ConnectWise Connection: Scenes From IT Nation 2011

IT Nation 2011

ConnectWise welcomed more than 1,600 attendees to its annual IT Nation 2011 event in Orlando, this month. The PSA platform vendor's show featured more than 60 vendors and 90 breakout sessions to help MSPs migrate to the cloud and better run their business. Here's a few scenes from the show.

Flash Mob

ConnectWise employees took to the stage -- and floor -- for a dance number to Outkast's "Hey Ya!" to kick off the conference.

Renaissance Man

Arnie Bellini, CEO of ConnectWise, kicked off the conference by welcoming about 1,600 attendees and talking about where ConnectWise fits in the great IT renaissance happening today.

Technology Showcase

ConnectWise attracted about 60 vendors to showcase their technology for service providers at IT Nation that included some pretty good freebies, including N-able Technologies giving away an iPad every hour.

Managed Service Putter

Alex Kiss, CEO of MIS Choice, a Mount Prospect, Ill.-based MSP, lines up a putt at the Integral Solutions Group booth at IT Nation.

Unlikely Partners

Intronis and StorageCraft Technology had separate booths at IT Nation, but spent time talking about their new unofficial partnership. Despite both companies offering cloud storage, they've found a happy medium.

"You'd think we'd be competitors but we wrote this white paper about our partners leveraging Intronis to store files in the cloud and using StorageCraft to store [PC] images," said Ted Roller, (right), vice president of channel development at Intronis. "StorageCraft called us and said this is good stuff and we started talking about how we were less competitive and more cooperative helping MSPs with a fully-featured backup practice." Also pictured is Lee Bender, director of sales engineering at StorageCraft.

Play-By-Play

SonicWall's football-themed booth let MSPs channel their inner Chris Berman and announce play-by-play for some famous football highlights before being asked a couple of questions for a customer testimonial. Here, Charles Love, director of service operations at Big Sur Technologies, a Tampa, Fla.-based MSP, gets his turn with the microphone.

A Clean Slate For HP

Hewlett-Packard's Andrew Alegria shows off the company's Slate tablet, running Windows 7. The device attracted attention from VARs who thought HP exited the tablet business when it killed off the webOS-based TouchPad.

Infotech Out In Force

Zenith Infotech had a booth with big executive presence at IT Nation (and at the Heartland Tech Groups conference that preceded IT Nation). From left are: John McCallum, Maurice Saluan, Barry Bernazzoli and Richard Schoeffer. The executives said they couldn't discuss the ongoing bond default issue, but Saluan channeled Mark Twain to say, "the rumors of our demise are greatly exaggerated."

Oxygen Bar

With everyone's head in the cloud, Asigra provided IT Nation attendees with free oxygen at IT Nation. Not just plain old oxygen but different flavored oxygen, including cinnamon, lemongrass, peppermint and orange.

Add A Little Flair

ConnectWise provided buttons for attendees to add some flair to their conference badge lanyard.

Getting Schnizzy

Bob Penland, (left), CTO of TruMethods, shows off his "Schnizz," the company's unofficial gesture, while posing with Joe Popper, owner of Computer Gallery, a Palm Desert, Calif.-based solution provider.