Top Midmarket ProductsVARBusiness has chosen 45 products in nine tech categories that represent the Best Midmarket Products of the year. These are products that offer the best technology along with the healthiest opportunities for the channel to sell to customers from 100 to 1000 employees. Winners range from IBM and Oracle to the Sourcefire Snout free intrusion-prevention system. Posted by Joe Caponi at 12:57 PM, July 31, 2006 Linux LettersCRN has published a rich collections of emails in response to Frank Ohlhorst's column, "A Linux OS For All," which asked what it would take to grow Linux's market share among enterprise users. Frank responsds at the end: "With encouragement from the channel, the purveyors of commercial Linux distributions will get it right, but time is running out and Microsoft's Vista is right around the corner." Posted by Joe Caponi at 10:57 AM, July 31, 2006 Economic Storm CloudsCRN talks to economist A. Gary Shilling about upcoming consumer and business spending pullbacks and the risk for the technology industry: "I don't see any reason that American business is going to suddenly lose the kind of discipline that was really borne out of some tough times in the early part of this decade that gave them the zeal to be cautious. And if the economy is going to be back in the soup later this year or early next year, I would think there would be renewed enthusiasm to be parsimonious in technology spending." Shilling concludes by expressing his belief that the Federal Reserve will continue to raise interest rates to forestall inflation - that the Fed has learned that 'overtightening', even to the point of recession, is always better than 'undertightening." Over at the Big Picture, Barry Ritholtz has been saying this for a while. Posted by Joe Caponi at 10:57 AM, July 27, 2006 Macs: The Low Price Leader?No, but it's getting harder to tell. Ed Moltzen looks at Apple's 'eye-popping' price cuts over the last two years: "This begins to provide a glimpse at how Apple has begun to disrupt the desktop space. It also begins to explain how, after years of tepid growth, Apple is now seeing its U.S. desktop business grow by more than 15 percent, while Dell's desktop business in the U.S. is growing by a little more than 6 percent." With Apple's big desktop machines still due to move to Intel chips, and the rest of the Mac family already a half year into their current price/performance lineup, look for some more moves soon. Not to be outdone, Dell is looking to go for the upscale retail buyer as well. Posted by Joe Caponi at 08:06 AM, July 27, 2006 Fast Growth 100CRN identifies the fastest growing solution providers of the year. How have they managed such a feat in today's tight business climate? "When you look under the hood of any of these top companies, what you find most responsible for their galloping growth is their unique value proposition: Time and time again, it's their ingenuity and the investments they make in their people, their infrastructure and their customer relationships that earned them a place on the list of top performers." Full listing here, along with further details about each of these high-flyers. Posted by Joe Caponi at 12:52 PM, July 24, 2006 Virtualization Is For EveryoneDespite often being seen as only a server-side technology, the virtualization capacities of modern dual-core processors can benefit all PC users. The latest TechBuilder recipe builds a virtual PC system, looks at the leading software from Microsoft, VMware, and Parallels; and addresses tuning PC hardware to get the most out of it. "Virtualization holds promise for users of everything from notebooks to the data center, and multicore technology makes that possible. Basically, virtualization lets users maximize their productivity. Users can deploy a single computer to emulate several systems, better known as virtual machines. These virtual machines, in turn, can be used to solve compatibility problems, migrate to new operating systems, or even create test environments. Posted by Joe Caponi at 11:12 AM, July 24, 2006 Microsoft, Intel And SunRobert Faletra sizes up the state of Microsoft, Intel and Sun in term of the health of their partner programs, finances, and products. An excerpt: "It goes to show you a superior channel can make a vendor successful with products that are less than cutting edge. Posted by Joe Caponi at 10:59 AM, July 20, 2006 Who Is The Most Admired?VARBusiness is looking for your favorite people and organizations for its upcoming 'Most Admired' special