SolarWinds executives said that the purchase of N-Able will enable it to “more effectively serve small businesses’ evolving IT needs by empowering the MSPs many of them have come to rely on.” N-Able, which is based in Ottawa and has about 180 employees, sells its products primarily to managed services providers (MSPs).

SolarWinds said that starting immediately with the close of the sale, it will sell N-Able products exclusively on a subscription model, thereby eliminating the perpetual license model.

According to N-Able, SolarWinds, which is based in Austin, Texas, plans to retain N-Able’s brand. N-Able founder Gavin Garbutt will retire with the sale of the company. The N-Able business will be headed up by J.P. Jauvin as general manager. The company named two other executives, Mike Cullen and Derik Belair, who will remain with N-Able. SolarWinds said that all other employees will be retained in the purchase.

The deal is expected to close by the end of this month.

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The expansion of its Cisco partnership, announced today at the 2013 Ingram Micro Federal Summit in National Harbor, Md., adds to Ingram Micro’s GSA Schedules program, which includes offerings from hundreds of other leading hardware, networking, security, software, systems and storage vendors, according to the distributor.

Ingram Micro gained access to the U.S. General Services Administration’s GSA Schedules program with the acquisition in 2012 of distributor Promark Technology. The GSA Schedules program establishes long-term, government-wide contracts with commercial firms to provide federal agencies with access to commercial supplies and services.

Besides Ingram Micro, there are two other Cisco GSA Schedule holders: Westcon Group and ECAmerica.

Ingram Micro and Promark, now a subsidiary of Ingram Micro, offer a team of field-based sales, technical and credit support personnel, as well as marketing specialists.

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According to the vendor, the Solutions Configurator allows partners to create multipart, customized enterprise solutions. As part announcement, Dell is also rolling out pre-configured solutions, training videos and dedicated sales support collaboration.

The Solutions Configurator integrates with deal registration to help close deals faster. It saves time by streamlining the configuration process, thus allowing partners to have a complete solution already built at the time of deal registration. Solution configurations can also be saved and modified for future instances, helping to speed the time to close a deal, according to Dell.

Prior to the introduction of the Solutions Configurator, partners would purchase individual products online and would then have to configure them separately rather than as one end-to-end solution, or they would have to work with a Dell technical sales specialist to configure a complete solution.

While there’s no mobile app, the tool can be used on mobile devices. Dell is reportedly working with channel partners to determine improvements and will continue to use partner feedback to make enhancements to the tool.

The Solutions Configurator is now available to U.S., Canada, U.K. and German channel partners with expanded availability to the Netherlands and France scheduled for later this month. Dell plans to have it fully live in its top 10 markets globally by the end of the year.

According to a blog post on Juniper’s site, Jones has been in the position since April 1. In a Q&A posted on the blog, Jones said he plans to drive collaboration between Juniper’s partners and the company’s sales team. Juniper is planning “proactive enablement activities” for partners.

Prior to joining Juniper, Jones was director of worldwide channels for Cisco WebEx from 2008-2010, having joined Cisco in 2005. Prior to Cisco, he spent six years at Proxim, and prior to that, five years at US Robotics.

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The 2013 IT spending forecast, which looks at 15 enterprise industries, reflects a U.S. economy that IDC expects to stabilize in the second half of 2013, leading to moderately strong IT spending growth. IDC’s Black Book is a database of IT spending information that’s continually updated with quarterly releases.

The 2013 forecast is up slightly compared with 2012′s; IDC predicted enterprise IT spending would be $447 billion, which represented a 5.98 percent year-over-year increase.

Companies in Arizona, North Dakota, Utah and Texas are expected to show the highest rates of growth in the country in 2013, at more than 7 percent across all industries. “The rates of growth in these states is the highest when compared to growth in these states last year,” said Natasha Menon, research analyst in the Global Technology & Industry Research Organization at IDC.

IT spending is expected to be higher in healthcare, manufacturing and professional services businesses in these states, with IT spending aligning with economic projections for employment growth, added Menon, noting that healthcare, professional services and consulting services are among the fastest-growing vertical sectors at 8 percent.

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There’s some new research out from Gartner, however, that reinforces that shift. Here’s the high-level finding: by 2017, approximately one-quarter of all businesses will run some sort of internal app store for managing corporate-sanctioned software.

The main reason this is happening? It’s another outcome of the bring your own device (BYOD) and the related bring your own application (BYOA) phenomenon. By controlling the apps that employees can download to their personal smartphones and tablet computers, companies are hoping to exercise more control over security and software expenditures, according to Gartner.

It’s not just about mobile apps, either. These stores could provide better control over desktop and cloud application provisioning. Or, at the very least, better insight into how is downloading what and who should pay for it.

“Bring your own application (BYOA) has become as important as BYOD in the development of a comprehensive mobile strategy, and the trend toward BYOA has begun to affect desktop and Web applications as well,” said Ian Finley, research vice president at Gartner. “Enterprise app stores promise at least a partial solution, but only if IT security, application, procurement and sourcing professionals can work together to successfully apply the app store concept to their enterprises.”

Technology solution providers definitely have a role to play in helping organize these marketplaces, potentially through deployments of mobile device management software. They also could have a role in defining the broader access control policies that extend the store concept beyond the mobile platform to other corporate software assets.

