At your convenience

The internet brings the world to your fingertips without you ever having to leave your desk, sofa or bar stool

We live in a convenience world: convenience foods, convenience shopping, convenience relationships. Yet the very word 'convenient' has negative connotations.

We are constantly told that we shouldn't eat convenience foods, that convenience shops are more expensive, and that relationships of convenience simply don't work. But in reality, is convenience actually that bad for us?

In the IT world vendors each spend billions on R&D a year trying to make IT simple and fast, and the technological epitome of this is the internet. It brings the world to your fingertips without you ever having to leave your desk, sofa or bar stool.

Convenience is a question of time; there is no point in having a convenience food that takes an hour to cook. In the frenzied world of IT saving time can mean saving business, and this is particularly the case in the channel, where the adage that time equals money still rings true.

This applies not only to VARs, which have to foot the bill for the time lost when their staff go on training courses or travel to and from meetings, but to vendors for which running a channel is a time-centric activity.

Fortunately the web has brought an end to this money-draining inconvenience, allowing vendors to talk to their channel partners via web links and real-time data and video streaming.

Web casts and web seminars are becoming an increasingly popular way for vendors to maintain regular contact with their channel, explaining new product launches and programmes and delivering financial results.

The convenience of sitting at your desk while you interact with a chief executive or channel manager - and enjoy the ability to hear other partners' interaction too - is invaluable.

This is why at CRN we are helping to drive this convenience of information. We will increasingly be running live, interactive web seminars giving readers the opportunity to chat directly with vendors and technology experts.

Go to www.crn.vnunet.com to register for our 'Taking 64bit to Market' web seminar.