One day to Coventry kick-off
The CRN Partner Connect trade show and seminar programme this Thursday promises a range of ways to score
With the curtain due to rise on the second Partner Connect expo in Coventry tomorrow, exhibitors are confirming the value of the networking experience and the chance it offers to explore new business opportunities.
Paul Jones, director of sales for UK and Ireland at AVG, says that coming to a venue in the centre of the UK is a "definite plus".
"It attracts many more resellers from outlying regions than a London event could ever do," confirms Jones. "The event was a great success for us when we attended last year. Events like Partner Connect provide an invaluable opportunity to meet with a high calibre of prospective partners and is one of the highlights of the year in terms of new partner recruitment."
Jones says that AVG will be launching its new PartnerUP reseller programme and internet security offering. "It also provides us with a forum to catch up and engage further with our existing resellers, to hear what their customers are telling them and to learn about improvements we can make to further enhance our offering for the future," he says.
Reseller Discount-licensing.com will also be exhibiting. The firm transfers or reassigns pre-used licence assets to new users, according to Microsoft's volume licence agreement terms. It also now works with SAP. Noel Unwin, managing director of Discount-Licensing.com, says the business is booming, and he wants to introduce more channel companies to the opportunities.
"We want to demystify those myths about what you can and cannot do [with software]," Unwin says. "We feel Partner Connect will be a good platform for that."
Unwin says he attended Partner Connect in 2011 and felt it will help Discount-Licensing.com make profitable connections. This year, he will drop in, but operations director Phil Hibbitt and senior business manager Mick Shotton will be manning the stand, where they will have presentations to take away and be happy to talk potential partners through the opportunities.
A range of luminaries of the current UK channel landscape will speak, including Adam Zoldan, the director and founder of Knight Corporate Finance, who will give a welcoming speech first thing.
Zoldan has worked in the industry for many years - initially as an analyst and then as a corporate finance adviser at PricewaterhouseCoopers. He also has experience as an entrepreneur, having started an IT business called V Networks which he sold to Opal Telecom in 2008. Zoldan has a deep understanding of the concerns of technology providers, particularly smaller ones.
Zoldan will be followed on the podium by Context chief executive and founder Jeremy Davies. Davies, who promises to take a deep dive into latest sales figures to find out where the prospects for growth are from now until the end of 2012 and beyond.
Janet Gibbons, director of partner strategy and programmes at Microsoft UK, will talk not only about Microsoft's current partner strategy but how best to move ahead in a world of cloud computing. Her session will be followed by one on best practice as understood by IBM, presented by Big Blue's UK vice president of partner and mid-market sales, Richard Potts. He will examine the specific financial challenges, and look at the cloud, services and solutions offerings that are likely to sustain channel and end user businesses alike.
Fujitsu executive director of the technology product group, Michael Keegan, is going to unveil its latest tactics and seek a response from resellers and other technology providers.
"Keegan has indicated, too, that he will speak to one of the biggest challenges today - getting the sales team to transition profitably from the product or ‘solution' sales to working with a cloud business model," CRN editor Sara Yirrell says. "There will be some 70 exhibitors, so register your place today to book an appointment with one of them."
Yirrell adds that research by the organiser Incisive's events team has suggested that CRN Partner Connect is the only place in the UK to meet a large number of vendors and investigate, form or develop relationships with such a range of technology providers.
"For only a day out of your busy schedule, it really can deliver. We urge channel firms to take advantage," says Yirrell. "It's free, easy to get there, and easy to find your way around."
Yirrell says that for any channel technology provider there is bound to be value in attending. "Our research indicates that there too few quality networking events for our industry. That's true, I think. So that is what we are aiming to provide. I look forward to meeting you all," she says..