Servers and desktop hardware

Dell’s New Year’s Eve surprise

Dell Inc. launched a major reorg on December 31. The move “globalizes” operations around three major customer segments — large enterprise, public sector, and small and medium businesses (SMBs). The press release posted quietly on Wednesday morning, making the Dell just the latest tech vendor to attempt to bury major news that could be construed as negative, before a holiday. Or so it seems. (The consumer segment was already handled globally.)

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CDW sees growth in government market

Earlier this week I got to talk with Casey Jones, a field sales executive for CDW Government, about the channel opportunities in the government market — expected to be one of the hottest verticals in 2009.In a straw poll taken at the CDW Partner Summit last week, partners said the government vertical will spend more than most others on IT next year.

“We expect this to be a growth market for ‘09, after healthcare and energy,” Jones said.

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EPEAT makes it easier for resellers to be green

Anyone who has any interest in representing green technology is familiar with the EPEAT rating system (EPEAT stands for Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool). At least I hope you are, since the government uses this information to guide procurement choices and many commercial accounts look to it as well for their own green IT initiatives.

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Vista-capable suit highlights PC power rifts

The class action suit filed over Microsoft’s discredited “Vista Capable” hardware claims has brought to light quite the sordid saga.

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Dell gets it right

After slamming Dell last week for ignoring partners in its news announcements, it’s only fair to point this out: Dell gives its channel partners prominent mention in today’s press release about the new PowerEdge T100 server.

The second sentence of the release says: “Starting at $449 and available from Dell and its more than 40,000 channel partners, the T100 is an ideal first server for businesses looking to build a networked server environment to enhance productivity, flexibility and security - a top-of-mind issue among SMBs globally.”

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Is Sun in play?

Gabriel Consulting Group posted an interesting item about Sun Microsystems‘ future. It speculates that the beleaguered tech giant may be taken private. 

Southeastern Asset Management, and its more famous subsidiary Longleaf Partners, has become Sun’s largest shareholders, with a 14% stake. Continued »

Is Fibre Channel over Ethernet really ready for primetime?

Ask Cisco executives about Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) deployment in data center and storage networks and they’ll tell you it’s a no-brainer. The technology will be ready for volume deployment by next year or 2010, and the channel should gear up and start training now.

Ask Brocade, a major Fibre Channel switch rival, and they’ll tell you to hold your horses — the enterprise is not ready to re-jigger entire data centers and the technology won’t take off until 2012. In fact, Brocade spent its Technology Day at the end of June warning that it would take its time with FCoE, not even doing customer testing until 2009. Brocade also said it would continue developing straight Fibre Channel equipment since that would be the dominant protocol for enterprise storage until at least 2014 . Cisco was happy to quickly counter Brocade in the press. Continued »

HP’s mini-data center in a box: No partner play yet

HP has introduced a data center in a box. Or a pod. Well actually a shipping container.

The mini data center, called Performance Optimized Data Center or POD, is a 40-foot shipping container that houses more than 3,500 computer nodes, or 12,000 large-hard drives, and delivers the equivalent of more than 4,000 square feet of typical data center capacity.

But partners need to keep an eye on HP as it rolls out this package. Initially there will be no channel partner play, though the company promises that eventually there will be. The data centers in a box — which are custom built according to user needs and ship in about six weeks from the time of order — are expected to be out in the U.S. in October and will be available worldwide shortly after. Continued »

VMware CEO Diane Greene suddenly replaced

VMware CEO Diane Greene — who is widely credited with driving server virtualization into the mainstream — was suddenly replaced by Microsoft veteran Paul Maritz. Maritz had most recently been running the cloud computing division at VMware parent company EMC.

The industry-shaking announcement came in a statement from the board of directors, but the company didn’t offer any details about why Greene is leaving. VMware chairman Joe Tucci thanked Greene for her contribution and wished her the best.

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Microsoft’s branding ’sucks,’ partner says

Here on Channel Marker, we love taking vendors to task for their mumbo-jumbo technobabble. You know, announcements like, “This new suite of solutions will provide a platform for customers to leverage their CRM, ERP, SOA and BPM in the cloud, exponentially increasing their workflow and productivity.”

We do it for fun, mostly. But when a vendor’s product names become confusing to partners, it can create serious problems with customers. One Microsoft partner who forsees such issues is Dave Sobel, CEO of Evolve Technologies, who wrote on his blog today that “Microsoft sucks at branding.” Here’s his description of what happened during a Microsoft training session today:

I’m spending my day with Microsoft around their new products, Windows Small Business Server 2008 and Windows Essential Business Server 2008.   They are part of the “Windows Essential Business Solutions” family.   The presenter, who is quite good (and I’ve seen before), took the time to apologize for the potential confusion, and made a point to tell us to be clear with customers.

Those names are all way too similar, especially when you realize that “Windows Essential Business Server” and “Windows Essentials Business Solutions” have the same acronym: WEBS. And this is quite a tangled one indeed.

But wait, it gets worse. Before I wrote this blog, I wanted to do a little research on these products. So I typed “Windows Essential Business Solutions” into Google, and here’s what I got:

That left me just as confused as Sobel. I poked around the Internets a little further, and I eventually found out that the product line is actually called Windows Essential Server Solutions.

I also discovered that Windows Essential Business Server is comprised of several different technologies, including Microsoft System Center Essentials, and that it comes in two different editions, standard and premium. The only difference between the two editions is that premium comes with SQL Server 2008. But even though it’s the premium edition of Windows Essential Business Server, it only comes with the standard edition of SQL Server 2008.

Got it? Me either. Good luck explaining all that to a customer.

And that’s Sobel’s biggest issue: Microsoft gave confusing names to all these products and acknowledged they are confusing, but the company is leaving it up to partners to sort out said confusion for customers. He asks, “How come this becomes my problem?” It will be interesting to see what Microsoft’s answer is.