http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball Ed Moltzen's blog on Channelweb Connect, focusing on industry events, tech and trends. Fri, 11 Sep 2009 13:54:45 GMT Clearspace 2.5.7 (http://jivesoftware.com/products/clearspace/) 2009-09-11T13:54:45Z http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/2009/09/11/is-saas-up-or-down Enterprise Content Management company Digitech Systems says it has conducted a survey of VARs on the topics of SaaS and ECM, and came away with some counterintuitive findings, according to an e-mail from one of the company's public-relations cloud saas Fri, 11 Sep 2009 13:56:55 GMT emoltzen@cmp.com http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/2009/09/11/is-saas-up-or-down 2009-09-11T13:56:55Z 2 months, 1 week ago 2 http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/comment/is-saas-up-or-down http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/feeds/comments?blogPost=1492 http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/2009/09/10/atts-network-upgrade-not-good-enough AT&T Wireless made a big deal yesterday out of plans to upgrade six U.S. cities to its High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) 7.2 technology, which sounds impressive until you look at the provider's coverage map. There are still broad areas of the U.S. at&t iphone wireless Thu, 10 Sep 2009 13:33:44 GMT emoltzen@cmp.com http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/2009/09/10/atts-network-upgrade-not-good-enough 2009-09-10T13:33:44Z 2 months, 1 week ago http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/comment/atts-network-upgrade-not-good-enough http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/feeds/comments?blogPost=1489 http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/2009/09/09/apple-and-expectations Steve Rubel has started a discussion on Friendfeed about Apple's press briefing today, saying it failed because the Cupertino, Calif.-based company didn't live up to the hype. Some expected Apple would announce The Beatles' catalog would now be apple Wed, 09 Sep 2009 22:42:48 GMT emoltzen@cmp.com http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/2009/09/09/apple-and-expectations 2009-09-09T22:42:48Z 2 months, 1 week ago 1 http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/comment/apple-and-expectations http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/feeds/comments?blogPost=1485 http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/2009/09/09/higher-capacity-drives-for-notebooks-will-hurt-netbooks A key differentiator between netbooks and notebooks is that notebooks, by and large, provide a lot more internal storage than netbooks. Western Digital, with an announcement today, may be pushing that delta yet wider.  The company rolled out its WD netbooks storage Wed, 09 Sep 2009 19:04:52 GMT emoltzen@cmp.com http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/2009/09/09/higher-capacity-drives-for-notebooks-will-hurt-netbooks 2009-09-09T19:04:52Z 2 months, 1 week ago 2 http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/comment/higher-capacity-drives-for-notebooks-will-hurt-netbooks http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/feeds/comments?blogPost=1482 http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/2009/09/09/it-should-be-getting-more-focus-in-health-care Intel has been among the companies out in front of the push to bring health care into the 21st century and has been since the company created an entire business unit to work on the issue. In all of the debates over health care in the U.S., it's simply health care digital Wed, 09 Sep 2009 13:56:54 GMT emoltzen@cmp.com http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/2009/09/09/it-should-be-getting-more-focus-in-health-care 2009-09-09T13:56:54Z 2 months, 1 week ago 7 http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/comment/it-should-be-getting-more-focus-in-health-care http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/feeds/comments?blogPost=1479 http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/2009/09/08/on-becoming-a-google-apps-var If you thought Google's problems with Gmail over the past few months may be enough to keep everyone out of the company's Software-as-a-Service path to the channel, you’d have thought wrong. Isos Technology, a Tempe, Ariz.-based solution provider, says Tue, 08 Sep 2009 19:25:44 GMT emoltzen@cmp.com http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/2009/09/08/on-becoming-a-google-apps-var 2009-09-08T19:25:44Z 2 months, 2 weeks ago http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/comment/on-becoming-a-google-apps-var http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/feeds/comments?blogPost=1477 http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/2009/09/08/was-100-million-spent-well-by-microsoft When Microsoft wanted to launch its new search engine (or, as some call it, a "decision engine,") Bing.com, the Redmond, Wash.-based company threw a reported $100 million marketing campaign behind it.   