John Moore

The typical three-year generational turnover in technology means organizations perpetually have excess equipment on their hands. And while the emphasis in IT is generally on the new, the disposal of the old presents logistical, environmental and security challenges. How does one integrate the handling of obsolete items into an overarching IT lifecycle management program? What […]

Document management pioneer ZyLab is looking to make a comeback in the channel. The company, which launched in 1983 in Chicago with a PC-based full-text retrieval software product, has since branched into Europe and Asia. The expanding company also built a dealer network. In North America, that effort diminished somewhat over time, but the company […]

DiamondCluster International and Sapient appear to be on the same upward trajectory, as the consulting firms take different paths to new highs on the financial improvement track. The companies talked business fundamentals last week during quarterly earnings calls. Both companies’ results seem to point toward an improved environment. DiamondCluster‘s North American net revenue was up […]

Resellers are drawn to storage as a technology that customers badly need and one that offers better margins than other varieties of box pushing. But as with any popular niche, differentiation eventually becomes an issue. Kashya Inc., however, aims to offer an extra element to the resellers’ storage mix. Kashya’s main message to resellers: Its […]

Perhaps you’ve never considered a video game console or a plasma TV as the way to your customer’s heart, but apparently other resellers have. Indeed, D&H Distributing Co. Inc. has found that a third of its consumer electronics business flows through IT resellers, according to Dan Schwab, vice president of marketing at the Harrisburg, Pa., […]

Oracle and channel harmony are words that haven’t always been mentioned in the same breath. But there’s nothing like a clean start. Oracle has reformulated its channel approach to support the recent North American launch of Oracle E-Business Suite Special Edition, a product tailored for the SMB (small and medium business) space. Special Edition is […]

ANTs Software thinks there’s a market for its high-performance databases, and the company is hoping resellers agree. The Burlingame, Calif., company recently unveiled a partner initiative, the ANTs Software Alliance Program. The program aims to cultivate alliances with a few VARs in select vertical markets: financial services, telecommunications, health care, real-time logistics and security. The […]

Paul Gustafson, director of Computer Sciences Corp.‘s Leading Edge Forum, which authored the “Open Source: Open for Business” report, says open source’s influences stretches from the desktop to high-performance computing centers. “People equate Linux with open source, and it sort of stops there,” Gustafson says. “But the open-source community has gone beyond Linux—and it’s taking […]

If you are a reseller specializing in storage, you’ve probably bumped into customers who—quite literally—want to get more mileage out of their storage area networks. Indeed, customers would like to interconnect SAN islands, but Fibre Channel’s range is limited to about six miles. That’s a problem for organizations that want to mirror their data off-site […]

Resellers searching for a way to stand out in the backup market may find an ally in Asigra Inc. Asigra, based in Toronto, recently retooled its marketing strategy. The company had been selling its backup and recovery solutions to service providers, who, in turn, supported end customers. But the company earlier this summer launched a […]

The process of lead dissemination could be likened to a black hole: leads enter the system and never escape. Stephen Hawking recently said that black holes eventually expel mangled matter, but I think you get the picture. BlueRoads Corp. believes it has an answer to the challenge of tracking leads. The company’s BlueRoads 5 partner […]

Small-business marketing often operates by fits and starts: a seminar here, a direct-mail piece there, and not much in the way of continuity. Avnet Partner Solutions, IBM Americas division, wants to change that situation. At this week’s Avnet Partner Conference, the company unveiled Avnet Integrated Marketing Solutions (AIMS). AIMS is intended to make marketing less […]