Will your suppliers prosper this year?

In my last entry, I asked you to examine your organization. Is your company focused and ready to prosper this year? If not, you still have some work ahead of you on that front. Go back to my last post and use that to help you get focused. Those of you who already have the focus can now turn your attention to your suppliers. How are they going to do this year? How can you know?

The first thing is to understand what their debt is. Continued »

Prosper in tough times

I promise, this won’t be another “2009 is going to be full of doom and gloom” post! You don’t need to be told the obvious; you’re living it right now. What you need to know is what you can do to come through the economic downturn better than ever. My next round of blog posts will focus on what you should be doing to not only survive, but to prosper and grow in 2009.

First, know thyself. Continued »

Websense gives partners more reasons to say “yes” to its program

One of the philosophies that I really appreciated out of former Intel Chairman and CEO Andrew Grove when he was still active was his staunch belief that investments in the future should not be sacrificed for the short-term good of a company’s stock price. This is not something that many high-tech vendors usually pay much attention to when the economy is all whacked out (like right now), so it’s refreshing when I hear about a company that subscribes to that notion, especially when the investments are focused on solidifying and supporting its channel relationships.

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Microsoft highlights partners in green IT initiatives

Microsoft partners will play a big part in the company’s green IT initiatives, the company said this morning.

Microsoft held a webcast this morning to talk about its environmental sustainability plans, specifically around green IT and virtualization in Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008. The company’s plans are two-fold: to reduce the 2% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions that come from software-driven devices, and to use software to cut the other 98%, said Francois Ajenstat, director of environmental sustainability.

“We see a role where software can help us reduce our dependency on energy,” Ajenstat said.

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Mass guv goes west in search of IT jobs

Massachusetts governor, and Friend Of Barack, Deval Patrick is heading to high-tech hubs in Seattle, Portland, and Silicon Valley to lobby for more IT jobs for the commonwealth.

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Suit says former VMware CEO broke securities law

A law firm with a history of suing public companies has set its sights on former VMware CEO Diane Greene.

Holzer Holzer & Fistel, an Atlanta firm, has filed a class-action lawsuit against Greene and CFO Mark Peek. The suit says the two execs broke the law because they didn’t tell shareholders that VMware was facing increased competition, taking a longer time to close deals and signing more customers to short-term contracts. The firm put out a press release last week seeking a lead plaintiff for the suit.

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Former Sage channel exec moves to Promethean. Hmmm. Maybe time to reconsider education software?

He’s back! Taylor Macdonald, the former VAR who was instrumental in developing the channel programs for CRM vendor Sage Software, has taken on the post of vice president of channels, America, for education software company Promethean.

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Intel’s Barrett to step down

Craig Barrett will relinquish his day-to-day management activities at Intel in May, the chip giant said today on its web site.

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HP taps new SMB channel lead

Meaghan Kelly will lead HP’s SMB channel sales efforts in the Americas starting February 1, the company said Thursday.

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Storage virtualization is hot. Ingram snags DataCore, too

Server virtualization is soooo last year.

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