Our list of the most innovative executives of the year spotlights the people that are pushing the envelope with new products and channel programs to bring solution providers to new heights.
Find out which executives made the grade and held their own, despite the great IT downturn of 2009.
Most everyone loves Thanksgiving turkeys. But IT industry turkeys? Not so much. We look at 10 examples of 'turkeys' that have disappointed the tech industry this year.
Company: Trust Digital
Headquarters: McLean, Va.
Technology Sector: Software
Key Product: Trust Digital EMM (Enterprise Mobility Management)
Year Founded: 2004
Number of Channel Partners: 5 in the U.S.; 25 worldwide
Ideal Channel Partner: Enterprise-focused solution providers
Why You Should Care: Trust Digital offers mobile enterprise management software that covers the full smartphone market, including Apple iPhone.
The Lowdown: Solution providers looking to cash in on the huge opportunity opened up by the proliferation of smartphones now have a trustworthy option.
Trust Digital has stepped into the smartphone fray with its Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) software product that supports everything from Apple's iPhone to Android-based smartphones to BlackBerry devices from Research In Motion.
Not only that, Trust Digital has launched a new channel program to gain traction with solution providers. That program includes training, support and sales leads.
Nick Turner, vice president of reseller and service provider sales at Trust Digital, said EMM fills a big gap for solution providers that up until now have been just managing BlackBerry RIM devices via the Blackberry Enterprise Server. "VARs are looking for help to extend beyond BlackBerry," he said. "This allows them to fulfill those customer requirements. This is a burning and urgent request among enterprises."
Craig Abod, president of Carahsoft, the federal government's largest VAR and No. 6 on the 2009 CRN Fast Growth list, said Trust Digital's EMM product compliments his company's BlackBerry practice.
"Now other devices coming into the IT environment, including iPhone and Microsoft Windows-enabled phones, have the same level of security, governance and compliance that the BlackBerry Enterprise Server has enjoyed for years."
Abod said Trust Digital's EMM eliminates the religious battles for a single smartphone standard. "This allows freedom of choice," he said. "This is all about letting users on the network with devices of their choice and giving them the same functionality as Blackberry Enterprise Server."
Abod said there is a "significant services opportunity" for VARs that understand the compliance and governance requirements and can help CIOs set policies and procedures.
Company: V1 Document Management
Headquarters: Boston, Mass.
Technology Sector: Software
Key Product: V1 DbCapture
Year Founded: 2009
Number of Channel Partners: 100 worldwide
Ideal Channel Partner: Midmarket-focused solution providers
Why You Should Care: Solution providers can move customers toward a paperless office with a database that is quick to search and retrieve information, with the chance to add services and hardware sales to make a solid margin.
The Lowdown: For solution providers, one of the most powerful sales pitches they can make to customers involves increasing productivity and efficiency to an organization while lowering overall costs. V1 Document Management aims to deliver those elements to customers while providing solution providers with a healthy margin.
"We save time, money and space for customers," said Paul Crompton, vice president of sales and partner recruitment manager for V1. "We replace an organization's existing database processors with electronic ones."
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| V1 DbArchive |
"Once a document is scanned and stored we use our authorization workflow tool to route documents around a business," said Crompton. "Our tool is a Web-based browser that enables companies to search indexes and retrieve documents anyone in the business."
Solution providers can use V1's DbCapture to create a variety of services, ranging from customizing the base product to each customer to training, implementing and delivering the hardware.
"The product is modular, with customers picking those modules, and then we give solution providers a return on the software price," said Crompton. "The amount we give back is based on the amount of business they conduct. Clearly, the more money they provide in terms of size and solutions, then more money they'll make."
Company: Xangati
Headquarters: Cupertino, Calif.
Technology Sector: Networking
Key Product: Xangati Application Management 2.0
Year Founded: 2006
Number of Channel Partners: 10 worldwide
Ideal Channel Partner: Enterprise-focused solution providers
Why You Should Care: Xangati is convinced that most application management products weren't providing the necessary depth and understanding of network infrastructure -- so it set out to build one that could.
The Lowdown: Xangati's Application Management 2.0 is geared toward service providers and enterprise-level IT managers ready to use streaming, collaboration and user-generated content as part of how they manage service levels in networked applications like VoIP, servers and storage. In Xangati's eyes, many existing management offerings fail to measure up -- especially with virtualization now playing such a prominent role in network infrastructure.
"One of the greatest challenges is when the network appears slow," said David Messina, vice president of marketing and product management at Xangati. "We're effectively taking customers from flying blind about the activity of their subscribers to giving them live visibility into subscribers and how they're using the network. The beauty is that you can now get a ton of rich information from the network infrastructure that you've made this huge investment in."
