Recent Articles
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The Open Source Challenge in the Channel
One of the ironies of the channel these days is that many of the data centers and network operations centers (NOCs) built by solution providers are based on open source technologies. Almost invariably, these platforms are being used to support commercial software and systems that have been deployed at any number of customer locations. That…
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Time to Dismantle the Channel Welfare State
There’s a lot of discontent these days with the state of the channel that largely stems from some of the very core economic theories that the channel is based on. The root of the problem that many companies have with the channel as it currently exists is that channel chiefs routinely struggle with the number…
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Mastering Your Own Cloud Computing Fate
As many solution providers continue to evolve into cloud service providers many of the server vendor relationships that many of them built their businesses on are being reevaluated. The primary reason this is happening is that if customers are buying a service they generally don’t care much about the specific IT infrastructure that enables it.…
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MSP Ecosystems Start to Come of Age
An interesting phenomenon is starting to take shape in the managed services category that has some long term implications for resellers in the channel. Managed service providers (MSPs) are increasingly partnering with software vendors to deliver more products as a service. For instance, instead of the customer buying backup and recovery software, the customer relies…
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Mobile Computing Should Prove to Be a Boon for the Channel
While there may not be much profit in reselling mobile computing devices, the opportunities associated with reselling mobile computing applications is a whole different matter. As organizations of all sizes become more comfortable with mobile computing devices they are starting to look for applications that leverage a near ubiquitous form of computing that requires very…
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The State of the Managed Service Provider
For more than a decade now solution providers have been told they should embrace managed services as a way to ensure ongoing profitability in an age where profit margins associated with reselling products are razor thin. Now comes an age of cloud computing where many systems are being consolidated in the cloud. Many of those…