Executive Briefing: January 11, 2008

Cisco Systems Friday named insider Wendy Bahr as its new North American channel chief, filling the role vacated by Chuck Robbins last month. As Cisco's new vice president of U.S./Canada channels, Bahr oversees all of the vendor's channel activities throughout North America. Her new post became effective Jan. 7. She fills a role that has been open for just over a month after her predecessor, Robbins, was promoted in early December to senior vice president of Cisco's U.S. commercial business. [READ MORE]

IBM is pouring new resources, including a wide range of partner incentives, into building up its midmarket channel, a move that its solution providers said is long overdue. The new channel incentives are aimed at simplifying how partners are rewarded, and making the rewards consistent across geographies and partner types for those who invest in working with IBM, said Leslie Norris, vice president of global distributor and reseller channel management at IBM. "The incentives are about recognizing their investment, and rewarding them for certain behavior," Norris said. [READ MORE]

The CompUSA name will live on, says the CEO of TigerDirect, a subisidiary of Systemax, which purchased some assets of the struggling retailer this week. Calling it "the deal of the century" Gilbert Fiorentino, CEO of TigerDirect, said the 16 CompUSA stores his company purchased will remain in place and 14 TigerDirect-branded retail locations, 11 current and three opening this quarter, will be rebranded as CompUSA stores. Systemax also bought CompUSA's brand and e-commerce business in a deal expected to fetch up to $30 million.[READ MORE]

Thursday was a day of major organizational changes at Microsoft, led by the revelation that Jeff Raikes, president of Microsoft's Business Division, plans to leave the company in September. Microsoft is also moving its Server and Tools Business out of the Microsoft Business Division, just eight months after SVP Bob Muglia and his group, which includes the SQL Server, Visual Studio franchises, moved into the MBD. The Server and Tools group will now report directly to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. Stephen Elop, formerly COO at Juniper Networks, will replace Raikes.[READ MORE]

Intel's long-awaited modular server has system builders and other channel partners licking their chops at the prospect of wrapping the ultra-scalable product with services for small- to mid-sized business customers. The new set of server building blocks, codenamed Clear Bay, was launched Friday by the Santa Clara, Calif.-based chip giant. The Clear Bay building blocks, which come with a built-in management console, can support up to six server compute nodes and 14 serial attached SCSI 2.5" hard disk drives, according to Intel. Clear Bay also has two Ethernet switch modules. [READ MORE]