Messina said many of Xangati's early channel partners have been virtualization and infrastructure specialists interested in optimizing NetFlow, the Cisco-developed data-feed that "summarizes" the flow of data around the network. Xangati Application Management 2.0 processes NetFlow records in real time and provides reports derived from summarized information -- not the full flow record -- which means it can provide reports faster than other NetFlow-enabled tools on the market, he said.
"We have a very nice complement of VARs that are heavily focused on Cisco markets and also building up big virtualization practices," he said. "Enterprises are sort of tired of finding hidden costs in the network, and to be candid, the channel should be, too. What we have aligns very well with the product lines that are popular, including Cisco switches and routers and VMware solutions."
Xangati came out of the gate strong thanks to a few rounds of venture capital funding in 2006 and 2007. Messina said Xangati will now focus on keeping the company 100 percent channel-inclined.
"We've proven out the technology at this point," Messina said. "Our focus now is trading demand generation and working with the channel toward basically creating a marketplace. We have people working aggressively to cultivate channel partners and set them loose on the enterprise market. We have no interest in building a direct enterprise model -- this is a trust solution and the kind of product you want to have in the channel."
Company: Zlago
Headquarters: Washington, D.C.
Technology Sector: Services
Key Product: Zlago Hosted Windows Desktops and Cloud Services
Year Founded: 2008
Number of Channel Partners: 50 in North America
Ideal Channel Partner: SMB-focused solution providers
Why You Should Care: Zlago offers a hosted desktop for small businesses, complete with e-mail, security and storage, that VARs can private-label to their customers.
The Lowdown: Zlago offers solution providers a way to provide a slew of hosted services without having to invest in a lot of infrastructure itself, according to CEO Michael Gold.
"We look at what are the 80 percent of services and applications that most SMBs use, and try to package them up [and offer them from a single] source. Those include your desktop, e-mail, backup, security, storage, and variety of business applications," Gold said. "Many businesses still want a mixed environment, but our bet is more will wanted hosted [services and applications] over time."
The company is looking for solution providers with strong SMB customer relationships who are ready to start integrating cloud services, said John Rice, vice president of channels at Zlago. In particular, Zlago hopes to attract the attention of distributors' partner communities like VentureTech Network, VARnex and TechSelect, but any solution provider in the managed services space is also a target.
Partners can expect to make margins between 25 percent to 40 percent bringing Zlago solutions to market, Gold said. Zlago launched its channel program in August and offers Webinars and other sales and marketing support to help VARs get on board, he added.
Kevin Gregg, vice president of business development and technical services at Connecting Point Las Vegas, said his company added Zlago because the solution provider can private-label the services to its own customers.
"I like the fact that they're flexible. They also have better expertise from a technical standpoint. When you're dealing with cloud services, it helps if [the vendor] is a little more tech savvy, if you will," he said.
Company: LogLogic
Headquarters: San Jose, Calif.
Technology Sector: Security
Key Product: Open Log Management Platform
Year Founded: 2002
Number of Channel Partners: 3,500 worldwide
Ideal Channel Partner: Enterprise-focused solution providers
Why You Should Care: LogLogic takes complex log data and turns it into something manageable.
The Lowdown: As its name suggests, Loglogic touts its line of log management tools as a great way to survive grueling compliance audits.
But while compliance mandates, such as PCI, HIPAA and Sarbanes-Oxley drive the lions' share of LogLogic's business, the offering also lends itself to better security and network performance optimization, executives said.
"This is ideal for companies or government agencies with hundreds of thousands of logs to store in one place," said Vince Schiavo, LogLogic senior vice president of global sales.
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| LogLogic Open Log Management Platform |
That information can in turn be used by enterprise customers as a tool in regulatory compliance audits and litigation as well as analyzing network performance issues.
Enterprise companies -- $500 million companies and up -- are the sweet spot, as well as federal government organizations with complex logs, numerous databases and massive amounts of log data that require monitoring, executives said.
Unlike competitors, the Open Log Management Platform can install quickly, and doesn't require many additional vendor-provided professional services.That's where partners come in, executives said.
Instead, partners can take the lead on their own consulting, installation and monitoring services -- such as network security forensics and PCI compliance policy management -- which ultimately will increase their own margins, add value and increase customers ROI, executives said.
"We turned the company over to the channel, running all business through the channel, even deals where we do most of heavy lifting," Schiavo said. "We let our partners drive professional services revenue. Then they're more excited about working with us."
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