Education exposed at its best

The UK’s premier channel exhibition is scheduled to take place this year in Hall 19 of the National Exhibition Centre, Birmingham, on Wednesday 21 and Thursday 22 May.

Channel Expo is the only event that brings the entire channel under one roof, showcasing the UK’s most diverse range of products and services for the reseller community, encompassing hardware, applications, networking, storage and peripherals.

The event has in excess of 3,000 resellers already registered for the two days and more than 90 exhibitors including Intel, Gamma Telecom, Lenovo, Star and T-Mobile.

As with the first day, the second day’s education programme is divided into three panel debates ­ ­ broken up by a talk from rogue trader Nick Leeson.

Mobile strategy
The first debate of the day is How to Sell Fixed and Mobile Convergence (FMC) and IP Telephony. As more firms look to implement a mobile strategy for remote working, how can resellers get into this lucrative space? What technology should resellers be pushing to their customers? How can the channel convince smaller firms to invest in the technology?

Chairing the debate will be industry guru Keith Humphreys, managing consultant at EuroLAN. Joining him on the panel will be Gareth Hamer, director of business development at Gamma Telecom; Andy Rawll, senior product manager of appliances and mobility at Avaya; and Bernie Dodwell, European
mobility business unit manager at Westcon Group.

“Mobility is not a complete enterprise solution ­ someone working in the back office does not need mobility ­ it is just part of the commercial organisation,” said Humphreys. “We need to treat the debate as a bit of a teaching session for delegates ­ FMC is still a new area and people are keen to learn more about it.”

Richard Bligh, group marketing director at Gamma Telecom, said: “Everybody on the panel will be coming at it from a different direction, but it will be a good opportunity to hear different viewpoints and talk about the benefits of convergence to a wider audience.”

Green issues
The second panel debate is based on How to Sell Green IT. As more firms look to refresh aging IT systems, what will happen to their old kit? How important is the green message to most firms? Who is responsible for disposing of equipment safely?

Chairing this panel will be John Godfrey, managing director of Life Cycle Services. He will be joined by Gary Fowle, director of marketing at Fujitsu Siemens Computers; Jonathan Perry, takeback and recycle programme manager at Dell; and Chris Davies, general manager at D-Link.

Gary Fowle said the green issue has gone far beyond just the standard environmental message.

“Chief information officers clearly see responsible IT as having two tangible benefits. It will provide a true environmental responsibility for their organisation and green IT can deliver fiscal savings that are significant enough to be considered by large businesses.”

Virtual storage
The final debate of the day is centered on storage and virtualisation. More firms are becoming aware of the green issues surrounding IT and are keen to cut down on power consumption and server space by going virtual. But what is the right way to go about selling this?

Chairing the panel will be Jon Collins, service director of analyst firm Freeform Dynamics. His panel will consist of Paul Hickingbotham, solutions manager at Hammer; Andrew Binding, vice president of northern Europe at Magirus; and Christoph Dobroschke, a server and workstation product manager at AMD.

Mark Burton, publisher of CRN, said: “The CRN editorial and events marketing teams have worked hard to get such a great group of experts on all the panels and we are confident that the debates will be lively and interesting for delegates.

“We hope resellers will come along to the CRN How to Sell Theatre ­ right ­ to ask questions of our industry experts on how to boost their sales skills and develop their businesses into new areas.”