Recent News & Press Coverage

MSP Partners, an alliance founded by Cisco, Ingram Micro, Intel, LevelPlatforms and Microsoft, and supported by Autotask Corporation, EMC, HP,Kaseya and Xerox, with the active participation of over 15 otherleading IT vendors, and thousands of solution providers offering managedservices today announced a cooperative agreement with The ASCII Group,Inc. (ASCII), North America’s oldest and most established community ofindependent computer integrators, solution providers and resellers. Theagreement allows members of MSP Partner and ASCII to expanded access tothe many benefits offered by these two major IT industry groups.Read More….

Opinion: It’s encouraging to see Google at channel events,but assigning a few people to manage the channel is a long way fromactually having a channel. Read More….

The ASCII Group, a membership organization of over 2,000 computerresellers based in Bethesda, M.D., recently announced they have renewedtheir endorsement of Grisoft’s AVG Internet Security software fordistribution to its members, through a partnership with Walling DataSystems, the leading US Authorized Grisoft AVG Distributor, based inNorth Carolina. Read More….

It’s hard to report on an event you didn’t actually attend, but I heard such great things about the CMP Channel Group’s inaugural XChange Eastern Europe event that I begged some phone numbers and brushed up on my international dialing skills.

Here’s what I discovered: Just like their U.S. counterparts, solution providers from Eastern Europe are eager to share….read more

Are distributors afraid of Google?
CRN asked five distributors for their reaction to the software company’s new Google Apps
Premier Edition offering, and only one executive chose to respond. Spokespersons from Tech Data, SED International and Synnex said their respective companies would have no comment regarding Google’s plans, while executives from Ingram Micro didn’t respond Thursday or Friday. Dan Schwab, vice president of marketing at D&H Distributing, said he hasn’t been briefed on Google Apps, but said the search giant is missing the boat if it doesn’t include a play for solution providers…read more

Do you have your passport yet? I know many of my frequent contacts don’t have much to do with business outside the United States, but there’s plenty going on.

The same week that the CMP Channel Group hosted its first European XChange event in Budapest, Alan Weinberger of the ASCII Group popped up recently to tell me that the organization has become a founding member of the new International Technology Channels Association (ITCA), which bills itself as an “international communication platform” for distributors, resellers, service providers and vendors…read more

ASCII Group, a U.S.-based group of small-business VARs and SIs islaunching an India affiliate to connect U.S. vendors with small VARs onthe subcontinent. Read More….

Lenovo’s deal with brick-and-mortar retailer Best Buy to begin selling notebooks and desktops to SMBs prompted a strong reaction from the head of the ASCII Group, who called the deal “outrageous” and said it would hurt VARs…read more

Here’s a partial list of Hurricane Katrina relief efforts by high-tech companies and organizations:

ASCII GROUP: Coordinating requests from members to offer e-mail, DNS and Web sites for other ASCII members in the Gulf Coast. Plans to expand effort…read more