The VAR Guy

Cisco Systems has unveiled its future plans for WebEx, its popular web-based collaboration technology, and The VAR Guy has been made privy to the nitty-gritty details, thanks to Michael Smith, director of Collaboration Applications Marketing, and Matt Michiels, business development manager for Go To Market Technology. The short version of the story is that Cisco is gearing up for the post-PC world by expanding the reach of WebEx and Jabber. The VAR Guy version? Read on and find out …

As CEO John Chambers seeks to streamline and re-focus Cisco Systems around its core markets, some pundits speculate that Cisco will sell of its WebEx business. But Cisco insiders say such speculation is nonsense. Indeed, Cisco Senior Director of Business Development Richard McLeod moments ago told The VAR Guy — point blank — that the WebEx business is not for sale.

The VAR Guy hopes to watch this evening’s Miami Heat-Chicago Bulls Game 3 showdown. But before our resident blogger turns his attention to South Beach, Miami, here are six channel partner-related blog entries that The VAR Guy didn’t have time to write for the week ending May 20, 2011.

The Comstor division of Westcon Group has added the Tandberg line to its stable of Cisco collaboration offerings, providing its reseller customers with video solutions ranging from the desktop to the conference room.

For a reseller, the only thing worse than the hassle of setting up on-site product demonstrations is not making the sale. Enter CloudShare, which takes existing IT infrastructure and lets you throw it into the cloud, giving VARs a virtual environment to deliver any enterprise application as-a-service for as long as your customers need to close the deal. I spoke to CloudShare VP of Marketing Kevin Epstein on the company’s offering and their future channel moves.

Everyone wants a piece of the Apple iPad pie, and Cisco Systems is no exception. They’ve created a WebEx App for the iPad, freeing you to manage conference calls without being locked to your office or desktop. I spent about 30 minutes with the WebEx for iPad app and was pretty impressed. Here are my thoughts and impressions…

Now that I’ve been living with my Apple iPad for a week, it’s time for a hands-on review from yours truly. Here’s what the iPad is — and isn’t — based on my first-hand experiences. When the iPad was first announced, I had honestly planned on selling my MacBook and replacing it with an iPad. But when I finally broke down a bought an iPad without actually selling my MacBook, I realized that the iPad does a lot of things, but not everything. And in that respect, I’m glad I kept my MacBook. Here are my initial reactions to the iPad.

The VAR Guy has reached his breaking point. Each week he receives dozens of online meeting invites from vendors. The online presentations often contain lame product pitches, complex diagrams or terrible PowerPoints. Even worse, the online conference software often doesn’t work with The VAR Guy’s Apple MacBook Pro. It’s time to put an end to this nonsense, and reinvent these briefings.

Sometimes, small deals are big indicators about where companies are heading next. Cisco’s $215 million acquisition of PostPath, for instance, speaks volumes about where John Chambers is taking the networking giant. Some folks say it’s a direct attack against Microsoft Exchange. The VAR Guy claims otherwise.