Recent Articles
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Asterisk’s Business VOIP Stars as Your Virtual Assistant
You’ve probably heard of Vonage and Skype, which offer decent Internet-based calling for individuals. But you should get familiar with Asterisk. This business-oriented VOIP (voice-over-IP) server uses a Web interface to put you in control of your phone system’s features and capabilities. And as a bonus, this system gives everyone in your office an easy…
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Zyme Helps Vendors Help Themselves
One of the toughest challenges IT vendors grapple with is keeping tabs on inventory once it reaches the channel. How much product is sitting in channel warehouses and how much has actually reached users on any given day is often a mystery. Discrepancies between vendor records and those of partners are more common than anybody…
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CompTIA’s Message to VARs: Sell What You’ve Been Giving Away
VARs have been giving away much of their value for little or nothing, just to make the deal, and it’s time they started charging, CompTIA officials told Channel Insider. For too long VARs have included implementation, setup, user training and other services as part of deals just to make the sale. But as hardware and…
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Apple Unveils New Wireless ‘Mighty Mouse’ for the Mac
Apple Computer is introducing a new wireless mouse for the Mac. On July 25, the Cupertino, Calif.-based company announced it would start selling the Mighty Mouse, a new version of its mouse that uses Bluetooth 2.0 wireless technology. Apple has been using Bluetooth technology in its Macs for several years. The new mouse also fits…
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Farming Beats Hunting
One of the central tenets of the book “Guns, Germs and Steel” by Jared Diamond is that societies that develop farming will eventually develop an economy that will overwhelm societies based on hunting and gathering. That may not be all that insightful, but when the same economic theories are applied to the channel, an interesting…
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Symantec to Push Product Training over Solution Training
Symantec made a significant shift in how it enables its 60,000 partners when it announced a new sales training curriculum July 24 that focuses on the vendor’s products and not the solutions in which they fit. Beginning with 18 Web-based Symantec Sales Expert training programs to be rolled out this week and next, partners will…
