The VAR Guy

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.

As Oracle OpenWorld 2009 kicks off today in San Francisco, Channel Chief Judson Althoff (pictured) and several other Oracle team members are talking up the company’s SaaS (software as a service) strategy for channel partners and ISVs (independent software vendors). Here’s the scoop.

The Google Apps Reseller program received plenty of buzz a few weeks ago. But software as a service (SaaS) rival Zoho is making noise with its Zoho Alliance Partner Program (ZAPP) — and attacking bigger brands like Microsoft and Salesforce.com along the way. Here’s the scoop from The VAR Guy.

The VAR Guy has spent the last two years evangelizing software as a service (SaaS) and open source as a killer combination that VARs need to master. But now Trip Chowdhry from Global Equities Research says SaaS and open source companies will suffer greatly amid the economic turmoil. Here are Chowdhry’s perspectives and The VAR Guy’s observations.

So, we’re in a recession. At least, that’s what the media keeps telling The VAR Guy. Still, some areas of the economy remain healthier than others. In order to move forward with your own business plans, take a look at these five anecdotal pieces of info.

Seven years after Microsoft spent $1.1 billion to buy Great Plains Software, that acquisition is finally paying some major dividends. The latest example: Electronic Data Systems (EDS) has agreed to sell, service and support Microsoft Dynamics — the next generation of Great Plains’ software. EDS’s backing is the latest in a growing list of key endorsements for Dynamics.