Scott Ferguson

Despite some recent strides to engage the channel, Lenovo is still receiving mixed reviews from VARs as the PC vendor prepares to battle titans Dell and Hewlett-Packard. The Raleigh, N.C.- based company has earned some points with the channel, especially on price, but many resellers remain troubled by the vendors lack of name recognition among […]

Add another Mac blog to the list. On Oct. 9, Google launched its own blog dedicated to Apple Computer’s Macintosh and other Apple applications. The first post on Google Mac Blog by Scott Knaster, a technical writer, and Rose Yao, a Mac product manager, offered some insight into why the search engine leader decided to […]

A new study found that worldwide shipments of smart phones and PDAs were up 57 percent in the first six months of 2006 compared to the same time period last year. The Gartner study, released Oct. 5, found that global shipments of smart phones grew by more than 75 percent in the first six months […]

Toshiba announced Oct. 10 that it is introducing several updates to its mid-range Satellite notebook line, and the company said it plans to market the new computers to both enterprises and the consumer. The computer section of Toshiba American Information Systems, which is based in Irvine, Calif., announced that the Satellite P105, M115 and the […]

Oracle announced Oct. 9 that it has purchased Sunopsis, a Burlington, Mass.-based company that produces data integration software. Oracle will integrate Sunopsis’ data integration products into its Fusion Middleware offerings, the Redwood Shores, Calif. company said in a statement. That integration will support both Oracle and non-Oracle data sources, according to the company. Sunopsis offers […]

Distributor Arrow Electronics is now offering its VARs and solution providers a managed service program for selling Sun Microsystems solutions. The new managed service program is being offered through the MOCA Group of Arrow Enterprise Computing Solutions, the company announced Oct. 9 at its annual Net@Work Partner forum in San Antonio, Texas. With the managed […]

Samsung has always been known for its high-tech, high-end offerings for the consumer market. That is about to change. The Irvine, Calif., vendor has begun paying closer attention to the commercial channel. At the IT ChannelVision conference in Phoenix, Samsung staked out a prime spot of the showroom floor to show off its latest wares, […]

Advanced Micro Devices, the world’s second-largest producer of microprocessors, announced that it has started a new partner program that will test and validate products made with the company’s AMD64 technology. The AMD Validated Solutions program was formally launched on Oct. 2 and company officers talked about the program extensively at the IT Channel Vision conference […]

There is little doubt that VARs have begun to target new opportunities in the small and midsize business space. However, what are those business end users looking for from VARs and solution providers to help with their IT concerns? The answer, according to Joslyn Faust, a principal research analyst at Gartner, is better service and […]

VARs and solution providers need to constantly recruit top sales talent to keep competitive in a channel environment that is undergoing fundamental changes. That is the blunt advice of Larry Kesslin, the preside of 4-Profit, an advisory service company that works with the IT channel and is based in Riverdale, N.Y. Kesslin addressed solution providers, […]

First, the bad news. The channel is changing and those traditional relationships between vendors, distributors, VARs and solution providers have begun to alter in fundamental and lasting ways. But there is also good news. For VARs and solution providers, it’s not too late to change, readapt and profit from this change in the channel. That […]

Apple Computer on Sept. 29 issued a security update that promises to fix several critical flaws in Mac OS X. In issuing the 2006-006 security update, the Cupertino, Calif., company patched and updated 12 flaws in Mac OS X Version 10.4.8. Several of the security flaws were serious enough to open the possibility for arbitrary […]