Recent Articles
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Appliances: Business Opportunity in a Box
Appliances have become a popular way to market an array of solutions from anti-spam to VPN security. The appliance vendor’s marketing pitch typically argues that hardware and software bundles make sense for small businesses that, more often than not, lack robust IT support. The box gets installed and does its job with a minimum of…
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Trust May be the Key to HP Channel Retrenchment
Whoever said familiarity breeds contempt got it wrong. At least when it comes to the channel, familiarity breeds confidence. By necessity, the channel functions on the basis of relationships. Solid relationships up and down the supply chain are fundamental ― from the vendors and their suppliers all the way to the end users, through distributors…
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Channel Still Wary of HP
One month after Carly Fiorina’s departure as chief executive of Hewlett-Packard Co., some HP resellers are welcoming the decision to shift some large accounts from HP’s direct-sales group into the channel; other members of HP’s enterprise partner group, however, remain guarded about the company’s overall channel strategy. During Fiorina’s reign, a common partner complaint was…
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GXS Links Coffee Firm To Customers
When Eight O’Clock Coffee spun out from The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company Inc. it found itself with pressing e-commerce demands and limited resources to meet them. The company completed its split with the grocer – better known as A&P – in late 2003. Last year, another challenge surfaced: the need to meet Wal-Mart’s…
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Your Competition May Be Your Best Asset
Despite the geographic boundaries the Internet has broken down in the business world, national organizations and small and midsize businesses alike will always need a local service provider to cover their IT services needs. Enterprise-level service providers could be national systems integrators with local offices or, just as often, bands of smaller VARs that join…
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Tech Data, Intermec Take Aim at POS, Data Capture Market
Distributor Tech Data is expanding the products it offers for point-of-sale and product data capture under a newly inked deal with Intermec Technologies, a manufacturer of asset-management and data-collection solutions. Clearwater, Fla.-based Tech Data Corp. launched a POS (point-of-sale) business unit two years ago, and built it up by adding POS product lines from 12…