Brian Sherman Posts

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.

Innovation in the computer industry is occurring at breakneck speed. With increasing internet capabilities and other technological advances, along with a continually escalating competitive environment, it’s extremely hard to keep track of it all. Those are a few of the points covered in the Tomorrowland: Meet the New IT session at ChannelCon 2016.

Channel professionals typically use B2B as a reference to the general indirect model, but Austin McChord, founder and CEO of Datto, Inc. gave the term a whole new meaning in his keynote at ChannelCon 2016. In his case, it refers to the way he started his business 8 years ago, in his parent’s basement with $80,000 in debt. By the end of last year Datto was valued at a billion dollars and had become one of the exclusive "unicorn" club according to respected business experts

CompTIA IT Security Community members broke into three separate groups during their ChannelCon meeting to discussing the details of various security portfolio offerings.They discussed where each MSP sits on the security continuum (foundational, comprehensive or advanced) and then focused their efforts on defining that particular level of service.

The CompTIA Managed Services Community took their best practice discussions to the next level at ChannelCon 2016. The standing room only audience was treated to a unique experience as community leaders turned the tables and made them into expert panelists.

One of the toughest things for new IT services business owners is planning out their portfolios. What services do you need to offer to satisfy existing clients and attract new customers? Security has become one of the biggest differentiators for MSPs today and the topic of expanding those offerings created some interesting conversations in the CompTIA Partner Advisory Council meeting at ChannelCon 2016.

Encryption should be a normal part of the channel security discussion today, ensuring that clients understand the options and benefits these technologies provide. That conversation should also extend to email and backup and disaster recovery solutions. If data could eventually be transmitted across the internet, it’s a prime candidate for encryption.