I recently had the pleasure of speaking at the Retail Solution Provider Association annual thought leadership summit on the challenges faced by channel partners and vendors in the transition from purchased software and hardware to a recurring revenue service model. Not unexpectedly, one of the hottest topics on the agenda was SaaS channel compensation. In particular, how can SaaS vendors expect their more modest channel partners to absorb the up-front costs of customer acquisition and on-boarding when the SaaS vendors have trouble doing it themselves? The SaaS subscription model shifts risk from the customer to the vendor. Shifting too much risk back onto the SaaS channel lands the SaaS channel partner between the proverbial rock and hard place. A Game of Risk The SaaS subscription model shifts risk from the customer to the vendor. SaaS vendors promote low-risk free tr... (more)

F500 Corporate IT, Cloud Innovators?

By Ellen Rubin The way you know you’re in the midst of a technology shift and market disruption is when organizations don’t behave the way you expect them to based on past track records. Cloud computing has been filled with surprises and unexpected behavior from the get-go. First, Amazon, a retailer, turns out to be a technology powerhouse in disguise and changes the rules of IT infrastructure. Then, “real” technology leaders like IBM, Dell, EMC, HP and others make lots of announcements about cloud but essentially do little and re-brand existing offerings... (more)

Building the Next-Generation Datacenter - A Detailed Guide / Stage 2

IT organizations today are experiencing pressure to not only adopt new and emerging technologies like virtualization, but also reduce costs and do more with fewer resources (thus reducing CapEx) - all while delivering assurance of capacity and performance to the business. In the first part of this article, we provided a brief overview of the CA Technologies virtualization maturity lifecycle and focused on the server consolidation stage. Although server consolidation helps efficient use of available compute resources and reduces the total number of physical servers in the data cen... (more)

A New Bubble?

We all remember the Internet bubble back in 1999-2000 era. Start-ups were getting huge valuations. The joke then was – if you are 27 years old and not a millionaire, then you are a failure. All you needed was a sign-board saying “new internet company” and stand on Sand Hill Road. Several cars will stop and within hours, you should have a check worth millions as investment. This is an exaggeration of course. Jeff Bezos of Amazon even said – we spell profit as “prophet”. Then the bubble burst one day and the debris was huge. Hundreds of B2C and B2B companies went belly up. Now af... (more)

Exinda to Feature WAN Optimization Solutions at Interop Las Vegas 2011

ANDOVER, MASSACHUSETTS -- (Marketwire) -- 02/23/11 -- Exinda, a global provider of WAN optimization solutions, today announced it will participate at Interop Las Vegas 2011, happening May 8-12, 2011 at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center. Exinda will provide insights based on real-world deployments of its WAN Optimization solutions at a full-day workshop entitled "Virtualization Management: The Road to Private Cloud". The Company will also deliver live, real-time demonstrations of its latest WAN Optimization solutions at booth #1005. "As one of the world's fastest growing WAN Opt... (more)