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 »

Here on Channel Marker, we love taking vendors to task for their mumbo-jumbo technobabble. You know, announcements like, “This new suite of solutions will provide a platform for customers to leverage their CRM, ERP, SOA and BPM in the cloud, exponentially increasing their workflow and productivity.”

We do it for fun, mostly. But when a vendor’s product names become confusing to partners, it can create serious problems with customers. One Microsoft partner who forsees such issues is Dave Sobel, CEO of Evolve Technologies, who wrote on his blog today that “Microsoft sucks at branding.” Here’s his description of what happened during a Microsoft training session today:

I’m spending my day with Microsoft around their new products, Windows Small Business Server 2008 and Windows Essential Business Server 2008.   They are part of the “Windows Essential Business Solutions” family.   The presenter, who is quite good (and I’ve seen before), took the time to apologize for the potential confusion, and made a point to tell us to be clear with customers.

Those names are all way too similar, especially when you realize that “Windows Essential Business Server” and “Windows Essentials Business Solutions” have the same acronym: WEBS. And this is quite a tangled one indeed.

But wait, it gets worse. Before I wrote this blog, I wanted to do a little research on these products. So I typed “Windows Essential Business Solutions” into Google, and here’s what I got:

That left me just as confused as Sobel. I poked around the Internets a little further, and I eventually found out that the product line is actually called Windows Essential Server Solutions.

I also discovered that Windows Essential Business Server is comprised of several different technologies, including Microsoft System Center Essentials, and that it comes in two different editions, standard and premium. The only difference between the two editions is that premium comes with SQL Server 2008. But even though it’s the premium edition of Windows Essential Business Server, it only comes with the standard edition of SQL Server 2008.

Got it? Me either. Good luck explaining all that to a customer.

And that’s Sobel’s biggest issue: Microsoft gave confusing names to all these products and acknowledged they are confusing, but the company is leaving it up to partners to sort out said confusion for customers. He asks, “How come this becomes my problem?” It will be interesting to see what Microsoft’s answer is.

Last week’s Microsoft Live Mesh announcement had many observers dreaming of the day when their PCs, cell phones and other devices would all communicate and share data with each other.

At least one Microsoft partner had an even grander vision — one in which Live Mesh would promote truly open interaction among different devices and platforms. But Microsoft is still stressing how Live Mesh will work with Windows and Windows Mobile (even though it will be able to run on any device). And now that partner, Digipede Technologies CTO Robert Anderson, is calling that strategy “disappointing.”

“… it is a little disappointing that there is such a heavy emphasis on Windows and Windows Mobile,” Anderson writes on his blog, Expert Texture. “I discount the coming Macintosh support because support for non-Windows mobile devices is really the issue. If iPhones and Blackberrys are out of the equation, then the synchronization story isn’t so compelling.”

Live Mesh will run, as Anderson describes it, “as a set of open protocols that anyone can implement.” He had hoped that Live Mesh would run on a modified version of Silverlight — Microsoft’s .NET runtime for Internet applications — which would make it available on any device without the need for third-party development.

As my editor Barb Darrow pointed out during last week’s Partner News Podcast, Live Mesh is starting off as a consumer-oriented strategy, but it will sooner or later have ramifications for business users, the VARs who sell to them and the ISVs like Digipede who develop additional software for them. And if Microsoft plans to use Live Mesh to help compete against Google in the SaaS and Web-based applications markets, more partners should be like Anderson and start paying attention now.

Spoke a couple of weeks back with Raza Imam, managing partner of Adaptive Solutions, a software engineering and custom development firm in Chicago about some rather, eh, extraordinary marketing tactics he is using to draw attention to his company.

Imam, who is 26 years old, noticed that small businesses that he was prospecting were looking more and more at offshore partners and, more important, that they had a lot of questions about offshoring in general. So he decided to create a tongue-in-cheek blog called BoycottSoftwareSweatshops to help address some of the questions he was getting about the benefits of offshoring and to tout his own onshore services to boot.

Typical topics that he has addressed include suggestions about how a small business can get high value, rather than low cost, for their project; possible culture shock that might come from using an offshore company; how to ask tough questions; and how to make sure deadlines are “real.”

Imam will be the first to admit that his firm is in somewhat of a saturated market, but he said that the blog has turned out to be a great source of leads — including inquiries from potential customers in Europe. When a person connects with him because of his blog, it results in a project about 80 percent of the time.

He has these three suggestions for any reseller or IT services provider who is thinking about using a blog to market their company:

1. Use humor and make jokes. “One of the fastest and most effective ways to see if a person ‘gets’ you is their sense of humor,” Imam says. That’s especially important when you are dealing with a client remotely. So, it’s important for both sides that there is some kind of rapport. Your blog should be about building rapport.
2. Don’t be afraid to make enemies. If you have an opinion, don’t whitewash it. Blogs are about creating controversy and dialog. You WANT people to take issue with what you write.
3. Make lemonade. If you or your company has made a mistake, own up to it. Talk about what you’ve learned in the process. “People don’t want you to be a rocket scientist, they just want you to be reliable,” Imam says.

Heather Clancy is an award-winning business journalist and channel communications consultant with SWOT Management Group. You can reach her at hclancy@swotmg.com.

The Microsoft Partner Program Web site gets skewered today by John Powers, CEO of independent software vendor Digipede.

