Avnet Technology Solutions has joined forces with Oracle to engage its IT solution provider community with Oracle health care solutions designed with small and mid-sized hospitals in mind.

New Jersey-based solution provider PowerSolution worked behind the scenes at the New Hope Church to ensure the small congregation's Web site and IT resources could handle the surging in traffic as it host the musical superstar’s final farewell.

Looking to challenge conventional Secure Web Gateways and Web filtering vendors, Zscaler unveiled a new channel program build around the delivery of Web content security via the cloud. The intent is making Zscaler and its partner ecosystem the equivalent of Salesforce.com of cloud security providers.

Solution providers give Ingram Micro top marks in cloud partnerships among distributors by a wide margin. However, the distribution preference reveals a big gap in distribution cloud cover.

Solution providers need to get ready for opportunities in the explosive growth of smartphone and tablet sales, along with an accompanying boom in mobile data traffic—with mobile cloud use accounting nearly three-quarters of that traffic—by 2016.

Huawei Technologies is spending big with U.S. chip and component suppliers in what is probably a prelude to greater North America expansion and an effort to improve its corporate image.

Infoblox is relaunching its channel program to bring more focus and resources toward the enablement of partners in IT infrastructure automation. The program is a nice balance of incentives and knowledge transfer for technology that does require a fair amount of change.

Private-equity firm Blackstone Group has reportedly dropped interest in Brocade Communications because the networking company’s value has risen too high to make a leverage buyout feasible. Channel sales may be part of what’s buoying Brocade to self-sufficiency.

Cisco is appealing to the European Union, which has a history of regulatory advocacy in technology, to impose requirements on Microsoft to ensure openness in future generations of video telephony and communications. There’s good logic behind Cisco’s argument, and it will ultimately benefit resellers.

Integrator FishNet Security is launching a new security service that combines security information management with other leading data integrity and monitoring technologies to provide a comprehensive, enterprise-class managed service.

Quest Software is adding professional services automation (PSA) capabilities to its PacketTrap managed services platform through the acquisition of BlueFolder. The intent is to build a more complete managed services offering by merging PSA with RMM. The deal reveals divergent trends in the managed services approach.

CA’s newest cloud “accelerator” solution holds infrastructure-as-a-service opportunities for solution providers. GreenPages Technology Solutions is CA’s first U.S. partner out of the gate with it.

Used and refurbished networking equipment represents a fraction of the switches and routers sold each year. Increasingly, though, the secondary market is getting a second look as businesses seek savings and consistency in their IT spending. Just ask Network Hardware Resale, which had a record year.

FireMon is integrating its innovative Risk Analyzer application with Rapid 7’s vulnerability management and penetration testing tools. The result of this partnership is a solution that provides solution providers and end users with deeper, more intelligent insights into their risk exposure.

Third Tier, a solution provider that offers technical support and assistance to peers, is changing its business model to make IT talent more accessible and affordable. It’s one of many such “talent benches” in the channel, and their collective success may be a sign of the need to virtualize tech talent.

Hewlett-Packard figuratively limped into Las Vegas for its Global Partner Conference, still suffering from the hangover of the 2011 management debacle. CEO Meg Whitman, her management team and a raft of new products and channel initiatives have lifted the dark cloud hanging over the vaunted vendor.

Parallels unleashed a string of new software, services capabilities and technology partnerships this week with the aim of enabling service providers with ammunition to capture a growing $2.4 billion SMB cloud opportunity.

Technology Capital Investors bought another regional managed services company this week, Savid Technologies. All Covered, a division of Konica Minolta, likewise bought regional MSP Service Assurance. The two deals look similar from a technology and service area perspective, but differ in the end goal. And that reveals two trends in managed services consolidation.

Pundits say the channel’s best days are behind it as cloud computing and emerging technologies make it easier for vendors and customers to buy direct. But a flurry of new channel programs and enhancements to existing programs show the indirect model is alive and well on all fronts.

Ingram Micro has earned global distribution rights to sell VMware pay-as-you-go licensing. The goal, say both vendor and distributor, is aimed at simplifying sales and streamlining costs for better partner margins.