News Briefs, March 7, 2005

COREL NAMES CHANNEL MARKETING CHIEF

Corel's WordPerfect and PaintShop franchises are "the branded alternatives" to Microsoft and Adobe, Mathieu said. At CMP Media's Solution Provider XChange conference this week in New Orleans, Corel plans to roll out a new lead-sharing program for VARs focusing on the legal market. "We will use our phone sales force to generate leads and pass them on to our VAR partners," Mathieu said.

Corel also plans to tout an aggressive plan to push its applications into the K-12 education market. "A whole school can get a site license for less than $2,000," he said. The actual cost is $1,750 for any of the core applications.

Corel's new Partner Insight Initiative aims to align Corel employees, including sales people, with partner needs. The program is built from the ground up for partner satisfaction, he said.

At XChange, Corel also plans to introduce its PaintShop products, which compete against Adobe's PhotoShop, targeting small-business VARs. With the sale of 10 licenses, one license is free.

MICROSOFT POSTS NEW PREVIEW OF SQL SERVER 2005
Microsoft last week released the third Community Technical Preview (CTP) of its SQL Server 2005 database.

The new code drop, the first CTP since December, includes the new Report Builder and Management Studio features as well as 64-bit support, Microsoft said.

The company also said it will post more Visual Studio 2005 bits to ensure that the recently released Visual Studio CTP works with this latest code.

A Microsoft spokeswoman said the third, and hopefully final, beta of the database is still on track for the first quarter, meaning that it must be released by the end of March.

The CTP for the first SQL Server 2005, code-named Yukon, was dropped in October. At that time, Microsoft said it was adding another test round to the delayed database.

MAXTOR HIRES CHANNEL COMPLIANCE DIRECTOR
Hard-drive vendor Maxtor last week appointed Franziska Hanreich as its new director of channel compliance in the company's finance organization in an effort ensure ensure best practices in its worldwide distribution channel, company executives said.

Hanreich plans to work with the Milpitas, Calif.-based company's sales and marketing organizations and auditors on channel inventories and warranties and will represent the company in the Alliance for Gray Market and Counterfeit Abatement, an anti-gray-market industry organization.

NEC DROPS MITSUBISHI
NEC-Mitsubishi officially will part ways on April 1 as the two companies have decided to dissolve their display partnership.

The company will go forward as a unit of NEC that will not only focus on desktop displays, but will begin to bring a wider variety of display products to market later this year, said T.J. Trojan, president of the company.

The dissolution of the partnership is tied to shifts in the marketplace that have created a significant drop in CRT display shipments compared with LCD displays and a desire on the part of NEC to play in a broader range of product categories that are outside the defined scope of the existing NEC-Mitsubishi partnership, Trojan said.

IBM TO INVEST $150 MILLION IN NEW INNOVATION CENTERS
IBM plans to spend $150 million this year to launch 100 new Innovation Centers worldwide that partners can use to hone their focus on key IBM products.

The Innovation Centers allow solution providers, systems integrators and independent software vendors to design and test solutions around IBM hardware and software, as well as the ability to demonstrate solutions for customers.

The initiative will double the number of Innovation Centers, which include several WebSphere Innovation Centers operated by solution providers and distributors. IBM plans to use the new centers to demonstrate eServer, TotalStorage and software solutions.

JUNIPER TO BROADEN INTEGRATED FIREWALL LINE
Security vendor Juniper Networks this week will expand its flagship integrated firewall line, adding wireless functionality to existing appliances that comprise the NetScreen-5GT family of products.

The new product, the Juniper Networks NetScreen-5GT Wireless, combines firewall and IPSec VPN capabilities with a built-in wireless access point and enables solution providers to segment customer enterprises into virtual WLANs.

The new product was designed specifically for small- and midsize-business customers who lack the resources to buy security and wireless technology separately, said Adam Conway, Juniper's product line manager for remote office security platforms.

"In a single platform, this device enables you to perform segmentation and policy enforcement in a secure wireless environment," Conway said.

The NetScreen-5GT Wireless starts at $770.