News Comdex Wrap-up – Reporter’s Notebook Steve Cross and ChannelMedia Staff

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Well, it’s certainly small…and in trade shows, size does matter. Folks, this Comdex was small. Many of our readers will remember when Comdex covered both sides of the Main Hall, plus the South Hall, Sands Expo center, Hilton Ballrooms, and even some of the hotels. Comdex 2003 was about half of the Main Hall. That’s it. Lots of analysts, journalists, trade show organizers and etc were all taking the public position that small means focused, but frankly, this was as unfocused as any Comdex in recent (since 1982) memory. The focus was supposedly B2B IT, and there were areas of concentration on the floor: wireless innovation, mobility, web services, and Microsoft. Yeah, the Microsoft area had about 15% of the total space on the floor.

MediaLive is the new organizer, raised from the ashes of Key3’s bankruptcy with mostly the same folks on hand to run it. They were selling this whole B2B IT concept pretty hard to anyone who would listen, but we saw a lot of consumer-ish stuff and a bunch of real low-budget and unexciting add-ons: cell-phone faceplates, cell-phone do-dads, etc, mostly from Asian countries.

Our staff covered the floor, paying special attention the unwired world. In fact, we had our best and worst experiences of the show in the unwired world. A very neat pre-assembled hotspot from Zyxel, a Swedish company made its debut. This is a very neat idea for small retailers (coffee shops, mail-stations, etc) who want to compete with the Starbucks of the world without investing in a complete T-Mobile program. This is a low-cost, and a very slick solution. Stuff like this will get the US to 100,000 hotspots in three years, we predict. There was also, some peer-to-peer wireless stuff. Interesting, ands we can’t quite figure out yet how it will play in business. IM stuff, IM security is an issue. Wireless security is an issue.

In fact, like many Comdex shows the big boys didn’t have a lot of pizzazz except Microsoft, who leveraged their smaller developers into a maze of neat applications and solutions. We found ourselves spending more time there than anyplace.

Security was a big focus of the show, just like in real life. We saw hardware firewalls, software firewalls, and lots of anti-spam products. We’ve written in a sister publication about Ironport, and it just seems like they have a great solution: one box with firewall, anti-spam, anti-virus, etc. Affordable, scalable. Nice solution. Our folks were tracking every manner of similar products, from companies like Global Hauri, a Korean software company with a very slick approach to anti-virus detection and live repair.

The multi-product, or suite approach was much in evidence, as shown by the folks from Zone Alarm, who have a sweeping approach to the field, across channels and products. Both Zone Alarm and Panda Software had a similar approach, but with a different orientation….Zone starts with a firewall and adds ancillary modules; whereas Panda starts with an anti-virus and adds from there. Both promise a complete suite of firewall, anti-virus, pop-up blocking, and anti-spam.

As you all know, anti-spam is a huge topic, and just about every anti-spam guy and gal was in attendance, displaying their wares. Every approach to anti-spam was being shown; server side, client side, filters, challenge-based, ASP model, subscription, and peer-to-peer. Some of the companies we saw were Aladdin, Cloudmark, Firetrust, and the afore-mentioned Zone Alarm and Panda. Who will be left standing? After talking with each of these companies, they all feel like they’re the “one”. Somebody should tell Neo.

Another big area of focus seemed to be VoIP, or Voice Over IP. A couple different approaches; some companies going straight for the infrastructure with scalable solutions, like Entel. We like the consumer-ish stuff though, and saw tons of products around including a nice little suite of hardware products from Octiv. Called OctivVox. Old pal Saul Freedman is bringing them to market. Nice stuff. I wish him (and them) luck.

A couple private media-only events had the most exciting products at Comdex. At the Lunch @ Piero’s (we didn’t eat; the food looked too heavy for early afternoon) we saw the coolest thing….a radio station in a box for around $2500. Just think about the potential clients; universities, schools, museums, public buildings, stadiums, etc. Absolutely self-contained, and complete. Just plug it in and start broadcasting.

Also some monster video stuff. Gateway, Linksys (Cisco), and others have stuff that will broadcast video and music wirelessly from a computer to a TV, and there were a couple neat products in that nascent market. Not here yet, but when it does arrive, the wired (wireless?) home will be a very neat place.

