Networking technology

Is there anyone not trying to steal Nortel partners?

Seems Juniper Networks is not the only buzzard swooping over the potential ruins of Nortel to snatch its channel partners.

John Wrona, executive vice president of sales and marketing at Nortel partner Ronco Communications, said he’s been hit up by AT&T, Avaya, Siemens and Cisco in the past month or so. Nortel’s shares have been trading at below a buck since November 7 and analysts predict the company will fold or be sold. Continued »

Cisco VARs consolidate: INX acquires NetTeks

INX Inc. snapped up Cisco VAR NetTeks Technology Consultants this week, continuing a trend in VAR consolidation.

The acquisition went for an initial $1.35 million in cash and 30,770 shares, with a potential payout of $2.8 million if NetTeks hits performance targets. NetTeks saw revenue of approximately $12.7 million for the 12 months ending September 30, 2008. Continued »

When topless meetings are business appropriate

Topless meetings? Before you get your knickers in a twist, be advised this G-rated concept–barring laptops, BlackBerries etc. from business meetings –is starting to take off.  So to speak. 

Even tech heavyweights such as Google, Apple and Yahoo are going topless in an effort to cut down on distractions. The problem? Meeting attendees in this increasingly wireless-connected world, spend group time texting or shopping when they should be paying attention. (Gulp…guilty.)

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Nortel in too deep; analysts say sale coming

Nortel is in bigger trouble than some even suspected. Monday the company reported a $3.41 billion loss in the third quarter and announced it would slash 1,300 jobs.

Most stunning about the announcement was that the first four employees to go were senior executives. Their departure is part of a plan to restructure the company into business units without a heavy corporate structure at the top, executives said.

It’s no wonder investors are betting on a sale of the company. Continued »

Microsoft fills in some cloudware bits with Azure

As expected, Microsoft started to talk up some details of its cloud computing strategy Monday at its Professional Developers Conference.

Amidst all the cloud talk, there were a few deliverables mentioned in Monday’s keynotes including activation codes for four new Azure Services outlined by Microsoft chief software architect Ray Ozzie on Monday morning. Developers and VARs can use those codes to poke around and try out the hosted services.

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Cisco fights channel partner over deal registration in court

Cisco is in Superior Court of Orange County, Calif. this week facing off against a former channel partner that claims the networking giant violated a deal registration agreement and poached a $3 million dollar IP telephony customer, turning the business over to AT&T.

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HP ProCurve-Colubris acquisition closes; channels unify

HP’s acquisition of Colubris Networks was finalized Wednesday, and the basics of how the products and channels will be integrated are beginning to firm up.

HP will integrate Colubris’ product line into ProCurve’s networking portfolio, and Colubris partners are invited to join the ProCurve channel, ProCurve said in a statement Wednesday afternoon. Continued »

Oracle takes on storage partners

Forrester Research’s Andrew Reichman has a good take on Larry Ellison’s latest competitive foray. During his Oracle OpenWorld Keynote, Ellison did, in fact, position the HP Oracle Database Machine (or Exadata) as an alternative to Teradata and Netezza. And that is true,  as far as it goes. And yet, as Reichman points out, Oracle’s other hardware and storage partners–some of whom were big OracleWorld sponsors, must be irked. Because this box is also taking aim at them.

Coopetition is a grand ol’ tradition in tech. Several years ago, while talking up his company’s desire to suck up more revenue from its own storage management, analytics and other offerings, Ellison warned applications, storage management and BI rivals that mined the Oracle’s installed base, to get out of his backyard.  Two of the companies he was shaking his fist at were Siebel Systems and BEA. And guess where they are now.

And so, with HP, Oracle is taking on Sun (which has its own data warehouse appliance work going on with Green Plum), NetApp and others even as those companies helped pay the Oracle OpenWorld bills.

Cisco’s Jabber acquisition heats up the collaboration race

Cisco Systems has acquired open source instant messaging and presence company Jabber less than a month after it picked up e-mail and calendaring software provider PostPath. The move signifies Cisco’s ongoing moves to reach out of the network and onto the desktop.

Terms of the deal have not yet been announced. Cisco executives were unavailable to discuss the impact of the deal on Cisco or Jabber partners.

Though Cisco already owns instant messaging and presence features, Jabber’s applications are open source and based on its own Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP). These applications are therefore easier to integrate into emailing, calendaring and other Web 2.0 software across the board, giving Cisco a leg up in the collaboration race against Microsoft and IBM. Continued »

Interop: Are tradeshows dead?

I was truly confused Wednesday morning when I jumped off the bus near the Jacob Javits Center in New York for Interop and saw armies of tight skirts and multi-colored stilettos trotting up the ramp to the convention center. This is not IT conference wear. These are not tech rats. No wrinkled khakis. Too many cutesy chicks. Continued »