Recent Articles
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IBM Launches Midmarket Software Partner Incentive Program
Looking to win more business from midmarket customers, IBM has upped the incentive ante for a subset of its software solution provider channel partners, with co-marketing dollars, leads and for the first time a social network marketing component. IBM is calling the new program the IBM Business Partner Software Midmarket Value Initiative. To qualify, a…
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Partner Locators Yield Mixed Results
While researching a recent story, I needed to get in touch with a few solution providers who partnered with a large vendor (who shall remain nameless). After fruitless attempts to talk to contacts I already had in my Rolodex, I decided to try some ‘cold calling,’ and pulled up the vendor’s Partner Locator. I started…
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Solution Providers: PC Refresh Cycles Stretch to Five Years
What if five years is the new normal in terms of PC refresh cycles? It’s not such an outrageous idea, according to solution providers and analysts contacted by Channel Insider. Pushed by the performance requirements of new software and the increasing performance of hardware driven by Moore’s Law, PCs in many corporations have typically been…
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Is Microsoft the Managed Services Market’s Biggest Enemy?
Over the years Microsoft’s commitment to channel partners has been pretty much unassailable, regardless of what you may think of the company’s products or its inclination to throw its weight around. But as the managed services market matures, you have to wonder how long the world’s largest software company plans to sit on the sidelines.…
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Is ‘Patch Tuesday’ Dead?
Microsoft’s first Patch Tuesday of the new year is an unusually singular effort; the company is releasing a single patch to correct a remote code vulnerability in all versions of Windows server. When Microsoft created Patch Tuesday in October 2003, it was a mechanism for bringing regularity and predictability to the patch release process. Prior…
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Bomgar Offers an Appliance for All Remote Support Needs
Pity the poor help desk worker, often tasked to solve near impossible problems with nothing more than a telephone and a sense of humor. Add to that the distributed nature of today’s enterprises, and it is easy to see why good help desk folks are hard to find. Bomgar (formerly NetworkStreaming) is aiming to make…
