Quest Looks To Expand Channel Presence
Fresh off its acquisition of Vintela, which closed last month,
Quest Software this week
laid
out how it will integrate the Vintela technology with its own
management tools. Vintela’s software enables Unix and Linux
machines to be tied in to Active Directory domains, and managed
with Group Policy. Now those tools are being added to the Quest
lineup of Windows-based management and security tools.
At the same time, Quest is changing its tune on its sales strategy.
The company uses primarily direct sales today, although it does
rely on systems integrators to perform the “heavy lifting”
in terms of supporting its products on-site, says David Waugh, vice
president of product management for Quest. “We realize to
take the company to the next level we have to take advantage of
VARs more,” he says. Over the next several months, the company
will assess all of its products—some 100 of them—to
see which are most suitable to offer through the channel. Those
that extend Microsoft products, like Microsoft Operations Manager
and Systems Management Server, such that they can manage heterogeneous
enterprises are a natural fit, Waugh says.
And there’s already some natural synergy between Vintela
and Microsoft. For example, you can call Microsoft for support on
Vintela Management Extensions (VMX) products, according to Jackson
Shaw, vice president, cross-platform integration at Quest.
Quest is clearly taking the channel play seriously. Heading up
the effort is Chris Skillings, the former CEO of Vintela, who is
now vice president of worldwide business partner development for
Quest.
The Full Skinny on Identity Management
Quest and Vintela are also players in the identity management market,
where the Holy Grail has long been single sign-on (SSO). Contributing
writer Stuart Johnston this week has an in-depth piece looking at
the whole issue of federated
identity management and SSO, which may well heat up with the
impending arrival of Windows Server 2003 Release 2 (R2) later this
year. R2 promises to bring a Web services-based identity management
scheme that enables Active Directory to integrate with other identity
management systems. You might think that has companies like Quest
and its competitor Centrify concerned, but Johnston says that’s
not the case -- or at least, not yet. “Our software extends
Active Directory to non-Microsoft environments [so that] you get
single sign-on so we are entirely complementary to what Microsoft
does,” says Tom Kemp, CEO of Centrify. Check out Johnston’s
piece for more on this issue, including the various standards in
play. It’s bound to be a topic we’ll be struggling with
for years to come.
The other chief standard in play with respect to identity management
comes from the Liberty Alliance, which this week announced
products from eight companies have successfully passed interoperability
with its SAML 2.0 OASIS SPEC.
Lessons from Zotob
The Zotob worm that was launched last weekend should help you drive
home a couple of key points with customers. For one, it can help
you make the case that it’s time to get rid of Windows NT.
As Scott Bekker reports in his
story on Zotob, researchers at Trend Micro say the flaw that
Zotob targets also exists in Windows NT, but since Microsoft no
longer supports NT, it didn’t publicly provide a patch for
it. The other key is the speed with which virus writers managed
to develop this worm. Microsoft released a patch for the previously
unknown vulnerability on Tuesday and the worm was unleashed over
the weekend. While that’s not quite a zero-day vulnerability,
it’s pretty close. The message: It takes extreme vigilance,
including a layered security defense and systematic patching, to
fend off these virus-writing miscreants. And using older systems
makes the chore that much more difficult.
Download Alerts
A couple of new downloads have recently been posted to the Windows
Download Center, including the Windows
Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) for Windows Vista (aka Longhorn).
The kit is designed to help OEMs, system builders and corporate
IT pros deploy Windows onto new hardware.
Also new is the Solution
Accelerator for Business Desktop Deployment, a best practices
guide for desktop deployments targeted at companies with 250 or
more PCs looking for increased deployment automation. The guide
is based on the experiences of a multinational bank with more than
15,000 employees on five continents using multiple data centers,
according to Microsoft. (Registration is required for the download.)
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In Case of Emergency, Enter “ICE”
Here’s an item that won’t help you sell more of anything,
but it just seems like a good idea. USA Today reports that a British
paramedic came up with the idea of putting an entry into your cellular
phone for “ICE,”
which stands for “in case of emergency.” The entry would
have contact info for someone to call in case something happens
to you. I’m sure we’ll never get the cell phone companies
to agree on something so simple and potentially effective (why can’t
they all use the same commands for voicemail? Do I hit #7 to delete
with this phone, or is it #3?), so it’s up to us to spread
the word.
A Not So Subtle Plea for Letters
Last week I mentioned that we want to hear from readers about what
they think of the content thus far in Redmond Channel Partner magazine,
RCPmag.com and this newsletter, both because we want to know what
you think and because we need some feedback to populate out our
letters page—always a challenge for a new magazine. This week,
I’ll try a more direct approach: We want letters! We have
a page to fill! Please write!
A few sentences, that’s all we ask. Read a story, give us
your thoughts -- rants, raves, questions, answers, musings, recipes,
whatever. Drop me a line at [email protected]
or use our online
form.
Need a prompt? OK, have a stab at answering this question: What’s
the best way to find another Microsoft partner to help you with
a customer project?
Posted by Paul Desmond on August 17, 2005