Kingston
DDR333 Server Memory: $450
www.kingston.com

DDR2 is the buzz in today's desktop market. Fully buffered DIMMs (FB-DIMMs) are already being talked about as Intel's server memory of choice moving forward. And yet vanilla DDR memory is still most prolific.

The capacities, speeds, timings, and other specific extras, such as ECC support, can make choosing the right server memory difficult. Thus, teaming up with a memory vendor who offers resellers help in picking parts is particularly important. Kingston gives you a detailed online memory selector where you can enter the exact motherboard you're outfitting and see a list of compatible modules.

As a means for testing an in-house workstation, we recently used the selector to equip an Intel SE7525GP2 motherboard. Kingston's selector yielded 17 compatible options, from 266 MHz to 333 MHz and in five different capacities. Between the selection, aggressive pricing, and reseller support, Kingston certainly looks like a solid VAR play for memory.

Microsoft
Dynamics CRM 3.0 Professional Edition: $1,244-$1,761/server
www.microsoft.com

CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is a topic to which every business, from home offices to large enterprises, needs to pay attention. Microsoft's latest solution, aptly named Dynamics CRM 3.0 helps your customers get their marketing, sales, and services organized through a familiar, Office-like interface.

A couple of new emphases highlight version 3.0. First is an outreach to enterprise customers who've likely been using third-party solutions up until this point. CRM 3.0 Professional gives those folks the look and feel they're used to from Word and Outlook. At the same time, small businesses get their own version of Dynamics CRM 3.0 intended to run exclusively on Microsoft SBS 2003. It's wizard-driven, tightly integrated, and less expensive to reflect the small business' IT budget.

The cool thing about CRM is that it doesn't have to be a local maintenance hog. Microsoft is rolling out subscription-based licensing for partners delivering hosted solutions, giving resellers one more potential recurring revenue play.

Buffalo
TeraStation Pro 2TB: $1,999
www.buffalotech.com

I have A customer who uses a single USB 2.0 external hard drive for backup. Originally, the plan was to save data exclusively from his server, in which case the drive would have been ample. But as he decided to keep important information on each machine rather than centralized on the server, a one-system backup turned into a network-wide effort, with seven systems saving to a poor little 300GB drive.

What he really needs is something like Buffalo's TeraStation Pro 2TB NAS drive with Gigabit Ethernet. Equipped with four 500GB hard drives, you can configure the TeraStation to run in its native mode, span all of the drives in a RAID 0 setup, mirror using RAID 1, or maximize capacity and redundancy with RAID 5. Each drive is accessible through front-mount trays, so should one go bad, it can be replaced quickly.

The $2,000 price tag is steep, but for a growing small business, the headroom is ideal, especially when you factor in the two USB 2.0 ports facilitating expansion.

Cisco
Aironet 1100 802.11a/b/g
Access Point: $699
www.cisco.com

With all the talk of 802.11n, now is a perfect time to remind your small business customers that while the draft standard might be great for their homes, it isn't yet set into stone and therefore might not be the best idea in a business setting. Instead, present the merits of a solid dual-band solution, such as Cisco's Aironet 1100-series access point, which supports the 802.11a/b/g standards.

The benefits of Cisco's products are well-known at the enterprise level. Built-in Virtual LAN support, Quality of Service, Wi-Fi Multimedia functionality, and a collection of Cisco IOS software features to simplify WLAN management called Wireless Domain Services are but a few of the extras Cisco uses to differentiate from standard SOHO components. It also adds an access point scanning-only mode, client tracking, a WPA migration mode, and fast secure roaming, all of which augment security in a business environment.

Serious Magic
Ultra 2 Keying Software: $495
www.seriousmagic.com

Between hardware and software, video production is an expensive undertaking. Serious Magic's Ultra 2 keying software helps change that, though, by leveraging a new vector keying technology. Using little more than a portable backdrop (otherwise known as a green screen), the Ultra software helps make it easy to layer video.

Serious Magic explains that in a traditional chroma keying app, uneven lighting, frizzy hair, and shadows will all throw off the picture. Vector keying involves a mathematical model of the environment to compensate for any imperfections. And with the optional Master Sets Libraries, you can take the filmed subjects and drop them into one of several virtual environments, from boardroom to football field.

How does the software tie into the equipment you're already selling? According to the company, a modern graphics card is able to offload processing from the CPU, accelerating the keying process by up to five times versus CPU-based loading. That's all the more reason for your customer to upgrade.