In this month's magazine, our cover story examines 7 Potential Obstacles to Windows 7 Bliss:

"Microsoft deserves credit for making Windows 7 leaner and better performing than Vista, but there are still plenty of reasons to believe that the industry's migration to the operating system could be something less than an enthusiastic stampede..."

Our quarterly State of Technology feature zeroes in on those security opportunities that offer "Big ROI":

"One of the most significant IT security trends is the continued upsurge of managed and hosted security services, which now dominate the majority of solution providers' portfolios."

In our columns, Steve Burke looks at Dell's Channel Pricing Problem:

"What the Dell case shows is just how difficult it is for a longtime direct-sales company to transform itself into a channel company. All the processes and policies that Dell has built since its inception 25 years ago were built to support a direct-sales model. Now Dell is changing.."

Can Annual Report Card success translate into a rich IPO? For Fortinet, the two seem to be going together. Bob DeMarzo explains how:

"[Fortinet] has had a steady climb in the ARC, rising from seventh place in 2007 to third last year and then taking first against rivals Cisco, Juniper, SonicWall and Trend Micro this year."

Meanwhile, Robert Faletra says Microsoft's new VAR/customer satisfaction requirements might be missing the mark:

"We here at Everything Channel do lots of perception studies, so I understand their validity and benefit... The trouble with Microsoft's approach is that it's highly unlikely to return much usable data."

The complete magazine, along with our back issues, can be found at crn.com/crn. Solution providers can request a free subscription at subscribecrn.com.