Partners are engaging in significant changes to their business models to improve their capability to deliver new digitally-focused services that partners today are increasingly demanding.
While Check Point has the reputation of being a high end product that serves the high end of the market, they also sell to SMBs as well, and even though the focus this year was on high end strategy, their SMB portfolio got its share of important announcements.
Sage’s new product portfolio and strategy had attendees saying this was the most exciting transform in their memory.
Following up on last year’s partnership with Major League Baseball, Sage is announcing a different type of sports partnership, with Sportable, a global data collection and analytics platform, which is designed to bring deeper, AI-led insights to major sports.
The new strategic collaboration agreement with AWS to enable AI-powered solutions for SMBs includes a launch of Sage Earth on the AWS Marketplace will kick off in a few weeks in the UK and Ireland, but other geos, including North America, will have a bit of a wait – like 18 months.
Sage emphasized that this year’s Transform is a very important one, because of key changes, particularly around AI, that will greatly improve customers’ lives and productivity.
Sage Copilot is a new AI-based productivity assistant, whose AI has been specifically trained around accounting rules and best practices, and which is designed to help SMBs make better business decisions.
A key target is edge sites, which can be part of larger companies, but which serve niche use cases that will give them 5G and cellular technology that is priced for the use case, and far superior from a technology perspective than the consumer grade products that are often used for these purposes now.
Mark Hickman, Managing Director at Sage Canada, reviewed the recent news items of particular significance for the Canadian market, and noted some additional changes coming next year.
Guardz has also just added a new Growth Hub for MSPs, which gives them multiple new cybersecurity tools aimed at small business customers.
The Aruba Instant On AP22D, a Wi-Fi 6 access point, and the Aruba Instant On 1960 stackable switch are both SMB products laden with enterprise technology, and are aimed at SMB customers who want performance.
Judy offers an enterprise-grade platform with seven separate solutions that are designed and priced for the SMB market.
Trend Micro’s Canadian sales manager for SMBs and MSP discusses the challenges these kinds of partners face, and what Trend is doing to assist them.
62% of SMBs were positive about the future, although growth expectations for most were tempered, and views about data privacy raise some concerns.
Peter Bellini also steps up to the CEO role to initially build out better support for the core vulnerability management platform, and longer term, expand the platform beyond vulnerability management.
Most QuickBooks data is not backed up today, in part because Quickbooks’ own backup options are limited, and expensive for smaller businesses.
EnGenius has been primarily an enterprise networking player, but they see a strong opportunity in the small business market, and have crafted a new and simple to use portfolio to address it.
Enhanced productivity is the principal reason for the increased confidence, which is generally nation-wide.
The GM role, which has not been filled since Greg Tobin’s retirement, gives more authority than the VP of Sales role which has been held by the last two Canadian heads, and is part of a broader effort to drive D&H’s Canadian business.
The new initiative involves monthly credit extensions for Canadian partners, new vendor programs, and increased headcount.
