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To explain the computing channel to my friends and family, a former colleague of mine, Adam Pletsch, and I came up with a chicken channel analogy. Restaurants, fast-food outlets like KFC, grocery stores and butchers' shops are at one end of the channel, just as VARs, systems integrators, consultants and dreaded dealers are in the I.T. channel. Chicken farmers and OEMs are at the other end. Very few purveyors of chicken sell customers a live, clucking chicken. What would we do with it? The same is true of I.T., where corporations don't expect their supplier to dump a pile of transistors and strands of code on their desk. They want a solution, the same way I want a KFC Zinger Combo cooked and delivered with minimal fuss and at a good price.
A chicken undergoes a drastic transformation along the way from the chicken farm to your plate. Very few chicken heads, for example, get fried, battered and served. There are chicken processors who defeather, debone and slice and dice the chicken into its various parts for distribution. There are third-party suppliers who sell chicken peripherals: potatoes, soda, coleslaw, etc., all of...