IT Channel

NetSuite gives new meaning to ‘cash for clunkers’ program

Never one to miss a good marketing opportunity, NetSuite has stolen a page from the U.S. federal government’s “Cash for Clunkers” incentive initiative. Only NetSuite’s target is out-of-date hardware and software that businesses may be running on site. Continued »

Still waiting for the Microsoft vision

A former colleague, who has worked the tech beat for more than 20 years, had some interesting thoughts the other night on the new-look Microsoft under chief software architect Ray Ozzie.

His rant went something along the lines of: “Geez, [expletive deleted] where’s this vision we hear so much about? What’s the next big thing? All we’ve seen is me-too stuff about the cloud. What’s beyond the cloud? What’s next?”

There was a gut instinct to defend Ozzie, home-town and Lotus Notes hero. After all, it’s hard to blaze a trail into the future while protecting a huge installed base of products, customers and partners. 

But then again, the rant rings true.

In tech everyone gets caught up in the latest thing–to such an extent that they may ignore or miss something truly exciting. Obviously, Microsoft can’t avoid the cloud, but is its Google fixation blinding it to other opportunities?

Microsoft has always played catchup to early innovators–to Apple, to Lotus, to WordPerfect, to NetScape, to Apple again, now to Google. As a current colleague said in Microsoft’s defense: “At least they’re playing catchup now on cool, cloud stuff.”

But when it was chasing NetScape Navigator, that was cool stuff. Ditto the Mac OS. Ditto iPhone.

Is that good enough for this self-proclaimed innovator?

What do you think? Send email to: Barbara Darrow.

Neutron Jack to headline Microsoft partner event

Former General Electric poohbah, author, and Red Sox fan Jack Welch will take center stage at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans. In July. Continued »

Storage efficiency: Go beyond cost savings

You’re feeling it full force — the impact of the economic downturn — and so are your customers. For the last two quarters, conversations have turned from “How do I expand?” to “How do I contract and cut costs?” Resellers, in the race to find projects and products that can help their customers reduce costs, also need to find solutions that will increase efficiency.

Most cost savings storage solutions — inline compression, data deduplication and even archiving — all involve putting more data in the same or less space. But even with these tools in place, your customers still have to manage an ever-increasing volume of data. Continued »

The value of focus

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 »

Disk archiving: How do you know it’s not the next ILM?

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 »

File virtualization: A reseller’s best friend in tough economic times

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 »

Poking holes in customer plans

“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 »

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 »

Selecting a CDP strategy

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 »