The Pipeline
By Kelley Damore
Giving Back: Business4Better
December 14, 2012
Want to give a gift that keeps on giving? Give your time and talent. UBM, our parent company, IBM, Salesforce.com, Twitter and other tech companies are doing just that and invite you to do the same.
Corporate giving is hardly the sole purview of technology companies. Yet, we in the tech sector have a unique responsibility to give back to those who have less access, opportunity and education than we have. This responsibility is greater than it was 30 years ago when R. Edward Freeman’s 1984 Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach helped popularize the notion of corporate social responsibility. Back then, technology was LANs and a server closet for companies to harness and maintain their networks. Today technology is changing the way societies interact, and serves as a platform for global change that we never would have imagined.
Take IBM, for example. IBM has created its World Community Grid, which pools surplus processing power from individual computers into a massive computing system that is used for scientific research, such as studies on malaria or clean water. The company also established a program called Reading Companion, which uses IBM voice-recognition technology to help children and adults learn to read.
Salesforce.com, for its part, has donated 360,000 hours of community service and is offering its product for free or at steep discounts to more than 16,000 nonprofits. It also awarded $40 million in grants since it was founded 12 years ago.
Twitter is working with an organization called Girls Who Code, whose goal is to train 13- to 17-year-olds with skills to pursue opportunities in technology and engineering. (For more on these efforts and what tech companies are doing, download the CRN Tech News app in the iTunes store and read the story there.)
Our parent company, UBM, is taking a similar approach. We are leveraging the talents we have in marketing services and event management to launch the Business4Better conference in the United States after two successful shows in Brazil and India on the same topic. On May 1-2, 2013 in Anaheim, Calif., Business4Better will bring together 2,000 business executives from midsize companies who want to establish corporate philanthropic programs. UBM also will offer free exhibitor space, signage and marketing services to 200 nonprofits that are looking to create partnerships with midsize private-sector companies. We believe medium-size businesses have the highest potential for impact because of their sheer number, and proximity to their communities. The goal of the conference is to bring together midsize businesses and nonprofits with a mission to create successful partnerships.
I am very excited and proud to be part of this effort. If you want to create some philanthropic programs or are interested in the conference, please check it out at business4better.org or email me with any questions. And if you have your own philanthropic story to tell, we would love to hear it.
Lastly, I wish to express my gratitude for the wonderful group of people that I get to work with day in and day out at CRN. They make my job interesting and rewarding. I am also grateful for the industry that we cover. I have met a number of truly amazing people: savvy business people who take risk, change course, and do it with dignity and respect.
Here’s wishing you a safe and joyful holiday season.
BACKTALK: Kelley Damore is SVP, Editorial Director for UBM Channel. You can reach her via email at kelley.damore@ubm.com.
30 Days That Humbled IT
November 21, 2012
From Superstorm Sandy to the presidential elections, the past 30 days have provided a treasure-trove of insights that a solution provider can apply to their business today and help them prepare for tomorrow. Here are some of the lessons I observed:
LESSON 1: What are you waiting for? Move to the cloud.
One of the biggest positive outcomes of Superstorm Sandy was that backup and resiliency was a nonissue for those who had already moved to the cloud. The very nature of cloud and the ability to have a distributed data center can help protect against disasters like Superstorm Sandy. And because it is distributed, hosted services and cloud computing offerings force organizations to think harder about their contingency plans. So move to the cloud and build out BRD practices if you have not already. Keeping a client up and running during a disaster is the best customer retention plan you could have.
LESSON 2: BYOD is here. It works. Embrace it. Don’t fight it.
Let me tell you CRN's personal story and what we did. Much of our IT and IT support is in Manhasset, N.Y., with our editors dispersed in Massachusetts, New York and California. We do not have hosted email because our corporate email, as well as our phones, were down for a few days. (Thankfully our content management system was up and running.) While corporate IT was working around the clock to get communications restored, CRN was still able to post stories and get our work done through cloud-based personal email accounts and cellphones.
BYOD is here, and traditional IT is forever gone. The best you can do is figure out how to make it secure for a company. This could be another opportunity for solution providers to add DLP, endpoint and mobile security, and authentication to the mix.
LESSON 3: Know what is at stake and what you have to gain or lose.
High-profile technology projects can help grow your business or get your foot in the door. Or they can go horribly awry, such as the case with Mitt Romney's Project Orca.
For those of you who don't know, Project Orca was a web-based app developed to help the Romney campaign track which supporters had voted and report back to headquarters from polling centers about any issues with voter suppression or fraud. It was designed to replace phone and paper get-out-the-vote efforts by sending realtime data to the campaign, which would then, in turn, allow volunteers to reallocate and microtarget grassroots efforts. Think mobility meets business analytics. From a VAR's perspective, if all goes well, this project could be a big break that brings a small development house to the national stage. Unfortunately, the project did hit the big time, but for all the wrong reasons.
