That could mean good or bad things for current Cisco partners, many of whom remain angst-ridden over the vendor’s past tendency to favor a few, very large partners over smaller but perhaps more value-oriented VARs. Cisco lost a well publicized court battle over this issue last year.

To be fair, Cisco is hardly a trailblazer when it offers special perks to its big, special friends. Microsoft, IBM, insert-huge-tech-vendor-name-here are all guilty of this at times.

The plans are part of Cisco’s marching orders for its new fiscal year, starting in August.

Check out Rivka Little’s blog for more on the reorg.

Fernando Quintero, who joined the company in 2002, was recently promoted to VP of channel operations for the Americas and has been on something of a publicity  blitz of late.

But, as for the worldwide channel chief, McAfee (in spoke-speak) said that it has:

“initiated an aggressive global search for a new leader of global channels. With an experienced team of regional channel leads, we are confident in our ability to make this a smooth transition and ultimately launch our channel program to even bigger and better levels.”

The vendor is no stranger to channel management turmoil.  Last year it brought in Lisa Loe from Symantec over long-timer channel vice president David Dickinson. She lasted three months. 

Stepping on stage at the Washington D.C. event, Phillips who is tall and lanky, said: “I know what you’re thinking….and I’m not him.”

Oracle schlepped its president and various other luminaries (excluding, apparently, CEO Larry Ellison) to Washington D.C. for the big debut.

Oracle’s had a very busy start of its fiscal year. Two weeks ago, it hosted its virtual sales kickoff for internal staff. Next week, it’ll re-do it for the Oracle Partner Community. And today, it’s doing its biggest middleware launch ever–including all the goodies it got from BEA Systems.\

And it’s gearing up a big VAR specialization push now that will continue through the year at Oracle OpenWorld in October and beyond. The goal is to push more of its nichey products like product lifecycle management, identity management, high-end middleware.

Thanks to SearchOracle.com’s Ed Scannell for his updates on today’s event.

The Smart Cubes bundle IBM hardware, OS and management software along with applications for specific customer types. IBM Business partners can furthter customize the appliance for their clients. Last month, IBM and Intuit unveiled a new Smart Cube that runs Linux or the IBM I (OS/400) operating system, appropriate middleware and Intuit’s popular QuickBooks Enterprise accounting software.

With this deal Ingram Micro, IBM’s largest distribution partner, is the first to offer Smart Cubes in the U.S. In many cases with such deals, Tech Data or other distributors soon follow suit.

Smart Cubes come  out of IBM’s new Smart Business group. Smart Cubes are only available to authorized IBM channel partners.

Certainly, you can’t attribute that entire amount to replacement batteries for computers, but businesses all over the world and of every size are rethinking the life expectancies for existing corporate hardware. That means they may be more willing to spring for a new notebook battery than in the past, as the efficiency of older ones takes a nosedive.

That thinking is reflected in Tech Data’s recent decision to sign up Oncore Power Systems, which makes products for leading brands including Apple, Dell, Fujitsu, Gateway, HP-Compaq, IBM-Lenovo, Panasonic, Sony and Toshiba.

I’m sure the margin isn’t mind-boggling or anything, but this could be one more relationship in your arsenal of technologies that underscore your ability to recommend hardware strategies that are more energy efficient and environmentally sound. To get things started, Oncore is offering commercial resellers an instant rebate of 45 on all replacment batteries and power adapters that they buy through July 31; government and education resellers can snag an instant rebate of $10 on these items.

Estimated retail price (ERP) on upgrades is $119.99 for Win 7 Home Premium; $199.99 for Professional; $219.99 for Ultimate. These (U.S.) prices are presumably for users moving from either Windows XP or Vista.

ERP for full packaged retail product  is$199.99.99 for Home Premium; $299.99 for Professional; and $319 for Ultimate.

The blog characterized some of this as an outright price cut:

“For Windows 7, we are reducing the price on our most popular retail product for customers, the Home Premium Upgrade, by approximately 10% (depending on the market). In the U.S., this means a customer buying Windows 7 Home Premium upgrade will pay only $119.99 instead of the $129.99 being charged today for its predecessor.”

Some VARs don’t agree that Win 7 is a bargain  There has been a lot of grumbling about how hardware prices have fallen while the percentage of the PC cost attributable to WIndows is disproportionately high. That’s one reason some hardware OEMs are seriously looking at Android or Linux for new netbooks, and many VARs are lauding that move.

Given the rocky reception Windows Vista got, WIn 7 is seen as  a very important product for Microsoft.

Microsoft last month had confirmed the future SKU and that it will include OneNote and SharePoint Workspace (nee the Groove client) in addition to the usual Office suspects, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Excel etc.

 Methodist Hospital in Memphis posted a statement to its website confirming news first reported by the Wall Street Journal (siting unnamed sources) last Friday.

“[Jobs] received a liver transplant because he was the patient with the highest MELD score (Model for End-Stage Liver Disease) of his blood type and, therefore, the sickest patient on the waiting list at the time a donor organ became available. Mr. Jobs is now recovering well and has an excellent prognosis.”

 The surgery itself raised many issues. Did Jobs’ wealth and prominence get him special treatment?

Shouldn’t Apple, a publicly traded company, be more transparent on what’s going on with its iconic CEO? Isn’t Jobs health, in fact, material information to be shared? Company boosters maintain that since Jobs handed over day-to-day responsibilities to COO Tim Cook in January, that his health is nobody’s business.

Many beg to differ, especially as Marketwatch’s Therese Poletti points out, Apple continues to slap Jobs’ name in press releases ballyooing various iPhone successes.

Upstarts like Appzero want to know why Microsoft and other software  incumbents aren’t jumping on the bandwagon to virtualize big-iron database, ERP and other server-delivered apps. Appzero CEO Greg O’Connor asked the question, and then helpfully answered it in a blog post late last month.  

Microsoft is probably in no hurry to push server app virtualization because it makes a ton o’ dough selling server SKUs. For its quarter ending in March, Microsoft’s Server & Tools group, which includes SQL Server database and other goodies,  logged nearly $3.5 billion in revenue, up from $3.2 billion for the previous quarter. Clearly Server & tools revenue is not something the company wishes to mess with. But it does have some server-side app virtualization in house from its Softricity acquisition. In December, the application virtualization group posted a blog asking for input on this server application virtualization.

 The posting explains what the technology can do:

 “Bringing virtualization to server applications will allow customers to rapidly deploy and service Windows Server workloads in a new way.  Today it may take days or weeks to provision applications in the data center. By decoupling the server application from the operating system, customers gain a level of flexibility that can be applied in various scenarios to improve operational efficiency.  Virtualization of server applications can allow IT departments and businesses act quickly and efficiently to the demands of their customers while integrating with both physical and virtual machines. ”

Appzero clearly has a horse in this race. The small Boston area startup says it’s already there when it comes to server-side app virtualization–on Windows and other OSes.  O’Connor’s pitch is that his company’s technology will help customers move the apps that do their heavy lifting into the cloud much more cost effectively and (in theory) with little rewriting or tuning.

 Microsoft showed off nascent server-side application virtualization at its Management Summit. Nothing was said about dates.

 In another post referencing that demo,  O’Connor said he was thrilled about Microsoft’s entry.

“Why?  Because any time Redmond pees on the 4 corners of a market, that space is immediately validated.  And server-side application virtualization is AppZero’s claim to fame.  We do Windows - and we do it now.”