Mar 25 2009 6:29PM GMT
Posted by: George Crump
IT Channel,
IT channel products and technologies,
George Crump,
Reseller channel business development
Spreading your technical knowledge too thin is a very common mistake that resellers (and manufacturers) make. A great example is the issue of what VMware storage protocol to use. There are three choices: iSCSI, Fibre Channel or NFS. Many solutions support all three.
But whether you represent a solution that can support all three protocols is really not the point. The point is: Are you equally comfortable with all three? Continued »
Mar 18 2009 3:26PM GMT
Posted by: George Crump
IT Channel,
IT channel products and technologies,
George Crump,
Data storage management
Disk-based archiving is a popular topic today, one that you might be bringing up with customers or maybe they’re even asking you about it. As we detailed in our article on archiving basics, archiving is the movement of old data off of primary storage and onto a secondary storage tier. Archiving isn’t a new practice; what is new is the use of disk instead of tape or optical as the medium for that archive.
A lot has been written lately about archiving or optimizing primary storage. But you need to be able to separate hype from reality. The investment of time and money to purchase lab hardware and learn how to use it can be very costly. Picking a technology that’s going nowhere can be deadly. So how do you know that archiving won’t be the next ILM? Continued »
Mar 12 2009 1:59PM GMT
Posted by: George Crump
IT Channel,
IT channel products and technologies,
George Crump,
file virtualization
Right now, your customers are looking primarily for one thing, to save money. One of the ways to do that is to get old data off of expensive primary storage and onto a disk-based archive like the kind offered by Permabit, Caringo or Nexsan. The question is, How do you get the data to the archive?
Continued »
Mar 5 2009 11:58PM GMT
Posted by: George Crump
IT Channel,
George Crump
“Trusted adviser” is a status that all reseller salespeople should try to achieve with their customers, but sometimes being the trusted adviser means you have to confront customers on decisions they’ve made that may adversely affect their business. Sometimes as a trusted adviser you need to poke some holes in the plan.
Continued »
Feb 24 2009 8:24PM GMT
Posted by: George Crump
IT Channel,
Data storage management,
George Crump
In a recent article on SearchDataBackup.com, Curtis Preston provides a thorough explanation of continuous data protection (CDP) for end users and how it differs from near-CDP. So what does this technology mean for the channel, and what should you be looking for in the tool you select?
The first question to ask yourself when approaching a CDP project for customers is whether it even makes sense for them. Continued »
Feb 18 2009 4:32PM GMT
Posted by: George Crump
IT Channel,
Reseller blogs,
Channel business development,
George Crump
I am constantly amazed at how many of your customers get the bulk of their IT news from blogs. That’s right, blogs. In fairness, they tend to take the source into consideration when evaluating the quality of the information; corporate blogs may be less trustworthy than an independent source, but your customers are reading them, and you need to be in the fray.
I am surprised by the number of reseller websites I visit that do not have a blog, or, worse, that have a website that hasn’t been updated in the past few months. Continued »
Feb 13 2009 3:14PM GMT
Posted by: George Crump
IT Channel,
VAR training,
VAR training, certification,
George Crump
In my last entry, I cited a survey Symantec fielded last fall indicating that IT budgets would either stay the same or go up in the following 12 months. The survey drilled down a bit on training: 78% of respondents said training budgets would either stay the same or go up in the next two years.
That figure makes sense. Think about it: In the past few years we have thrown a lot of solutions at customers: server virtualization, networked and virtualized storage, archiving, improved data protection, and disaster recovery. Continued »
Feb 11 2009 8:20PM GMT
Posted by: George Crump
IT Channel,
George Crump
Are you really asking yourself that question? Then you are about ready to go out of business. I find that most businesses that are waiting for the winds of Washington to determine their future, even government-focused resellers, are in serious trouble.
What is in this spending bill that will really help resellers? Continued »
Feb 4 2009 3:21PM GMT
Posted by: George Crump
Supplier relationship management,
Vendor partner business issues,
George Crump
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 »
