John Hazard

EMC partner AmeriVault says it’s unconcerned by the vendor’s seeming interest in online vaulting, the Managed Storage Provider’s turf since 1998. EMC President and CEO Joe Tucci on Feb. 6 told a standing-room-only press conference at the RSA Security Conference 2007 that the storage vendor is currently researching and apparently will pursue an online archiving […]

Datalink acquired fellow storage VAR Midrange Computer Solutions Feb. 1 and overnight became one of the largest vendors of Sun, EMC, IBM and Symantec storage solutions. The purchase, for $14 million ($5 million cash and $9 million in Datalink shares), makes a storage VAR with the potential for $160 million in annual revenue–MCSI’s $47 million […]

Google reached a bit of a milestone recently–50 channel partners building applications and services on its enterprise search solutions. The channel came to Google in September 2005, when the software giant sought out the aid of partners in bringing its search technology behind the corporate firewall. Twelve initial VARs and ISVs began developing solutions designed […]

Any speculation about Dell changing its channel tune as it changes CEOs might be answered best by the company itself. In a release announcing the decision to replace CEO Kevin Rollins with former CEO and founder Michael Dell, the PC manufacturer boasted, “There is no better person in the world to run Dell at this […]

Charles Weaver, president of the MSPAlliance, makes a simple analogy for the concept of accrediting Managed Service Providers. “When I go to a doctor, I don’t understand anything about medicine, but I trust he does because of the certificates on his wall,” he said. “There needs to be that same level of trust in Managed […]

The consumer and small business launch of Microsoft Windows Vista and Office on Jan. 30 meant very little for business customers, but for VARs and partners trying to sell it to them, it’s the air cover they’ve been waiting for. The first mass-market Vista marketing blitz hits the airwaves and billboards Feb. 1, with a […]

Veritas is marketing its new Backup Reporter 6.0as a visibility tool for managed service providers with a need to analyze and rein in backup operations. The product is aimed at IT organizations with runaway storage environments full of heterogeneous systems that make tracking operations a bear, not to mention the compliance concerns. But in announcements […]

SAP’s Donna Troy will resign her post as head of the software maker’s global channel program, company sources revealed Jan. 29. Troy, executive vice president of global SME (small and midsize enterprise) indirect channels, will leave the company soon, following a restructuring of SAP’s channel and sales groups that brought her team and position under […]

Managed security service provider Perimeter Internetworking acquired smaller rival, Message Secure, thereby adding finance clients and regional presence, both firms announced Jan. 29. The purchase, Perimeter’s ninth in three years, gives the MSP 200 new financial clients, bringing its total in the space to 1,900 customers and improves the Milford, Conn. firm’s coverage in California […]

Network Liquidators, a supplier of used network hardware, launched a program for VARs to help them bring wares in the front door and out the back. The company finds VARs a useful source of used product procurement and expects their ranks would be an equally efficient route to market, said Joe Serra, Network Liquidators’ executive […]

Ingram Micro VARs can dispose of customers’ cell phones and printer cartridges as an added service, and earn credit to boot. Ingram Micro Outlet/Recycle is designed to provide a streamlined process for resellers to toss customers used cell phones, ink and laser printer and fax cartridges, an added service for the end-user and an extra […]

Cisco Systems penned a deal with ScanSource, a Point of Sale and data capture specialty distributor, opening it to thousands of manufacturing and retail VARs, an underserved market for the network vendor. The pick-up, the second distribution deal in as many years for Cisco, opens a second front in a planned three-front distribution strategy to […]