Recent Articles
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The Unfulfilled Potential of CRM Software in the Channel
Given all the noise that has been generated about customer relationship management (CRM) software over the years, solution providers in the channel could be forgiven for assuming the CRM market is pretty well saturated by now. In reality, SugarCRM CEO Larry Augustin says that 60 percent of organizations today don’t have a CRM in place…
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The Path of Least Channel Resistance to the Cloud
Every time there is a major disruption in computing models the impact on business models in the channel is profound. The ongoing shift to cloud computing is no exception. At this point it’s not really a question of whether solution providers will be participating in the cloud, but rather finding the least disruptive approach to…
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The Many Faces of WAN Optimization
The history of opportunity for solution providers in the channel is very closely tied to bottlenecks. Almost any time there is an impedance mismatch between storage, servers and the network it creates a limited IT resource that needs to be optimized. Today the resource that is most limited is the wide area network (WAN). While…
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EMC Unveils Pre-Configured VSPEX Storage Systems
Vendors everywhere are determined to reduce the complexity associated with configuring and deploying IT equipment. The latest example is EMC, which today launched a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure reference architecture that initially consists of 14 configurations that have been tested and pre-integrated by EMC to work with virtualization software from VMware, Microsoft and Citrix, and IT…
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Data Migration Services Escalate Storage Wars Across the Channel
Given the immense amount of scrutiny that IT storage budgets are getting it may come as little surprise that there is an intense amount of infighting going on these days between solution providers representing different storage vendors. But what may come as a surprise is how much easier it’s becoming for customers to switch storage…
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IT Automation Reduces Technical Services Revenue for the Channel
Major advances in IT automation hold both great promise and significant amounts of peril for solution providers in the channel. Both IBM and Hewlett-Packard have moved to significantly reduce the total cost of IT by introducing new system architectures that make extensive use of IT automation. In the case of IBM, the PureSystems the company…