Symantec starts FY 2011 with layoffs

Word out of Mountain View is that Symantec is cutting jobs — quite a few jobs — at the start of its new fiscal year.

Some groups — midmarket sales for example — will see a 20% reduction, sources say. Stay tuned for more details.

This follows apparent cuts last month in the company’s Veritas file system development team.

Update: Beth Pariseau over at SearchStorage.com has more on other Symantec downsizing .

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Harris survey: Tech companies get some respect, financial firms not so much

Tech heavyweights Amazon, Intel, Google, and Microsoft were among six companies that got “excellent” reputation quotients or  ”RQ” scores, according to the newly released 2009 Harris Interactive Poll. Continued »

CompTIA offers new VAR membership option

CompTIA has taken a cue from charities and non-profits and from the managed services industry by coming up with a subscription-based pricing model for VARs, so that they can pay by the month instead coughing up the $250 annual fee all at once.

Under the new program, solution providers can sign up for a recurring $20 per month credit card charge (which will also save them $10 on the year). The idea is to entice more smaller organizations that might want access to CompTIA research and education.

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Cisco’s pipeline remains plugged

Nope, you weren’t imagining it. Cisco continues to have problems fulfilling orders for some of its more popular networking gear.

Cisco resellers and customers  report long lag times for Cisco’s Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) firewalls and other non-glam but necessary gear.

Kinda makes you wonder if Cisco’s taken its eye its bread-and-butter networking gear to chase the pie-in-the-sky of Unified Computing Systems.

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Oracle execs stick to direct sales mantra

Oracle and Sun VARs hoping for relief from direct-sales anxiety didn’t come out of last night’s Oracle earnings call with much in the way of reassurance.

Oracle execs did not back down from a planned direct sales push both in hardware and software. Continued »

Microsoft Office Communications Server: A fruitless tree?

Microsoft’s Office Communications Server 14 is due later this year. But in this lackluster unified communications (UC) market, is that too soon?

This week, Microsoft pushed Office Communications Server (OCS) 14 at VoiceCon Orlando 2010. OCS is an add-on that works with Exchange Server and Microsoft Office. It includes support for instant messaging, voicemail, Internet telephony and conferencing.

Microsoft is touting its latest UC product as a replacement for PBX-based systems. But in a recent call with our Channel Advisory Board, members gave their take on unified communications services, and it wasn’t too promising.

Continued »

Healthcare plan = big bucks for VARs

While many VARs may not agree with the now-approved healthcare legislation, those with a healthcare bent see it as a potential goldmine. This according to one member of the SearchITChannel.com Advisory board. Here are the top five takeways from yesterday’s quarterly advisory board call:

 1: Business is back!

Let’s lead with the good news for once: Several board members said they are seeing brisk business after quarter after quarter of dismal results.

“Last week was our best week in 63 weeks” in terms of services, said Database Solutions’ CEO George Brown. “People are coming back to custom apps work. We’re recovering but slowly.”

Continued »

Arrow enterprise team beefs up services capabilities

One of the big perpetual gripes of channel types is the amount of investment it often takes to get their technical services teams up to snuff on certain new technologies, especially when things are as tight as they have been for the past two years. Continued »

Have you automated your professional services biz yet?

Is it me or is there a heck of a lot of activity going around in the professional services automation (PSA) world right now? I’ve always been intrigued by these applications, because of the discipline and process that they can bring to a solution providers day-to-day operations.

Right now, I’m watching two of the platform vendors in particular: Autotask and ConnectWise.

Continued »

Jerry York, who left his mark on IBM, GM, dead

Jerry York, the legendary numbers guy who played key roles at GM, IBM, Apple and other fortune 500 giants, died today. The cause was reported to be an aneurysm.

York famously arrived at Big Blue with new Chairman Lou Gerstner, and as CFO streamlined that company’s operations. In one anecdote he toured IBM’s office product supply closets and found the company wasted too much money on different sizes and types inter-office envelopes. He was also involved in Kirk Kerkorian’s failed bid for Chrysler.

 York, who was 71, joined Apple’s board in 1997.

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