The VAR Guy thinks it’s time for Novell to change course. The company disappointed investors yet again this week by delivering weak financial results and a quarterly loss. As Reuters noted, Novell in every quarter for more than a year has either missed analysts’ targets, made disappointing forecasts or both. Ouch. Still, Novell’s shrinkage problem […]
Apparently, few businesses are willing to make a leap of faith from Windows XP to Windows Vista because of bug reports and hardware compatibility issues. One tech journalist, Chris Null, has even compared Vista’s launch to the “New Coke” debacle. That’s a bit harsh. Windows needed an upgrade. Coke didn’t. Still, Vista is a difficult […]
It’s time for The VAR Guy to eat some crow. For nearly a year, he has been predicting that Dell would rebound. He also expected the company to recruit a few savvy IT consulting firms to support its server and storage initiatives. Dell’s latest quarterly results, announced today, show that The VAR Guy was wrong […]
The iPhone is still scheduled to ship this June, but some Apple consultants are advising customers not purchase the device until second-generation hardware arrives in late 2007 or early 2008. A source at Macanics, a small IT consulting firm in Brooklyn, tells The VAR Guy that the iPhone’s initial performance could be limited by Cingular’s […]
Next week’s VoiceCon conference in Orlando will be “the biggest conference of the year” for Cisco Systems’ unified communications strategy, according to tipster who chatted with The VAR Guy. The event could include a meeting of the minds between Cisco and Microsoft. Joint VoIP customers like Boeing are “demanding” that Cisco and Microsoft work more […]
The VAR Guy told you earlier this week that the line between databases and business intelligence was blurring. Today, Oracle erased the line completely by acquiring Hyperion. For BI integrators, it’s time to choose sides as the market heads for a shakeout. In addition to Oracle, potential partners include Microsoft, which is hosting its first […]
The VAR Guy loves a good crime drama, especially when it involves technology. Have you heard the one about the Cisco reseller who turned to the dark side? The Bad Guy (no relation to The VAR Guy) allegedly used false identities in 39 states to order networking gear from Cisco since 2003. Now, for the […]
The VAR Guy has a confession: He barely knows how to use the IP phone sitting on his desk. Basic features like call forwarding and voice conferencing are complete mysteries to him. It sounds pathetic, but there are thousands of IP phone users just like him. Small business and enterprises often don’t have the time […]
The VAR Guy is often skeptical of software partnerships, especially when the relationships are little more than glossy press releases and empty marketing promises. But in the open source marketplace, where application developers are trying to prove their business savvy, some partnerships deliver real value. One prime example: JasperSoft (the business intelligence company) and MySQL […]
The VAR Guy doesn’t blog too often about executive changes. But Patrick Fetterman is one of his old sources from the early 1990s networking industry. Fetterman is also one of the few executives who has mastered managed services. Until recently Fetterman was president of Mi8, a successful email service provider in New York. Now he’s […]
The VAR Guy stumbled onto a mystery today. During a chat with a 3Com manager, he asked if the company had any plans to support Asterisk—the open source IP telephony server. The manager politely danced around the question, then indicated that 3Com planned to address Asterisk without necessarily competing with the open source system. Sounds […]
As part of an open letter to Michael Dell earlier this month, The VAR Guy strongly recommended that Dell focus on the open source community to jump-start sales. Plenty of people are now echoing that advice. In fact, Dell has received 1,800 requests for open source solutions from customers and partners in recent weeks. As […]
Microsoft is making numerous moves at this weeks HIMSS conference in New Orleans. The VAR Guy thinks the most interesting initiatives involve SharePoint. First, the big picture: Microsoft has acquired a search company that focuses on healthcare, launched a healthcare solutions portal and continues to promote SharePoint as an effective content management system for healthcare […]
The VAR Guy couldn’t make it to New Orleans this week for the big Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Conference. But vendors are launching a healthy number of channel solutions at the event. Nortel Networks, for one, has launched asset tracking services that VARs can offer to healthcare organizations. Watch for Nortel to […]
The VAR Guy has had to remain mum about this next piece of news for more than a week. It wasn’t easy. He has a big mouth, a broadband connection and a blog. That’s a dangerous mix. During a chat with several trusted Linksys sources in mid-February, he learned that the company planned to revamp […]
If you’re about to sell your company or acquire another solutions provider, congratulations. But The VAR Guy also offers this timely warning: Never forget the implosion of marchFIRST, a failed solutions provider formed by the merger of Whittman-Hart and USWeb/CKS. Whittman-Hart in the 1990s was a successful, steady-growing IT consulting firm. But the dot-com boom […]
The VAR Guy will be watching closely when Dell announces quarterly earnings on March 1. Just about everyone is expecting the company to deliver poor results. But here are the five questions The VAR Guy hopes Michael & Co. will answer during the earnings call:
HP’s OpenView is a reliable, scalable option for enterprise network management. But for some VARs and many midsize businesses, it’s either too expensive or too complex to deploy. In fact, 60 percent of customers are using less than half of the features found in traditional IT management suites, according to Enterprise Management Associates. That made […]
If The VAR Guy was building an online marketplace for solutions providers, he’d tap the eBay talent pool for help. That’s exactly what OnForce is doing, having recruited former eBay CTO Marty Abbott to its board of directors. OnForce says its executive leadership also includes former leaders from HP and PC Connection, representing a mix […]
Universities like Apple. Universities like open source. The VAR Guy wonders: Is there a potential solution stack here for VARs? Yes indeed. One prime example: Eastern Illinois University has deployed roughly seven t0 10 Apple servers running Zimbra’s open source email platform for 30,000 users, according to John Robb, VP of marketing and product management […]
