How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Love the Recession
The VAR Guy is touring Silicon Valley this week. He met Netscape veterans launching a new company. He visited Trend Micro insiders. He spoke with the CEO of Nimsoft. During more than six hours of meetings, the recession was discussed for about 15 minutes. Fact is, savvy IT businesses aren't bombing. And they aren't bogged down in recession talk. Here's a recap of Day 1 in Silicon Valley.
The meetings:
The VAR Guy is touring Silicon Valley this week. He met Netscape veterans launching a new company. He visited Trend Micro insiders. He spoke with the CEO of Nimsoft. During more than six hours of meetings, the recession was discussed for about 15 minutes. Fact is, savvy IT businesses aren’t bombing. And they aren’t bogged down in recession talk. Here’s a recap of Day 1 in Silicon Valley.
The meetings:
- One-Thousand MSPs: A trusted source within Trend Micro says the company now has roughly 1,000 VARs offering Trend’s managed security services. Instead of going into hibernation mode during the recession, Trend Micro is gearing up for a 2009 partner summit in Florida. Surely, some events are worth canceling. But the decision by Trend Micro and Cisco Systems to move forward with their respective 2009 partner summits shows how vital the IT channel remains to technology sales.
- Fully Funded, And In Launch Mode: The VAR Guy met with a former Netscape executive who has launched a cloud-focused company. Sorry, but our resident blogger signed a non-disclosure agreement so he can’t offer specific details about the company. But he can say this: The start-up’s CEO is in hiring mode, seeking marketing experts who can promote the company’s cloud service, which will launch around spring of 2009.
- Nimsoft Still Growing: Nimsoft CEO Gary Read described how the company continues to attract managed service providers and corporate IT customers by disrupting the traditional network management (HP OpenView, CA Unicenter, IBM Tivoli, BMC) market. In fact, Nimsoft now offers a free Macintosh to the company’s top saleperson during designated sales periods. Where does The VAR Guy sign up for that gig?
Oops. Got to run. It’s time for another full day of meetings in Silicon Valley. Stay upbeat. Stay focused. And ignore all those doom-and-gloom folks who say you can’t build a business during a recession.
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I wanted to thank the VAR Guy from stopping by our office in Palo Alto. His depth of knowledge about open source was amazing. I was also really impressed with how they understood how information moves online. I felt that we could have spent a lot more time talking about search engines marketing and open source communities.
It’s really great to see innovative use of technology and SEM/social media techniques help a site like The VAR Guy to succeed in the recession.
Craig,
Seems like you and CNet’s Matt Asay are two of the rare people who claim to have met The VAR Guy. PR folks and so-called journalists like The VAR Guy rarely have much in common. But in this case, disruptive software seems to be a common passion.
All the best for Q4 and 2009.
Well, not just a free Macintosh but in fact a MacBook Air. For any of our sales executives that sets a new quarterly sales record they get a free MacBook Air.
In answer to where to sign up, send us your resume to resumes@nimsoft.com. We are hiring quality sales execs.
Gary: Thanks for providing the full facts involving the MacBook Pro offer. Sorry The VAR Guy didn’t have the details of the offer quite right. Best wishes for a successful 4Q. Keep growing the managed services and corporate IT management market, and The VAR Guy will keep blogging about it.
I’d also like to thank the VAR guy for stopping by to visit us in Southern California. It was a little weird when he insisted on sitting behind a back-light screen to protect his identity, but we got used to that after only a few awkward moments.
Justin: Obviously, The VAR Guy is paranoid about identity theft. So he protects his own identity by hiding it. Everywhere. And thanks for swinging by the site. Content was a little slow today. Rumor has it our resident blogger is a little under the weather. More content from one — or more — VAR Guy’s coming soon to this site 😉