The economic stimulus package has passed, and there will be an enormous amount of money shooting out of Washington. Whether this will help the economy any is still up in the air, and even a few Democrats are saying it's just too much.
This week at CeBIT, Microsoft announced that its Business Productivity Online Suite is available for trial in 19 countries. Microsoft is also releasing the Microsoft Office Communications Online, and Business Productivity Online Deskless Worker Suite packages. The releases are part of the company's Software-plus-Services initiative.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is obviously not living in the real world. Of course, he's governor of the Dreamland known as California, so I guess I can't blame him. In opening the 2009 CeBIT trade show in Hannover, Germany, he told those attending to not be "losers" and to "pump up the economy".
The "VAR Marketing" blog, written by Will Gibney, had a great line in this entry, saying that Channel Marketing Development Funds (MDF) is "like playing with the house's money in a casino." I tend to agree with Will's assessment.
The biggest corporations that are suffering are getting the attention of both the media and the government. Big bank? Have a bailout. Car company? Here's some money to get you through. Virtually any big manufacturer that's threatening layoffs has a Congressman lobbying for a piece of the stimulus pie.
More customers are looking for financing options from their VARs these days, but credit is hard to come by, whether you're trying to buy a new home or a new network for your business. Fortunately, there are still a few vendors out there who have deep enough pockets to provide these options.
IBM has a new plan, and nobody seems to like it very much. Last week, IBM told its solution providers that the company is moving to a "controlled distribution" plan, which carries with it new certification requirements.
The theory behind deal registration is solid. It lets you keep track of your own deals, and protect your leads from being poached by other resellers, or worse, by the vendor itself.
Sidekick: The Good News & the Bad News Either way you look at it Microsoft Data Center management did not follow standards or best practices in this failure. In which case it makes me wonder more about the outsourcing of corporate data much less personal data.
- mburton325
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