The VAR Guy

In a single day, legacy channel publication Computer Reseller News posted two glowing stories about Dell’s progress in the laptop and government markets, respectively. Has hell frozen over? Is Dell that hot — or has CRN finally put the deep freeze on all the negative Dell coverage?

First, CRN noted that Dell seems to be turning around its laptop business. A few hours later, CRN was back with a report about Dell solutions providers winning government sector business. Wow. And wow again. A double play. A dynamic duo. Two thumbs up.

Kidding aside, CRN and its army of Everything Channel reporters break a ton of quality news. But The VAR Guy — call him Everything Else Channel? — has always thought CRN spends a bit too much time bashing Dell. As recently as March of this year, CRN declared that Dell suffered from a cultural crisis.

Really? Cultural crisis? With so many experienced channel veterans now running around inside Dell, The VAR Guy is betting that the PC giant figures out how to empower solutions providers with managed services.

Some folks say VARs are dead. After checking his own pulse and web site traffic, The VAR Guy disagrees. Instead, he believes channel pros are reinventing themselves via managed services and new software stacks. In fact, a new survey by Channel Insider suggests that Red Hat Linux is now the most popular platform among VARs.

The VAR Guy isn’t surprised. We’re in a tricky economy. CIOs and small business owners want VARs who can innovate yet save money. Linux is the rare technology that achieves both of those goals.

Not that The VAR Guy agrees with all of the Channel Insider survey findings. Sun Microsystems and Novell server operating systems placed second and third in popularity among elite VARs, noted Matt Asay, author of the Open Road blog.

That sounds a bit misleading: How can Sun be more popular than Microsoft on the server? Sure, The VAR Guy is a Unix and Linux fan. But he doesn’t deny Microsoft’s success in the server market.

I’m feeling a bit like Hillary tonight: Can I get a recount? Both Bills (Clinton and Gates) would appreciate it.

Side Note: Did Channel Insider really need to develop a 33-page slide show to tell us about their channel winners? One quick list on a single page would have been nice.

Even if you’re a small managed service provider or VAR, you still need effective PR strategies. At least, that’s the stance from PR expert Cheryl Snapp Conner. In the May 15, 2008 podcast on MSPmentor, Conner describes some simple ways to launch and measure your viral PR campaigns.

On June 12, executives representing managed service providers will gather for a Webcast aptly named MSPmentor Live: CEO Exchange. During the fast-moving online event, MSPs will be able to ask peers and experts their most pressing questions about pricing and service level agreement strategies.

Register now for this one-hour June 12 event, which starts at 2pm eastern. Hosted by The VAR Guy’s sister site, MSPmentor, the event will show MSPs how to avoid some of the commodity pricing battles occurring in the managed services market right now.

Confirmed speakers include:

• Scott Goemmel, co-founder and partner, PMV Technologies (#15 on the MSPmentor 100)
• Nick Vossburg, CEO, TechAssist (#20 on the MSPmentor 100)
• Jim Alves, executive VP, Marketing, Kaseya
• Joe Panettieri, editorial director, MSPmentor

Registration is simple. And the event will truly be an interactive opportunity for you to ask MSPmentor’s guest speakers your most pressing questions.

You can tune in June 12 for MSPmentor Live: CEO Exchange. And then tune back in on June 25, when MSPmentor Live: CEO Exchange returns with such featured guests as Autotask CEO Bob Godgart.

Better late than never. Symantec, nearly three years after acquiring Veritas, appears to be hitting its stride. At least that’s the spin Symantec gave after announcing surprisingly strong earnings on April 30.

Lots of folks have been bashing Symantec lately. A few even predicted that the company would break itself up. But The VAR Guy didn’t pile on the bashing session.

The reason: Storage (Veritas) and security (Symantec) truly are complementary solutions, especially in the age of corporate compliance. Symantec’s vision hasn’t been flawed. But the company’s execution has repeatedly fallen short of Wall Street’s expectations.

After completing the Veritas takeover, Symantec wound up with a faulty ERP system that burned distributors and VARs. At last, Symantec appears to have fixed those problems and sales are picking up again.

Consumer sales rose 10 percent, storage and server management climbed 11 percent, and security and compliance software sales jumped 21 percent compared to the corresponding quarter last year.

Good, But Not Great

Nice, but The VAR Guy still has one key concern: Symantec still isn’t saying much about the Symantec Protection Network, a software as a service platform that VARs can use to offer storage (now) and security (soon) as an on-demand option for customers.

At first glance, storage and security are a dynamic duo for SaaS customers; both services, after all, are in high demand. However, SPN hasn’t generated much buzz. And insiders at Trend Micro — a key Symantec rival — say they don’t run into Symantec much when competing in the SaaS and managed services markets. In fact, Trend insiders point to McAfee as a more established rival in the managed services space.

Dell will host a webinar for its managed service provider partners on May 1. The VAR Guy spotted some early details about the Dell webinar over on his sister site, MSPmentor.

The webinar comes at an opportune time for Dell. The company suffered a few lumps from MSPmentor and The VAR Guy when Dell recently celebrated the MessageOne software as a service (SaaS) acquisition without mentioning partners in the press release.

The VAR Guy is watching Interop Las Vegas from the comfort of his home office this year. The Interop news wire appears a bit lighter than previous years. And the keynote speaker lineup — while impressive — lacks Cisco CEO John Chambers and other industry titans. Is Interop still popular? Sure. But competition from a different type of event may be stealing some of Interop’s thunder. Here’s the scoop.

