The VAR Guy

How can channel partners develop disaster recovery (DR) plans for small and midsize business (SMB) customers? Symantec Channel Chief John Eldh offers guidance.

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NetApp may announce layoffs and job cuts during its May 21 quarterly earnings results. Can Chief Marketing Officer Julie Parrish -- the company's former Channel Chief -- get ahead of the story?

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Will Ubuntu PC makers ZaReason and System76 introduce Ubuntu tablets? Here are clues about the future of ZaTab and System76's own Ubuntu tablet ambitions.

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Could the new VMware vCloud Hybrid Service run Zimbra hosted email to counter Microsoft's Office 365 cloud?

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New VMware Global Channel Chief Dave O'Callaghan must empower channel partners to master software-defined data centers, vCloud Hybrid Service, desktop as a service (DaaS) out to smartphones and tablets, and more.

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Microsoft is making a Windows 8 and Office partner sales push to help close fiscal Q4 2013 on a high note. The Microsoft sales push, called Beyond easy, offers profit incentives on Windows 8, Office, SQL Server, Windows Server 2012 and more.

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Hadoop, the open source Big Data framework, has come a long way in recent years. Many enterprises already deploy Hadoop distributions in large-scale production environments. But some channel players such as Syncsort are still seeing opportunities for filling in some of the gaps in Hadoop performance as total maturation of the technology remains elusive. On Monday, the company announced new products that it says "turns Hadoop into a more robust, feature rich and easy-to-use ETL [extract, transform, load] solution."

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VMware's vSOM (vSphere with Operations Management) allows partners and customers to more effectively manage virtualized and cloud data centers, asserts VP Frank Rauch. To prove that point, VMware has some special profitability offers for channel partners.

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HP Q2 2013 earnings results, coming May 22, must show progress with HP Autonomy, cloud, security and big data. Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman must also show that she's taking the right steps to stabilize HP's PC business. Can Whitman deliver the goods?

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In addition to offsite backup and data storage solutions, VARs and MSPs should help ensure customers' data centers have fire protection measures in place. Intronis Senior Solution Engineer Nathan Bradbury offers guidance.

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Yahoo apparently is buying Tumblr for $1.1 billion. But Tumblr had only $13 million in revenue last year. Does Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer know something about Tumblr's blog platform that the rest of us don't?

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SugarCRM grew annual recurring revenue 30 percent in Q1 2013 vs. Q1 2012. Channel partners are embracing the company. Is there a longer-term exit strategy?

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Want to back up Google Apps, Gmail, Drive and more? Spanning Cloud Apps has launched a reseller program to help VARs and systems integrators offer those cloud backup services.

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Bitrix24, a business social media platform that seeks to compete with Microsoft Yammer and Salesforce.com Chatter, has gained Google Docs support.

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Verizon and VMware partnered to offer Horizon-based desktop as a service (DaaS) capabilities to Google Android smartphones from LG and Motorola. Here's where channel partners fit in.

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VMware vCloud Hybrid Service debuts May 21. How will VMware's IaaS Cloud counter Amazon, Google and Microsoft Windows Azure? Where will partners fit into the conversation? The VAR Guy offers insights.

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CIOs are under a lot of pressure these days. Well, to be perfectly honest, they’ve been under tremendous pressure for the past decade to keep their organizations on the cutting edge of technology and their information and systems secure, all while looking for ways to increase efficiency. They've seen their overall IT budgets remain stagnant but have needed to invest more in virtualization, mobile applications and integration, cloud computing and, of course IT, security.

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Hewlett-Packard has expanded its x2 hybrid PC lineup with a Windows 8 entry and another based on Google's Android operating system, both of which are slated to start selling in the United States in August.

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Hewlett-Packard has backed upgrades to its MSA entry disk array lineup and its StoreEasy Storage portfolio with tools, training, marketing and financial incentives to prompt channel partners to sell the line to businesses and government agencies.

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Dell elected to push up its Q1 2014 financial report by three business days from its scheduled May 21 date, amid accounts that it would post disappointing results and wanted to get the news out sooner rather than later. As expected, Dell missed Wall Street expectations, as its net income for the period tumbled 79 percent and per share earnings fell 81 percent. Sales and gross margins both slipped some 2 percent.

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