The channel will play a more central role for Symantec Corp. under a program rolling out next year.
Symantec telegraphed some of the changes on Wednesday at its Symantec Partner Engage event in Scottsdale, Ariz.
In a pre-briefing, Garrett Jones, a Symantec veteran who became vice president for global channel operations this spring, said the changes stemmed from Symantec 4.0, the new strategy under CEO Steve Bennett, who is the company's fourth CEO (thus 4.0). The strategy developed out of Bennett's review of the company after taking over as CEO in 2012.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on November 13, 20130 comments
One partner's view from the trenches is that mergers and acquisitions are a powerful driver for midmarket customers to move to the Microsoft cloud.
Matt Scherocman is president of Interlink Cloud Advisors Inc. in Cincinnati. A longtime Microsoft channel player, Scherocman and some business partners spun up an Office 365-focused consultancy a couple of years ago. He blogs occasionally, and this week provided some interesting insights about M&A.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on November 04, 20130 comments
Big U.S. tech companies are setting their rivalries aside to unite against a common problem -- the ongoing damage revelations about the U.S. National Security Agency are doing to their reputation for keeping customers' cloud data private and secure.
On Thursday, AOL, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo co-signed a letter to the sponsors of the USA Freedom Act calling for greater government transparency about legal demands for the companies' customer and user information and greater accountability for government surveillance.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on November 04, 20130 comments
It was starting to look like the world was getting serious about migrating away from Windows XP in time for the operating system's April 8, 2014 support deadline.
The end-of-life date for Windows XP has been a major focus for Microsoft, with annual reminders to partners at the Worldwide Partner Conference for each of the last three years and tools like countdown clock gadgets.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on November 01, 20130 comments
In advance of its 10th anniversary as a company in December, StorageCraft Technology Corp. is bolstering its international presence.
Draper, Utah-based StorageCraft is opening a new international headquarters in Cork, Ireland. The disaster recovery, system migration and data protection vendor that is a mainstay in the managed services provider market is currently hiring for IT support, marketing and human resources positions for the Cork office.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on November 01, 20130 comments
Now that Microsoft is buying Nokia's phone business, the Finnish company's financial results are less important to the Microsoft ecosystem. Nokia was Microsoft's most strategic partner in CEO Steve Ballmer's long game to become a player in smartphones. One major reason to pay attention to Nokia's financials was to determine if the company would survive its former CEO Stephen Elop's plan to transition to the Windows Phone platform.
The other major reason to pay attention was to see how many Lumias, the flagship brand for Windows Phone, Nokia had sold in the preceding three months. With Nokia Lumia devices accounting for 80 percent or more of Windows Phone shipments in recent quarters, Lumia sales were a good indicator of the Windows Phone platform's overall health.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on October 30, 20130 comments
Microsoft's earnings report last week brought a sharp bounce in the stock price. Here are five notes for the Microsoft channel from Microsoft's earnings release, press release, investor call and 10Q statement:
- Surprisingly strong overall performance. After last quarter's poor performance, this quarterly earnings statement was a loud cry from Microsoft that rumors of its demise are greatly exaggerated. The company beat analysts' expectations with revenues of $18.53 billion, net income of $5.24 billion and earnings per share of $0.62. The results even caught Microsoft off guard. "Total revenue was up 7%, to $18.6 billion, and came in about $700 million better than our expectations," said Chris Suh, general manager of investor relations, on the investor call.
Meanwhile, the new reporting structure that divides Microsoft up into different reporting units seems, for now, less opaque than it at first appeared. Several financial analysts on the investor call thanked Microsoft for providing more detail.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on October 28, 20130 comments
Time was, a Microsoft operating system update would be the major IT event of that month, and every computer- and peripheral-maker would drop everything to be sure to have drivers and software ready for go-day.
So it speaks to Microsoft's loss of market power, at least on the client side, that much of the industry seems to yawn when Microsoft does something as major as update its flagship OS, in this case from Windows 8 to Windows 8.1.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on October 24, 20130 comments
Kaseya fully embraced Microsoft Office 365 on Thursday.
The Lausanne, Switzerland-based systems management and MSP tools vendor bought the technology of the high-profile Office 365 tool 365 Command for an undisclosed amount. The 365 Command technology was owned by Champion Solutions Group, based in Boca Raton, Fla., a company that is a Microsoft National Systems Integrator and an early cloud adopter.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on October 24, 20130 comments
Jon Roskill is out of Microsoft, his employer for nearly 20 years, less than a month after stepping down from the high-profile role of channel chief.
Microsoft replaced Roskill with Phil Sorgen as corporate vice president for the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Group in a move announced Aug. 29. In a blog post announcing the change, Roskill had said he hoped to "return to my roots of product development and take all the great insights I gained from my time with our partners and use them to create even more partner opportunity."
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Posted by Scott Bekker on October 21, 20130 comments
Tech Data Corp. on Wednesday launched a new program to help its solution providers expand their Microsoft practices.
The distributor's new initiative is called Microsoft Beyond!, and it includes a rewards program, education, marketing kits and incentives.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on October 16, 20130 comments
The parent company of Redmond Channel Partner magazine, 1105 Media LLC, also puts on the Visual Studio Live! event series all around the United States. I've been lucky enough to attend a few of the events, and I'm always struck by how much of the content is relevant to partners. Yet the audience is usually dominated by corporate IT developers.
In advance of the year-end blowout show, called Live! 360, I put that question about partner content and a few others to Andrew Brust, a longtime Microsoft partner himself and also one of the conference chairs.
Scott Bekker: Most of the attendees at VS Live! events are corporate IT developers. But a lot of the content seems like it would be pretty informative for developers working at Microsoft partner companies, as well. What are some of the things that a Microsoft partner could take away from VS Live next month? More
Posted by Scott Bekker on October 08, 20130 comments