Information technology services

Results of Symantec SMB disaster recovery survey suggest upside for channel

The good news is that you have a lot of prospects in small-business disaster recovery solutions, according to a recent survey by Symantec. The bad news is that most of your prospective customers don’t understand just unprepared they are, so your sales cycle isn’t likely to be easy. Continued »

It’s time for VARs to figure out the software services thing

Now that Microsoft’s made its hosted online services broadly available, it’s time for VARs to take stock of what this new software delivery vehicle means to them.

Google, Salesforce.com, other vendors have driven this Sofware as a Service train for some time, but Microsoft, unlike those SaaS powers, built its business with partners so those partners can no longer ignore the shift, even if they are so inclined. The smart ones will figure out how to parlay the delivery model for their own gain. The others risk a lot by letting it pass them by. Continued »

MySQL diaspora

It’s been 13 months since Sun Microsystems announced its  plan for a $1 billion buyout of MySQL and almost a year to the date since the deal closed. Now, the MySQL executive diaspora is on. Monty Widenius, one of the tech geniuses behind the open source oriented database left last week. Former MySQL CEO and front man Marten Mickos soon followed. (David Axmark, Widenius’ co-founder, had already hit the trail last October.) Continued »

HP introduces two small-business tech financing promotions

One of the things that will separate the successful high-tech vendors this year from the rest of the pack will be their ability to help their reseller and VAR partners manage credit and cash flow.

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Google reseller program on the way?

A Google reseller program seems to be in the works, according to this video posted Friday on YouTube.

The 14-second video features Dave Girouard, Google Enterprise president, and 10 Google employees standing behind him. Girouard says, “On behalf of the Google Apps reseller team, I want to say thank you for taking the time to learn about this exciting new program.”

The employees then yell, “Go Apps resellers!”

Google Apps Education Edition, which offers email, word processing, instant messaging and other programs for college students and faculty, is already gaining some traction in the channel. But there’s also concern that Google’s focus on Web-based applications could take away on-premise sales opportunities for solutions providers. Maybe this “Google Apps reseller team” will help address those issues.

UPDATE (7:04 p.m. Eastern): The owner of the video has removed it from YouTube. 

Who, exactly, is feeling the IT spending slowdown?

Either every solution provider I know is brilliant or lying, or every IT decision maker is fudging their answers when they take IT spending polls. That’s because even though all the data suggests that companies aren’t buying tech or won’t buy tech or are too scared to buy tech, at least some of the solution providers I speak with anecdotally tell me they had a bang-up fourth quarter.

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IT services warning: Rough sailing ahead

If they’re not already kaput, the days of open-ended IT consulting engagements soon will be.

Unisys, a big IT consultancy and integrator and also a tech vendor, kicked off the holiday season on a bleak note. Last week Unisys said it would cut 1,300 jobs, or 4.3% of its employees; would consolidate plants; and stop contributing to employees’ 401(k) programs.  The matching contributions, it said, cost the company $50 million annually.

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Whose cloud is it anyway?

Raise your hand if you’ve heard enough about the proverbial cloud yet.

Understood. The hypefest has been enormous. And the payoff? Not there yet. Continued »

Virtualization predictions for 2009

With the end of the year approaching, virtualization pundits are coming out with their predictions for 2009. I won’t be coming out with any of my own — I had to sell my crystal ball to buy a few last-minute Christmas gifts — but here’s a roundup of what the experts say to expect in the next 12 months: Continued »

Gartner: 10 ways IT service providers can win wallet share

OK, so you’ve made the swap-over to emphasize services. Problem is, lot of other resellers are telling the same story. So, how can you differentiate, especially in a nasty economic climate?

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