Six Channel Blogs The VAR Guy Didn’t Write: July 2

The VAR Guy is set to unplug for the July 4 holiday weekend. But before our resident blogger disappears for a little R&R with his family, here are six channel partner blog entries The VAR Guy didn’t have a chance to write for the week ending July 2, 2010.

7. New Rules of Engagement?: Sounds like Microsoft has made some changes to it service provider partner programs in recent days. How do hosted Exchange and hosted SharePoint partners plan to cooperate  — and compete — with Microsoft’s own BPOS (Business Productivity Online Suite), Exchange Online and SharePoint Online efforts? The VAR Guy expects the answers to surface July 11-15 during Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference in Washington, D.C.

6. Spin City: CRN claims Cisco’s channel reorganization is a defensive move against HP. Um, how so? Sure, business looks pretty darn good over at HP, where Q2 revenue was $30.8 billion, up 13% from the Q2 last year.  But Cisco’s most recently quarterly revenues were $10.4 billion, up 27% vs. the same quarter last year. Sure, HP and Cisco compete fiercely. But The VAR Guy doubts John Chambers organizes his troops based on what’s happening over in HP’s garage…

5. Sunny Outlook?: Arrow Enterprise Computing Solutions has launched a Fast Track program to help legacy Sun resellers enroll in the Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) Specialized channel partner program. The move comes the same week that Oracle hosted a FY11 kick-off event for channel partners. Next up, Avnet Technology Solutions (an Arrow rival) will host a partner conference at the end of July. The event is expect to attract plenty of Oracle and Sun partners.

4. Kids In the Halls: Cisco notes that GenY already is changing the face — and the sound — of the modern workplace. Here are the details. My, The VAR Guy certainly is feeling old…

3. Thank You: The VAR Guy’s web traffic rose 61.6 percent in the first half of 2010 vs. the first half of 2009. And first-half 2010 traffic was up 154.11 percent compared to the first half of 2008.

The VAR Guy considered building a big, fancy, animated online slide show to express those stats graphically — and lift traffic even more. But our resident blogger didn’t want to alienate you with a pointless point-and-click exercise. Instead, Nine Lives Media Inc. would simply like to thank you for your readership.

2. Road Trip: The VAR Guy is on vacation, returning July 12. But don’t panic. You’ll still get your daily dose of channel chatter. Contributing associate bloggers Matt Weinberger and David Courbanou will be carrying the load for the next few days. And The VAR Guy’s own posts will pop up on the site here and there. But please don’t expect any email replies until The VAR Guy gets back on July 12.

1. Check the Headline: This is a top six list. And The VAR Guy needs to pack for vacation, so there is no number one. Thanks for reading and engaging in an ongoing dialog with our resident blogger.

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