ShowStoppers was great as always. Held on the first night of the show, this media-only event features a number of smaller companies not found on the show floor, who have very neat technologies. Sometimes they’re just previews, but often these are full-on market introductions. The food is always great, and the technology is always interesting. We saw a spiffy new desktop organizer that is just ideal for the budding Tablet PC market – Optimal Desktop. Could use a slicker name, but we got a free download, and it’s sorta’ neat.

Griffin doesn’t make it to a lot of shows, but with the iPod now driving Apple’s entire marketing thrust, expect to see these folks, with their complete line of iPod accessories and add-ons at the forefront of this very exciting niche. Now that iTunes is shipping for Windows, expect the best player on the market (yeah, we’ve seen them all, and the iPod is hands-down the best) to dominate. And the Griffin folks seem to be along for the ride. Often, interesting products arrive with little fanfare. Sightspeed has one. With some sort of proprietary software compression, they take regular web cams and plain vanilla broadband (now in 37% of all homes and businesses) like DSL, Cable, etc and pump out full-motion 30 fps video conferencing with sound. Could this be the real thing for home and small business videoconferencing? We’ll see.

And some old dependables were around too. Lexmark had the most beautiful line of printers on the market. Great innards, too. And the folks at Iomega were around, with their complete lineup of storage solutions. But we missed some other folks; no digital imaging (which will be a big focus at CES), no screens (they’ll all be at CES, too), few laptop manufacturers (yep, CES), and small PDA booths (the big ones will be at CES).

Comdex was smaller this year, much smaller. Did that make it better? We think not. Can it survive with this focus? We’re not sure. Networld-Interop has a similar focus, and it’s really on the ropes after this year. Shows are rebounding with the economy. CES is expected to draw in excess of 125,000 to Vegas. Our thought: CES adds a B2B IT area for January 2005, and that kills Comdex for good. We’ll miss it.

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News A Different View of Comdex By Dennis Masella, VP, Gartner Vision Events

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Everyone has an opinion about Comdex. I’ve seen articles saying that it’s dead, dying, reviving, or reinventing itself (see Steve Cross’s article this issue). My own opinion falls somewhere along the Mark Twain expression: "to paraphrase, news of its death has been greatly exaggerated." Having just returned from this year’s Comdex in Las Vegas, I certainly experienced a show that has changed in some fundamental ways. I’m sure no one missed the two hour taxi lines, or going from convention center to hotel to hotel to see everything. Other features – the presence of virtually every big industry player, lots of exciting product launches, and the kind of buzz that used to define Comdex – were conspicuous by their absence.

But I believe the real question about Comdex is not the issue of size, but of purpose. I had quite a few significant meetings, which is what Comdex has always been about for me. This Comdex, as in years past, was a central meeting place for a wide range of vendors, resellers and service providers. This has always been an important function of Comdex, and the industry would be poorer without it. Gartner held a reception during Comdex for past and future clients to thank them for their business, discuss new opportunities and give them a peek into the future according to Gartner analysts. We were looking for 100 attendees, and had well over 100 show up. We knew many of our customers were going to be in Las Vegas, so we wanted to be there too.

It’s true that Gartner Vision Events is in the same business as the producers of Comdex. We both stage technology events. But we have never viewed Comdex as a competitor. What we deliver and what Comdex delivers are considerably different. The Vision model is about executive-level audiences and facilitating seller-buyer face time in intensive environments such as Boardroom Appointments and One-on-One meetings. The Comdex model, even modified, is more about quantity and providing a much broader backdrop. That’s not about to change. But there’s a reason, and a need, for different event models to succeed. In the case of Comdex, the IT industry will always need common ground for different parts of the technology community to come together. The Comdex “Vision” may be different than ours, but we see its survival and even revival as a positive sign for all of us.

NEWS

Intel’s Next Step
By ChannelMedia Staff

Intel is taking steps to become the provider of wireless access points for the consumer and small business market. The company is not planning on developing the small gateway and routers that are becoming increasingly popular as a solution to create a wireless network in a home, but rather will include software with its next generation chipset, code-named Grantsdale, that will enable the computer to act as the access point. President and chief operating officer Paul Otellini revealed the information at the company's annual analyst conference. The chipset, which is slated for release in the first half of 2004, a release that will coincide with the company's debut of its next generation Pentium 4 processors, code-named Prescott, is expected to be a major upgrade for the company. Not only will it feature wireless technology but it will be the first from Intel that supports the emerging PCI Express interconnect that should enable faster graphics.

