It's a compelling business model and it's going to happen fast, agreed channel chiefs from Cisco, Dell, HP, IBM and Rackspace in a recent CRN roundtable. Here's how each company plans to support its partners.

Channel chiefs weigh in on the new compensation models arising from the adoption of the cloud and the move toward selling services.

Tech Data executives made one thing clear during their partner conference: They have no intention of cannibalizing channel partners and following Ingram Micro into hosted cloud.

The scale-out version of Cisco's UCS Invicta flash storage product, which stopped shipping last month because of technical glitches, won't resume shipping until sometime during the company's January quarter.

We look at VCE from its start as a developer of reference architectures based on EMC, Cisco and VMware technologies through its transformation into a $2 billion developer of integrated data center solutions to now as a new unit of the EMC Federation.

In other top stories this week, VCE will officially become an EMC company. Also, Apple sees big numbers in the fourth quarter.

IBM Insight and NetApp Insight not only have the same name, but are being held within a half-mile of each other in the same city.

HP CEO Meg Whitman said HP's robust storage and networking offerings, combined with the HP split, puts HP "ahead of the curve" to do battle with EMC and Cisco in a market moving at lightning speed.

Solution providers said Wednesday that Cisco's reduced ownership stake in VCE could open the door for the networking giant to acquire an EMC rival like NetApp.

EMC, Cisco and VCE executives moved to deflect any concerns that the decision to absorb VCE into EMC would impact the long-standing partnership between EMC and Cisco, and said that VCE as part of EMC would become a more agile organization.

Bloomberg is reporting the company is set to make the announcement Wednesday when it reports its quarterly results.

Datalink saw strong growth in service sales during its recently-ended quarter, which helped offset a drop in product sales.

Solution provider Datalink has acquired Bear Data, a VAR with $130 million in 2013 revenue, in a bid to expand its Cisco expertise and geographical reach.

Zscaler is stoking the competitive fires by moving beyond Web filtering and including antimalware, data loss prevention and Secure WiFi in its cloud-based service.

Bruce Klein, SVP of Cisco's Worldwide Partner Organization, told CRN in a recent interview that the networking giant is preparing to launch a software partner program at its 2015 Partner Summit this April in Montreal.

Cisco's Steve Benvenuto discusses opportunities for smaller partners in the Internet of Everything. Benvenuto encouraged partners to build relationships with one another and explore joint ventures.

Storage vendor Nimble Storage has partially based its latest SmartStack for ROBO Desktop Virtualization converged infrastructure solution on the new Cisco UCS Mini servers introduced last month.

Cisco Systems sees a massive opportunity for its channel in the emerging Internet of Everything, but urged partners this week not to try to seize it alone.

Cisco Systems sees a massive opportunity for its channel in the emerging Internet of Everything, but urged partners this week not to try to seize it alone. (via ITbestofbreed.com)

Cisco said it's not getting out of its converged infrastructue joint venture with EMC and VMware, but would not explicitly say that it's going to continue adding to its $716 investment in VCE.