The VAR Guy

Novell’s board of directors is facing a pair of symbolic deadlines: The VAR Guy thinks Novell will need to somehow address the pending private equity takeover bid by Elliott Associates before the BrainShare conference starts March 21 in Salt Lake City, Utah and before Red Hat announces quarterly results on March 24. Here’s why.

How’s this for ironic: The more The VAR Guy moves around, the more weight he gains. Eating at buffets in New York, Las Vegas, San Jose and San Francisco this week didn’t help… If The VAR Guy put down his fork long enough, perhaps he would have written the following six channel partner blog entries for the week ending March 5, 2010:

Initially, The VAR Guy wasn’t all that impressed with Novell’s latest financial results, announced Feb. 25. But our resident blogger overlooked one important fact: Novell’s SUSE Linux business is now break-even. That’s an important milestone — but what does it say about the broader open source industry’s march to profitability? Here are some clues.

The VAR Guy had his hands full this week. Everyone, it seems, has a channel partner story to share. Alas, there aren’t enough hours in the day for The VAR Guy to cover all the channel chatter. So here are six channel partner blog entries The VAR Guy didn’t get to write for the week ending Feb. 19, 2010.

When Novell Brainshare 2010 kicks off March 21 in Salt Lake City, the company will put several initiatives in the spotlight. Among the top two priorities. Promoting Novell Pulse (a real-time communication and social messaging platform for enterprises) and promoting SUSE Linux software partners. Here are the details.

The VAR Guy was distracted by the usual stuff this week. Deadlines. Meetings. Vendor calls. And classic arcade games. Here are six blog entries The VAR Guy didn’t have a chance to write for the week ending Jan. 29, 2010.

Alas, The VAR Guy abandoned his New Year’s resolutions this week. Our resident blogger is drinking Latte again. Lots of it. But all that extra caffeine didn’t help The VAR Guy to meet his daily deadlines. Here are six channel blog entries our resident blogger didn’t write for the week ending January 15, 2010.

After a one-year hiatus, Novell plans to resume its BrainShare conference for customers and channel partners in 2010, according to Chief Marketing Officer and Channel Chief John Dragoon (pictured). Somewhere, SUSE Linux fans should be celebrating. Here’s why.

Novell has found a creative way to put Netbooks and SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 in the hands of IT managers and channel partners — even with Microsoft sitting in the same room. Here’s the scoop from The VAR Guy.

Despite the recession, two areas of the IT channel — open source companies and managed services specialists — are pressing ahead with partner and customer conferences. The latest example involves Pentaho, an open source business intelligence company that plans to host a partner summit in April.

How bad is the economy? Novell has just canceled BrainShare, one of the IT industry’s long-standing events. Initial perspectives from Matt Asay (Blogger, The Open Road). Plus, here’s the official statement from Novell Chief Marketing Officer John Dragoon.

Novell didn’t deliver any home-run news during BrainShare on March 17, but the software company did manage to smack a few solid singles during the day. Overall, the buzz from Utah sounded pretty upbeat. Here’s a look at Monday’s developments, and The VAR Guy’s take on the situation.