NexGen Cloud Teams With ASCII Group, CompTIA, THINKstrategies

The NexGen Cloud Conference & Expo, debuting Dec. 3 to 5 in San Diego, is partnering with three leading industry organizations to bring best practices, training and other vendor-neutral content to solution providers seeking a leg up in the cloud market.

Conference host The Channel Company Thursday said it has joined forces with the The ASCII Group, CompTIA and THINKstrategies to extend the scope of the event. Each of the three industry organizations will be adding content and expanding the size of the cloud community the event touches, said The Channel Company, also the parent company of CRN.

"For more than 30 years, we've helped forge the relationships, identify the trends, and unveil the best practices that drive change in the IT community," said Robert Faletra, CEO of The Channel Company. "With NexGen Cloud, The Channel Company is filling a much-needed gap, providing a vendor-neutral, partner-centric cloud computing conference focused on helping the IT channel drive both innovation and revenue through cloud solutions," Faletra said.

[Related: Solution Providers: NexGen Cloud Fills Big Gap In Cloud Market]

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By bringing together those organizations, the NexGen Cloud Conference will expose attendees to an unprecedented level of industry knowledge, insight and best practices guidance, said Robert DeMarzo, senior vice president of strategic content at The Channel Company.

"We've reached out to some of the leading vendor and solution provider associations. They want to get on board with a conference like this, support it and provide content. It's really critical to have them on board because they have a big community, and they see value in aligning with us," DeMarzo said.

David Geevaratne, co-founder and president of New Signature, a Washington, D.C., solution provider, said bringing in additional cloud community players will give solution providers a wider range of expertise to draw from.

"The more community organizations that are at the conference, the better the opportunity for solution providers to immerse themselves in what they need to do to accelerate their business by transforming their customers into cloud-powered businesses," said Geevaratne, a member of the NexGen Cloud Conference & Expo advisory board.

As a CompTIA Certified Technical Trainer, Geevaratne was particularly pleased to see CompTIA team up to be part of the NexGen Cloud Conference.

"When I'm speaking with both partners and customers, being accredited is a differentiator because it adds to my value proposition; it adds to my ability to execute because I have training based on dozens of years of industry best practices, and it helps me elevate my own personal profile in the community of IT leaders," he said.

The theme of the conference will be "All Roads Lead to the Cloud," reflecting the prediction of industry experts that all channel businesses must adapt to the cloud by 2017.

The NexGen conference will be the first ever to solely focus on best practices, from sales, to marketing, to customer engagement, for solution providers interested in adopting cloud technologies or expanding the ones they currently offer, DeMarzo said.

"What we've tried to create is an event for any solution provider out there that wants to build or accelerate their cloud business," DeMarzo said, adding NexGen is nontechnical and vendor-neutral, "not about any one distributor's or one company's vision."

The conference will offer peer content from VARs, managed service providers, system integrators and IT consultants. Industry experts and vendor representatives will also present exclusive research, content, education and intelligence to help the partner community maximize the potential of offering their customers cloud-based solutions.

More than 1,000 solution providers and some of the largest brand-name cloud vendors in the industry are expected to attend.

PUBLISHED JULY 17, 2014