The VAR Guy

Yesterday was Day 4 of the RSA Security Conference in San Francisco, and U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano stole the show by challenging the private sector and individuals alike to come up with a way to educate the public on the necessity of cybersecurity. Some details, and the rest of the fourth-day highlights behind the jump.

Cisco, NetApp, and VMWare have joined forces. And what births forth from this trifecta? An effort to improve virtualization security. Dubbed “secure multi-tenancy design architecture,” its basic job is to show clients how to pinpoint applications that use the same physical network, server and storage resources in huge networks and adjust resources correctly. Here’s a little more info…

Riverbed, known for its  WAN optimization hardware, is launching new partnerships with US Distributors and networking with global resellers. Here are some quick details.

Iomega, of ZipDisk fame, is trying to write a new chapter in mobile computing. If you get really attached to your working environment, you might wish you could drag your PC with you, but that’s not always practical. VPN is nice, but not always available. And sometimes… even a laptop doesn’t meet your needs. You’re just looking for something easier. Iomega’s new vClone technology apparently lets you do a brain-transplant on whatever PC you wish. Bring your comfy computing environment anywhere by using a simple USB hard drive. Sound too good to be true? It almost is. Here’s the scoop:

The VAR Guy spent another week chasing (and missing) a few deadlines. Even with his growing staff, our resident blogger didn’t quite cover all the channel chatter this week. Here are six blog posts The VAR Guy didn’t write for the week ending Dec. 11, 2009.

The VAR Guy has spent a few days digesting recent developments from Cisco, EMC and VMware. The trio, as you may have heard, have teamed up and unleashed a cloud effort dubbed “Vblock.” Hmmm. What are the implications for channel partners? Take a look.

Linux redefined pricing in the operating system market. Now, Zmanda hopes to apply those same open source pricing pressures in the backup market. Zmanda claims that its backup system costs one-fifth to one-tenth as much as alternatives from Symantec and EMC. But is open source backup — at any price — ready for the enterprise?

Is the party over at VMware and the virtualization market? Yes and no. In a surprise move, former Microsoft executive Paul Maritz has been named president and CEO of VMware, replacing ousted co-founder Diane Greene.