On his blog, Powers Unfiltered, Powers gripes about how hard it is to search for other Microsoft partners, the site’s incompatibility with Firefox and wrong information about Digipede’s partner status. The portal incorrectly says Digipede has neither renewed its partner program membership nor paid for its Gold Certified membership. Powers writes:

“This is not a trivial point. I’m not the only one at Digipede who can log into the Microsoft Partner site. I’ve promised my partners that I’ve taken care of our Gold Certified Partner status, and that we’re all set. Yet when they log in, they … are led to believe that I’ve forgotten to pay and that our status is in jeopardy despite their herculean efforts to get our products tested and certified in time. This makes me look stupid (and I get enough chances to do that without Microsoft’s help).”

Powers does go out of his way to point out the “wonderful information” available on the site, and he offers suggestions to fix all the problems he brings up. Still, he concludes that his interactions on the site are “often problematic.”

The Microsoft Partner Program Web site isn’t the only issue that partners are having lately. Stories coming this week on SearchITChannel.com will focus on partners’ troubles getting certified for Windows Server 2008, as well as their cool reception for the Big Easy, a new program that promises $10 million in incentives.

For partners who’ve been wondering, Microsoft says it will make Windows Vista SP 1 beta available within weeks to “a moderate sized audience.”

The service pack will address reliability and performance issues, new hardware support and support for emerging standards, Microsoft said in an email. Details on what will be in this beta, which will be made more broadly available via MSDN and TechNet later, are here .

The beta will include all the previous updates as well as BitLocker Drive Encryption, support for Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) and Extended File Allocation Table (exFAT.)While many partners have not been overwhelmed byVista or customer reception to it, they need to keep their eye on it as it. More details are here.

Given that the bulk of users remain on Windows XP, the fact that Windows XP SP 3 beta is also going out to partners and customers in a few weeks may be of more immediate interest. Final bits are due in the first half of next year, Microsoft  said.

This service pack will also roll up all previous security updates, out-of-band-releases and hot fixes plus a few new updates, the company said.

And for Longhorn watchers, Windows Server 2008 will release to  manufacturing in Q1 of 2008. The company had hoped to release that code by year’s end. The company  said this RTM will not affect the previously-announced  mega-launch of Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 to take place February 27 in Los Angeles. More information is available  here. 

Barbara Darrow, a Boston-area journalist, can be reached at badarrow@comcast.net

I never really pondered what Charles Darwin meant by the word “fit” until this week at the CompTIA Breakaway conference.

Certainly it doesn’t refer to “fit” in the sense that we use the term now — all buffed-up from sessions at the gym.

Darwin wasn’t talking about the smartest among us either.

Read more »

[Note: This week SearchITChannel.com is proud to introduce its newest expert blogger — Barbara Darrow — one of the most expert, most experienced reporters covering Microsoft and its VAR community. Watch here for her coverage and analysis from Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference in
Denver this week.]

The thousands of Microsoft partners—ISVs, VARs, solution providers, integrators—converging on Denver this week have a lot on their minds.

Here, from a completely non-scientific survey of several Microsoft partners – both the “classic” and Microsoft Business Solutions varieties — are the five hot spots to watch at the annual Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference.

1: Profitability

The “P Word” is always top of mind for partners. Margins continue to be a huge challenge—although one that is not specific to selling/supporting Microsoft wares.

Can a solution provider or ISV make fat margins selling Microsoft licenses alone? In a word: no. Can he or she profit by customizing, supporting and guiding customers through transitions from non-Microsoft (or even old Microsoft) wares to new goods? More likely.

MBS partners in particular see the company’s traditional high-volume, low-margin approach as sweating their traditional margins; and they are none too happy about it. Several say they can make better dough selling SAP Business One or other competitive products that are not so widely distributed.

Read more »

Tech giant IBM and Lawson Software have announced their intention to take their partnership in a new direction. The new aim is selling their business applications to small businesses in “specific industries,” according to CNet’s Martin LaMonica.

The union between IBM and Lawson dates back to early 2005 when Lawson agreed to “optimize and standardize” its business applications on IBM’s software and hardware.

According to Lawson’s Website, this new development targets SMBs in “key vertical markets.” These markets include banking, insurance, fashion and food industries.

This development can be turned to the advantage of VARs looking to work with these industries. Partnering with Big Blue can provide fantastic opportunities to corner those markets with service agreements, hardware updates and more.

~ Eric Pierce

It was inevitable. After all the hype. After all the talking heads had spoken, Microsoft’s new OS, Vista, will finally hit the shelves tonight at midnight.

Bill Gates was so excited that he couldn’t contain himself.

It still remains to be seen how large an affect this will have on the Channel, but the smart money says it will — eventually. While it does make a lot of sense for VARs and systems integrators to stay on the cutting edge of available technology, deploying Vista with a company you support on Tuesday morning might just result in toilet paper all over your face.

The Reseller News is already talking about the problems they’ve had with the installation. From backing up all your files to getting anything to display on the monitor, there are likely to be some bumps along the way.

Just imagine what would happen to all of you, my friends, if you installed Vista at a company Tuesday night and none of the monitors worked properly on Wednesday morning. Put on a pot of coffee, it’s going to be a long day of support.

But it is just a matter of time until the early adopters have blazed the trail deep enough that more companies are going to want to start taking part. Patch Tuesday will become part of the vernacular again (if it ever went away) andVARs and systems integrators will need to be ready to take advantage of the business opportunities it presents. Bundling the software with new hardware can lead to support roles which could be renewed on a regular basis.

Regardless of how you plan on selling and supporting Vista, Jonathan Hassell may have the best advice out there: Get training.

And if you’re thinking of playing with Vista at home to get a feel for it, take a look at The Cult of Mac. While Vista is assuredly designed for your personal computer, running it on your personal Mac might be more satisfying.