Channel Insider Staff

Networking specialist Westcon Group, Inc. is rolling out its Cisco Smart Care Service to selected U.S. VARs, following a successful program debut in Europe where it was launched last August and now has more than 300 participating solution providers. Restricted initially to Cisco-certified SMB resellers, the service is designed to help SMBs simplify network maintenance […]

RSA, the security division of EMC, has announced the RSA SecurWorld Stimulus Rebate Program for its channel partners in North America. Through September 30, 2009, RSA SecurWorld partners are eligible to receive additional incentives when selling the RSA SecurID solution. The program includes sales of hardware and software authenticators, RSA Authentication Manager — the software […]

Strengthening its external storage portfolio for small businesses and mobile professionals, Seagate has announced three additional BlackArmor product offerings: the BlackArmor NAS 220 storage server, the BlackArmor WS 110 external drive workstation and the BlackArmor PS 110 portable drive. The new solutions join the vendor’s existing network attached storage lineup — the BlackArmor NAS 440 […]

In my weekly column this week, “Managing the Mass of Clouds,” I speculated on a new role for solution providers in the cloud computing era; that of manager and advisor on cloud-based applications and services. The premise is simple: small and midsized businesses will come to rely on SAAS and cloud-based services, but won’t have […]

NEW YORK (Reuters) – T-Mobile USA will begin selling a new smartphone using Google Inc’s Android operating software in August, facing off against high-end devices such as Apple’s latest iPhone and the Palm Pre. T-Mobile, an arm of Deutsche Telekom and the No. 4 U.S. mobile service, said the myTouch 3G phone is a slimmer […]

Microsoft is shifting around several of its executives, including executives in its Small to Mid-market Solutions and Partners (SMS&P) division. Michael Park, who currently serves as the corporate vice president of U.S. SMS&P, is taking on a new role as the corporate vice president of Microsoft business solutions sales, marketing and operations. Meanwhile, Phil Sorgen, […]

(Reuters) – Microsoft Corp is willing to invest up to 10 percent of its operating income in its Internet search business for up to five years, Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said on Thursday, as its "Bing" search engine starts to gain ground with Web surfers. Bing — part of Microsoft’s perennially money-losing online services unit […]

Westcon Group, which focuses on the networking, convergence, security and mobility market, has added Microsoft to its roster for the first time. The agreement applies only to the United States at this time. Through the deal, the two companies will focus on service-oriented offerings, which include unified communications, virtualization, Microsoft BPOS hosted services and security […]

In a deal that could be worth billions of dollars over the next 10 years, HP has signed a "relationship agreement" with Alcatel-Lucent "to help customers leverage the convergence of telecommunication and IT." The yet-to-be-executed agreement will see the companies launch a program to transform mid- and large-size enterprise and public sector organizations’ communication networks […]

(Reuters) – Microsoft Corp’s Bing search engine won more market share from rivals last week, according to new industry data released on Wednesday, but still trails Google Inc and Yahoo Inc. Challenging market leader Google — which in turn is looking to break into Microsoft’s core software market — is a long-term project, said Microsoft […]

Chris Martin of Houndog Technology has an interesting notion about how to get customers to pay more for break/fix services: throttling the supply/demand equation. In his blog post, Martin describes his transition from being coy about asking for money to attaining a steady comfort level. >> Click here to check out Chris Martin’s post on […]

EMC Corp. says its’ full range of new consulting, implementation, education and managed services, dubbed EMC Global Services, is designed to integrate VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager into customers’ EMC business continuity environments to automate recovery of virtual environments. Moreover, EMC’s Velocity ASN partners can offer their own value-added services in the mix. "The new […]