Robert Deshaies and Cynthia Bates will divvy up responsibilities for Microsoft’s US partner organization, Microsoft said late Wednesday night.

Deshaies, who had been vice president of the US Partner Group is now vice president of Partner Business Development & Sales, a new role. Cindy Bates, who had been general manager of Microsoft’s Small Business Group was promoted to vice president of US Partner Strategy for marketing and programs. Read more »

Summertime is the time to mull.

Today I have the time to consider whether Microsoft and Nortel — currently unified communications (UC) partners — will move from heavy dating to marriage.

According to channel partners of both companies, rumors of such an acquisition have been swirling for some time. They say that while an acquisition is not apparent in the near term, none would be surprised to see it happen eventually. Read more »

Hewlett-Packard’s (HP) $13.9 billion bid to buy Electronic Data Systems (EDS) made it through U.S. antitrust review, the companies reported Monday. The deal still hinges on approval by European regulators and a vote by EDS shareholders, who will meet July 31.

It remains unclear how the deal will affect channel partners from both companies. HP CEO Mark Hurd has said that there will be no bumps in the road for channel partners since EDS and HP play mostly in different fields. Still, concerns run high among partners and will until the future unfolds after final approval. It is also unclear what will happen to the long-term relationships EDS holds with HP competitors like Cisco Systems, Dell and IBM. Read more »

Being an Oracle partner can be a pricey business.

For example: If you’re a select Oracle partner who wants face time with Oracle reps at the vendor’s yearly sales kickoff, you can pay either $6K, $10K or $25K for the privilege.

For that amount you get to be an Exhibitor Partner at the big Las Vegas event. The idea is to get your pitch to Oracle sales reps. There are many. The event draws some 40,000 people in early June. Maybe even (knock wood) get a look from Charles or Larry. Read more »

Dell has launched a new wiki, PartnerStorm, that is already fielding reseller complaints about the fledgling Dell channel program.

On PartnerStorm, the channel version of Dell’s popular IdeaStorm forum, users can post their ideas about the channel program, which is called PartnerDirect. They can also comment on each others’ ideas and vote on which are the best.

Read more »

This year’s Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference will be in Houston. In July. One word: Ugh.

And, interestingly, insiders say preliminary numbers show that more than half (60%) of attendees will be from outside the U.S. That’s a first, to my knowledge and is at least partially attributable to the incredible shrinking dollar.

Note to vendors: If you’re gonna drag people into triple-digit heat and humidity, make it cheap.

As for news: Look for Microsoft to talk up repeatable solutions in SMB markets. And don’t forget SaaS and the mega-billion dollar question of how partners fit into Microsoft’s software plus services game plan. That’ll be a big theme.  Read more »

Avaya appointed former Motorola channel executive Jeremy Butt to be its worldwide channel chief today. The appointment is the latest in a series of executive changes at the company in recent months.

Butt most recently served as vice president of worldwide channels for Motorola’s enterprise mobility business, and he is credited with greatly expanding the division’s channel reach globally. Read more »

Earlier this week, a partner asked Microsoft the following question: If Software Assurance expires on Small Business Server 2003, will the client lose the right to install SBS 2003 on new hardware?

Seems like a simple enough question, right? Wrong. On the Microsoft SMB Community Blog, it takes Microsoft senior manager Eric Ligman nearly 650 words to answer.

Read more »

The much anticipated Dell Channel Blog made its debut today with two posts — one from Dell chief blogger Lionel Menchaca, who introduced the site, and another from channel chief Greg Davis, who wrote about the new Partner Advisory Council.

The council, judging by a picture on the blog, has about two dozen members. They met this week at Dell’s headquarters in Round Rock, Texas, and Davis said the big topics they discussed were: communication, partner profitability, building trust in the channel and reducing complexity for partners.

Menchaca’s introduction said the primary contributors to the Dell Channel Blog will be channel community manager Amie Paxton and channel community liaison Mike Bukowski. But more importantly, he gave me a shout out for earlier comments I made on the Direct2Dell blog.

Dell execs are clearly making a strong effort to reach out to partners with this blog. They know they have to if they want to erase the channel skepticism that Dell’s two-plus decades in direct sales has created. There will likely still be bumps in the road as Dell puts its channel program together, but this outreach should buy the company some patience and benefit of the doubt from partners.

Has there ever been an economist willing to say we’re in a recession while the recession is actually happening? My own personal barometer of the economy (my husband who is a contractor) continues to have a very bizarre spring. After months of denial and a sort of lag factor, it appears that IT buyers are more nervous, too.

The CDW IT Monitor, which the reseller publishes on a bi-monthly basis, shows that slightly fewer businesses are planning to increase their IT budgets in the second half of 2008. That would be 50 percent vs. 54 percent in February. The data show that 8 percent are planning to cut their IT spending, compared with 6 percent.

CDW derives its monitor report from an online survey of about 1,000 IT decision maker reflecting all sizes of business and government agencies. You can spend some time with the complete findings here.

Generally speaking, there was less shake-up among the bigger respondents, which CDW postulates is due to the fact that budgets have already been approved (although who’s to say they can’t be cut!) CDW notes that at midsize companies, a sub-index tracking planned IT investment slipped 7 points from February to 70. There was also a 10 percent decline in the number of businesses that said they would hire IT staff in the next six months; 21 percent reported plans to hire, off 10 percent.

The good news is that the strategic value that survey respondents place on technology actually improved slightly: 83 percent reported said “yes” to notion that IT is “effective in achieving corporate mission and goals.” That was up 1 percentage point from 83 percent in February. So, that means demonstrating how technology can solve a business need is the way to make the case for a sale. Have at it.

Heather Clancy is a technology journalist and business communications consultant with SWOT Management Group. She can be reached at hclancy@swotmg.com.