Project Orca was a colossal failure, and much has been said about its shortcomings -- miscommunication, lack of training, poor documentation, server overload, and the list goes on. This is a good lesson for all solution providers who may have that make-or-break client. Make sure you do the basics, remember who the user will be, and deliver on what was promised.
LESSON 4: Technology can't solve everything. It is all about the human connection.
Humans are more resilient than technology will ever be. And when we are faced with a crisis, we always come through even stronger. People inspire in ways technology can't.
BACKTALK: Kelley Damore is SVP, Editorial Director for UBM Channel. You can reach her via e-mail at kelley.damore@ubm.com.
Proving The Industry Wrong
October 19, 2012
At channel conferences, vendor partner shows and here in the pages of CRN, we all espouse the characteristics of a good channel program: consistency, predictability, transparency and support from the very top.
A lot of vendors talk the talk, but few walk the walk. The one exception is Cisco.
Cisco has been selling predominantly through the channel for close to three decades. Eighty percent of its business goes through the channel, and it has always been a leader when it comes to forward-thinking and innovative programs. It was the first vendor to push technical specializations and, as VARs moved into these specializations, Cisco then evolved its programs and organized them around architectures. Remember, it was Cisco talking about cloud builders and cloud providers three years ago and, more recently, the company has been advocating for packaged solutions. Specifically, Cisco had the first major channel program for converged infrastructures and has been offering training and best practices around building professional services arms.
And while channel conflict is a common occurrence for other vendors that must manage an aggressive direct sales force while growing a channel, Cisco has little conflict in the field. The biggest complaint about Cisco is the pressure it exerts on its VARs to sell its complete offering and be a Cisco-only VAR.
Yet Cisco and its CEO, John Chambers, have been second-guessed time and time again. Cisco's future and hefty margins were questioned as competitors attempted to make inroads into its leadership position in the networking and infrastructure space. The industry wasn't convinced it could be successful in the server market. And while it has made mistakes (think supply chain snafus and 20-plus adjacencies), when the chips are down, Cisco has proven that it knows how to regroup, refocus and get the company back on track.
In fact, within the past year Cisco has regained significant market share in switching/routing, wireless and security. As a reflection of channel confidence, Cisco had a particularly strong showing in our Annual Report Card awards this year. It proved the naysayers wrong and took the Midrange Servers win away from the traditional hardware manufacturers as its UCS offering swept the category. In all, Cisco earned 14 awards with other sweeps in Unified Communications and Enterprise Networking Infrastructure, and awards in SMB Networking Hardware and Network Security Appliances.
So it comes as no surprise that when we met with Chambers for an hour earlier this month, he was confident and more aggressive than in previous interviews. He touched on the competition, which he said is remarkably weaker now than it was two years ago. He mentioned Juniper's recent layoff announcement and seemed less concerned about Huawei as a threat to Cisco's hold on the switching and routing market.
Instead, he was almost chastising those critics and priding himself on Cisco's transparency and accuracy in predicting broader IT trends. Instead of looking back, today he seems to be preparing for the future, trying to make for a seamless transition for the next CEO -- a tall order considering he has been the personification of Cisco for 17 years.
But as Chambers says, Cisco knows market transitions and has proven the industry wrong more than once. If Chambers continues to execute like he is today, he may ride off into the sunset as one of the greatest high-tech executives of our time.
BACKTALK: Kelley Damore is SVP, Editorial Director for UBM Channel. You can reach her via e-mail at kelley.damore@ubm.com.
Fast Growth: Top-Flight Tips
September 24, 2012
With many solution providers struggling to grow or even stay in business these days, who better to talk about the secrets to success than the No. 1 solution provider on CRN's Fast Growth list?
This year XIOSS, a data storage solution provider, earned the top spot, growing more than 3,000 percent during 2009-2011. The numbers are indeed impressive, but the journey has been wrought with uncertainty and lots of hard work. In late 2008, Mark and Susie Galyardt were at a crossroads in their careers. Mark was director of the Telco Services Business Unit for Datalink, and Susie had just left a job at Delta.
Mark had worked with large corporate customers and saw the challenges around data storage and the need for someone to come in and offer effective solutions. The Galyardts decided to take the leap and start a business to offer deep technical expertise and consulting services to Fortune 100 organizations.
Their timing could not have been worse. Credit markets had dried up, and venture capitalists were not interested in a reseller model.
"We hired a bank consultant to help us with working capital," explained Mark Galyardt, executive vice president. "But it was fruitless. There wasn't any help out there. It was very rough [in the beginning]. CIOs were pulling money back. We lost multiple projects that we thought were done deals."
Fast-forward two years: The company was on track to reach $10 million in revenue and the Galyardts were able to round out their executive team by recruiting Scott Robinson, chief technology officer for Datalink, as president of XIOSS. Robinson had experience building a company from the ground up and was impressed with how XIOSS was differentiated.
"I joined the company because I saw what XIOSS was doing. Large companies had rapidly growing environments, their capital expenditures were restricted and they were looking for expertise. XIOSS had been building a team and had a philosophy in these enterprise accounts," said Robinson.
