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. 

The acquisition went for an initial $1.35 million in cash and 30,770 shares, with a potential payout of $2.8 million if NetTeks hits performance targets. NetTeks saw revenue of approximately $12.7 million for the 12 months ending September 30, 2008.

INX is a Cisco gold partner with special certifications in unified communications (UC) and security. NetTeks, which has 32 employees, is a Cisco silver partner that was an early UC entrant, but is also a certified managed services provider.

Houston-based INX said acquiring NetTeks, which has offices in Boston and Glastonbury, Conn., will give it further entry into New England.

“This acquisition, coupled with our existing Boston operations, will create one of our largest regions. For the past eleven years NetTeks has developed close and longstanding relationships with many customers in the region and has built a reputation for excellence in project management and network engineering,” Mark Hilz, president and COO of INX, said in a statement. NetTeks has about 200 managed service customers.

INX gives NetTeks the kind of capital necessary to grow in customers and into new technologies, said former NetTeks president and CEO Ethan Simmons, who will now be vice president of New England sales for INX.

“INX’s national presence, as well as the expanded set of solutions focused around the data center, will provide our team with compelling additional capabilities for our customer set,” Simmons said.

This is the second major acquisition for INX in a little more than a year. Last year, INX acquired Cisco gold partner Select for $8.5 million. INX is among a handful of larger VARs moving in on smaller ones to gain regional ground and customer count.

A number of analysts have said that rough economic conditions would cause further VAR consolidation. This deal doesn’t appear to be the result of economic troubles since NetTeks was not in an apparent financial bind.

Company CEO Steve Ballmer some years ago told solution provider partners that the vendor would offer self hosted ERP and CRM applications as needed. It was all about customer choice, he said.

Others at the company immediately downplayed that notion–at least vis-a-vis hosted ERP– saying  the model wasn’t cooked etc. etc.. It was not lost on those insiders how controversial that effort would be to existing partners who already hosted Microsoft Dynamics ERP.

At PDC 2008 last month, corporate vice president for Microsoft Online, Dave Thompson opened the door on the discussion again.

“So what is Microsoft Online? Very simply, it’s enterprise class software delivered via subscription services, hosted by Microsoft, and sold with partners. And today, we offer Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, CRM Online, OCS Online. We offer Exchange-Hosted Services, Office Live Meeting. But that’s really just the beginning. In the future, all our enterprise software will be delivered as an option as an online service. And the key value prop of Microsoft Online Services is that it provides the best experience. These are the richest collaboration tools, the market-leading collaboration tools, but they’re available in a much easier-to-use form, and easier to administer, and easier to buy. And they provide a faster way to get to that value. It’s easier to stay up to date because we do it for them, and they can deploy as an online service in minutes instead of months.” (italics mine.)

So here’s hoping that Steven Elop will address this issue Monday when he announces availability of Exchange Online and SharePoint Online.

Just when you thought people couldn’t be any dumber about their avatars, Second-Life-being-someone’s-only-life makes the news again. A UK couple recently filed for divorce after the wife, Amy Taylor, discovered that her husband, David Pollard, was having a virtual affair. How scandalous!

They met in the popular Second Life realm, fell in love and had an exotic tropical wedding (virtual, of course). Their real marriage was completed at the registry after the lavish Second Life wedding. The real-life marital troubles began when she caught his avatar, named Dave Barmy (really? Barmy? You can customize your avatar’s name and you choose Barmy?), in the throes of passion with a virtual prostitute. Suspicious of his online loyalty, she hired a private detective (virtual) to follow him. When she later found him (by him, I mean Mr. Barmy) cuddling with another woman (virtual) on a sofa (also virtual), she confronted him and he revealed that he no longer loved her and wanted a divorce. It really just goes to show that the old adage is true — once a cheater, always a cheater.In the end, I guess it could’ve been worse. While it’s not quite a fairy-tale ending, no one really suffered from this one. Pollard is engaged to another woman in both Second Life and in real life, presumably the sofa-lady. How I’d love to see that wedding. And Taylor has met the new man of her dreams — guess how? No, not through Second Life, but World of Warcraft. I wonder if he’s an orc.