A key feature will be missing from the equation when Grantsdale emerges, and that is the actual WiFi radio that will transmit and receive the wireless signals. Consumers will still be required to purchase an add-in card to make a computer fully functional, at least in the near term. However wireless technology is one of the key market sectors that Intel has targeted as a key market for growth and the company has said that it is working to integrate the radio portion into its chips at some time in the future.

The overall affect of the move will be to place Intel into a direct competition with companies such as Netgear and Linksys that already develop router and gateway products for the home market. However they have some advantages. Lower power consumption and so lower energy bills to start. If the PC needs to be turned off or rebooted, the network will also go down. So it will need to be on at all times. However the technology does seem to be another selling point in Intel's drive to get consumers to upgrade their PCs on a regular basis, and for users that would not have considered creating a wireless network in a home, an impetus to develop one, and possibly buy additional peripherals that support the various WiFi technologies as well.

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NEWS

Get Ready for the Next VARVision and System Builder Summit Event!
Mark Your Calendar: March 14-17 Hyatt Regency, Dallas
Plan to Meet Senior-Level System Builders and VARs

Why are System Builder Summit and VARVision the leading events for the white box and value-added channels? Because we identify and invite only North America's leading System Builders and VARs. You'll meet CEOs, Presidents and other senior-level Decision-Makers you simply can't reach through traditional sales and marketing vehicles. You'll also have access to top Resellers ready to make deals right now - executives who have the authority and the buying power to change your bottom line.

Plan to Meet One-on-One, It's How Business Gets Done

How will you do business with these Reseller executives? In pre-arranged, strategic business meetings - the kind you just don't find at other technology events.

• Private Boardroom Appointments enable you to present your products, programs, and solutions to targeted groups of Resellers aligned with your product set. In every Boardroom, our audience will be in tune with your goals!
• One-on-One Meetings at The White Box Expo™ and Channel Solutions Center™ let you take boardroom discussions to the next level.

Plan to Sell Your Hottest Products to the Hottest Markets

The System Builders and VARs are strategically selected to represent the most profitable and high-growth markets.

• Line up big-volume deals with System Builders selling into the SMB, Federal Government, Consumer, Gaming/High Performance, Distributor, State and Local Government, Education and Server marketplaces.
• Build the VAR relationships you need in key markets including Security, Healthcare, State & Local Government, Education, Financial Services, Networking Technologies, Wireless.

Contact:
Mary Fogarty
603-471-4227
mary.fogarty@gartner.com

NEWS

Collaborative Partnering to Drive Success
Online Conference – Tools and Practical Steps for Developing Effective Partnerships

What are the secrets for building successful strategic partnerships and channel relationships that grow the business and drive competitive advantage? How do you gain commitment from partners who have their own
agendas and priorities? How can you best leverage technology to increase channel-driven sales?

Join iCohere for the Partner Relationship Management 2004 online conference, January 26-28, 2004. This completely online (virtual) professional event focuses on dynamic ways to engage your partners, enhance your relationship, and drive revenue.

Through interactive, mixed media presentations, real-time teleconferences, online meeting rooms with hosted discussion topics, and instant messaging, you'll interact with presenters who are thought leaders from across the field and your colleagues who are an international group of partner and channel management professionals.
We’ll explore key conference themes from diverse perspectives!

Conference Highlights:

• New Strategies for Selling with Partners
• Enabling Relationship Management through Technology
• Value Creation Model for Partnership Management
• Measuring the Value of Partnering - The Metrics of Relationships
• System and Methods for Generating, Optimizing, and Evaluating Business Partner Alliances
• Building Profitable Partnerships
• Partner Adoption: The Key to ROI for Channel Investments
• Cleaning House

For More information go to: www.icohere.com/prm2004

Sales organizations, especially in the world of IT services and solutions, are undergoing significant changes and are under pressure from executive leadership to produce increased results. Buyer profiles are changing as business unit executives become more involved in the decision making process for IT solutions. Sales forces are becoming more mobile and agile, creating a more client-facing, virtual sales organization. Competition is changing as new providers emerge in a converged world. IT solutions providers are increasingly looking to leverage partners (and their sales teams) for expanded sales reach into target markets. All of these issues are contributing to the need for IT services companies to improve the measurement of key sales activities and results if they expect to have the information and insight needed to make decisions that will lead to needed improvements and successful results. In many cases, these dynamics are forcing sales executives to measure different issues and to measure in different ways than they did in the past.

