Recent Articles
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Economic Downturn to Slow Government Spending
When businesses start tightening their budgets in economic downtimes, solution providers start looking for customer alternatives. Often, that means targeting the government market. But the timing couldn’t be worse, according to Bob Laclede, vice president and general manager of government and education sales at distributor Ingram Micro. Typically, solution providers set their sights on local…
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Sun Partner Advantage Program Adds Software Specialties
Looking to put more weight behind its software product sales, Sun Microsystems has announced a series of software specialty certifications available to members of its Sun Partner Advantage Program. Sun also announced an Open Access Channel Program, providing access to this software to companies that aren’t Sun partners. "Software specialties are designed to provide increased…
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Increasing Security Threats Open New Channel Opportunities
Recent reports from three different vendors suggest that IT security is still a major stumbling block for many organizations, and failure to properly address concerns and educate employees and executives could stifle business innovation, lead to data loss or theft and identity theft, and increase vulnerability to spam attacks. While this is certainly bad news…
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Solution Providers Positive but Cautious about Microsoft Azure
While many solution providers ranked Microsoft’s cloud computing effort as their top concern in a recent survey, some IT solution providers are taking a positive but cautious approach to Microsoft’s new Azure platform, which puts computing power in the cloud for end-user businesses. The technology enabled by Microsoft Azure, which will be hosted on Dell…
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Time to Invest in Business Development
Walking down the street of Bellevue, Washington, the other night, I overheard the conversation of four middle-aged men who were obviously in the technology business (blue shirts, khaki pants). The topic of their evening stroll: partner expectations. The most senior member of this quadruplet was bemoaning how he keeps getting calls from solution provider partners…
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The Scariest Things in the Channel
What would any Halloween be in the channel without considering some of the things in the channel that go bump in the night. Without further ado, here’s a list of 10 things that tend to scare the average solution provider executive these days: Managed Services: This may be one of the most profitable aspects of…