I think I’ve said all I can really say about avatars in my earlier blog entry on the topic, but I can’t help but reiterate my point a little bit more. There’s a reason that virtual life is called Second Life — there is your FIRST life, your real one. Go out to a bar and meet someone. Join a book club. Attend a singles’ gathering. There’s even match.com or eHarmony. Don’t use a videogame as your only way to meet potential mates. Whatever happened to playing videogames for fun?

Elaine Hom can be reached at ehom@techtarget.com.

Amidst all the cloud talk, there were a few deliverables mentioned in Monday’s keynotes including activation codes for four new Azure Services outlined by Microsoft chief software architect Ray Ozzie on Monday morning. Developers and VARs can use those codes to poke around and try out the hosted services.

Those services — hosted by Microsoft but available to participating developers — are Microsoft SQL Services that add reporting and other capabilities to the previously announced SQL Server Data Services; .NET Services including “.NET framework concepts” such as Windows Workflow (WF) and access control; Live Services for storing, sharing and synchronizing data and documents; SharePoint Services and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Services.

It was unclear from the various Ozzie, Bob Muglia and David Thompson speeches exactly which of the SQL Server data services (there will be many) will be accessible soon. This is another rolling rollout.

Muglia, the senior vice president of servers and tools, likened this PDC slate to the 1992 Professional Developers Conference where Windows NT was outlined. He was smart to steer clear of any mention of the past two PDCs and their Longhorn promises.

Throughout the session, which was streamed, the question was (and remains) what the toll will be for the use of this infrastructure. To borrow from an infamous quote attributed to former Microsoft exec Paul Maritz: “What’s the vig?”

Microsoft, the ultimate capitalist, isn’t doing this out of the goodness of its heart. The business model here is every bit as important as the technology — which remains unproven. Most likely it will come in and under price Amazon.com’s for-rent infrastructure.

Ozzie addressed that issue. Kind of. Basically, the business model remains under wraps and will evolve. Here’s the money quote (so to speak) from Ozzie:

“When it is released commercially, Windows Azure will have a very straightforward business model, with costs primarily being derived as a function of two key factors, and apps resource consumption and a specific service level that we agree to provide.

The pricing and models for all the Azure services will be competitive with the marketplace, and we’ll provide a variety of offers and service levels where there may be differentiated requirements across the breadth of developers and markets that we serve as a company from the individual developer to the enterprise.

Azure services offerings will be available directly through the Web and through existing channels and programs, and we’ll give you more details about our offerings as we get closer to commercial release.”

Ozzie was good enough to credit Amazon.com’s efforts from the stage, acknowledging that Microsoft and others would be standing on its shoulders going forward into this massive cloud.

UPDATE (10/28): Here’s what Muglia told The Wall Street Journal re: cloud pricing and profitability:

“As we start charging customers we will start to be able to make money,” Muglia said in an interview.

“We’re in investment mode now,” he added.  He said the service should be profitable fairly quickly.

At Oracle OpenWorld on Monday, the two Chucks — Oracle president Charles Phillips and executive vice president Chuck Rozwat–said Oracle is making its full Fusion middleware toolset, and its database, available to run on Amazon.com’s  cloud infrastructure.

It appeared, from their on-stage chat, that the tools are now available for building and deploying applications to run in that Amazon EC2 cloud infrastructure. The fact that Amazon.com (and other players) are getting traction from this strategy has caused anxiety among the more traditional software providers. Microsoft Visual Studio developers are still waiting to hear about that company’s development-tool-for-the-cloud strategy expected at this fall’s Professional Developers Conference.

 So, Oracle is joining the land rush (if that’s the right term) in that netherworld known as the cloud. The database-and-apps giant already hosts its own software on its own infrastructure. Now it’s blessing Amazon.com’s foundations as well.

Much of this may be more a pricing/licensing debate rather than a technology discussion. In theory, an Oracle developer will not need to change how he or she develops if the app or database will reside on an on-premise server or a secure server farm hosted at some Amazon.com (or Oracle) location.

Still, it’s an important statement of direction as companies rush for cloud cred.

Direct quote from Rozwat: “We’ve started to make complete our complete Fusion Middleware stack available on the Amazon cloud. This is a way to deploy middleware on the cloud using virtualization and other things Amazon provides.” He was speaking to several thousand Oracle partners and customers gathered in San Francisco’s Moscone Center for the big annual Oracle shindig.

