Recent Articles
-
Dawn of Solutions as a Service
If there’s going to be an “IT 3.0” or a “Channel 3.0,” the marketplace masters will be those companies that crack the code for “solutions as a service.” Two years ago while working at the now defunct VARBusiness, I coined the term “Channel 2.0.” At the time, the channel was already showing shifts in the…
-
IBM, Phase 2 Deliver Lotus as a Service
Software-as-a-service provider Phase 2 International will team up with IBM to bring Big Blue’s Lotus software suite, previously aimed at larger enterprises, to the hard-to-reach small enterprise market. Phase 2 CEO Kevin Doherty says that although solution providers servicing the midmarket have been clamoring for this type of solution, working through pricing negotiations and hashing…
-
Comparative Analysis: VOIP PBX for Small Business
Knowledge of voice over IP has become so ubiquitous that many falsely believe it’s a simple, ubiquitous technology available to business environments of all sizes. The truth is VOIP integrated with PBX and SIP trunking services has a low penetration in small businesses, those with fewer than 25 seats. New technologies are bringing integrated VOIP…
-
Gartner: Outsourced IT Services Prices Could Fall 20%
Outsourced IT services prices will decline between 5 and 20 percent through 2010 as the market for them becomes more competitive, according to a new report from Gartner released this week. The price pressure will come from increasing competition in the market between traditional and new providers, Gartner says, as more providers compete aggressively to…
-
Internet Explorer 8 Challenges Hosting, Services Companies
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 didn’t incite the kind of panic that occurred with last year’s daylight-saving time debacle, but manged service providers and hosted application providers say there’s still plenty of work to be done to ensure that customers weather the transition smoothly. “This impacts our entire customer base and all our delivery models, from managed services…
-
IBM, SAP Make Cloud Computing Breakthrough
Migrating running applications and data center workloads between remote locations across different networks wasn’t supposed to be possible. But IBM and SAP broke through that barrier and may have created a means for solution providers to deliver cloud-based computing that’s better tailored for their customers’ needs. The European Union-funded Reservoir project works with 13 technology…