Vista vs. XP: Countdown woes?

One of the big questions at Varnex last week was this: “Any news about whether or not Microsoft will extend the June cutoff for Tier 1 OEM skus?”
The answer, of course, was no. We have no idea if Microsoft is going to extend the cutoff date or not. I expect we will hear more about this [...]

Focus: Eric Ligman’s Microsoft SMB Community Blog

It’s good to be back in Greenville after a pretty full week of travel and meetings at SYNNEX’s spring Varnex conference.  While the team is getting caught up on all of our projects, I wanted to share one of the best Microsoft-centric online resources available to SMBs today: Eric Ligman’s Microsoft SMB Community blog. (I’m [...]

Microsoft and SYNNEX Varnex giveaway: DilTech’s Dil Singh is our 80G Zune winner.

We posted our list of winners yesterday (we’ll mail the prizes out to you if you haven’t already picked them up), but we wanted to give a special nod to Diltech’s Dil Singh, who beat out a hundred or so resellers in the battle for our extremely sought-after 80 gigabite Zune!
(Okay… it was just a battle [...]

Varnex: How to leverage Microsoft’s next-gen Software + products.

Microsoft’s Joe Flesch came back for another presentation today, which he delivered to a full capacity room (once again). This time around, he focused on next-gen products offered by Microsoft as well as the business model that resellers can get behind to leverage managed services.
Here are some basic notes and slides:
What we are talking about: [...]

Varnex: SYNNEX’s Executive Panel shares thoughts with attendees

From left to right: Frank Raimondi (AVP of Channel Marketing & Programs), Kirk Nesbit (VP of TSD Design & Support Services - holding the microphone), TJ Trojan (SVP - Peripherals), Steve Jow (SVP - Commercial Sales), and Bob Stegner (SVP Marketing - and today’s moderator).
One of the main threads of the panel discussion today was [...]

Varnex: Kevin Murai takes the stage, emphasizes collaboration, market specialization, and effective geographic coverage.

Kevin Murai took the stage this morning and spent some time talking about passion, understanding the value of building relationships, and technical expertise - all three being some of the core strengths of SYNNEX as an organization and our employee culture - and put them in the context of Varnex.
Kevin went on to crystalize some [...]

Announcing the Winners!!!

Thanks to everyone who came by the Microsoft booth this afternoon.  We had several drawings for Microsoft speakers (by Leeds), Microsoft Wireless entertainment Destops 8000’s, and the almighty 80G Zune!  Here are the lucky winners:
Carole Dasher (Ted Dasher, Inc.) - speaker
Jeffrey Bohlig (Compar) - speaker
Scott Yelton (Deltacom) - speaker
Shane Irvin (Communications Professionals) - speaker
Joey Parker [...]

Varnex Partner Program Session: Eric Ligman on Microsoft Open Value Subscription (OVS) and the Big Easy promotion

Microsoft’s Eric Ligman (above) gave a pretty in-depth presentation on OVS and the Big Easy promotion this afternoon. Honestly, Eric shared way too much information to fit in a blog post (I can’t type that fast, sorry) so we will post the entire presentation on the Microsoft Sherpa blog next week.  Until then, here are [...]

Varnex Microsoft Solutions Focus: Hosted Exchange adoption is easy, smart, and 100% beneficial to resellers and SMBs.

Great presentation earlier this afternoon by Richard Pratt on SYNNEX’s growing suite of “On demand” services (see slide) and Perimeter’s Anthony Graziano on Hosted Exchange.
Some quick notes on the session (shaken, not stirred) - From Richard Pratt’s presentation:

Market trend: Managed Services growth: 20% CAGR. Double-digit growth for the next 5 years. $18B in ’07. $42B by [...]

Varnex Vendor Focus Session Recap: Microsoft virtualization and partner programs

Just a quick recap of the first two-part vendor focus session hosted by Microsoft this morning:
Joe Flesch Focus briefly talked to an above-capacity audience about virtualization. (We had to bring in a dozen chairs to accomodate the additional attendees.)
Talking points:
Advantages of Microsoft virtualization over other offerings like VMware -

Integration with the OS is much [...]