The VAR Guy

Pentaho, which specializes in commercial open source business intelligence (BI), has launched a formal Gold Reseller Program as part of a global push for the company. The VAR Guy is hardly surprised, given his ongoing dialog with Pentaho Channel Chief Lars Nordwall. Although details about the gold program are sketchy, Pentaho seems to be catching on with solutions providers.

The VAR Guy is smiling. Another of his predictions is coming true: The emerging open source IT channel is converging with cloud services. To wit, OpenBI — a business intelligence solutions provider — is deploying applications in Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) for a health care company. Here’s the scoop.

Most folks are focusing on Cisco Systems’ consumer electronics push this week. But The VAR Guy is keeping one eye on the data center — where Cisco apparently is preparing to launch blade servers. If true, our resident blogger wonders: How soon will Cisco speed dial Red Hat, MySQL, Novell, SugarCRM and other open source application providers?

The delicate dance between Red Hat Enterprise Linux and open source application providers continues. The latest example: Red Hat is among the latest investors in Jaspersoft, which specializes in open source business intelligence. Here’s the scoop, from The VAR Guy:

As The VAR Guy has reported, SugarCRM veteran Lars Nordwall is now senior VP of business development at Pentaho — an open source business intelligence software company. Nordwall’s focus area includes building Pentaho’s channel partner program. The VAR Guy traded email with Nordwall to learn why he leaped to Pentaho. Here are Nordwall’s thoughts on the open source BI and the IT channel.

The VAR Guy nearly overlooked a major development in the open source IT channel: Novell and SugarCRM veteran Lars Nordwall (pictured) has made the leap to Pentaho, an open source business intelligence company. Nordwall’s move is one small step for open source VARs, and one giant leap for Pentaho. Here’s why.

The Global 2000 is nice. The Fortune 500 is very nice. But selling into the Fortune 50 — especially for a small open source company like Pentaho — is extra sweet. Pentaho, which recently launched version 2.0 of its open source business intelligence software, says it has won business with several Fortune 50 companies. And Pentaho’s partner network is expanding. Here’s the scoop.