Six Channel Partner Blog Entries We Didn’t Write: April 16
The VAR Guy spent considerable time in Silicon Valley this week, running from one meeting to the next. Our resident blogger is heading home now — before starting more business travel next week. Of course, there were multiple blogs The VAR Guy didn’t have time to write this week. Here are six channel partner blog entries that should have been written for the week ending April 16, 2010.
7. Hedging Their Hosted Exchange Bets: At least three major Hosted Exchange companies plan to start offering customers hosted Open-Xchange, an open source alternative to Microsoft’s email platform. The reason: Hosted Exchange margins are facing price pressure — especially as Microsoft continues to build its own Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS), which includes Exchange Online.
6. Let’s Get Serious: The VAR Guy hears Juniper‘s fairly new chief marketing officer has overhauled the company’s branding and advertising. Gone are the cute cartoon ads. Now, Juniper is promoting business messages more strongly to partners and customers. Juniper’s channel chief is expected to attend Ingram Micro’s VTN conference in Florida the week of April 18. The VAR Guy will seek more updates at that time.
5. Coming Back Online: Intermedia, a hosted Exchange provider, had an outage that impacted 30,000 of 250,000 customers earlier today. The VAR Guy wants to be sure not to “over state” the outage. Our resident blogger will share some thoughts from Intermedia this weekend.
4. Discovering MSPs: Synnex, the big distributor, hosted a conference in Florida this week. MSP-centric companies like ConnectWise and itControl Solutions were on hand, a hint that Synnex plans to spend more time targeting the managed services market.
3. Big Numbers: Amazon Consulting has released some rather intriguing research, exploring the channel mood within multiple vendors and across the IT industry. The VAR Guy has the stats from Amazon, and hopes to find the time to blog about them next week.
2. Speaking of Research: Word on the street says CompTIA is making some investments in its channel research staff. The VAR Guy is checking out the chatter, which is especially timely this “April.”
1. Check the Headline: The VAR Guy doesn’t play by the rules. This is a top six list. Our resident blogger is stepping onto his flight now. Back soon with more channel chatter.
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