ShadowRAM: January 30, 2006

Last year, IGS rolled out a slew of managed services offerings for the SMB market, and it plans to expand that effort this year. The problem is these tend to be packaged services that are sold by the channel and then delivered by IGS. That&'s great if you don&'t have a robust services business and just want a finder&'s fee. But IGS&' field people still view partners with a strong services business that can deliver their own services as a competitive threat. The bottom line, IBM business partners say, is that IGS wants to deliver the services and book the revenue itself, and it sees the SMB market as relatively unmarred turf.

Dell keeps hinting about maybe, possibly, considering using AMD processors to power some of its build-to-order systems. The latest admission was at the World Economic Forum last week, where Michael Dell told Reuters that the company is open to using AMD. “Sure. We do not have an exclusive relationship with Intel,” he said.

What do all these public statements mean? There are two schools of thought. The first is that Dell actually is planning to pick up AMD processors this year. The other is that Dell is simply looking to avoid fueling the fire of the antitrust suit that AMD filed against Intel last June. That suit claims that Intel used monopolistic powers to coerce large-scale computer makers, system builders, wholesale distributors and retailers into using its processors. Intel has denied the charges.

Dell is one of the last large PC makers that exclusively uses Intel processors, and many solution providers have charged that the direct marketer gets preferential treatment for its loyalty.

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Sponsored post

At Lotusphere last week, Jason Alexander, aka George on the late, great TV series “Seinfeld,” addressed thousands of Lotus partners and customers. He was introduced to the familiar “Seinfeld” theme, raising hopes momentarily that Jerry himself might be the mystery guest. Nope. Just George. The actor quickly put things into perspective. “As I look at this sea of faces, I realize one thing: My career has gone into the crapper.”

The battle is on for accounting, make that ERP, VARs and customers. Last week, NetSuite announced to the world defections from the Microsoft Business Solutions camp, while Microsoft launched a promo to lure Sage customers to any of its lines except Axapta (make that Dynamics AX). And on and on. Several MBS partners—mostly from the Solomon camp—told CRN they&'ve left MBS for Sage.

Let the games continue!