Countdown to 500

This year's VARBusiness 500 issue has gone off to the printers; only a few pages of CRN's Twentieth Anniversary issue remain to be completed; and work on CRN's PC Expo/Salary Survey issue is well underway. Meanwhile, we're hard at work preparing all this, and more, for the web. Briefly then, here are this week's highlights.

Master Your Market

The first Selling Small Business suplement, and the second edition of GovernmentVAR went online this week, with insights into making money in these important markets. Don't miss Robert Faletra's column on how major vendors continue to misunderstand the small business market, and how solution providers fill the gap. The next GovernmentVAR is July 8; the next Selling Small Business, July 15.

It's Only Business

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer talked to CRN this week, identifying IBM, Linux and AOL as his top competition. He also got one important item off his to-do list, naming Allison Watson as the company's new vice president for worldwide partner sales and marketing.

Novell has been working hard lately to re-invent itself. This week the company announced it's purchase of SilverStream, and its J2EE-based web application server software. Elizabeth Montalbano talked to Novell CEO Jack Messman about the opportunities SilverStream brings to Novell.

Upgrade Highlights

Sun Microsystems rolled out an upgrade to it's Sun ONE Studio Java development environment; Palm OS 5 shipped to manufacturing this week; HP announced plans to optimize HP-UX 11i for Intel's Itanium 2 server processor; and J.D. Edwards announced it would license its ERP software as components, rather than a single 'monolithic' system, when it delivers J.D. Edwards 5.

Bon Voyage

We're bidding farewell to one of the key members of our ChannelWeb team this week. CRN editor/online Eric Hausman is leaving us to pursue an MBA degree. Eric has been a top reporter, and the point man driving CRN online for the last several years, and he was one of the most important reasons CRN.com was a Neal Awards finalist for best Web site this year. Best of luck, Eric.