In an effort to identify the current state of sales measurement issues and specific metrics being realized in the IT services and solutions market, Gartner recently conducted a two-phase research study with IT services and solutions companies. This research identified at the corporate, sales management, and sales person level, both the issues and activities that are being measured, as well as actual average metrics being realized in a significant number of these categories.

What Should You Be Doing?

Based on the findings from this research, Gartner recommends the following: Every IT services and solutions company has a unique combination of service portfolio and target market. Thus, the specific sales activities and results that need to be captured and measured will be unique to each company. Gartner recommends that IT solutions companies carefully consider a finite set of metrics that is applicable and most useful to them as a foundation for sales success measurement. Time and resources wasted on collecting and analyzing irrelevant sales results cannot be afforded. In other words, “measure smarter, not harder.” Too often, sales management within a specific business unit establishes a set of sales activities and objectives to be measured within their own silo and without consideration of the “bigger picture.” Gartner recommends that sales managers and executives take the additional step to insure that the sales activities and results that they are capturing and measuring align closely with the objectives and strategy of the company. To do otherwise may lead to actions and results that are at cross-purposes with the intended direction of the company. In conjunction with the above recommendation, corporate and sales executives need to insure that sales metrics that are captured at the corporate, sales management, and sales person level are carefully aligned and coordinated. IT solutions companies need to clearly identify at which level each specific metric can best be captured and take steps to avoid redundant sales measurement efforts.

Most sales executives and managers are diligent in regards to measuring quantitative sales results. In most cases, the results are readily available and are the foundation for what these managers are being tasked to do … drive numbers. In many cases, though, these same sales managers are less than attentive to qualitative sales measurement. Therefore, Gartner recommends that sales management increase focus on the qualitative issues that lead to sales success. In particular, focus should be placed on measuring such qualitative issues as business acumen, team management skills, and consultative and strategic selling skills.

The tendency to avoid change is human nature. Sales managers tend to focus on traditional sales metrics and are less likely to aggressively consider new areas of results measurement. Yet, the sales environment and competitive landscape are constantly changing and require new perspectives and insight in order to successfully react to this change. Thus, Gartner recommends that sales executives regularly review the set of metrics that they capture and measure and revise and/or expand this list as required by the changing business landscape.
Business partners (channels and alliances) are increasingly contributing to the go-to-market strategies and sales results of most IT solutions companies. Yet, over half of the companies that participated in this research do not measure sales production generated by each of their partners. Gartner strongly recommends that IT solutions companies establish key sales metrics to measure the sales results of partners and develop specific actions to be taken based on the results. This process should be a collaborative effort with the partner community in general and with individual partners specifically. These actions should also be incorporated into the overall framework (terms and conditions) of the partner programs of these companies.

Provide timely access to critical information to people throughout the sales organization: this is an essential success factor for effective decision making. Technology advancements have enabled managers to gain timely access to an enormous amount of information (some relevant and some not). Thus, dashboards have emerged that consolidate relevant information in a timely manner to make the access process more efficient. However, many sales organizations have not developed and implemented the usage of sales dashboards. Gartner recommends that IT services and solutions companies that have not implemented sales dashboards do so immediately.

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HP launched the Business Inkjet 2300 at Comdex in November. The BIJ2300 replaces the BIJ2280 series and uses the same supplies, but has a faster processor (256MHz vs. 133MHz), more memory (64Mb vs. 32Mb), comes standard with 2 paper trays for a total of 400 sheets of input capacity, and has enhanced resolution (4800x1200 vs. 1200x1200). Three configurations are available: a base model, the 2300N, and the 2300DTN. E-commerce street prices are averaging $482, $750, and $806, respectively. The BIJ2300 can print up to 26ppm in mono and 22ppm in color. The "laser quality" (benchmarked to the Color LaserJet 4600) print speed is 9ppm mono, 5ppm color.