Here are a few lessons XIOSS learned along the way:
Lesson 1: Differentiate and really understand your customers' pain points. The founders were in the field, servicing Fortune 100 companies for many years, so they understood their customers' problems on the ground. They were able to build a company based on their vision of where the technology was headed and what their customers truly needed. "It is really important when you start a new company to have a core vision and philosophy that you believe in and work hard on executing on that vision. And it has to be differentiated. You can't enter the market doing what everyone else is doing," said Mark Galyardt.
Lesson 2: Invest in your field team. XIOSS believed in lean corporate overhead. It felt the people in the field were the ones closest to the customer and could help solve business problems.
Lesson 3: Be vendor-agnostic. XIOSS works with all the major storage vendors, but it doesn't put all its eggs in one basket. By being vendor-agnostic, it can find the best solution. "The customer comes first," said Susie Galyardt, CEO. XIOSS also believes in looking at smaller emerging vendors because they can help meet a particular need or differentiate their offering.
Lesson 4: Don't get discouraged. "Stay on the path and slowly climb the mountain. It takes a lot of time. We are growing the business incrementally brick by brick. This approach is making it easier and easier each step of the way," she said.
BACKTALK: Kelley Damore is VP, Editorial Director for UBM Channel. You can reach her via e-mail at kelley.damore@ubm.com.
The One To Watch
August 27, 2012
As fall approaches, we’ll see an onslaught of hardware products, from Windows 8 tablets to Ultrabooks and hybrids, and if the latest numbers are any indication, Lenovo will be the one to watch.
Earlier this month, the Chinese PC maker reported very strong sales of its laptop and tablet PCs, earning it the No. 2 spot in terms of PC shipments worldwide, and narrowing the gap between No. 1 and No. 2 by seven-tenths of a point. Even more impressive, this is the 11th quarter in a row that Lenovo outgrew Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Acer.
HP, meanwhile, just posted the worst loss in its 73-year history with a 10 percent drop in its PC business revenue compared to last year’s quarter. Dell’s PC sales have dropped as well vs. last year’s quarter.
Yet while Lenovo is going strong in PCs, it isn’t stopping there. Last month, the company unveiled a partnership with EMC in which it will gain access to EMC’s enterprise technology and EMC will gain access to a massive Chinese market where Lenovo is king -- and other emerging markets where EMC wants a foothold. Clearly, Lenovo also has its sights set on the enterprise server market, hoping to continue to build on its success and take away more share from Dell, HP, IBM and Cisco on the server front.
The secret to Lenovo’s success will be communicating the channel message and executing consistently with VARs. In fact, the battle for market share will be fought in small and midsize businesses, where VARs are pitching upgrades.
The vendor that has the strongest incentive program and channel message around new hardware and Windows 8 will have an opportunity to make the greatest gains. If Lenovo can execute on its program and message, it will take the top spot away from HP within two quarters. Furthermore, if Lenovo can leverage its relationships with partners, it can successfully chip away at the data center market.
Meanwhile, HP needs to make up for some significant lost ground during the past 12 to 18 months. Its missteps in the PC business have left VARs ripe for the picking.
Let’s be honest, HP is still very internally focused right now and, really, who can blame it? Positions are being shuffled, jobs are being eliminated and employees, tired of the uncertainty, are packing their bags and going elsewhere. In many cases, VARs are forced to forge new relationships with HP field reps, and the chaos has left HP VARs looking for options. Even HP executives have admitted they are still fielding questions about whether HP is truly committed to the PC business and the channel, much to their chagrin.
HP has to get externally focused and be aggressive if it is going to keep the top spot. It needs to get back to a place where it is consistent, trusted and easy to do business with. The company also needs a solid, differentiated and innovative product lineup, and it needs to get the message out around those products. Lenovo is already creating buzz around its products by preannouncing them and showcasing them at VAR events. In fact, Lenovo was the first vendor to announce a Windows 8 tablet.
Surely, Lenovo is in an enviable position as the leader in China, one of the fastest-growing economies. But, truly, this is HP’s game to lose. The biggest technology vendor in the world has got to put the past behind it, admit the mistakes it’s made in the past, and convince VARs it is once again committed to PCs and to the channel.
BACKTALK: Kelley Damore is VP, Editorial Director for UBM Channel. You can reach her via e-mail at kelley.damore@ubm.com.
- Giving Back: Business4Better
- 30 Days That Humbled IT
- Proving The Industry Wrong
- Fast Growth: Top-Flight Tips
- The One To Watch
- Can We Have It All?
- Scratching The Surface
- EMC: Extra Mighty Channel?
- Compliance Is A Gold Mine
- Happy Anniversary, CRN
- Whitman Must Bury 8/18/11
- The Apple Of My 'i'
- Channel Business Index Offers Insight
- What I Learned At BOB
- It's All About Software
- What HP Needs To Do
- Tablet Gold Rush
- 110% + 110% = Exhausted
- Transform Or Be Left Behind
- Burns: Blazing A New Trail
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