Posts Tagged ‘storage’

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.

At the VMware Partner Exchange in Las Vegas, vendors across all technology segments are craning to showcase how their hardware and software support or enhance VMware’s virtualization tools. The goal is acceleration and expansion of channel programs and penetration of existing accounts.

The unexpected announcement that former CA CEO John Swainson is heading to Dell to head up a new software unit surprised many in the technology market and channel. What shouldn’t come as a surprise are Dell’s ambitions to become a portfolio technology company. The challenge: Getting partners to recognize the value of the portfolio.

Symantec is reassuring partners that its line of backup appliances will be unaffected by its joint-venture Huawei Technologies’ shut down. Hardware, Symantec says, is a growing part of its portfolio.

Huawei Symantec has all but shut down its U.S. operations to clear the way for the purchase of its assets by its parent company, Huawei Technologies. Officially, the company remains open until March, but partners are already being supported by offshore offices and a skeleton crew in California.

The storage appliance vendor says the number of registered partners in its worldwide channel network surged in 2011. Drawing new partners in is a combination of product features and channel programs that made sales easier and more profitable. It shows that technology and channel programs cannot stand independently.

The fall flooding in Thailand that destroyed much of the global hard drive manufacturing capacity by suppliers such as Hitachi and Western Digital continues to drive up prices that won’t of servers, storage appliances and PCs. The price hikes won’t recede until 2012, analysts say.

Brocade Communications has reportedly received bids in the latest chapter of trying to sell itself. Speculation is Brocade will go private through a private equity sale. However, some say a vendor like Oracle or IBM could snap up the networking and storage switch company to compete against the likes of Hewlett-Packard and Cisco.

Today, we unveil the first round of our Channelnomics 2011 Influencers awards, in which we recognize those special people and businesses that – for better or worse – influence the thinking and operations of the channel over the last year. We will publish our winners all this week. Up first, associations and channel groups, mobility, and storage.

Everyone knows that Santa travels around the world each Christmas delivering toys to girls and boys. What many don’t realize is technology makes it possible for Santa to make all those trinkets and embark on his annual journey. And, no surprise, most of these technologies are supported by the solution providers.