Jessica Davis

Six months after it removed the partner requirement for reselling its products, Oracle is declaring the action to be a success. Oracle made the change—allowing sales through distribution via the Oracle VAD Remarketer program—so that resellers that did not want to pay the fees associated with being an Oracle partner could still resell the company’s […]

A full 48 percent of survey respondents said they look to service providers for advice on business and technology trends, and 32 percent said they wanted even more of this kind of advice.

What’s wrong with Microsoft’s Windows Small Business Server 2008? It’s not here yet. Microsoft announced the new server family name on Feb. 20. Called Windows Essential Server Solutions family, it includes standard and premium editions of Windows Small Business Server 2008 and standard and premium editions of Windows Essential Business Server 2008 which is aimed […]

Nearly a year after it first announced its software-as-a-service Symantec Protection Network online backup offering for SMBs, the security vendor has said the solution is now generally available. The company is offering a free, three-month trial for customers who sign up before April 30, and is offering higher commissions to partners who convert those trials […]

CIOs want their solution providers to offer return on investment analysis, but only a small percentage of solution providers offer it. That’s according to new research from the Ziff Davis Enterprise IT Executives Service Provider Study conducted in February 2008. The survey offered insight into what sorts of services CIOs were looking for and getting […]

The portfolio is available to customers now from Dell. Channel partners will get the tools in the coming months, a spokesperson said. For better or worse, Dell started out its existence and spent most of its life boasting about the benefit of its direct-only sales strategy. So over the last year the company has been […]

Dell is looking to be able to offer customers and channel partners 18 to 20 kinds of infrastructure services that they can mix and match into customized services. That’s the strategy behind the company’s plans, announced Feb. 12, to acquire MessageOne, an e-mail archiving company, according to Raj Kushwaha, vice president of services at Dell. […]

Sun Microsystems will use its channel partner network to create virtual subsidiaries in emerging markets around the world with the first one in Vietnam. The program, called Sun Equity Partner, or SEP, lets Sun gain a greater presence in particular geographies by creating a joint venture company between Sun and one of its partners in […]

Two and a half months after it launched its formal partner program, PartnerDirect, in the United States, Dell is ready to export it. The PC maker announced Feb. 12 that PartnerDirect is now available in Europe and in Canada. The programs offer the same features as the program in the United States—a two-tier program supported […]

Jamcracker is offering a new service to help VARs quickly add software as a service to their lineups. The Santa Clara, Calif., aggregator of on-demand software applications—including those from Microsoft, WebEx and McAfee—is opening up its Webstores model to VARs.  The company also offers the services to telcos and large service providers. Webstores provide front- and […]

A declining economy is likely to mean more traction for software as a service, particularly in vertical industries with the tightest budgets such as financial services. That’s according to John Loftus, executive vice president and managing director of the technology group at Safeguard Scientifics, a publicly-held investment firm that gives a leg up to growth-stage […]

Microsoft is expanding its Open Value Licensing program in a way designed to make it more attractive for channel partners to sell site licenses to their SMB customers. The program previously only offered the more expensive perpetual software licenses. But on March 3 Microsoft will announce Open Value Subscription – a new option that enables […]