Jessica Davis

In a tough market, it feels like all negotiation comes down to price and the customer always has the advantage. But master negotiator Bill Garcia, founder of Table Force, says there are tactics that businesses can employ anytime they are negotiating to get the best deal possible. Garcia shared a taste of his menu of […]

In an age of squeezed margins for IT hardware sales, everybody is looking for higher-margin value they can add to the deal, whether its integration, services or even software as a service. And one road that some VARs are traveling down to boost margins is partnerships with ISVs (independent software vendors). It’s value that resonates […]

They aren’t pouring the champagne at IT distribution giant Ingram Micro, but it’s not a drought anymore either. Ingram Micro attributed a better-than-expected third quarter to improving demand, better currency conditions, and its efforts to engage customers and vendors. Those more proactive efforts yielded better results in the third quarter, CEO Greg Spierkel tells Channel […]

If your customers seem to be moving at a more frantic pace, they are not alone. Overall, everyone is more pressed for time these days, says uber-cool trend spotter Michael Tchong, who spoke to VARs about the quickening pace of all things and how that fits into the uber-trend of being unwired. Tchong, founder of […]

The decline in margins on IT hardware sales may have accelerated the move of many VARs to solutions selling, but the Wall Street meltdown, credit crunch and recession only served to solidify the commitment of many to move into those kinds of sales. That was the impetus behind the formation of the Solutions First Council, […]

IT Service Trends Highest Paying Biggest Demand Top Geographies Q3: A Return to Normal? Online IT services marketplace OnForce recorded a return to pricing stability and installation work in the third quarter – good news for a market that’s been battered by a recession and leaning on break/fix work. OnForce released some of the key […]

Dassault Systèmes has agreed to buy a portion of IBM’s sales and client support service for its product lifecycle management software in a deal valued at $600 million in cash. The deal includes the PLM software portfolio, customer contracts and related assets. It marks the biggest such deal in Dassault’s history, and the French technology […]

Virtualization has remained at the top of IT spending lists this year even as spending on almost every other category has slipped dramatically. And to help IT organizations get the most out of their virtualization investments, solution providers have an array of new technologies to choose from—including a set of offerings introduced by CA this […]

During economic recessions, while there’s certainly attention to how to cut costs, many businesses also look at how they can better serve their customers. And in an age of social networking, plenty of solution providers have launched blogs, become active on LinkedIn or Facebook or Twitter, or continued to rely on the tried-and-true e-mail newsletter […]

Virtualization may be a big buzzword in IT circles this year, but it’s not as widespread as many presume. However, its momentum is growing fast, according to the most recent information from Gartner, presented at its Gartner Symposium/ITxpo in Orlando this week. The market research firm says that while only 16 percent of workloads are […]

What’s the killer app for the cloud these days? If you ask one of the biggest data sourcing companies, TPI, which acts as matchmaker between outsourcers and outsourcing service providers, companies looking to cloud computing want to move something very basic out there – their PCs. “Companies are buying access to terminals for a lot […]

With Windows 7’s release now official, thoughts in the industry now look toward the hardware world. Manufacturers of the computer components and systems that will run the OS are placing big bets on Windows 7’s potential impact on the sale of new computer systems. “I think everybody is ready and waiting,” Margaret Lewis, director of […]