The VAR Guy

Dozens of cloud vendors and potential channel partners gathered in Mountain View, Calif., on November 7 for the inaugural Cloud Channel Summit. The common goal: Connecting the dots between cloud services providers, VARs and resellers to build new revenue opportunities. But guest speakers — including folks from Salesforce.com, CompTIA, GoodData, rPath and more — frequently debated the path forward. Among the key topics discussed: Whether VARs need a vertical focus to succeed in cloud computing.

As The VAR Guy himself is starting to see, this time of year gets really busy for your friendly neighborhood blog team when it comes to industry conferences and events. So it’s really no surprise that in the span of two weeks, I attended both the Salesforce.com Dreamforce ’11 (details on Talkin’ Cloud) and Intel Developer Forum 2011 events. Both involved ISVs, SIs and other channel pros converging on the Moscone Center in San Francisco, but the events couldn’t have been more different.

Yes, Steve Jobs has built or reinvented a long list of industries — everything from PCs to music distribution. But Jobs, who recently resigned as Apple’s CEO, has also influenced markets far beyond Apple’s core focus. A case in point: Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff (pictured) has openly thanked Jobs for influencing his company’s direction. Apparently, Jobs played a key role in the current cloud apps boom. Here’s why.

The VAR Guy had a lengthy conversation with Microsoft Channel Chief Jon Roskill (pictured) today. The call marks roughly six months since the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2010. During the discussion, Roskill offered some timely updates on Microsoft’s cloud, virtualization, CRM and channel partner strategies. Most of the points included key business milestones — including alleged competitive gains vs. VMware and Salesforce.com. Still,  Microsoft faces some key challenges. Here’s the scoop.

It has been roughly eight months since Autotask acquired VARStreet, a SaaS platform that allows VARs and MSPs to source, quote, purchase and fulfill IT product sales. So how is VARStreet evolving? Patrick Burns, director of innovation, provides some clues — including an enhanced focus on “world-class” quoting capabilities. Burns shares those details and more in this FastChat video.

Open source isn’t anything new in the channel. But an open source ERP suite provided by a 100% channel company that offers its resellers 90% margins across the board? That’s got The VAR Guy’s interest. And now OpenERP has announced they’ve signed up partners in 17 new countries — and opened their first US outpost in Silicon Valley. Here are some details.

V.i. Labs has built its business around helping ISVs get insight into how their software is getting used — and misused. With this week’s launch of CodeArmor Intelligence 3.0, V.i. Labs takes that concept and gives it greater scalability and deeper detection. And they’re integrating it with the Salesforce Force.com platform. Here are the details.

Even Google knows that people are impatient when it comes to search — and that goes double if you’re looking for just the right SaaS application to meet your needs. That’s where Rackspace AppMatcher comes in: a channel-focused offering designed to hook SaaS vendors up with their ideal subscriber and vice versa. Here’s the story.

The idea seems simple enough: Vendors create an online database of their channel partners. End customers, in turn, can search the online database for a local, certified IT service provider. In theory that’s a win-win for solutions providers and customers. Still, partner locators face three key challenges. Here’s The VAR Guy’s analysis.

CCRM.com already provides automated email logging for Salesforce.com, providing better visibility into the sales cycle for users of the CRM platform. Today, though, the company launches CCRM Pro, a commercial SaaS offering that offers administrators better control over what gets logged, a domain manager, and more updates. Here’s the scoop.

Electronic signature specialists DocuSign took last week’s ESIGN summit in San Francisco as a major opportunity to show off what they’ve been working on since last we spoke — and heading that list is integration with the SaaS Salesforce.com Chatter social networking platform. DocuSign says it’s just the first step in getting their electronic signature solutions into the hands of businesses everywhere. Here’s the scoop.

Microsoft has declared this to be Dynamics Business Week. The software giant is hosting a series of online conversations centered around their CRM solution and the overall sales cycle. We hear from plenty of VARs that continue to profit from Microsoft Dynamics. But it seems like Microsoft also faces rising CRM and ERP competition from folks like NetSuite, Salesforce.com and SugarCRM. Here are some quick observations.

Chatter, Salesforce.com’s social platform, is launching on June 22nd, and companies like Bank of America have already jumped on board, meaning it’s grabbing attention. There’s still a lingering question, though: Will Chatter gain the allegiance of enough ISVs to develop the platform into a proper ecosystem? Here are some thoughts.

Let’s cut right to the chase: Peter Coffee, Salesforce.com’s director of ecosystem platform research, says the SaaS provider’s Chatter business social platform will go live on June 22nd. Here’s what to expect when it does — and our take on its impact in the IT channel.

Who will be the Microsoft of cloud computing? In other words, which single company will emerge to absolutely dominate the cloud the way Microsoft dominated desktop computing? The answer, according to Salesforce.com’s Peter Coffee, is “Absolutely nobody.”

Call it a healthy hunch. The VAR Guy believes Ingram Micro is preparing to make multiple cloud-related channel moves in the days ahead, and they could involve such partners as Salesforce.com, Rackspace and Microsoft. Here’s the rumor, started by The VAR Guy.

Cancel the funeral and send back the burial flowers. Reports or SAP’s demise are largely exaggerated, according to the company’s channel team. Sure, much of the media continues to raise questions about SAP’s business performance. But Kevin Gilroy (pictured), VP of SAP’s North American SMB partner effort, says SAP is winning roughly 25 new customer deals per day. And Gilroy is preparing some channel moves to help SAP partners “rip out” Oracle solutions and put in SAP. Will the strategy work? Here’s some perspective from the show floor at SAP Sapphire in Orlando, Fla.

SAP is preparing a channel partner program for Business ByDesign, the company’s fledgling SaaS (software as a service) platform for midsize customers. Here are details, which The VAR Guy gathered at the SAP Sapphire conference in Orlando.

Rewind about five years. eWeek Technology Editor Peter Coffee (pictured) was on stage at a CIO conference. The VAR Guy was in the audience taking notes. Plenty of technology editors step into conference spotlights. But few have mastered public speaking as well as Coffee. Faster forward to the present. So, where is Coffee these days? The VAR Guy has the answer.

New Year. New CEO. New Partners. That’s the situation at SugarCRM, which is set to kick off its annual SugarCon partner, customer and developer conference on April 12 in San Francisco. So, what can channel partners expect from SugarCon and the open source CRM provider? Here are some clues.

Second verse, same as the first: cloud security continued to be a major theme at the second day of the RSA  Conference in San Francisco. Here are the highlights…

Call it a sign of things to come: Salesforce.com says it intends to raise $500 million for acquisitions. While many small VARs continue to struggle with basic financing requests, Salesforce.com’s news reinforces the fact that investment money continues to flow into the cloud and SaaS (software as a service) markets.

You read that right: the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is looking into cloud computing, trying to figure out what the very real security and privacy concerns could mean for consumers and what they have to do about it. The real trouble is that if the FTC hasn’t made itself entirely clear on what “cloud computing” even is, and resellers could be in trouble if the government decides to legislate and regulate SaaS (software as a service) applications like Salesforce.com or Zoho under that umbrella. Here’s the scoop.