report. Give a pat on the back to the people you look up to. And if you have a favorite product you'd like to mention, there's still time to enter VARBusiness' Tech Innovator Awards for 2006. Posted by Joe Caponi at 05:20 PM, July 19, 2006 Taking on GladwellOver at 'Knowledge Is Power' EastSight Consulting President Parmelee B. Eastman blogs about our VARBusiness 500 awards speaker Malcom Gladwell, whose new book 'Blink' extols the power of 'thinking without thinking'. Eastman writes: "In my experience, instinctive decision-making works in a very limited number of instances. And a big problem with those cases is that you don't know which ones are appropriate until the results of the decisions are known. And even then, you cannot be sure which, or if, another decision would have produced superior results." She goes on to spell out four specific objections to Gladwell's thesis that, for an unbiased expert, 'snap' judgements can provide better results than decisions that take into account much larger sets of data. I don't think even Gladwell would disagree with these observations. What he does do is provide a framework for appreciating how often those instant judgements are correct. With a hand in planning and building a number of different websites, I hear ideas daily for new elements and designs, that I find I instinctively categorize: Good; Good but not worth the effort; Good for somebody else; Just Plain Bad. While, as Eastman notes, that gives me little to use to justify my decisions to management, I find it has helped me be confident in my screening process for investigating the best ideas further. Posted by Joe Caponi at 02:13 PM, July 19, 2006 Ready For A Recession?Okay, it may not happen. But it might. With rising energy prices, interest rates and inflation, businesses are watching their dollars closely--and the channel will be affected. Are your best case/worst case plans in order? CRN looks at the possibilities in their cover story Are You Recession-Proof?: "The last recession, in 2001-02, was accompanied by a 20 percent—or $93 billion—plunge in business spending for computer equipment and software. At that time, many solution providers were caught flat-footed and struggled to adjust to the rapidly worsening sales climate. Others couldn't adapt and simply went out of business. Posted by Joe Caponi at 11:17 AM, July 18, 2006 Rating Dell's BlogEd Moltzen checks out the new blog from Dell; one2one: "One of the first laws of blogging is that a blog shouldn't be a public relations effort, it should be a conversation. This is one conversation that's not starting out with a happy tone. But that doesn't mean Dell won't keep trying." Ed's been keeping an eye on Dell's efforts to improve its services image. Are you at a channel company using blogs to engage with your customers and get your message out? Let me know we'll add your link to Hot Topics. Posted by Joe Caponi at 12:25 PM, July 17, 2006 Make That (Monitor) a DoubleFor decades now, computer users have chased after bigger monitors, with Photoshop and video artists leading the way with 23 inch behemoths that cost and weighed far more than the computers they were attached to. But the smaller-is-better crowd has struck back: dual 19 inch (even 17 inch) LCD monitors are all the rage. The New York Times reported recently quoted research that dual monitors will provide a 20% to 30% boost in user productivity across nearly all user applications. Here at CMP, dual monitors have sprouted up on the desks of big-shots and developers alike, and there's much more to come. Our latest TechBuilder recipe explains how to sell the dual monitor option to your customers and what steps to take to maximize the user benefits. Posted by Joe Caponi at 12:10 PM, July 17, 2006 Digital ConnectDigital Connect, our site for home integration and convergenece VARs, has rolled back into CRN and can be found at crn.com/homeintegration. Heather Clancy explains what's up: "Integrators hailing from the traditional IT world, rather than professional AV installers, seem to be embracing the (home) market quickly. Today, close to 70,000 CRN subscribers tell us they touch homes, home offices and very small offices." Posted by Joe Caponi at 11:41 AM, July 17, 2006 Get Up To Speed With Microsoft VelocityMicrosoft's Partner Conference is wrapping up in Boston today, and our editors have been all over it. Find all the news in our Microsoft Velocity News Center, including these top stories: Continue reading "Get Up To Speed With Microsoft Velocity" Posted by Joe Caponi at 12:59 PM, July 13, 2006 State Of The Market At MidyearVARBusiness has just released the results of its State of the Market Midyear Report -- a survey of almost 400 solution providers to assess the state of business this year, compared to the expectations recorded last winter in the State of the Market 2006 report. Continue reading "State Of The Market At Midyear" Posted by Joe Caponi at 04:39 PM, July 11, 2006 Tech Innovator Awards Open For Submissions
