June 19, 2009
Should You Join Yet Another Partner Program?
The VAR Guy
Heather K. Margolis shares with partners what they need to know if they’re thinking of joining another partner program.
“Is the vendor’s product a good fit for your arsenal? If you focus on virtualization and cloud computing with products like Hyper-V, VMware, Salesforce.com, and StarWind then EMC approaches you about selling one of their Back-up and Recovery products you certainly aren’t going to change your entire business model to add on additional product. What is the ROI of introducing a new vendor? To sell a new technology and do it right there are costs incurred by you and your team. You must figure out the value this partnership could bring you (i.e. revenue) then subtract out the costs and decide if it is worthwhile. Costs include administrative, certification requirements (both time out of the field and the payment for training), changes to your Web site and other marketing materials, and marketing programs around the new products and services.”
Repeat After Me: TelePresence Is A Managed Service
MSPmentor
Joe Panettieri writes where the TelePresence solution opportunities are for managed service providers.
“First, most corporate networks will require significant switch, router and software upgrades to handle TelePresence sessions. Second, businesses will need somebody to actually build out TelePresence conference rooms, home offices, etc. And third, businesses will need somebody to actually maintain the TelePresence systems – monitoring and troubleshooting Quality of Service (QoS) issues before they go from minor issues to major problems.”
MS names ship date for free security suite
The Register
John Oates writes that Microsoft will be releasing its free security suite next Tuesday.
“It was going by the funky codename Morro, but is launching under the duller name of Microsoft Security Essentials. It replaces Windows OneCare. Microsoft Security Essentials will be available for users in Brazil, Israel and the US initially and for PCs using Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7. The service aims to protect machines against viruses and other malware. The free download takes only 140MB..”