Michael Vizard

As the channel enters the back half of 2007, there is a remarkable sense of calm pervading the community largely as the result of the convergence of several external rather than internal forces. The main sense of calm comes from the fact that the economy is continuing to grow, with the fastest amount of growth […]

With the arrival of the Fourth of July, the dog days of summer will soon be upon us. With them come rising concerns over energy costs, brownouts and rolling blackouts as utility companies struggle to keep up with demand. For a solution provider, this convergence of electrical woes creates an opportunity to have a really […]

When in the Course of IT events it becomes necessary for a customer to dissolve the bonds which have connected them with a vendor and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Natures God entitle them, a decent respect to the […]

Among the things that keep managed services providers up at night is this concept of hardware as a service. But the sleepless nights have little to do with understanding the model, which is, after all, just a slight variant on the leasing model. The real concern is how to keep hardware service from eating away […]

For a lot of solution providers CDW has been nothing short of a mortal enemy, ranking right up there with Dell in terms of using volume purchasing to drive down margins. By leveraging the volume it sells, CDW has historically been able to get better pricing from suppliers, and it has used that advantage to […]

While the great search for sources of recurring revenue has mainly focused on managed services, one of the most overlooked sources of such revenue for solutions providers is the Internet connection itself and the increasing number of applications that are running over it. What was once considered a tactical opportunity that many solution providers felt […]

Solution providers were invited in late March and April 2007 via e-mail and online to fill out an online ballot rating 2006s products by category. The online ballot first asked voters their involvement in each category; then, among those categories in which the voter resells products, five were chosen at random for detailed ratings of […]

APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT TOOLS Perhaps it should not come as much of a surprise that Microsoft would win here considering its focus on the category, but given all the hype surrounding open-source platforms, it is worth noting how handily Microsoft took the top spot with a score of 5.2 compared with second place finisher IBMs score […]

IBM is planning to unveil the first systems that will use next-generation Power6 processors within the next six weeks. At IBMs ParterWorld Conference in St. Louis, Ross Mauri, the general manager for System p in IBMs Systems and Technology group, told eWeek that Big Blue will be announcing new System p servers based on the […]

Its that time of year when everybody makes some sort of resolution about improving their business, only to see it go by the wayside before January is over. Given the fact that many solution providers are run by people who turned a technology avocation into an actual vocation, many of these people find themselves short […]

While many people like to talk about what the channel should be doing now or what they might do someday for the channel, not everyone actually follows the rhetoric with action. So it’s important to recognize and appreciate the people in any given year who actually put what they preach into practice. With that in […]

The CompTIA Educational Foundation has announced a new IT job training initiative under which it will create a fund to help returning veterans, people with disabilities and disadvantaged minorities break into the IT industry. Announced at the organizations SMB Summit in Tucson, Ariz., from Oct. 31 to Nov. 2, the Creating Futures program will be […]