Dell enhances partner portal

Dell is planning to enhance its partner portal and continue with its aggressive channel recruitment strategy, reports CRN-UK.

Greg Davis, vice-president of global commercial channels at Dell, said the vendor has seen “tremendous” growth through its partner network and intends to continue investing in its resellers.

“There is ongoing revision to our portal based on partner feedback,” he said. “In the Autumn we will re-launch the portal to make it easier for partners to use. We are currently growing our channel business at two times the rate of our internal growth.

Taking the initiative is generally a good thing, and vendors are often keen on enhancing and updating their channel programmes. But what incentives are vendors offering VARs to sell green IT? asks ChannelWeb.

Simon Jackson, vice-president of Northern Europe for NEC Display Solutions, said the greener features of its products are complemented with features such as carbon metering and eco-modes. It is promoting things such as white LEDs and public displays sold with feet as an option - because research shows that most users do not need the feet.

The vendor has worked to qualify for Electronic Product Environment Assessment Tool certification. “Customers are asking for greener products now,” he said.

The past two weeks have seen two acquisitions of relatively small purveyors of scalable file systems by big storage players, says CNET News.

First, HP finally pulled in its partner IBRIX. Only days later, LSI made a surprise acquisition of ONStor. If both IBRIX and ONStor offer platforms upon which one can build scalable network attached storage, do these back-to-back deals indicate some sort of emerging trend? Yes and no.

Yes it is in that, if you're a major NAS vendor and want to compete with NetApp, who is readying GX8, scalability is now a must-have. But IBRIX extends capabilities HP already has whereas for LSI, ONStor represents their first ever venture into the NAS world.