Sounds like a great printer, right? Laser quality color at 5ppm for under $500 - will your office run out and buy one? Probably not -- after all, who would buy an inkjet printer for office use when everyone uses laser? And besides, aren't inkjets horrendously expensive to operate? Now that the 16ppm mono / 4ppm color Minolta-QMS 2300W color laser is down under $500, for most offices, it will not be a difficult decision as to what color printer to buy. The office color market is thorny for business inkjets because of the firmly entrenched laser bias. Laser printers have long been the standard for business documents and users can't imagine paying anywhere from $200 to $1500 for a business inkjet (!). Consumers think of inkjet printers as the cheap $49 machine they often get bundled with their PC and because there are cheap inkjet machines on the market, the prestige of the inkjet segment is cheapened. Additionally, there is a pervasive perception that inkjets are wet, unreliable, expensive to print color, and not durable.

These perceptions stem from current experiences with those aforementioned $49 inkjets or past dealings with inkjet printers of several years ago. Even though business inkjet printers have made great strides in the last couple years, the assumptions remain and as all marketers know, perception is reality. As long as office workers believe that inkjets are inferior to lasers, they will never be considered business class machines.

The truth is: these perceived flaws are rapidly being addressed with each subsequent inkjet printer, and very soon text quality and durability will be indistinguishable from lasers. Cost, reliability, and standard features already surpass those of comparable color lasers. For the money, business inkjets are a better deal than color laser printers.

Where Color Laser Printers Win

Plain paper print quality: Laser has always had the advantage of looking good on all media, while print quality varies by paper type for inkjets. Older inkjets were completely pale and washed out on plain paper and while even now, plain paper prints might not have the pop and sharpness of a laser print, they still look reasonably good. Besides, if a laser user wants to print a presentation quality job, he will not use the standard 16 or 20lb paper - he'll upgrade the paper quality. Same for an inkjet user - better paper quality leads to better prints.

Durability: Again, these are not your father's inkjets. They don't smudge when you look funny at the prints. Yes, if a customer licked his finger and dragged it across the print or left it out in the rain, it might smear, but who normally does that to an office document? Smearing during highlighting is still a valid concern that is constantly being addressed by HP's plethora of chemists. In time, highlighter durability will be on equal footing with lasers. And, don't forget laser's occasional tendency to "block" or transfer toner to another surface, like the paper above it or the plastic sleeve of a 3-ring binder, under heat and/or pressure.

Duplexing: Duplexing may be difficult because of the image "strikethrough" and the "cockle." Strikethrough is when the image from one side bleeds through to the other and cockle is the bumpiness caused by paper fibers being wetted by ink. Using a heavier, more expensive paper can often solve strikethrough and cockle. However, do users really want duplexing? HP does not even offer duplexing on its low-end lasers: 1500, 2500, and 3500 series. It's an expensive option on the Minolta-QMS and Oki Data machines. HP does offer standard duplexing on its entry-level business inkjet, the 1100d.

Where Business Inkjet Wins

Cost - Printing a black and white page on a color laser or a color business inkjet will always be more expensive than printing the same page on a monochrome laser printer. However, printing color pages is where business inkjet shines. As shown in the graph below, the color cost/copy for two HP Business Inkjets is lower than eight of the leading color laser printers (using high yield supplies when available).

Additionally, the box purchase price for the standard feature set is also very attractive for business inkjet printers. Total cost of ownership (TCO) is a metric that companies are just starting to measure. In the past, companies typically had no idea of how much they spend each year on printing, but new evaluation services from several of the printer manufacturers are trying to demonstrate costs and potential savings. TCO, including purchase price, supplies, and warranty costs, is lower for business inkjet.

Reliability - HP tracks reliability through customer calls and warranty returns. It may surprise the laser faithful out there, but business inkjet reliability rates are consistently better than color lasers and nearly identical to monochrome lasers. Depending on the printer model, there are several non-user-replaceable moving parts in a laser system (the laser itself, the mirror, the fuser, the charging station) that can fail or go out of whack while the "writing system" of an inkjet printer is completely replaced every time a user changes out a printhead. The extended warranty price for a business inkjet is much lower than for a color laser - indicating that the manufacturer expects to pay more out for fixing the color laser.