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The independent business technology community for HP users, Connect, is launching on March 1 the Connect Marketplace — a searchable index of HP partners that HP Connect members can turn to when looking for products.

HP PartnerOne and AllianceOne partners can set up a free basic listing or enhance their listing for a fee.

According to Nina Buik, chief marketing officer at HP Connect (which was formed by the consolidation of user groups), this is the only resource of its kind for partners that allows users to search the marketplace by different criteria – for instance, product type, HP partner affiliation and location — to find the right partner for them.

Partner listings will not be rated by users, but at some point in the future, after the marketplace is fully populated, partners may receive recognition in the way of awards or partner of the year, etc., Buik said.

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Indeed, 73 percent of the 1,242 IT professionals surveyed for CDW’s new study pointed to their employees’ use of mobile devices and consumer-focused cloud services as a significant influence on their organization’s cloud computing plans. About two-third of them are using their own personal experiences as a guidepost for their company’s cloud decisions.

“By aligning cloud services with critical applications and preferences of employees that use mobile devices, organizations can better capture business value that includes cost savings, increased efficiency, improved employee mobility and an increased ability to create innovative new products and services,” said Stephen Braat, generation manager of cloud solutions for CDW.

Even though lots of businesses are thinking about adding cloud services or infrastructure, according to the CDW report, the adoption rate is far less, at about 39 percent. That’s up big time, though, from 28 percent in 2011.

There’s one obvious reason why: the cost savings involved.

Most of those surveyed by CDW anticipated saving 13 percent off their current IT budgets by using cloud computing, compared the 10 percent expected by those surveyed for last year’s report.

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Exhibit A: Close to 40 percent of those surveyed by NPD Group for its Connected Intelligence report use tablet devices or smartphones to access content, including the Internet and Facebook.

What does this mean? For one thing, they are relying less on their desktop or notebook to navigate information. Specifically, 27 percent of both tablet and smartphone users have cut back on their Internet and Facebook usage on personal computers, reports NPD.

Since we all know personal habits have a way of creeping into workplace concerns, trends in content management are something technology solution providers should monitor carefully.

There are several ways it could become an issue for you or your customers.

For a start, the push toward tablets and smartphones means Web sites needs to be (at a minimum) optimized for mobile viewing. If your company communicates with its customers via a customer portal, has it taken the time to optimize it for mobile access? Do enough of them use mobile devices to warrant a specific mobile application? Does your organization support mobile application development skills.

Within your own organization, consider how information viewing options might affect the way that manuals and technical information are distributed. Are they available on tablets, where they can be managed and kept up-to-date far more frequently? Could you keep your technicians closer to how when they are earning new certifications, by allowing them to learn and verify new skills online via video or digital courseware?

Although it seems a bit of a stretch, it may also be time to start evaluating applications and technologies that connect mobile devices with televisions, for video conferencing or streaming purposes, NPD suggests. That’s because approximately 21 percent of consumers are starting to connect their mobile devices to televisions, via screen-sharing services such as AllShare or Miracast.

Although the current applications envisioned for these technologies aren’t very business-like in nature, that could change over time as people begin experimenting.

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Against that backdrop, one could describe the latest IT spending forecast from Gartner as hopeful, since the firm is revising its worldwide IT spending prediction for 2013 upward. Gartner is now calling for spending of $3.7 trillion, up 4.2 percent from the last 12 months. Back in the third quarter, its researchers were calling for growth of about 3.8 percent in 2013.

One of the things that really resonated with me from the latest forecast is the optimism over “device” sales, which Gartner believes will rise 6.3 percent this year to $666 billion. That number includes personal computers, mobile devices (such as tablets), mobile phones and printers. And, for contrast, consider that growth for this segment was only projected at 2.9 percent for 2012.

On the surface of things, that’s a really high number. But, it’s actually a pretty sharp downward revision from the recent past, when Gartner was anticipating sales of $706 billion, which was about 7.9 percent growth year over year. The biggest factor in that downward revision has been increased competition in the tablet market, which is driving down average selling prices. Still, there is a silver lining: it means technology solution providers will still be supporting and integrating a far greater volume of these client devices than in the past. That’s more managed services, more data center infrastructure, more bandwidth.

For a broader perspective, here are the forecasts from the two other leading research firms: IDC is calling for a worldwide total of $2.1 trillion, up 5.7 percent; Forrester predicts $2.09 trillion, which is an increase of about 3.3 percent.

I’m not going to try to explain the wide discrepancy in growth rates, except to say that researcher uses a slightly different base and they don’t necessarily including everything that the other ones do. Gartner, for example, includes global telecommunications services and technologies in its numbers.

“Uncertainties surrounding prospects for an upturn in global economic growth are the major retardants to IT growth,” said Richard Gordon, managing vice president at Gartner, in a press release about the firm’s latest forecast. “This uncertainty has caused the pessimistic business and consumer sentiment throughout the world. However, much of this uncertainty is nearing resolution, and as it does, we look for accelerated spending growth in 2013 compared to 2012.”

So, how sentimental are you feeling about IT growth in 2013? One thing I’ve noticed throughout my close to 20 years of covering the IT industry, is that the technology solution providers who approached the market with the most positive attitude at the beginning of the year usually tend to live up to that attitude. The ones that thinking negatively, usually deliver on that.

This is not to say that your predictions shouldn’t be based on practical realities, but the way you approach a situation can make all the difference.

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