Year: 2012

  • Considering the IBM Watson Possibilities

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    While the hype surrounding IBM’s Watson project far exceeds any current reality, the implications of the next-generation analytics platform on the channel could be as far reaching as they are profound. IBM has already started a number of pilot projects in vertical sectors such as healthcare that will ultimately transform how those businesses are managed.… Read more

  • Variations on a Cloud Storage Theme in the Channel

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    Now that EMC has announced that it’s going to rely even more on the channel to push products and services for the cloud, a lot of solution providers are going to have to ask themselves what exactly is the best business model when it comes to storage in the cloud. At the EMC World 2012… Read more

  • Rightsizing the Cloud Service Provider

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    One of the issues that solution providers have with investing in the cloud is all the money needed upfront to create a cloud computing service. The amount of capital required effectively puts building cloud computing platforms out of reach for many solution providers, which results in them reselling services built by somebody else. The trouble… Read more

  • How Mobile Computing Enables the Channel to Transform the Enterprise

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    Most customers are not particularly enthralled with the software they rely on every day to drive their business. For the most part, they have been making the best of a bad situation. The application they rely on was designed to serve the needs of a broad swath of potential customers, which is to say it… Read more

  • The SMB Conundrum in the Channel

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    It used to be that the small-to-medium (SMB) market was a place the channel sold products and technologies that had matured to a point where they could be safely deployed by organizations that didn’t have much IT expertise. But in recent years it’s becoming clear that there are different classes of SMB organizations and that… Read more

  • The Selling of IT Simplicity

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    It seems like everywhere anyone turns these days IT is getting more complex to manage. The question that begs then is whether there will soon be some sort of backlash against IT products that are overly complex. And if so, is this a trend that solution providers could capitalize on. Certainly part of the interest… Read more