Features - In order to hit these new low price points, color laser printers have had to strip out features like Postscript support and robust networking solutions. For instance, during a color laser benchmarking study recently, an IT department tried to set up the Minolta-QMS 2300DL, and they had a very difficult time getting the printer on the network. Similarly, with the Oki 5100n, the printer driver had to be installed on the user's PC because it would not install properly on the network. The more expensive HP, Lexmark, and Xerox laser machines installed easily. Basically, the cheaper color lasers get, the less robust they become. The value proposition for business inkjet is to provide more features at the same or lower box price. For example, the sub $500 business inkjet 2300 has postscript capability while many of the low-end color lasers do not.

Image Quality -The print quality of laser is constantly held up as the gold standard, and yes, the text is usually quite sharp. However, lasers sometimes have trouble with solid area-fills (like slide backgrounds) because the electrostatic charge cannot hold evenly over a large area. Photos are typically quite grainy because the laser toner particle size is much bigger than the inkjet drop volume. Inkjets often produce a much wider color gamut - the more colors available, the better the image quality. Additionally, inkjets have the unsurpassed ability to print fantastic images on special papers, such as photo. That could be considered a downside, however, as most offices don't want photo quality machines around for employees to suck up ink printing vacation pictures.

Comparing the Business Inkjet to Color Lasers

HP has three tiers of Business Inkjets at the moment: the entry-level is the 1100d series (starting at $199-$299), the mid-range is the new 2300 series (starting at $499-$899), and the higher-end segment is covered by the BIJ3000 series (starting at $599-$1099). Let's pick the new BIJ2300 to compare against its closest color laser competitors. Looking at the specification table below and thinking back to where business inkjets win, one could argue that there are some compelling reasons, such as cost/copy, reliability, processor speed, paper capacity, and postscript capability, for offices to look at business inkjets again.

The $64K question: will offices look at business inkjets if they know about the advantages?

Salesmen have reported that when they place a business inkjet in an office, the users love it, but it is tough getting past that laser bias hurdle. Research has shown that when blindly comparing specifications, business inkjets stack up very well against comparably priced and featured laser printers. Customers are even more willing to buy "printer A" because of its lower price and higher print speeds. However, when customers learn that "printer A" is a business inkjet, a customer's propensity for buying the machine declines significantly. Even after being shown that the durability, cost, and quality are very similar to laser, the buying desire increases, but not up to the same level it was before learning the printer was an inkjet.

Despite the frustrating resistance, HP will continue to produce business inkjets. HP virtually has the business inkjet market to itself and it prides itself in offering customers technology and product choices. Margin-wise, HP makes a lot more money off of business inkjets than it does off of lasers because it owns the technology, whereas Canon gets a cut of the laser business. Canon did dabble in this market with the N1000 and N2000 printers, but decided that the business inkjet market wasn't big enough to continue designing new products. Likewise, Lexmark beat a hasty retreat from the business inkjet market with its J110 "liquid laser" printer.

It's a natural progression: business inkjet will continue to improve to laser level and color lasers will continue to get cheaper. Who wins in the end? Some users will always buy a laser, while some will become more open to looking at business inkjet. Business inkjet will maintain its strategy of offering a lower color cost/copy, a lower total cost of ownership, and a stronger feature set to entice users to try it out. When users begin to realize that they can actually get laser quality, durability, reliability, and lower color costs with inkjet, the business inkjet will finally get the respect it deserves. Until that time, the laser printer rules the office.

Dean Lane is senior director of Information Technology at Symantec. A former CIO, he recently co-wrote CIO Wisdom which includes best practices from Silicon Valley’s leading IT experts.

FROM THE COMMUNITY “Did you pitch 27 clients and prospects today?” By: Casey Hughes

You might be thinking that my article title is an unfair question to ask? After all, most sales professionals struggle to meet with even 3 clients or prospects in a single day. 27 would seem unreasonable and even impossible should you add the realities that a “real meeting” requires time, logistics coordination and adequate preparation. Still I’d suggest that if you are not connecting with your clients and prospects daily, somebody else might be.

Recently I completed a project with Alvaka Networks, a network security VAR in California, which enabled them to conduct a successful sales meeting with 27 clients and prospects in a single day. And from their own desktops using our ChannelMatch web meeting service.

