Larry Walsh Posts

The Obama administration is pumping $19 billion into the healthcare industry to help defray the costs of digitizing medical records and enable collaboration amongst medical providers. Electronic medical records promise greater efficiency and productivity, but healthcare providers are worried about their liability resulting from software errors. Those concerns could create a barrier to sales for solution providers. These liability concerns are keeping many physicians from investing in EMR syste ...

As they say in boxing circles, here’s the tale of the tape: Apple has sold more than 20 million iPads since they went on sale last January. Samsung is reporting more than 1 million Galaxy Tab sold in the first month on the market. And scores of vendors are racing to put their version of touch screen tablet computers on the market.If you think those numbers are impressive, consider this: Asian manufacturers are gearing up to produce more than 100 million tablets in 2011.DigiTimes reported last we ...

It’s no secret that everyone wants a piece of the cloud. Ah, but plenty of debate remains over what the cloud means to the channel, and who will eventually dominate this emerging marketplace. And that’s the buzz dominating the Channel-Lands last week.Google, Microsoft Griping for Government CloudIt seems Microsoft and Google are bound to remain locked in a pitch battle command of the federal government’s cloud business. When either one wins a deal, the rival seems duty bound to complain or – in ...

Here’s an alarming statistic: one in seven small and mid-sized businesses have no IT security protection. According to a new survey by security software vendor AVG Technologies, SMBs are particularly exposed to Internet-born threats that could disrupt growth. And, worse, they don’t have the expertise to exercise risk management. There are a couple of well-known facts reinforced by the AVG survey: SMBs are exposed to the same security threats as large enterprises. SMBs do not have the expertise a ...

Spiffs, rebates, special discounts and limited promotions are tools all vendors use to tickle their customers into loosening their purse strings. Vendors surrender a little margin in favor of capturing a customer to upsell and expand the sales relationship later. But are these special incentives always worth the expense? How do they affect the partner in the sales process?This is the question Bill Leutzinger, president of telecom reseller TelecomMedic, asked in his recent blog post on Phone Plus ...

The world is moving up into the clouds, of that there is no doubt. Just how the channel will make this migration and what form will businesses take once they arrive remain in question. This week, the Channel-Lands received a reaffirmation commitment in the cloud to partners from one of the largest patrons. We also heard from the new HP chief on his plans for partners. And we’re monitoring some interesting moves by Apple.Microsoft Chief Affirms Channel Cloud CommitmentMicrosoft global channel chi ...

Literally moments after releasing more than a quarter-million sensitive U.S. diplomatic documents, WikiLeaks issued a distress call via Twitter that sounded like something out of Star Trek. It essentially read: “We’re under attack.”The assault aiming to block access to the classified documents was nothing more than a distributed denial of service attack – commonly called DDoS. In hacking circles, DDoS is one of the oldest and relatively simplest of attacks. It leverages the Syn-Ack handshake tha ...

For most of us in the Channel-Lands, it was a short week. The Thanksgiving holiday usually means two-and-a-half days of work, most of which is consumed with preparations for the annual festival of food, family and football. Ah, precisely the reason our forefathers ventured to this great continent. But the technology world didn’t stop spinning just because the menu included cranberry sauce and mashed sweet potatoes. Channel-Lands was still very active with the acquisition of Novell, Oracle winnin ...

Some of the latest Microsoft TV commercials reflect scenes familiar to us all: stranded at airports waiting for crowded flights. In one spot, a couple is dismayed by the wait time for their delayed flight. How will they pass the time? “To the Cloud,” the man exclaims! He connects to his home PC to access a recorded TV show, “Celebrity Rehab: Season Premier.” Boredom abated, his wife says, “Yeah cloud.”Is this the cloud? Or better yet, what is the cloud?Defining cloud computing continues to confo ...

Despite all the attention placed on the importance of health care records and patient confidentiality, U.S. hospitals say data breaches are a fairly common and expensive experience, according to a new report by the Ponemon Institute. The study, sponsored by ID Experts, released last week finds that data breaches are exacting a heavy toll on health care providers. Sixty percent had more than two security breaches in the last year, and the average security breach costs $2 million in direct and in ...