Firings, Lawsuits and iPad Killers, Oh My

The center of the Channel-Lands universe was San Antonio this week as the CompTIA faithful converged on the Texan city for the annual Breakaway conference. Four days of packed education and analyses presentations, community meetings and peer networking seemed to pass too quickly. You can read all about Breakaway on the CompTIA blog – believe me, there’s plenty to read and they’ll be stories coming out of the event for weeks to come. But the world didn’t stop turning while we were all down on the Lone Star prairie. This week’s Channel-Lands will take a look at some of the stories will missed – including some high-profile executive controversies and notable lawsuits.

HP Wrestles with Hurd Aftermath

OK, this actually started last Friday, but it remains the most significant technology-business story of the week (and may just top the charts for the month). In a surprise move, Hewlett-Packard’s board ousted CEO Mark Hurd for fudging his expense records. The discrepancies were discovered when the company investigated – and cleared – Hurd of sexual harassment charges by a marketing consultant. The sudden and seemingly unexplainable firing of the man who seemingly rescued HP over the last five years created shockwaves that ripped through Wall Street to the channel.

In the channel, CRN probably has the most extensive coverage of the Hurd firing, with a string of reports by veteran channel scribes Steve Burke, Scott Campbell, Chad Berndtson and Jack McCarthy. In story after story, solution providers told CRN that they wanted the commitment and stability that Hurd brought to the channel in his five year tenure. As Berndtson reported: “Although few would speculate on Hurd's potential replacement at HP's helm, VARs interviewed by CRN Friday conceded that the fallout would at the very least be a distraction for weeks to come -- and that Hurd's leadership and popularity among HP channel partners would be tough to replace.”

HP has reassured its partners that the company’s commitment to the channel would not waiver. In his report, Burke wrote: “The channel leaders said the company's three key channel goals remain the same ones that [Americas channel chief Stephen] DiFranco himself outlined at HP's Americas Partner Conference earlier this year: simplification of channel programs and processes; better alignment with business units; and streamlining its PartnerONE channel programs.

Who will replace Hurd at the HP helm? The VAR Guy is placing his bet on Ann Livermore, executive VP of HP’s enterprise business. As he wrote in his blog: “Livermore was twice overlooked for the CEO post; once when Carly Fiorina was hired and a second time when Mark Hurd was recruited from NCR. The VAR Guy thinks the third time will be the charm for Livermore.” Several other candidates are being considered for the post, including HP’s Tony Bradley and Vyomesh Joshi, and Microsoft’s Stephen Elop.

Dell Lawsuit Takes New Twist

Dell’s perception problems aren’t being helped by the latest twist in a lawsuit filed by North Carolina solution provider Advanced Internet Technologies. According to a New York Times report, AIT is accusing Dell of ignoring a court order to turn over records related to an alleged cover-up of faulty OptiPlex computers from 2003 to 2005. AIT says its business was harmed by Dell, which allegedly knew motherboards and other components were defected in nearly 12 million units shipped. AIT is an unlikely source for such a lawsuit. According to Hoovers, AIT’s total revenues are $19 million compared to the $60 billion in revenues posted by Dell. One solution provider quoted by the Times attributed Dell’s decline trust among customers and partners to the faulty computer issue. 

Forget Clouds, Think Managed Services

Solution providers can’t have a conversation or listen to a presentation without being bludgeoned with cloud computing. The world is migrating to the cloud, but the cloud isn’t driving out every technology and service delivery mechanism that came before. Managed services – cloud computing’s older cousin – is very much alive and producing tremendous value to the solution providers who have built practices. A few of the channel pubs made note of managed services in the past week.

Channel Insider’s Jessica Davis had an interesting slide show on effective habits of successful managed service providers. Some of these tips are common sense – like regularly measuring performance and consistency in service delivery. But as they say common sense isn’t commonly practiced. Davis includes other tips like standardizing the technology used in service delivery, meeting regularly with customers and branding products.

Joe Panettieri of MSPmentor offered up his own tips for using social media to build managed services business. His advice: launch a blog to promote what’s happening at your company; leverage Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn as a distribution mechanism for news about your company; and get into video. Check out the reasoning behind his advice; it’s rather insightful. I agree with Joe when he says, “Trust me. Blog engines remain the ultimate way to spread news about your company. Fast.”

What’s So Special about the iPad?

iPads were everywhere at this week’s Breakaway conference. Solution providers were using them to take notes and keep up with email. CompTIA staff had them for holding digital information about the conference. And vendors were using them as raffle prizes in their booths (hey Shockey Monkey folks, I want my iPad!). But is the iPad the ultimate mobile computing device?

CRN’s Ed Moltzen did a performance test of the iPad using the benchmarking tools by Geekbench. Conclusion: the iPad has good battery life and ease of use, but lacks the performance and flexibility of a similarly priced notebook or netbook.

Perhaps that’s the reason why so many other PC vendors are racing to put out their “iPad killers.” Channel Insider reported that Dell plans to release its Streak tablet at the undercutting price of $300 with a two-year AT&T service contract. Oh, and it makes phone calls, too.

ComputerWorld has a detailed report on HP’s tablet plans, including intent to release with versions of Microsoft Windows 7 and WebOS (the operating system it acquired from Palm). The HP tablets will come out in early 2011.

The battle for the tablet is just beginning to heat up. The challenge for would-be iPad killers is beating the huge headstart and love-affair Apple has.

CRN.com Gets a New Look

Congratulations to CRN.com, which relaunched its website with a terrific new look, easy navigation and lots of added features. This is the first website refresh in more than three years for Everything Channel’s primary news and information portal. As online editor Joe Caponi says in his blog, “You'll find a new focus on breaking news in areas such as cloud computing and data center management, along with a new suite of tools courtesy of our partners at My VBO.” Interestingly, Everything Channel dropped the ChannelWeb brand in favor of CRN.com. When the last redesign was done, CRN and VARBusiness were merged into one website – ChannelWeb. For search engine optimization purposes, ChannelWeb retained the crn.com domain. The unification of the URL and brand should clear up the periodic confusion among Web users and create a better synergy with the print publication. Good job, CRN!

That’s the news from Channel-Lands. Let me know what stories you find important by emailing me or posting your comments right here.