Six Channel Blog Entries The VAR Guy Didn’t Write: April 9

The VAR Guy is on the road the rest of April, blogging live from many of the top partner conferences in North America. Can you keep up with our resident blogger? Can The VAR Guy keep up with himself? Apparently not: Here are six channel partner blog entries The VAR Guy didn’t have time to write for the week ending April 9, 2010.

7. Open to Alternatives: Call it another win for open source database provider EnterpriseDB. Specifically, former Sun/Red Hat/MySQL executive Karen Tegan Padir has joined EnterpriseDB as VP of products and marketing. Padir reports directly to EnterpriseDB President and CEO Ed Boyajian.

6. More PSA Competition: For VARs seeking to improve their project management and workforce management, Tenrox is seeking to compete with ConnectWise, Autotask and Tigerpaw in the Professional Services Automation (PSA) market… The VAR Guy is checking for more details about Tenrox. While he’s at it, The VAR Guy also needs to give Karisoft a look…

5. Betting on Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization: Sure, VMware leads the virtualization market. But channel partners are starting to bet on Red Hat Enteprise Virtualization (RHEV). True believers include Shadow-Soft, an Atlanta-based consulting company that focuses on the public sector.

4. More Changes At Symantec?: The VAR Guy just received a note from Symantec stating: “Symantec is shifting its consulting services strategy to work with qualified channel partners to extend our consulting business.” Hmmm… Is something else going on at Symantec? The VAR Guy is checking in for further clarification.

3. CA In A Selling Mood?: The grapevine says CA Inc. (formerly Computer Associates) is set to sell off a product group or a piece of the CA business. Details expected in the next 2 weeks. A CA spokesman declined comment.

2. Catch Him If You Can: Want to meet The VAR Guy (assuming he’s a real person…)? Try to spot him this April at…

• SugarCon (April 12-14, San Francisco)
• NetSuite SuiteCloud (April 13-16, San Francisco)
• Autotask Community Live (April 18-20, Miami)
• Ingram Micro VTN (April 21-23, Hollywood, Fla.)
• HP Americas Partner Conference (April 26-28, Las Vegas),
• Cisco Partner Summit (April 26-29, San Francisco)
• and SMB Nation (New Jersey, April 30-May 2).

1. Check the Headline: The VAR Guy doesn’t play by the rules. (He never has.) This is a top six list, which means he’s run out of space… even on a limitless blog page.

Our resident blogger plans to track a few rumors (or even create a few…) over the weekend. He thanks you for reading.

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