Recent Articles
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Avnet Climbs Aboard the Cisco Unified Computing Train
Avnet has joined the growing army of distributors lining up to make it easier for channel partner solution providers to resell and install Cisco’s Unified Computing System. This week the IT and electronics distributor announced that it would create a dedicated business unit focused on Cisco Systems’ data center product suite, and it would sell…
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Microsoft Customer Satisfaction Mandate Looms
When Microsoft informed its partners that conducting customer satisfaction surveys would be mandatory to maintain or achieve Gold Certified level status in the revamped Microsoft Partner Network, it was viewed by some as yet-another administrative hurdle. Outward grumbling was kept to a minimum, however, though some partners privately wondered whether they reaped any benefit from…
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Are Microsoft’s Best Days Behind It?
It’s strange and almost silly to think of putting Microsoft on a death watch, but chatter is increasingly rising about the steady decline and dimming future for the world’s largest and most successful software company. Just a couple of years ago Microsoft seemed an invincible force, yet an increasing number of pundits and solution providers…
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Dramatic Data Center Denouement: Making Sense of 2009
Lean and Green Seems like one of the mantras of 2009 was “Do more with less,” and that’s what going green is most often all about. Whether it’s greater energy efficiency or greater attention to recycling IT assets when they’ve come to the end of their useful lives, green was a big trend for the…
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FTC Sues Intel for Alleged Anticompetitive Practices
What’s already been a very troubling year for Intel just got worse. The Federal Trade Commission is suing the world’s biggest computer chip maker, charging that the company has illegally used its dominant market position for a decade to stifle competition and strengthen its monopoly. They allege that Intel “has waged a systematic campaign to…
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Dell Zeros In on Data Center Storage
The battle for the data center has been heating up recently with the likes of Cisco’s California, HP’s Converged Infrastructure, IBM’s Smarter Planet and the disappearance of Sun, so Dell’s decision to throw its hat in the ring with its own IT-as-a-commodity approach should come as no surprise. However, somewhat buried in the company’s grand…