It looks like Oracle will position this infrastructure as a fallback option for customers rather than a replacement to on-premise or other hosted options.

Database 11g for cloud computing will include “new capabilities to support our database on the cloud. You can run an image there literally on Amazon.com EC2 using Web services from Amazon and use it as a backup.”

An update to Oracle 11g database is promised this week. Under the internal and acutely non-poetic name, 11.1.0.7, the update will include an in-memory database cache option (borrowed from TimesTen, an Oracle acquisition and in-memory database expert.)

This may be the database “revolution” Oracle CEO Larry Ellison has hinted at during the last two company earnings calls. But who knows? Ellison speaks Wednesday and he’s been known to surprise the assembled massed before.

Also promised at the show: Beehive, or the next release of not-so-hot-selling Oracle Collaboration Suite rewritten to be completely “Web 2.0 savvy.” Buzzword check list? Check.

In a flurry of slides, there were other product promises including a new release of the WebLogic Suite, Business Process Management Suite, Oracle WebCenter Suite and the first release of Fusion Middleware 11g including jDeveloper 11g and TopLink 11g.

In July, for these products, some of which came in via the BEA Systems acquisition.The slides and words were flying so stay tuned here for clarifications and updates.

 Ah, Oracle’s started populating its media site with the relevant press releases.

Terms of the deal have not yet been announced. Cisco executives were unavailable to discuss the impact of the deal on Cisco or Jabber partners.

Though Cisco already owns instant messaging and presence features, Jabber’s applications are open source and based on its own Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP). These applications are therefore easier to integrate into emailing, calendaring and other Web 2.0 software across the board, giving Cisco a leg up in the collaboration race against Microsoft and IBM.

Cisco said in a statement that the Jabber acquisition would enable presence and messaging to be used in WebEx Connect and its UC platform to provide both “on-premise and on-demand solutions.” Cisco executives said in August they would make Webex collaboration announcements this month, and those will also likely be part of this collaboration strategy.

“Enterprise organizations want an extensible presence and messaging platform that can integrate with business process applications and easily adapt to their changing needs,” said Doug Dennerline, Cisco senior vice president of the collaboration software group, in a statement. “Our intention is to be the interoperability benchmark in the collaboration space.”

Cisco is not actually leading the way when it comes to open source collaboration, since, for example, Novell’s Teaming collaboration offering is open source and can integrate into most emailing, calendaring and enterprise 2.0 applications.

Also, Cisco is not alone in identifying collaboration as a space for immediate movement. Last week, IBM announced an expansion of its enterprise Web 2.0 strategy, which will enable social software platform Lotus Connections to integrate into iEnterprises’ CRM software, as well include new mashup capabilities. IBM also announced The Center for Social Software, a social software research center that will serve as the incubator for new enterprise 2.0 products.

For Cisco, the Jabber acquisition also brings a new set of customers to maintain and possibly up-sell. The Department of Homeland Security, Wells Fargo and FedEx are just a few of Jabber’s extensive list of major customers that have both implemented its products and built up customized applications based on XMPP.

“This isn’t just a technology, this is an ecosystem,” said Peter O’Kelly, principal analyst at O’Kelly Consulting. “It’s in Cisco’s best interest to keep that vibrant community.”

O’Kelly added that Cisco has a good track record of acquiring companies and “not breaking them.”

The Jabber acquisition is expected to close in the first half of fiscal year 2009. Upon the deal’s close, Jabber employees will be incorporated into the Cisco Collaboration Software Group.

Chambers offered condolence to financial analysts reeling from plunging markets and failing banks.

“We went through a life threatening experience in 2001,” Chambers said, not referring to the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center but the ravaging of the tech markets. “We truly understand what you and you’re colleagues are going through.”

Then he flipped the script on analysts.

“If there is anything we can do, we will be there for you.”

With that out of the way, Chambers assured analysts that Cisco’s long-term growth prediction of 12 to 17% is on track despite the economic downturn.

Then he launched into an hour-and-a-half presentation of how Cisco will dominate multiple technology market sectors, including video, virtualization and Web 2.0.

Cisco has long touted its collaboration and new video technologies, but this year the company is clearly coming closer to the concept of one device connecting to any network for voice, video, data and collaboration applications. That plays nicely into Cisco’s core networking technology portfolio, since the more converged video and data applications proliferate, the more bandwidth growth explodes.