Consider the situation at Cisco. The networking giant earlier this month hosted a massive partner summit in Hawaii. It was all-hands-on for Cisco’s Chambers and other top company executives. And in June, the Cisco Live conference will host thousands of customers in Orlando, Fla.

Money Matters

So, pretend you’re a chief marketing officer at a major networking company faced with the following options:

• Option A: Spend much of your budget on your own event and your own customers — where you can shape and control all the messages, solidify existing relationships and avoid rival vendor messaging.
• Option B: Spend much of your budget on a third-party industry event, where you can seek to recruit new customers and build new partnerships — but compete with rival vendor messaging.

From where The VAR Guy sits, it seems as if some vendors are pumping more and more money into Option A, while continuing to carve out a decent amount of funding for Option B.

Solutions providers seem to be following that lead. The VAR Guy knows dozens of solutions providers that attended the Cisco Partner Summit earlier this month, but only a handful of his sources went to Interop.

The net result: Interop remains a solid stage and gathering place for the networking industry. And it’s good to see some new, fresh voices on the Interop keynote list. But vendor-driven, vendor-controlled events seem to be the rage.

Admittedly, The VAR Guy is going out on a limb here. He isn’t even at Interop. And some big news from big vendors could certainly surface at the event this week. But nobody ever accused The VAR Guy of withholding his opinions.

PC makers and their customers continue to push back against Windows Vista. Software as a service (SaaS) and open source are giving Microsoft fits. Yet, it’s far too early to bury Microsoft. Here are seven reasons why the software giant’s empire won’t completely fall anytime soon.

1. Big Profits: Although profits fell 11 percent during its most recent quarter, the company still generated $4.39 billion in net income during the period. That’s roughly $49 million in pure profit every business day during a 90-day quarter.

In stark contrast, Red Hat’s net income during its most recent quarter was $22 million. In other words, it takes Microsoft less than half a day to surpass Red Hat’s entire quarterly profits.

2. Windows Installed Base: Some folks may hate Vista, but the operating system’s installed base has grown to 140 million licenses, up from 100 million in January. That’s impressive and pathetic, considering all of the folks who are downgrading to Windows XP or jumping to Mac OS X or Linux. Alas, The VAR Guy concedes that the Windows installed base continues to beat the competition by a wide margin on the desktop.

3. Managed Service Providers: Sure, MSPs and software as a service (SaaS) experts are embracing open source applications. But they’re also flocking to hosted versions of Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft Dynamics and Microsoft SharePoint, among other options. In fact, many MSPs are buying up Microsoft software partners in a race to enter the SaaS market.

4. Server Applications: Microsoft’s server and tools sales rose 18 percent to $3.3 billion, helped by the launch of new versions of Windows Server and other major software franchises, notes the Associated Press. Do some quick math, and it’s difficult to find any other server-centric software companies generating more than $13 billion in annual sales while generating near-20 percent annual growth.

5. Independent Software Vendors (ISVs): Ultimately, Microsoft’s primary customers are ISVs — the very folks who keep writing more and more applications for Windows. And even open source companies such as SugarCRM say they are more than happy to offer apps on Windows Server.

6. Market Fragmentation: Sure, Oracle has acquired numerous application providers. But generally speaking, Microsoft remains the only major software supplier that has a full arsenal of options — operating systems, tools, databases, application and online services.

7. Xbox Marks the Spot: Revenue from the division responsible for the Xbox 360 video game system ballooned 68 percent to $1.58 billion, which Microsoft attributed to robust demand for game consoles, noted AP. More importantly, kids (including those fathered by The VAR Guy) are hooked on the Xbox Live video game service.

With any luck, Microsoft’s business developers will steal a few pages from the Xbox Live online service experts.

Yes, Vista was a pathetic product upon its arrival. And Microsoft will continue to take some lumps for the next few years. But the Internet and open source were supposed to kill Microsoft in the 1990s.

Looks like all those deadly blows were merely flesh wounds.

When Symantec announces quarterly results on April 30, The VAR Guy will be listening closely. Our resident blogger was a big advocate of the 2005 Symantec-Veritas business combo. But so far, that merger has yielded mixed results. Here is one key piece of info The VAR Guy will be digging for as he looks through Symantec’s financial results.

Question: What’s the State of Symantec Protection Network?

In December 2007, The VAR Guy predicted Symantec would become the next Software as a Service (SaaS) giant. So far, that prediction seems far too optimistic.

Storage and security are two of the hottest software-as-a-service (SaaS) opportunities on the planet. Yet Symantec’s big SaaS platform — the Symantec Protection Network — has generated little fanfare since launching earlier this year.

Initially, SPN supports storage. Security capabilities are coming later this year. A few managed service providers tell me they’re interested in SPN. But there doesn’t seem to be much “buzz” about Symantec and SaaS or cloud computing. At least not yet…

Is The VAR Guy wrong? Is SPN building momentum? Or will there be a slow build toward mass adoption? The VAR Guy is all ears.

Update 3/29, 9:40am eastern: AP is speculating that Symantec may sell off some of its under-performing business units.

The VAR Guy couldn’t make it to Hawaii for Cisco’s recent partner summit. But now he hears that Cisco demonstrated Apple’s iPhone working on a unified communications network. Sweet. Some of the details about the demonstration surface in this April 24 Podcast on MSPmentor.net, The VAR Guy’s sister site.