John writes the Contract Watch column and his own column for the Channel Insider.John has covered the information-technology industry for 15 years, focusing on government issues, systems integrators, resellers and channel activities. Prior to working with Channel Insider, he was an editor at Smart Partner, and a department editor at Federal Computer Week, a newspaper covering federal information technology. At Federal Computer Week, John covered federal contractors and compiled the publication's annual ranking of the market's top 25 integrators. John also was a senior editor in the Washington, D.C., bureau of Computer Systems News.
Hosting vendors arent just counting on the big guys as they round up partners. Some companies are courting traditional resellers and small Web design shops, as well. Take Epoch Internet. This hosting company recently started targeting resellers through a relationship with Avnet Computer Marketings Hall-Mark division. The objective is straightforward: Recruit resellers to sell Epochs […]
After i9 Interactive won a job to create a Web site for serious anglers, the New York-based integrator embarked on a fishing expedition of its own. The goal: catch a reliable hosting partner. The story began when Ken Schultz, fishing editor of Field & Stream, hired i9 to develop Kenschultz.com. While the integrator felt confident […]
Cisco Systems message to partners at last weeks Las Vegas summit was nothing if not consistent: Get into Internet Protocol (IP) telephony. Speaker after speaker promoted Voice over IP (VOIP) to the 4,000 or so conference attendees. Cisco even wheeled in a tractor trailer-borne demonstration center stuffed with IP phones and other converged network gear. […]
Jenny Pappas, VP of Marketing and Investor Relations Westcon Group www.westcon.com Seeking Old Friends With the New Economy in flames and financing in short supply, the time may be ripe to look up some old friends: distributors. Distributors long have been a source of financial backing for resellers and integrators. Now, some companies are offering […]
Cisco Systems Silicon Valley campus once used telephones from Lucent Technologies. Cisco eventually ditched the gear, but CEO John Chambers had the opportunity to dump Lucent once again recently, at least symbolically. During a Cisco technology demonstration, Chambers was asked to create a sound effect by dropping a phone into a trash bin. The phone […]
A recent twist in the hosting-alliance ecosystem is getting partners to team with each other. Steve Quane, strategic planning and business development manager at Intel Online Services, works with integrators, technology vendors and application services providers. Collaboration among that partner base has become more routine. “Most of our bigger deals in the last six months […]
Corporate buyers may be skittish, but the federal government is still buying technology—lots of it. Agencies spend about $40 billion annually on IT, and online initiatives should push that figure higher. President Bushs budget proposes a $100 million fund to support interagency e-government efforts. Naturally, e-business firms want to get cozy with George W. and […]
In the government space, finality isnt all its cracked up to be. Take the privacy provisions of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). In December, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) published a final rule to set forth standards for protecting the confidentiality of individually identifiable health-care information. Consultants predicted a […]
Larry TanningPresident and CEOwww.tanning.com Pursuing the Difficult The dot-com party is over, and thats just fine with Larry Tanning. As president and CEO of Tanning Technology Corp., Tanning has focused his company on integrating a clients back-office systems to e-commerce apps. Gone are the days when a consultant could make a buck cobbling together a […]
In the Marx Brothers classic, “Horsefeathers,” a drowning Thelma Todd cries out for a “lifesaver,” to which Groucho responds by tossing her a Lifesaver candy. Its a situation sadly familiar to drowning high-tech firms, which last week expected a lifesaving interest rate cut from Alan Greenspan, and instead got the equivalent of hard candy. The […]