Survey: SMBs poised to rebound when economy turns

Small-business owners are a remarkably resilient breed. Even though the federal government sometimes seems to be out to get them (an extra week of vacation anyone?), a new study that was conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit and sponsored by services company Verio, finds that 83 percent of...
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.
OS choice for netbooks expands

First there was news that Hewlett-Packard, Dell and possibly other hardware makers would consider slapping Google Android on netbooks. Last week, Intel said it's jumping into the netbook OS market...
Channel advocate looking for others to help preach the cause

Pat Taylor, a former system builder who has been a member of Intel's Premier Partner Board of Advisors for years who also has been its president for three years, wants the channel to stand up for itself with vendors. Taylor has founded Atypical...
Top five lessons from TechEd

The pallid economy took its toll on TechEd 2009 attendance. But there were still lessons to be learned or reinforced. My top five: 1: Microsoft burns with Silverlight fever. This is not a good thing. Microsoft, everyone knows you have Flash envy, but remember that many Web...
Google fails; panic ensues

The reporters in my row are agog as the Google news outage continues. Folks wanted to know which alternative search engine to use. The consensus winner was Ask.com, although Altavista and...
SharePoint 2010 to join 64-bit only club

The next release of Microsoft SharePoint will leave 32-bitness behind. Microsoft dropped the news that SharePoint 2010 will be 64-bit only in its blog and at a...
Vista who???

The most interesting thing--and there were several interesting things--in today's TechEd 09 keynote was Bill Veghte's words of wisdom to current Windows shops. Continued »
Can you claim the title of trusted partner?

One moniker that gets bandied about plenty in the channel, especially in times like these when everyone is trying to define their "value," is the idea that an IT solution provider should be considered a "trusted adviser" or "trusted partner."
Ballmer’s white board magic

Last month, the New York Times brilliantly reproduced Steve Ballmer's white boarded vision of the company's cloud services plan. It depicts the company's "software plus services" vision with...