OPN Specialized at Oracle OpenWorld 2009

Beth Vanni shares her thoughts on OPN Specialized with Lydia Smyers immediately after the launch of the program at Oracle OpenWorld 2009.

Lines Drawn In The Sand: Are Oracle’s Partnering Efforts Ready to Stand Among its New Competitors?

Beth Vanni – Director, Market Intelligence

October 12, 2009 –  Oracle OpenWorld 2009:   As Sun Microsystems’ Chairman Scott McNealy literally passed the baton to his “better capitalist” colleague, Larry Ellison, it became clear on stage to most OpenWorld attendees that Oracle is entering a new league.  When the Sun acquisition becomes final for Oracle, targeted for January 2010, Oracle will join the short list of enterprise computing platform mega-vendors, namely IBM, HP, and Cisco.  But, will the Oracle Partner Network measure up to the maturity of the world-class channel engagement and support programs offered by its peers?

The Clouds Begin To Part: Where Do Distributors Fit After The Storm?

A View on the Vendor/Distributor Relationship from the GTDC Annual Summit
By Beth Vanni – Director, Market Intelligence

Top channel support functions that distributors help with to increase ease of doing business for vendors’ partners (Amazon Consulting Cost of Complexity Study)

At last year’s Global Technology Distribution Council (GTDC) most of the conversation was about access to capital and credit.  The bottom of the recession was looming straight ahead and the fear about IT product demand drying up was very palpable.   Fast forward 12 months.  This year’s event is decidedly more optimistic.  The major distributors have undoubtedly had a tough year, along with their major vendor partners, but by all indications of average selling prices, unit sell-through and pipeline forecasts, the major distributors think we’re all climbing out of the bottom of the trough.

VMworld 2009: Ahead in the Cloud

Sandra Glaser Cheek

I spent several days at VMworld 2009 last week where I was one of 12,000+ attendees (roughly, about ¼ of the attendees were partners) gathered to immerse ourselves in all things virtualization. There were a few new product announcements – all ripe with the notion of clouds and an overarching computing paradigm, but there were really no big surprises. A few highlights that stood out for me:

Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference Update Day 4

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Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference Update Day 3

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Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference Update Day 2

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Windows 7: The Great “White Hope” for IT Spending or Hopeful Optimism?

Microsoft Partner Conference Update

Beth Vanni

By the end of 2010 more than 20% of the U.S. IT workforce will be using Windows 7.   More than 177 million copies of Windows 7 should be in place worldwide – 60 million of that in the U.S.   These July 2009 projections from IDC align with the level of optimism and enthusiasm expressed by Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO, as he marched back and forth on stage with his customary passion and salesmanship.
Perhaps even more interesting was the number of hands that went up in the main session when Ballmer asked how many of the 9,000 some odd partners in the audience were already running or using Windows 7.  To my eye, it seemed that about 2/3 of the audience raised their hands.   Bill Veghte, SVP of the Windows Business, reported that over 16,000 hardware and software partners are currently developing on Windows 7;  Microsoft experienced nowhere near this early momentum for previous Windows releases prior to their general availability.  IDC projects that the 85,000 Microsoft partner companies in the U.S. will collectively employ nearly 700,000 people and will sell $18.51 of services and products for every $1 of Windows 7 sold.  According to their projections, the economic impact of this market should total $100 billion in products and services sold around Windows 7 into the U.S. market between now and by the end of 2010.
Surely, this year’s Microsoft partner conference is full of renewed product innovation.   As we all know, Microsoft was originally a technology innovator first, then a marketing powerhouse second.   So, back to its roots it goes.  With the disappointment realized in the market last year around Vista, Microsoft has a big promise to uphold to the breadth of its partner community.   Hence, there are major product announcements or upgrades planned for nearly every part of the Microsoft product portfolio — Windows, Office, Sharepoint, Azure, Dynamics and Windows Server, among others.
At this same conference, however, Gartner’s market projections for economic rebound were less glowing.   For the SMB section of the market (under 1,000 employees, by their definition), they showed overall software spending to still be at negative growth rates (-1.6%).  Granted, this was “less bad” than other IT product categories (desktops, servers).  But in the segment of the market where the vast majority of Microsoft partners specialize, the forecast for pure IT demand still wasn’t rosey.   This varying degree of optimism about true IT spending, regardless of the innovation offered by major product releases, still gives the channel pause.   The Gartner session was packed – partners taking pictures of the data on the screen with their smart phones.

Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference Update Day 1

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Day Three Cisco Partner Summit

Diane Krakora gives insight and perspective on day three of Cisco’s Partner Summit in Boston

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