Given the proliferation of virus’, Trojan horses and the ever present need for real-time network security, Alvaka leveraged the opportunity (and urgency) to motivate clients and prospects to participate in their first web meeting. From inception to completion, the entire process took only 3 weeks and resulted in significant sales opportunities for Alvaka Networks. Of the 27 companies that participated, 60% found the experience to be “extremely valuable”, 40% expressed their satisfaction as “valuable”. All expressed an interest in attending future web meetings with Alvaka (50% said “it was a great use of their time”!).

The purpose of the event was made very clear:

• To raise awareness of the growing importance of Patch Management within the overall corporate IT security management practice.
• To communicate to clients and prospective clients the availability of their new Patch Management service.
• To sell more new services to existing clients and as a vehicle to garner the attention and business of prospective clients.

Oli Thordarson, CEO of Alvaka Networks had this to say regarding the whole experience: “ChannelMatch was essential in guiding us through process of hosting an on-line meeting. Everything was provided by ChannelMatch, from the beginning planning process, to putting together the invitation and publishing the meeting profile on the ChannelMatch Portal, to the preparation of our meeting content and coaching for delivery, ChannelMatch confidently lead us through a successful process. After the event, valuable sales and marketing feedback was collected for us to make follow-up sales. A real plus is the recording of the event. We had several clients who could not attend, but are already asking us to send the link to the recorded presentation. ChannelMatch helped us cost effectively touch many of our clients and several new prospects and prepared them to become consumers of our newest service offering.”

Imagine… you pitch 27 clients and prospects in a single day. If you don’t someone else might be.

ABOUT CASEY
Casey Hughes is the Director of Channel Business Development for Gartner Vision Events Online. He has 27 years of channel management experience including senior vice president roles at KayPro, Tandon and Merisel. Since the Internet era began in the mid 1990’s, he has architected numerous platforms for online collaboration, most recently a web meeting and online events portal called ChannelMatch. As a senior associate of the CoWorking Institute and an active facilitator for Hewlett Packard’s Media Solutions, Casey has unprecedented experience in helping organizations leverage technology and the requisite social processes for effective web meetings and online events. Casey can be reached at casey@channelmatch.com or by calling his Malibu office at 310-457-2146.

FROM THE COMMUNITY Changing Channels Are we becoming Japan? – Part 3 By Steve Cross

For a while I’ve been looking at changes in the distribution model to get insights for clients, and help them position for the future. Some of that insight I’ve shared (remember, I save the best stuff for paying clients). A couple columns addressed how the consolidation of outlets, diminishing numbers of channel jobs, and growth of mega- and hybrid- distribution/firms is affecting the way products go to market in North America. That was contrasted with how products go to market (through channels) in Japan.

In Japan there are “front-end” distributors who localize package, republish, and prepare software and hardware products for launch. They sell the stuff off to bigger “box-mover” distributors. Then the box movers sell to an ever-decreasing series of resellers. Sounds familiar, huh?

Allow me to briefly continue to refresh your memory. It seems like republishers and hybrid reps with distribution agreements and pre-assigned/reserved SKUs have made a huge dent in the previous models. Much of that is fueled by the inability to the big distributors to add and manage new small; products. You may ask why this would be a bad scenario. Well, it keeps little guys away from the market, and raises the bar too high for new players. Is that bad? Yes, indeed. As most of the innovation in our industry comes from the bottom, rather than the top, if these new products don’t see the light of day, all of futures in the business will be diminished.

There is an old story about AT&T before the break-up 20+ years ago. AT&T was planning to introduce broadband sometime in the 2020’s, another 15 or so years from now. Only by breaking the monopoly up and allowing the little companies to fight it out were we able to build this great Internet infrastructure that allows 37% (as of last month) broadband access.

We’ve seen the growth of these hybrid people to fill the niche of bringing new products top the distributors while still managing the products on hybrid side of the fence, sort of unburdening the transaction for the distributors. One more level of intermediation that really makes sense and allows the system to function at perhaps a higher level. Look for more. And at each step of the intermediation, a small amount of margin gets drained off.

These are not bad things. If products are managed better before they hit the disty, if products and companies are prepared better for the market, if new technologies continue to flow, is that bad? Heck no. That’s good stuff and it will keep us all working. I like that.

Contact Steve Cross at steve@crosschannel.com, 702-492-7472.

Editor's Note: Steve is a channel consultant who helps fine-tune channel programs, and prepare companies for multi-channel launch.

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