Jessica Davis

In the dog-eat-dog arena of Microsoft Exchange hosting, you can either cut your prices or offer more value to your customers. Intermedia has done the latter by teaming up with Unison to offer a SAAS-based unified communications solution for $50 per user per month. The offering includes the six requisites of unified communications as agreed […]

VMware may have a stronghold on the server virtualization market, but that doesn’t mean competitors like Citrix aren’t winning big deals. Case in point is Carpathia Hosting, a managed hosting services provider and provider of IT infrastructure and management for enterprises and federal agencies. This week Carpathia announced a partnership with VMware virtualization rival Citrix. […]

Even as Cisco Systems and Hewlett-Packard postured in their heightening competition in the data center product arena, Tech Data made moves this week that solidified its position as the technologically neutral one—an IT Switzerland of sorts. Tech Data’s AIS (Advanced Infrastructure Solutions) division announced four new solutions groups, two of them along vendor lines, focusing […]

Here’s how to sell a unified communications system: hard cost savings over three years, $40,000; total price for system, services and support, $31,000. Throw in zero-percent financing and the deal is a no-brainer. That’s what Ryan Halper, founder of Cynnex Networks, an IT unified communications solutions provider specializing in small business, found when customer Wolfgang […]

The Rackspace Cloud, previously known as Mosso, has formally launched its first partner program with tracks for resellers and for affiliates. The program offers volume-based discounts for reseller partners looking to offer their own service to end-customer companies, Jeff Omstead, director of cloud sales at The Rackspace Cloud, told Channel Insider. “A lot of our […]

Looking to make inroads to the smaller end of the data center market, HP has brought its data center consulting services to its channel partners for sale to small and midsize data centers. The services comprise the following three offerings: a basic capacity survey, infrastructure condition capability and analysis, and energy condition capability and analysis. […]

While desktop virtualization offers the promise of lower costs and simplified management, the technology is still in its early stages of adoption and CIOs may still be resistant. That’s because they perceive plenty of problems with the technology that is such a stretch from the client/server architecture that IT managers work with today, and there […]

Image via Wikipedia If you are a small business with under 10 servers, does it really make sense to jump into virtualization? For these organizations the benefits of virtualization may be less about server consolidation and more about portability, disaster recovery and centralized management. If your servers go down, is your business still operating? Or […]

Dell’s PartnerDirect program is just a little over 2 years old, and the company has had its work cut out for it winning the trust of VARs. Previously known as the company that made direct-only sales a religion, Dell’s channel organization has been looking to engage with channel partners. And its efforts may be paying off. […]

As Cisco breaks off its longstanding partner relationship with HP, the big winners are likely to be Cisco’s largest channel partners who may find themselves taking over implementing technologies that HP used to resell and implement on Cisco’s behalf. Cisco to HP: Hit the Road, Jack Cisco’s Channel Chief Keith Goodwin this week announced in […]

Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HPQ) reported first-quarter net revenue of $31.5 billion, up 8 percent year over year, and net income of $2.3 billion, up from $1.9 billion during the same period a year ago, representing a roughly 25 percent increase. More significantly, HP raised its outlook for its full fiscal year, citing its technology portfolio, leaner cost […]

IT solution providers and VARs fared better during this recession than the one that followed the dot-com/Y2K boom and bust, Ingram Micro (NYSE:IM) CEO Greg Spierkel has told Channel Insider. He estimates that 20 to 30 percent of the VAR community went into bankruptcy due to the effects of the recession in 2002 and 2003. […]