Chambers said Cisco is “about to see an instant replay” of the mid ‘90s when the company led competitors in automating orders and customer care online. With Web 1.0 applications, Cisco ushered in sales growth of the very technology used in its own business processes.

This time around, Cisco is using video and Web 2.0 — including internal wikis, video blogging, telepresence and collaborative workspace — throughout its own campus, and Chambers said customers want in on these technologies and business processes.

“I sit down with the CEO and he brings in the key business person not necessarily the CIO,” Chambers said, explaining that technology and business process planning are tightly intertwined.

In perfect Cisco-marketing form, Chambers added a splash of drama to his presentation by displaying a faux home office on stage that was connected via VPN to the Cisco network, had an IP phone, a small-screen telepresence system and an IP set-top box in the living room.

Using the equipment, Jim Grubb, Cisco chief demonstration officer, first located a co-worker for a meeting using a presence application that was attached to a database in which employees were tagged by their expertise. Then he launched into a WebEx impromptu video meeting, did a search on the company intranet and public Internet for a video clip of Chambers discussing green emissions, and then sent that video to his own mail box. At that point, he could access that video to view on his set-top box, PC or mobile device. Grubb also displayed a holographic telepresence meeting during which a co-worker’s head miraculously appeared on stage for an instant meeting.

After Chambers spoke, CTO Padmasree Warrior laid out a vision for Cisco’s role in cloud computing among other technologies.

“In our vision there will not be a single uber-cloud,” Warrior said. “There will be a combination of public clouds and private clouds” that will work in a federation.

The applications in that federation of clouds will be enabled by the intelligent network.

Those rumors (and Evans stresses that they are rumors) aren’t exactly shocking. For one, as Evans points out, Nortel is trading at under $6 now. That makes me think two things: 1. If I were Nortel, I might spin these rumors just to raise my share value. 2. (The more likely one) If I were IBM, I would be thinking two words: fire sale. OK, maybe I would be thinking a full phrase: Fire sale on a once-solid company that still has incredible potential.

All that aside, a pairing of IBM and Nortel also wouldn’t be surprising given the history between the two. In the past few years, Nortel has worked desperately to evolve into a nimble communications software firm as opposed to a legacy networking manufacturer (which it still is at its core). In doing so, Nortel has formed a strong unified communications (UC) alliance with Microsoft (hence those partnership rumors), as well as one with IBM.

The IBM-Nortel alliance spawned the Joint Development Center, which researches and develops joint products from the two companies. Nortel’s website says the relationship between the two “focuses on collaborative innovation that leverages IBM’s services and technology capabilities with Nortel’s experience and leadership in communications infrastructure and solutions.”

Bottom line: Both Microsoft and IBM need solid IP telephony and networking equipment in order to make a real run at enterprise UC. Nortel could easily fulfill that need for either of these heavy hitters as they attempt to take on Cisco.

Wednesday morning Cisco senior vice president and corporate controller Jonathan Chadwick spoke at the Citibank Citi Technology Conference where analysts were on the hunt for potential acquisition tidbits.

In perfect Cisco executive form, Chadwick dropped just enough info to keep folks questioning … and nothing more.

Whetting VMware hopes, Chadwick marked virtualization as the most important destination on Cisco’s roadmap, noting its role in the emergence of enterprise video and the enabling of converged network access via any device.

“When you think about the underpinning of all of that … the network empowers all of it and that is what virtualization is for,” Chadwick said.

Analysts were quick to grill Chadwick on Cisco’s acquisition strategy, specifically inquiring about whether it would buy its way into market adjacencies.

Chadwick confirmed that Cisco would, in fact, buy its way into technologies that would “round out” current offerings, but that it would also keep the emphasis on building in-house.

Asked why the number of Cisco acquisitions has fallen this year (Cisco purchased only four companies this year compared to 11 last year), Chadwick replied: “I would not read anything into that.” He added, “It’s about buying a company that we can insert into our technology portfolio.”

When pressed to expound on the size or type of company Cisco might acquire, Chadwick said: “There are very few companies that can pull off a like-for-like [acquisition].” Cisco’s moves will be in the medium to small space, he added, but he would not “rule out” deals with companies of other sizes.
Clearly, the speculation continues.