Looking back on 2013
Everyone I meet asks how this year has been for CRN and my reply is always the same - manic!
Just like 2013 has been a year of complete change for the IT channel - so it has been for CRN.
We have always reflected the shifting landscape of the industry - and it is not surprising that there has been a lot of consolidation this year particluarly in the distributor landscape, but also in the VAR world as well. In turn this consolidates/changes our readership.
The term VAR is an interesting one - and I'm after opinions on what companies want to be described as in future - because the term 'solution provider' is not a popular one with me (far too American), but seems to be creeping in more and more! I'd be really keen to hear your thoughts on that one.
In our last issue of the year the term Varmaggedon popped its head up - not as scary as it sounds - but reflects the jouney many resellers are making to remain relevant in this era of cloud, apps and services.
And just like our readers, we are on a journey to remain relevant in this era of changing audience/sponsor demands and business models in the publishing world.
News continues to be the foundation on which we build all our offerings to the audience - and there have been some pretty big stories out their this year, the one that resonates with a lot of people is the demise of 2e2, but there are far too many others of equal importance to mention by name.
Print has also had an interesting year. The decision to finally go fortnightly this year proved to be the right move following our redesign the year before. It means our readers use Channelweb for daily news, but the magazine for a more in-depth read - just as intended. One thing we know for sure - our audience has a hunger for tailored, relevant content and we will continue to provide this in spades, both in print and online.
Our events side of the business has been an interesting one - I think it is common knowledge now that Partner Connect will not be happening any more - after many years trying to provide something to our smaller readers - and frankly with one of the best speaker line ups we have already had - we realised we were flogging a dead horse. And I for one couldn't be happier.
Smaller, more focused and tailored events are the way forward, as the success of our Channel Conference on managed services proved. Watch out for some interesting ones next year.
Fight Night was a roaring success, our Sales and Marketing Awards had a very successful year two, and the Channel Awards were the best yet judging from the feedback we have received.
One of the biggest changes to CRN this year is our foray into market research through our 'CRN Intelligence' moniker - we are not trying to compete with the incumbents, but spotted a gap in the market and are making it our own.
The success of the 2013 Vendor Report speaks for itself - no other report out there benchmarks vendors based on seven key channel performance indicators, as viewed by the partners themselves. We are currently working on the 2014 report, and would really appreciate as many people taking a few minutes to fill out our survey. It can be found here.
We also launched a Public Sector (local government) report and are working on a similar one for the Education sector - watch this space - and our Top VARs, and A-list proved as popular as ever.
I even wrote a report myself - the IT Buyers Guide - and the feedback I've had from it so far is very encouraging. We questioned 350 IT managers, 100+ financial directors and 100 VARs to get a 360-degree view of the IT buying process and how customers actually view the channel/spend their budgets. The results were very intersting indeed.
We have a lot of exciting stuff coming up in 2014 - it is definitely going to be another busy one for CRN and as soon as I can tell you all about it - I will!
However for now I'm really looking forward to a couple of weeks off and recharging batteries ready for next year.
I'd like to finish by thanking everyone for their continued support of CRN and our various events/publications/supplements/reports.
Your support and feedback means a lot, and we look forward to working with you in 2014.
Happy Christmas/festive period and a very happy and prosperous New Year.