The VAR Guy

It has been about a month since Digium launched the Asterisk Exchange — an online marketplace to help VARs and customers piece together telephony solutions based upon the open source IP PBX. It’s an intriguing concept — similar to Red Hat’s failed Red Hat Exchange efforts. So can Digium succeed where Red Hat failed? Yes. Here’s why.

Forgive The VAR Guy for looking tired and bloated. He’s packing on the pounds in the Dominican Republic at the Kaspersky Lab Partner Conference, where food is all inclusive and the restaurants never seem to close. If our resident blogger would stop eating and start blogging, he would have written the following six entries for the week ending Feb. 12, 2010.

The VAR Guy thought Red Hat Exchange — an online store the software company launched last year — would be an overnight hit. It wasn’t. But after some tinkering, Red Hat Exchange (RHX) seems to be taking off — and giving partners like MySQL and Zimbra a lift as well. In fact, the site’s bookings doubled in Red Hat’s most recent quarter, The VAR Guy has learned. Here’s how Red Hat got RHX on track.

The VAR Guy will keep a close eye on the Red Hat Summit, which kicks off June 18 in Boston. Here are five trends and themes he’ll be investigating at the event.