Oracle axes Virtual Iron resellers

Oracle has closed the sales and channel business of Virtual Iron in the wake of its acquisition of the server virtualisation vendor, reports ChannelWeb.

Solution providers have received termination letters from Oracle and a couple of key sales and channel executives have left Virtual Iron, signs that Oracle's main purpose in acquiring Virtual Iron is to absorb its technology into its Oracle VM server virtualisation offering.

Oracle last month acquired Virtual Iron Software in a move to use server virtualisation to boost its software application business and in the process its competitiveness in relation to Microsoft.

US firm Palo Alto Networks is looking to knock a few traditional firewall vendors off their perches with what it is calling its 'next generation' firewall product, states Channel Pro.

Speaking about its UK channel campaign, Palo Alto's UK, Ireland and Africa regional manager, Alex Raistrick, takes aim at the current crop of firewall vendors: “The firewall market hasn't evolved for long time. You still have the main players - CheckPoint, Juniper, Cisco, Fortinet, but nothing really exciting for long time.

“Existing firewalls don't do the job they're designed to do any more, which is to protect the perimeter of your network,” he adds.

Solution providers that invest in vendor technical certifications are more profitable, sell more complex systems and have better relationships with their customers, according to the new Channel Insider/Amazon Consulting certification study, says Channel Insider.

But not all vendor certifications have the same ROI.

Chanel Insider reveals the top ten vendors that have the best certifications for return on their partners' investment.