In our upcoming issue of Business Solutions magazine, we feature a special supplement called the Partner Program Insider. Within this special insert, my colleague Mike Monocello and I highlight trends we're seeing in the top four vertical markets our channel readers are selling into: education, government, healthcare, and retail.  Continue Reading..

I've been thinking a lot lately about the future of the point of sale (POS) VAR. When our kids look back on this time period, I'm convinced these years will stand out  in the history of retail solutions providers as one of those time periods of considerable transition, evolution, and probably a little chaos.  Continue Reading..

Earlier this year, I would have predicted that 2012 would have been the year tape media made the same transition that film-based picture cameras made a few years ago.  At a couple of trade shows I attended, storage vendors offered up analyst stats that further confirmed this hunch, with some claiming “42% of data restores from tape fail” and others claiming that number to be as high as 71%.  Continue Reading..

Earlier this week, IMS Research (the physical security industry’s go-to analyst firm), issued its forecast for video surveillance-as-a-service (VsaaS) or cloud-based video surveillance. The punch line of the report is that VsaaS is on pace to rapidly grow (IMS Research predicts that the world market could exceed $1 billion by 2014).  Continue Reading..

In our March 2010 issue, we featured FishNet Security, a large security VAR that was projecting 15% growth by the end of the year due in part to offering virtualization and wireless solutions and adding new employees. (Check out, “Simplify Your Security Offerings To Spur Sales”).  Continue Reading..

Early this morning as I was about to send an email to a colleague, my email shut down and multiple popup messages flashed on my screen telling me my hard drive was unresponsive. Additional messages popped up from my Sophos antivirus software telling me that a virus had been detected and quarantined.  Continue Reading..

What can I say to convince you to add IP video surveillance to your line card? As a network-savvy integrator with a customer base, you've got many of the attributes necessary to sell and implement this technology (with some vendor support in the early stages, I'm sure).  Continue Reading..

There's the very real trend of retailers and restaurateurs asking their point of sale (POS) suppliers for iPad/Android consumer-grade tablet-based POS solutions. If you're that retail or restaurant solutions provider, you know that you can't make any money selling iPads or consumer-grade Android tablets.  Continue Reading..

Do you feel that making the move to managed services isn't much better than your break/fix past? Do you know what things you may need to change about your business to grow? Alex Osipov, the CTO of OS33, recently gave us his insight into why he thinks MSPs should focus more on relationships with their clients instead of one-time implementations.  Continue Reading..

In our September 2010 issue, I interviewed Ed Levin, the owner of International Point Of Sale. In the article, Levin explained how he felt as if his company lacked a competitive advantage by only selling hardware. To remedy the situation, Levin developed his own retail software (hence the title of the article, "Should You Become A POS ISV?") targeted at mom and pops. At the time of the article, Levin was able to speak...  Continue Reading..