Teeing Off at Breakaway

Breakaway has begun.  The golfers teed off this morning for the Creating Futures Charity Golf Classic.  Catch the photos of the golfers heading to the tees. 

More than 1,000 IT channel leaders are expected this week at JW Marriott San Antonio Hill Country Resort & Spa.  It’s gorgeous here, folks.  If you’re not here, you’re missing out.  I’ll post photos of the beautiful scenery later today just to show you what you’re missing.  But really, jump in your car or hop on a plane and head over.

Beyond the scenery, the trip for all the tools you can gather to improve your business are more than worth the trip.  Are you a service buyer looking to expand your geographic footprint seamlessly, while lowering your overall service costs by 30 percent or more? Or, perhaps you are a service technician looking to start, grow and thrive in the IT and consumer electronic space? Whether you are a service buyer or a service technician, OnForce (Booth #513) will help you get a competitive advantage. With more than one million service events completed, OnForce offers a proven marketplace that connects service buyers with thousands of highly skilled service professionals to fulfill on-site work all across the U.S. and Canada, on demand. Plus a visit to its booth, makes you eligible to win at Apple iPad or iPod touch. Winners will be announced daily.

A year ago, hawkeye Channel, (Booth #1218) an international full-service channel marketing agency, launched the beta version of PartnerConduit Network (PCN), a comprehensive online community driven by partners for partners to manage collaborative opportunities and grow their business. Today, this network is helping technology manufacturing vendors and channel partners nationwide to meet the ever-increasing demands from their customers for comprehensive solutions. PCN enables these vendors and partners to quickly connect and collaborate with many others both inside and outside their partner base—saving them time and giving them a clear line of site to return on their investment. During Breakaway, qualified attendees can collect as much as $500 in Collaboration Currency™ and get a free 90-day trial to PCN.

Today, Asigra Inc., a cloud backup and recovery software provider, announced that it has certified 6fusion’s Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), (Booth #309) enabling managed service providers (MSPs) to improve their time to market and limit up-front capital costs by leveraging 6fusion’s cloud infrastructure to host and deliver cloud backup services worldwide.

On the security side of the conference, check out Veri-NAC^™, declared by SC Magazine to be one of the 20 most influential security products of the last two decades.  It’s a family of network access control (NAC) appliances from Black Box (Booth #601) that ensures that only authorized devices gain access to your network. It also screens for vulnerabilities in computers connected to your network, returning mobile users, wireless devices and all other devices. If Veri-NAC detects an untrusted asset, it responds instantly to shut off network access for that device—protecting your network while keeping your trusted devices securely online.

ServiceLive.com (Booth #1214) is a nationwide online marketplace for home services, connecting skilled service providers to businesses and consumers. From plumbing and painting, to IT help, ServiceLive's platform removes the headaches and hassles of getting services done at home. With ServiceLine, each user has a project center to track their projects and activity easily online. Also, a free iPhone app allows busy homeowners and professionals a way to communicate and manage service projects on-the-go. Each year, nearly 130 million homes are in need of maintenance and one to two million homes are added to the housing inventory. Currently, the market is fragmented; no one company owns more than one percent. 

If you still can’t get to San Antonio this week, keep up to date on Breakaway news by checking our blog each day.  Or simply sign up for the RSS feed so you get the news pushed to you.  And mark your calendar now for the 2011 Breakaway, August 1-4 in Washington, D.C.