ConnectWise stressed two main themes at their IT Nation Event in Orlando – the need to further empower MSPs, and the need for MSPs to develop their security capabilities. Those two themes were closely intertwined, as ConnectWise is rolling out multiple tools and programs to enhance both, with more to come.
The changes involve restructuring the deployment of Lenovo resources to better support partners, new rewards for alignment and new logos, and changes to improve slow pricing policies – although a big one won’t roll out until next year.
HPE has built on the Digital Marketing program they announced last year with a new digital marketing maturity assessment tool, and increased resources through Marketing Pro Academy,
Stax automates the process of identifying gaps in MSP customer solution stacks, recommends offerings which can fill these voids, and provides the MSP with assistance and collateral to sell them.
While past ESET marketing materials have been static downloadable assets, this tool, designed by marketing automation company MindMatrix, fully automates campaigns, to make them easy to design, use and track.
Salesforce adds a second Essentials cloud, and improves the original introduced last fall, although at this point in time, Essentials is still a marginal channel play, since the focus has been on improving the offering rather than broadening the go-to-market.
Incents for new logos are on the way, but an even bigger change will be Nutanix moving from partners teaming with sales to making partners more autonomous.
Gigamon introduced inline 1Gb and 10Gb encryption on their security platform earlier this year. Now they have upgraded this to support faster 40Gb and 100 Gb networks, which they also think will encourage 100 Gb adoption.
The enhancements both offer lower price points to appeal to the lower end of the Atmosera TAM, and improve visibility to appeal to larger customers.
Veteran channels leader Zach Edwards was brought in by Komprise to design the new program, and improve Komprise’s support to its channel, which is their entire route to market.
While a low price will create a minor margin opportunity for the MSP, the main MSP benefit will be the better use of their time that will come from having the ASV scan capability integrated directly in the compliance module.
Avast is providing the new tool free to its partners, in the belief that going forward they all need to focus much more on security than many have in the past.
The Tasktop Integration Hub, focused on software development, provides integration services between large numbers of lifecycle and dev/ops tools – but the company is planning to expand its capabilities.
