Microsoft unveiled at its Worldwide Partner Conference here July 10 a partner dashboard that promises to consolidate information from across hundreds of pages on various Microsoft corporate and partner Web sites and provide partners a single source to measure stats against the partner pack.The tool gathers information on partners’ certifications, customer engagements and other up-to-the-moment statistics currently spread across the portal, providing a single glance at overall metrics and monthly progress of partner activity.
Category Archives: VAR channel
SharePoint as your enterprise search application?
Microsoft Corporate Vice President Chris Capossela announced a new search product developed in partnership with consulting giant BearingPoint at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference in Denver on July 10. The product, called SingleView, is built on top of Microsoft’s SharePoint 2007 collaboration portal and is already being used by dozens of large enterprise customers.
You can read the entire article here in eWeek.
Channel Chat podcast: Chris Schwartzbauer, Shavlik Technologies
In my latest Channel Chat podcast for Ziff’s ITLink, I talk with Chris Schwartzbauer, who is the VP for Worldwide Sales and marketing for Shavlik Technologies. We talk about the four degrees of security VARs and some of the differences between them.
You can download the podcast here.
Channel Chat Podcast: Ari Tammam, Promisec
In my latest podcast for Ziff’s ITLink, I talk with Ari Tammam, the VP of Channels for network security company Promisec about their channel program and the important of regular security audits. Promisec sells a $10k auditing tool that they offer a limited version for free for their channel partners.
You can download the podcast here.
Selling unified comms and QoS to the channel
The days where the typical corporate network is just carrying data packets are over, and VARs can take advantage of a new breed of applications called unified communications to turn some solid business opportunities.
The idea is to marry voice, email, instant messages, and even video conversations in one central place, to make it easier to keep track of your connections. It is not a new idea.
You can read more about how three trends have come together to make this compelling for the channel in my story today in eWeek here.
Channel chat: Deepak Thadani
My ITLink podcast program today is called “What VARs should know about firewalls.” My guest is Deepak Thadani, the head of SysIntegrators in New York City, a security and networking VAR.
You can listen to the podcast here.
Channel chat: Steve Harvey of Digium
This week’s ITLink podcast is called “How to become a VOIP VAR” and my guest is Steve Harvey, who is VP of WW sales for Digium. As many of you might know, Digium is the company that is the commercial face of the popular open source VOIP PBX product Asterisk.
You can listen to the podcast here.
Linksys changes channel program, brings ties closer to Cisco
At a briefing yesterday in San Francisco, Linksys announced significant changes to its channel program. It expects to drive closer ties between its channel and that of parent company Cisco, which now wants the Small and Medium Business market it once relegated to the Linksys line.
Channel chat: John DiLullo of SonicWall
As part of my podcast series for Ziff’s ITLink community, I talk to John DiLullo, the head of SonicWall’s worldwide sales team, about how to create a profitable managed services offering. What is involved in resellers setting up managed services for their customers, what kinds of skills are involved, and other useful information is covered.
You can download the podcast here.
Channel Chat Podcast: Selling encryption to the channel
I have been working with Ziff-Davis’ ITLink social networking site, adding content that is geared towards the reseller community. Today’s Channel Chat podcast is with Karen Hartsell, the director of world-wide channel marketing for PGP Corp. I spoke to her about how VARs can sell encryption, some of the things that she looks for in picking VARs, and recent changes to PGP’s channel program.
You can download the podcast here.