Inside This Issue: Jan. 8, 2007

Cover Story

What's Hot, What's Not In 2007
Although 2007 may just be under way, the trends for the IT industry and channel are already visible. CRN took a close-up look at six market segments to see what solution providers need to know as the new year unfolds.

>> WHERE WILL IT SPENDING GROWTH BE IN '07?

25 Predictions To Profit By
Where and how do channel players expect to make some money in 2007? Here are 25 ways to drum up profits this year as solution providers forecast a variety of trends in hardware, managed services, networking, security, storage and software.

Also In This Issue:

CES 2007: Digital Home Growth Puts CES On VAR Radar
Consumer electronics products are becoming more critical to the solutions that IT VARs are building for small-business and home networking customers.

SMB VARs Mobilize For Managed Services
A community of SMB solution providers has launched a membership portal aimed at growing its ranks and making members more money.

Demand Generation: VAR Sees Red-Letter Days After Sealing Gov't Deal
Micro League just joined the big leagues. The Los Angeles solution provider won a state of California contract with Office Depot.

Enterprise: Powering Up And Cooling Down The Data Center
Power disruptions, rising costs, and heat-intensive new technologies have businesses and their solution providers scrambling for ways to reduce energy use and solve cooling issues in the data center.

Leasing: Are SMB VARs Missing Out?
How come no one's going ga-ga over leasing? It's a multibillion-dollar opportunity that many small-business VARs leave on the table.

Upstarts & Startups: Epoch Data Is On The Money
Much of Epoch Data's IT business in New York crumbled along with the Twin Towers on 9/11. But company executives relocated and reinvented the business by creating a software package to help prevent the very attacks that altered their lives and the lives of their customers.

Spammers Find New Way To Clog Up Your Inbox
It's raining spam. As quickly as vendors move to stem the tide of unsolicited commercial e-mail with innovative technology, spammers shift their tactics, and the junk-mail heavens open up again.

Review: This Motherboard's In An Elite Group
Elite Computer Systems aims to meet that high-performance bar of today's new multi-core processors with its latest motherboard, the PN2 SLI2+.

ShadowRAM: Rumors, Truth & Innuendo
Palmisano makes avatar debut, IBMer does tech work for Howard Stern sidekick, CDW polls its Web site visitors on Vista adoption.

PREVIOUS ISSUES

COLUMNISTS
Heather Clancy:
Real Values
Resolving To Be A Better Community Resource
The newly designed CRN aims to accommodate solution providers wherever and whenever they want to read, research or interact with each other and with the reporters who cover them.

Steven Burke:
The Final Cut
HP The CES Retail Ripoff
The biggest story at this year's CES is the sales fraud being perpetrated by big-box retailers gobbling up the marketing hype from major vendors and passing it off as gospel to unsuspecting consumers and businesses.

Robert Faletra:
On The Record
It's Off To The Races For 2007 Consolidation
Well, here we go again. Cisco Systems has already laid to rest any speculation that consolidation in high-tech will slow down in 2007.

Larry Hooper:
Under The Radar
Fun With Slashdot
This year's CRN Products Of The Year report had readers talking -- lots and lots of them, in fact.