Brian Sherman Posts

In the early days of cloud computing, most channel partners were merely spectators sitting on the sidelines offering advice and whatever assistance they could to their more adventurous customers. But, over the past decade, providers have taken on a much different role and are now not only the face of cloud for their customers, but strategists, designers and process consultants for virtual environments. The latest CompTIA research points out some of the driving forces behind those changes.

Despite the negative expectations of some in the industry skeptics, a number of IT distribution companies continue to strengthen their channel value propositions and their business models. And, if the M&A activities of the last two months are any indication of what’s ahead, buckle your seat belts

Many solution providers have been somewhat reluctant to discuss the true amount of break fix and onsite services they deliver. When you get a chance to dig into the details, you may find they're delivering a lot more of that support than you'd expect. Despite experts predicting that virtually every provider would be a "pure play MSP" by now, the reality is much different.

Despite the growing number of channel firms offering basic data and network protection today, it’s simply not enough just to counter the basic threats today. Security has to move from a line item in the portfolio to a more highly advanced, proactive management service. It’s a true consulting focus that can be best summarized with six industry best practices.

January 1st is no longer a reset date. Strategic planning is a 365-day event today and it is the primary role of the top organizational leader. As Geico’s commercials have reinforced for so many years “…it’s what they do.” And September (as well as October, November and December) is perhaps the most crucial time for their management teams to rise to the occasion. This is when sales and marketing leaders double their efforts to find and close the best leads, and work with their customer services counterparts to ensure long-term client success.

With some less than stellar earnings reports by IT distributors this month, it has some questioning the long-term viability of these key channel partners. Do these financial reports indicate worse times may be ahead, or are they an indication of the efforts underway to transform services and business models to meet the needs of partners and their customers? My money's on the latter...

During one of the final sessions at ChannelCon, three members of the association's Industry Advisory Councils shared insight and ideas for differentiating a solution provider business in today's cloud environment. The panelists represented each channel community:provider, vendor and distributor. Find out what they discussed in this article...

Looking to add a new specialization to your business or expand your customer reach? Or, on the flip side, are you hoping to cash out and retire in a few years? Either way, there are a number of things you need to know before pursuing M&A discussions. The ChannelCon 2016 discussion on mergers and acquisitions strategies covered a lot of those topic. Moderated by Joe Panettieri, Content Czar of ChannelE2E, this panel discussion featured five IT industry executives with a lot of great M&A stories and ideas to share.

A lot has changed over the past 10 years in the channel and researchers predict that cycle of transformation will continue to speed up exponentially over the next decade. And while that sounds great to those with IT service business investments, revolution often brings its own challenges. Overcoming those obstacles and taking advantages of the latest opportunities were a major focus of the conversations at ChannelCon 2016 ̶ and the channel chief power panel discussion highlighted a number of them.

Many customers don’t know the difference between “complying” with standards and regulations and actually being secure. Those misperceptions have to be addressed early on in the solution conversation to prevent major issues (and significant blame) from occurring later. That was just one of the observations made by panelists in the Common Problems Encountered in Security Compliance session at ChannelCon 2016.