Carolyn April

Call it “Back to the Future,” or perhaps déjà vu. After months of regulatory uncertainty and wide-ranging speculation about the life of the deal, Oracle went public Jan. 27 with long-awaited details about its mega-acquisition of Sun Microsystems and the strategy it plans to initiate for business and product integration and a go-to-market model. One […]

Cisco this week revamped its flagship CCNP certification requirements and added a new certification option aimed specifically at network service provider operations. The changes reflect Cisco’s desire to map certification and training skills more directly to proving capability in a given individual’s job role rather than simply exercising technical acumen in specific products, according to […]

Looking to jump-start buyer demand as the economy slowly awakens, Cisco this week rolled out an aggressive financing program for its partners to dangle in front of customers. The new program, outlined by Cisco Capital, offers three-year, zero percent financing for SMBs in the United States. The terms apply to the entire Cisco commercial product […]

In its quest to squeeze more dollars from its digital signage hardware business, NEC late last year tapped into the lucrative market for digital signage advertising when it created a new network platform called Vukunet to bring advertisers and signage operators together. Today, NEC is bringing its partners into the fold. Specifically, the company is […]

It’s no secret that the giants of packaged enterprise applications—SAP, Oracle, etc.—got lapped by nimbler competitors in the race to take their business software to the cloud. Salesforce.com and Netsuite went to software-as-a-service right out of the gate, while SAP, in particular, has struggled to develop a credible version of its software for the new […]

Polycom has rolled out a new partner program that the company hopes will elevate partner commitment and drive partners to attain specializations in skills in areas such as unified communications (UC) and IP-based video solutions. The new Polycom Choice Partner Program represents one of three distinct channel tracks that the videoconferencing and UC company maintains, […]

SAP jumped on the software-as-a-service bandwagon today, announcing a new program that allows channel partners to offer its midmarket industry-specific software suite on a subscription basis. Partners participating in the SAP Business All-in-One fast-start program can now be certified by SAP to provide application management and hosting services for SAP Business All-in-One solutions. SAP Business […]

At times sounding more like a single entity than two separate corporate giants, Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard today announced a three-year, $250 million technology-integration and go-to-market agreement that spans the entire data center stack from hardware infrastructure up to the application layer. In a press conference, Microsoft chairman and CEO Steve Ballmer and HP CEO Mark […]

For years, IBM has been knocked by the channel as arduous to do business with, especially when it comes to developing midmarket solutions and backing them with the right support for partners to sell effectively into that space. IBM has made improvements though, albeit with many fits and starts along the way. IBM’s Express portfolio […]

Who’s selling software licenses in the channel these days? Truth be told, plenty of folks are as software remains big business, especially in the higher-end world of enterprise applications. And yet, the business model is becoming less prevalent further downstream, as solution providers come to realize the not-so-lucrative returns associated with peddling licenses for Office […]

Vendors routinely promote and reward the practice and the subject always sparks discussion at industry partner events. I’m talking about partner-to-partner collaboration or P2P. Haven’t you heard? Everyone’s doing it. But are they? A recent study by Channel Insider and Amazon Consulting reveals that while P2P is indeed a trend in the channel, it’s far […]

IT services firms are hiring. That’s the latest from the U.S. Department of Labor jobs report released today, which provided some encouraging news for folks in the channel. For the fourth straight month, the DOL recorded gains in IT services jobs. IT employment in general has also experienced growth over the last three consecutive months. […]