Recent Articles
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Symantec Establishes Partner Advisory Councils
Security vendor Symantec announced the establishment of a global and several regional partner advisory councils to give enterprise resellers a hand in the company’s course and forge closer ties between the vendor and VARs. The company promises a “highly interactive” vehicle to offer input on the vendor’s go-to-market strategies and an effective, influential forum for…
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SMB VAR Network Goes East
The Small and Medium Business Technology Network is looking eastward. The loose network of small VARs and integrators that originated in Southern California just added dozens of members on the Eastern Seaboard, boosting its membership to more than 400, according to Jim Locke, co-founder of SMBTN and president of J.W. Locke and Associates, based in…
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Managed Services: Threat or Opportunity?
At a recent channel event, I shared a table with a senior Fortune 1000 vendor channel executive and a handful of solution providers. I asked the executive, “Why should these solution providers sell your product rather than your competitor’s?” He provided an impressive set of reasons, including superior features, lower prices, better support programs and…
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Be Afraid: Congress Takes Up Net Neutrality
U.S. Congress involvement in anything these days should give everyone at least a slight tremor. “Unintended” consequences seem to have a way of rearing their ugly heads in the aftermath of congressional action. Remember campaign finance reform and how well that worked? What about the Telecommunications Act of 1996? Instead of the competition that was…
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What Will Apple Do When the Malware Comes?
The release in the last few days of malware for the Mac and Linux underscore some old issues about how it is possible to have malware on those platforms. I have some new thoughts though. I’ve begun to wonder what Apple would do if a real problem developed. To be very clear, a real problem…
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Tangent Suit Claims Microsoft Soaked Partners
Updated: Microsoft looks forward to defending itself against Tangent’s federal complaint, stating, “No court has ever found that Microsoft charged too much for its products.” Microsoft has been hit with yet another antitrust claim, this time from a partner that alleges that the software vendor abused its market dominance to extract exorbitant fees from OEMs,…
