Hewlett-Packard

HP, Microsoft moves irk partners

Hewlett Packard channel partners were unpleased to learn this week that HP will make them foot the bill for new compliance training.

HP wants all its parters to comply with the U.S. Government Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by year’s end. And said compliance will set them back $120 which they will be required to front on their credit card upon registration.

The goal is to make it “easy and affordable..for our channel partners to comply,” according to HP. The problem is, the FCPA is for “U.S. firms seeking to do business in foreign markets” and many of the affected HP partners are not authorized to sell HP products outside the U.S.

Well, at least they can charge it. Microsoft ERP partners were unpleased to learn that, starting in November, tehy won’t be able to fund their software license purchases with credit cards–corproate or otherwise. The reason? Microsoft was sick of the associated charges so now VARs must pay by check or PO.  The news was first highlighted in Bob Scott’s Insights last week. 

Check out more channel news at SearchITChannel.com.

Big changes for spawn of Perot

Wow.  it was quite a week for the IT brainchildren of H. Ross Perot.

On Monday, Dell announces a $3.9 billion buyout of Perot Systems to bulk up its enterprise IT services against nemesis Hewlett Packard. Two day later, that same HP drops the venerable EDS moniker it acquired a few years ago for a cool $12 billion and change. Continued »

EMC fights Donatelli departure tooth and nail

EMC isn’t taking the defection of David Donatelli to Hewlett Packard lying down. In fact it’s suing to put the kibosh on the move and a Masschusetts (homer!) judge has granted a preliminary injunction in the matter. A colleague here at TechTarget (thanks Jo) says EMC is one of the few companies that have successfully enforced notoriously hard-to-enforce noncompete agreements in the past so this could get juicy–perhaps as much so as the Microsoft-Google kerfuffle over Kai-Fu Lee.

Top five questions about Sun-Oracle

Here’s a completely non-scientific list of my top five questions arising from Oracle’s $7.4 billion buy out of Sun Microsystems.

5: How could it have been surprising that Oracle was the white knight here? Larry Ellison is the go-to guy for distressed tech companies who don’t want or cannot be acquired by IBM or Microsoft (hell, better throw Google into the mix for the new millenium. ) This goes way, way back. Back in the paleozoic era, Lotus Development Corp. CEO Jim Manzi tried like all get out to get Oracle to buy Lotus so it wouldn’t end up in IBM’s clutches. That didn’t work out so well.

4: What happens to Oracle’s ardent courtship of Dell and Hewlett-Packard? One can only guess that the HP-Oracle Exadata “Database machine” is a goner now. Not that it was setting any sales records.

3: Which virtualization play will survive the inevitable putsch?

2: How soon will a big hunk of Oracle’s revenue be going by way of hardware bundles with Sun servers? This is very much a page ripped right out of IBM’s DB2 playbook. And Ellison could barely contain himself when talking about that “shelfware.”

1: What was deal with Scott McNealy on the call?  He sounded ummmm, medicated.  Even though this signals the end of the McNealy era in tech (hell, Jonathan Schwartz and the open source pony tail epic already rang the bell on that one.) Still for $7.4 billion, couldn’t Scooter have mustered a little enthusiasm for three minutes? Listen to the playback. It’s shocking

Conglomeration conga

Whether Sun and IBM ever actually do tie the knot, the M&A craziness will continue.  It’s interesting to parse reactions to this possible deal. For IT shops, there’s angst because some Sun partisans hate IBM and people with religious devotion to IBM won’t touch Sun. If those two data center giants converge, the fear is less competition and higher prices.

VARs are acutely interested in this because a vendor they may have been selling against may soon magically morph into their vendor.  This raises interesting channel conflict issues. Despite its well-documented troubles, Sun has gotten good reviews for its channel management by a handful of its elite partners. They’re not eager to be thrown into the IBM pot.

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Mass guv goes west in search of IT jobs

Massachusetts governor, and Friend Of Barack, Deval Patrick is heading to high-tech hubs in Seattle, Portland, and Silicon Valley to lobby for more IT jobs for the commonwealth.

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HP taps new SMB channel lead

Meaghan Kelly will lead HP’s SMB channel sales efforts in the Americas starting February 1, the company said Thursday.

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Black Friday turns bloody

Whoa. Retailers can’t catch a break this year.

First of all there’s this little thing called a recession, which we’re now officially in,  according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, otherwise known as NBER. (Thanks for the heads up guys!)

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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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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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