Pedro Pereira

For a company that built a business model around disdaining the channel, Dell sure gets a lot of attention in the channel. And that is only about to intensify as the vendor changes its public attitude toward VARs, integrators and service providers. As widely reported, after years of pretending it wanted nothing to do with […]

Distributor Ingram Micro Tuesday is launching a division to sell complex solutions involving such technologies as blade servers and networked storage to organizations with fewer than 1,000 seats. The Infrastructure Technology Solutions Division will help Ingram Micro’s solution provider partners zero in on a market space that has remained underserved by the IT channel, said […]

Between innovations such as the Apple iPhone and Microsoft’s newly announced surface computer, it appears the future of computing will be rather tactile. Both devices employ touch-screens for all functions, and if they meet with success in the market, they will change the way we use computers. That is, if these devices perform precisely as […]

Managed services providers are enjoying growth rates of more than 200 percent in some cases, and often they are winning customer business without having to face competition. The lack of competition, said Jonathan Wolf, vice president of product marketing at SilverBack Technologies, a managed services platform vendor in Billerica, Mass., indicates there is still a […]

In all the buzz about direct-selling vendor Dell and its plans to finally make an honest partner out of the channel, one extremely significant fact has gone unmentioned: Dell already has a relationship with the IT industry’s largest distributors, Ingram Micro and Tech Data. The deal with Tech Data is reportedly worth several hundred million […]

During a Ziff Davis eSeminar on May 10, one of the audience’s first questions was about ceding control of IT systems to a managed service provider. The audience comprised hundreds of end users, who naturally have concerns about what it could mean to their business should a provider they engage under a managed services contract […]

It took a while for distributors to find their place in managed services, but the race is finally on. Just as Tech Data jumps into the market with its own offering, Ingram Micro is expanding its Seismic managed services palette. Ingram Micro, of Santa Ana, Calif., on May 7 revealed four additions to its Seismic […]

Lack of awareness remains the biggest obstacle to customers in agreeing to a managed services contract. In a survey of users, IT trade organization CompTIA, of Oakbrook Terrace, Ill., found that 52 percent of customers cited lack of knowledge about available services as the biggest deterrent for them to use managed services. This means that […]

Solution providers typically like to keep their customers out of reach of vendors, lest the vendors give in to the temptation to cut the provider out of the equation. But e-mail filtering and security vendor MX Logic, Englewood, Colo., has turned the indirect sales model on its head. Whereas vendors selling through partners typically let […]

Sun’s pricing debacle in April points to a weakness in the structural setup of a good number of IT vendors, even those commonly perceived as “channel friendly.” The weakness results from lack of communication between a vendor’s channel-focused employees and those who work on the direct side of the business. Unless the vendor does 100 […]

A Google News search the other day on “SMB” produced 1,807 returns. It’s not exactly “American Idol” numbers, but that’s a lot of news on small and midsize businesses. What’s going on? Vendors in the past couple of years have made strong strategic plays for that market space, and lately the trend seems to have […]

Enterprise Resource Planning software traditionally has found a home in large organizations, but a solution provider in Vancouver is helping to change that by bringing a wireless, open-source ERP application to small and midsize businesses. The provider, YellowDog Consulting Inc., developed the application for use in handheld devices utilized by warehouse workers to ship and […]