Posted by Joe Caponi at 01:50 PM, July 10, 2006 Dell Gets Services MessageEd Moltzen reports that Dell is putting it money where its mouth is in terms of repairing it customer service reputation: "Dell isn't out of the woods from all the ill-will it created last year when, its executives admit, it let services sag. And some of its laptops are getting press of the wrong sort - like the exploding laptop that became an Internet legend within a matter of days last month... Posted by Joe Caponi at 10:56 AM, July 10, 2006 Recycling PC's and ComponentsSafely disposing of old PCs and monitors (especially CRT monitors!) is a challenge to any group that builds, sells or uses them, and increasingly entails compliance with environmental regulations. The latest TechBuilder recipe, Recycle Old Hardware the 'Green' Way discusses the risks and regulations involving each type of PC component, provides tips for handling disposal in an efficient way, and covers tips to make sure your data is the one thing that doesn't get 'recycled'. Posted by Joe Caponi at 09:37 AM, July 10, 2006 A Sandbox For IEThis promising technology 'virtualizes' your web sessions: "Once GreenBorder is installed, it takes a snapshot of your system setup when it starts. Any program run inside GreenBorder makes its changes only to that snapshot, not to the actual system configuration. Even if an attacker is able to use an exploit that could potentially compromise system files, those changes are made only to the copy. As soon as you exit and reset GreenBorder, the changes disappear." Posted by Joe Caponi at 10:45 AM, July 7, 2006 20 Years of VirusesCRN has posted TechWeb's special report on 20 Years Of PC Viruses, including looks at the history of malicious computer bugs, the ten worst viruses, the earliest bug-fighters, and advice on dealing with a malware attack. "The first worm to spread widely over the Internet was the Morris worm, released in 1988 by Robert T. Morris, then a graduate student at Cornell University and now an MIT professor. Morris claimed to have created the worm as an intellectual exercise to measure the size of the Internet; however, it spread farther than intended, and many machines were infected multiple times. Infected computers -- Unix machines rather than PCs -- slowed down so much that they became unusable." Posted by Joe Caponi at 09:33 AM, July 7, 2006 Macs Secure Against All But Apple"Macs aren't immune to vulnerabilities, he added, but exploits continue to be rare against Apple's operating system. Even the February disclosure of the first-even "zero-day" flaw in Mac OS X wasn't enough to galvanize hackers." This however, isn't going to bring in many new fans: "Apple Computer Inc.'s Mac OS X has joined rival Windows in "phoning home" to distant servers without users' permission, a Mac developer claimed earlier this week." The specific service seems pretty innocuous, but people do like to know who their computers are talking to. Posted by Joe Caponi at 07:11 AM, July 6, 2006 The Dahlgren QuesionTwo of the biggest channel companies; one executive; and a non-compete agreement. Larry Walsh is watching the case of Bruce Dahlgren, due in court tomorrow. "Dahlgren and HP were smart, though. Even before Lexmark, a Kentucky-based company, could react, they filed a lawsuit in the employee-friendly California courts, which typically don't recognize the legitimacy of noncompete agreements. Lexmark did file its own complaint in the Bluegrass courts, and the two courts agreed to impose an injunction on Dahlgren, which prevents him from working in North America until the case is disposed." Posted by Joe Caponi at 02:27 PM, July 5, 2006 Windows On Linux-Upgrade To Fedora Core 3For running Windows applications on a Linux desktop, Red Hat's Fedora Core is one of your best options. Over on Techbuilder, thye've posted the second part of a recipe on upgrading your Linux to run Fedora Core 3, and take advantage of the improved Windows support. Posted by Joe Caponi at 10:22 AM, July 5, 2006 |
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