Jessica Davis

Spring seems to be the season of change for channel executives this year, with news of big changes recently at Intel, Arrow, Oracle and Cisco even lost its Linksys channel executive, Nigel Williams. And now Hewlett-Packard has appointed insider Enrique Lores to senior vice president of worldwide sales for its Personal Systems Group and head […]

LifeSize is launching a high-definition videoconferencing system that lists for $4,999, a price the company says will spur widespread adoption of HD teleconferencing systems and make selling them easier for channel partners. Called LifeSize Focus, the system includes a camera with an integrated microphone along with a codec to deliver immersive HD teleconferencing to compete with […]

Looking to improve partner margins while providing end customers with opportunities to save power, Sun Microsystems is launching a new "Eco" partner program. The program, a component under the umbrella of Sun’s existing Advantage partner program, provides Sun partners with tools, resources and training to build Eco IT practices through assessments and implementations, thereby increasing […]

Need a story to tell your customers about why it’s better to buy through you, a reliable and long-trusted VAR, than directly from Dell? Look no further. The Consumerist blog has posted the story of a Dell customer who had a Dell technician visit to repair the headphone jack on her Dell Inspiron 9100. Well, […]

HP today announced a broad expansion of its imaging and printing portfolio for large businesses. HP officials said that the new offerings include six HP LaserJet printers, an enterprise-class scanner for document capture, three access control printing solutions, four printing services and an accreditation, certification and test program for HP’s software solution development partners. "These […]

SonicWall has established a Partner Excellence Center and plans to roll out a deal registration program later in 2008. The company’s channel chief calls both moves part of an effort to go after Cisco resellers. "Over the past two years there was a lot more concentration on the expansion of the company though acquisitions," such […]

Dell’s recruitment plans for VAR partners will focus specifically on solution providers and systems integrators who have customers that Dell has been unable to reach. That’s according to Paul Bell, Dell senior vice president and president of the Americas, speaking to a group of analysts at the company’s headquarters this week. Bell also provided further […]

Cisco will make two of its successful services offerings more widely available to its channel partners next week with announcements at its Cisco Partner Summit. First, the networking giant is taking its entry-level monitoring service, Smart Care, to the masses by releasing it for general availability for partners to offer end-customers. And second, Cisco will […]

Got a complaint about how your vendor deals with channel partners? Get in line. A new channel performance study gives vendors a failing grade when it comes to how they drive business through their channel partner programs. The study, the Channel Performance Outlook Study, compiled the opinions of 500 indirect channel sales executives, distributors, resellers and […]

Former Ingram Micro boss Kevin Murai has joined rival distributor Synnex as co-CEO and will move into the sole CEO role in November when current CEO Bob Huang retires.   Murai has also been named to Synnex’s board of directors. Murai told Channel Insider that while he does not plan to make big changes to […]

Dell has launched a limited pilot of a direct-to-customers managed services program, the company told partners in a March 31 letter from channel chief Greg Davis. The pilot initially will be limited by geography—slated for Dallas, Davis said—and he promised to reveal further details about Dell’s managed services plans and how they relate to the […]

As energy costs and a looming recession weigh on the minds of top executives across many industries, integrated power and cooling services vendor APC has beefed up its channel program and is taking its message on the road. A full 70 percent of CIOs surveyed by Gartner named power and cooling as the biggest problem […]