The software giant has desperately wanted to Tue, 08 Sep 2009 13:37:13 GMT emoltzen@cmp.com http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/2009/09/08/was-100-million-spent-well-by-microsoft 2009-09-08T13:37:13Z 2 months, 2 weeks ago http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/comment/was-100-million-spent-well-by-microsoft http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/feeds/comments?blogPost=1476 http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/2009/08/27/is-the-eu-hurting-vars-by-dawdling-on-sun-oracle European antitrust officials are taking their sweet time in evaluating Oracle's proposed $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems, and this piece by Brenon Daly suggests it could take a lot longer if a decision isn't forthcoming by Sept. 3. The sun eu microsystems oracle Thu, 27 Aug 2009 18:12:47 GMT emoltzen@cmp.com http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/2009/08/27/is-the-eu-hurting-vars-by-dawdling-on-sun-oracle 2009-08-27T18:12:47Z 2 months, 3 weeks ago http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/comment/is-the-eu-hurting-vars-by-dawdling-on-sun-oracle http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/feeds/comments?blogPost=1420 http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/2009/08/27/a-good-sign-for-it-recovery DisplaySearch throws a bit of good news our way on Thursday morning: "According to David Hsieh, Vice President of DisplaySearch, 'July was a record-breaking month for large-area TFT LCD panels in several segments, including total shipments, shipment Thu, 27 Aug 2009 13:52:41 GMT emoltzen@cmp.com http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/2009/08/27/a-good-sign-for-it-recovery 2009-08-27T13:52:41Z 2 months, 3 weeks ago http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/comment/a-good-sign-for-it-recovery http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/feeds/comments?blogPost=1417 http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/2009/08/26/salesforce-wants-more-vars-selling-its-cloud Salesforce.com launched a new VAR program, trying to entice the channel to begin pushing its cloud-based CRM applications and more. ( Via Techcrunch .)  You can read details of the program here. (PDF) Essentially, Salesforce says that there’s no cost Wed, 26 Aug 2009 13:24:26 GMT emoltzen@cmp.com http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/2009/08/26/salesforce-wants-more-vars-selling-its-cloud 2009-08-26T13:24:26Z 2 months, 3 weeks ago 3 http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/comment/salesforce-wants-more-vars-selling-its-cloud http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/feeds/comments?blogPost=1409 http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/2009/08/25/collaborate-or-die We've posted my review of IBM's LotusLive Engage application -- a service I recommend as a nice collaboration and live meeting technology. The review speaks for itself, but there are some additional issues that should get people thinking and social networking ibm Tue, 25 Aug 2009 13:01:49 GMT emoltzen@cmp.com http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/2009/08/25/collaborate-or-die 2009-08-25T13:01:49Z 2 months, 4 weeks ago http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/comment/collaborate-or-die http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/feeds/comments?blogPost=1402 http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/2009/08/24/suddenly-everybody-wants-a-pc-business There was a time, a few years ago, when people couldn't get out of the PC business fast enough. IBM sold its PC business to Lenovo. Compaq, which didn't see a future going it alone in the PC space, sold out to Hewlett-Packard. Gateway gave up the ghost pcs nokia Mon, 24 Aug 2009 13:31:30 GMT emoltzen@cmp.com http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/2009/08/24/suddenly-everybody-wants-a-pc-business 2009-08-24T13:31:30Z 2 months, 4 weeks ago http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/comment/suddenly-everybody-wants-a-pc-business http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/feeds/comments?blogPost=1398 http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/2009/08/21/amazon-slashes-key-cloud-pricing In an e-mail to customers of its cloud-based hosting service, Amazon.com said today that it's slashing pricing on a key element of its service: "We wanted to let you know that, starting today, we have lowered the one-time fee for all Amazon EC2 Reserved cloud computing Fri, 21 Aug 2009 15:57:55 GMT emoltzen@cmp.com http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/2009/08/21/amazon-slashes-key-cloud-pricing 2009-08-21T15:57:55Z 3 months, 2 days ago http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/comment/amazon-slashes-key-cloud-pricing http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/feeds/comments?blogPost=1390 http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/2009/08/21/another-argument-against-windows-7-upgrade Wired's GadgetLab Web site has published a piece by Brian X. Chen listing "7 Reasons to Avoid Windows 7." A top reason, Chen writes, is the lack of support for direct XP-to-Windows 7 upgrades. Microsoft recommends "clean" installations, which 7 windows Fri, 21 Aug 2009 14:06:17 GMT emoltzen@cmp.com http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/2009/08/21/another-argument-against-windows-7-upgrade 2009-08-21T14:06:17Z 3 months, 2 days ago 2 http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/comment/another-argument-against-windows-7-upgrade http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/feeds/comments?blogPost=1385 http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/2009/08/18/former-ibm-channel-chief-working-to-make-new-mark Donn Atkins spent decades working for IBM during its many ups and downs, good times and bad times with the IT solution provider channel, developing programs that have ultimately lasted for years in an industry where channel programs can sometimes change ibm channel Tue, 18 Aug 2009 13:30:27 GMT emoltzen@cmp.com http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/2009/08/18/former-ibm-channel-chief-working-to-make-new-mark 2009-08-18T13:30:27Z 3 months, 5 days ago http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/comment/former-ibm-channel-chief-working-to-make-new-mark http://community.crn.com/blogs/insideball/feeds/comments?blogPost=1368