Year: 2006

  • Alternative Technology’s Bill Botti: Bringing the Boutique to the Masses

    Pedro Pereira

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    Bill Botti has always taken distributor Alternative Technology’s name to heart. Since he took over as president seven years ago, Botti has come up with a number of creative ways to offer a distribution alternative to solution providers. For starters, Englewood, Colo., company carries a limited product line card, meticulously chosen with an eye to… Read more

  • Intel’s Shirley Turner: Engaging VARs for Solutions

    Brian Prince

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    Building bridges is part of Shirley Turner’s job, something she did effectively in 2006 as Intel’s director of North America channel marketing. When it comes time to educate distributors, system builders, integrators and VARs about Intel’s platform products, Turner is the one to call. But of those four groups, her work with VARs can be… Read more

  • N-able’s Mike Cullen: Fortifying MSPs

    John Hazard

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    One particular difficulty VARs face in making the switch from reactive, break/fix shops to the proactive, fixed-fee model of managed services is setting their prices. Managed service providers fear pricing themselves out of the market or, worse, charging customers a fixed fee that falls short of their realized costs. “They just don’t know what to… Read more

  • HP’s John Thompson: Bringing Stability and Trust to HP’s Channel

    Michael Vizard

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    At the start of 2006, Hewlett-Packard was recovering from a fratricidal war between the company and its solution providers that had many people wondering whether the company had the will to not only compete with Dell but even survive. But while storms raged all around HP, the one man who stayed calm in the center… Read more

  • Cisco’s Edison Peres: Putting Partners on the Profitability Path

    Michael Vizard

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    Just about every vendor executive today is fond of lecturing solution providers about profitability and the need to evolve their business models, but few companies actually put any skin in the game to help make that happen. That’s what makes Edison Peres, vice president for advanced and core technologies for Cisco Systems, stand out in… Read more

  • Taylor Macdonald: Bringing Partners’ Support to the Front Lines

    Michael Vizard

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    As one of the few executives in the industry who has actually walked a mile in the shoes of a solution provider, Taylor Macdonald not only empathizes with the solution provider partners of Sage Software, but he also comes up with programs to help them deal with the business issues they face. In his role… Read more