the Americas, EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa) and Asia-Pacific.

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Here’s the quick rundown on CompTIA’s offerings:

• 10-Week Guide to Cloud Computing
• 10-Week Guide to Healthcare IT
• 10-Week Guide to Accelerating Your IT Security Business
• 10-Week Guide to Building a Legal IT Services Practice
• 10-Week Guide to Unified Communications

Each guide details the steps IT channel companies and technology solution providers, including managed service providers, can take to build a practice in that area.

Additionally, CompTIA has released Quick Start Guides for CompTIA Security and MSP Partners trustmarks, which are CompTIA’s business-level credentials. What’s more, the organization has updated its current guides on managed services, managed print services and the healthcare IT space.

It’s no surprise CompTIA is preparing to help IT channel companies and solution providers expand their reach in 2012. According to one of its own 2011 studies, 62 percent of end users said they planned to increase their managed services budgets over the next two years, particularly when it comes to security, network administration, IT support and web hosting. Other recent CompTIA studies have found that companies leveraging IT managed services are seeing significant cost savings and that managed print services are on the rise.

All of that means new opportunities for the IT channel are on the horizon, if CompTIA has any influence.

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