Jessica Davis

More than half of SMBs prefer to buy their PCs from a VAR or systems integrator rather than direct from the vendor, and SMBs plan to increase their PC spending this year by 7 percent. That’s according to a new survey from Forrester Research of more than 1,000 small businesses—700 in North America and another […]

Hewlett-Packard VARs will now be able to sell various enterprise HP consulting services, as the vendor announced it is moving the services from a direct sale into the channel. HP said it will move several of its HP-provided consulting services and educational services that have traditionally been sold by its own direct organization over to […]

NetGear will increase its discounts to its top-tier partners to 12 percent from 8 percent in a series of improvements to the company’s partner program, announced this week at Networld+Interop, along with a series of products designed specifically for the SMB space. The changes are part of the company’s improvements to its PowerShift Partner Program […]

Challenging economic conditions are beginning to affect IT sales, if the earnings of IT distributors are any indication. Arrow, Avnet and Ingram Micro all announced their earnings this week (all three links will expire after 30 days), and all reported that macroeconomic conditions hurt sales. From high gas prices to their effect on the prices […]

Ingram Micro, reporting earnings April 24, attributed its revenue softness to broad macroeconomic factors in some geographic areas, including North America and Europe. Ingram Micro CEO Greg Spierkel told Channel Insider that the rising consumer prices and the real estate crisis in the United States are weighing on the market. "There’s the rise in the […]

Dell’s MSP partners will soon have a new service to offer to customers, and to compete with Dell on. The company announced April 24 that it has closed on its MessageOne acquisition. The deal provides Dell with managed services technology for e-mail management, archiving and business continuity. The company is adding these functions to its […]

Want to tell Dell what you really think? The comments section is open now. Dell says it will be launching a new blog to serve its partner community. According to Dell: “The blog will be a place where you can tell us what you think. I’ll also aim to get partners to post on the […]

Weak server sales hurt Avnet’s earnings per share in the third quarter, as CIOs postponed big projects in the current uncertain economic environment, according to executives at the distribution giant. "Our enterprise server revenue in the Americas and EMEA [Europe, the Middle East and Africa] was far less than we anticipated," John Paget, global president […]

Hewlett-Packard’s new global channel chief says he is looking to simplify the company’s existing channel programs to make it easier for partners to place orders and get paid. Enrique Lores on April 15 was named senior vice president of worldwide sales for HP’s Personal Systems Group and head of its Solutions Partner Organization, serving all HP […]

While your typical office that’s already wired for Ethernet may not be scrambling to get in on the first wave of 802.11n deployment, some vertical end customers may be good candidates for the new version of Wi-Fi technology. Ruckus Wireless, which introduced a channel program six months ago and now works with 200 VAR partners, […]

In an attempt to eliminate barriers to entry for ISVs entering the software-as-a-service market, Sun Microsystems is offering a free 90-day proof-of-concept sandbox trial of Solaris on Demand. The program relies on Sun’s Solaris operating system as the infrastructure and is hosted by a handful of participating service providers. The ISV gets the sandbox, managed […]

Looking to both reward its channel partners and make their implementations go smoother, Juniper Networks has released what it is calling an Implementation Specialization—a quick reference guide to developing and deploying specific Juniper technologies. The "playbook," created from the best practices of Juniper engineers and select Elite J-Partners, creates a standardized way to implement Juniper […]