John Hazard

IBM will launch a Partner Profitability Tool the week of March 26 designed to put a rough number and date on the ROI of partnering with Big Blue. While a rough, and uncertain, two-year estimate, it marks the first time a partner has been able to attach a number to the “‘Is it worth it?’ […]

Manhattan Associates, an Atlanta-based supply chain ISV, has been building on IBM blocks for 15 years, but it is turning to Big Blue now for its sales, marketing, research, logistics and services reach to build a global channel it couldn’t otherwise build on its own. Manhattan Associates, which announced its global aspirations March 28, isn’t […]

Thirty-second TV spots with Jay-Z boasting “The PC is personal again!” might say it louder, but for the past six months, John Snaider, vice president and general manager of Hewlett-Packard’s Americas Business PCs, and the company’s Personal Systems Group have been preaching to the manufacturer’s 26,000 channel partners that “the PC is profitable again.” Thin […]

Hewlett-Packard rolled out enhancements to it’s PartnerOne channel program to simplify membership and reward requirements and add incentives to boost new business growth among its 26,000 partners. The latest adjustment, the third in 18 months, cuts the complexity of the program further and rewards VARs who are growing their HP business, said Tom LaRocca, HP’s […]

Eighty-eight percent of Ingram Micro’s VentureTech Network members are partnering with each other, up from 77 percent in 2006. Other VARs and distributors should take note. Analysts, channel chiefs and many VARs pay lip service to the concept of partnering among VARs as the channel becomes segmented vertically and VARs seek to extend their solution […]

Ingram Micro’s “Seismic” Managed Services Platform and delivery program is attracting lots of interest from customers, but most are holding out for the distributor to open the Network Operations Center, slated for early in the second quarter of 2007, customers and Ingram officials said. The service, a hosted version of Level Platforms remote monitoring and […]

How much money are you leaving on the table? Kirk Robinson, vice president of North America Channel Marketing at Ingram Micro, posed that question to a roomful of VARs March 15 at the distributor’s VTN conference in Nashville. If you’re not taking advantage of license renewals and warranty extension and refreshes, you likely are leaving […]

Cisco System’s five-year effort to engage an SMB channel, has relied almost exclusively on distributors to introduce, recruit and train VARs about the vendor and their SMB value. It has engaged all of the distributors with programs with programs that familiarize a set of VARs already selling successfully in the space with a technology and […]

Wear your “Cheap Sunglasses” to IBM’s PartnerWorld Conference April 29 to May 2 in St. Louis. ZZ Top is in the house. The bearded boys will be blaring at the show as part of the May 2 entertainment, giving a break to John Fogerty, who last year played no less than three channel shows—PWorld, Hewlett-Packard […]

Distributor Ingram Micro on March 15 announced new business building tools for its Glacier program to prod more Cisco Systems sales out of small and midsize business VARs. The new tool set—business development consulting, technical training and certification assistance and Cisco services practice help through Ingram’s Reseller Services Portal—is designed to educate VARs that are […]

Cisco Systems introduced incentives and tools for its “core” technologies—routers and switches—to support VARs selling what is still the backbone of the network. VARs are now eligible for a trade-in incentives, deal registration and end-user network assessments for Cisco’s keystone technologies such as VOIP (voice over IP), Unified Communications and others. VARs will also be […]

What works in marketing? During a break on March 14 at Ingram Micro’s VTN conference in Nashville, VARs shared with each other some unique success stories. Inacom Information Systems, of Madison, Wis., took the focus off technology, holding events like family night at the zoo, inviting guest speakers like University of Wisconsin football coach , […]