CDN provided live Twitter coverage of yesterday’s CDN 100 Top Solution Providers event, including Info Tech Research Group analyst James Alexander’s briefing to partners on buyer behaviour and how channel partners can grow their business.
As you can see, condensing such strong insights and advice under a140 character cap can be a challenge. The complete Twitter stream fromyesterday’s event is below. For those new to Twitter, you want to startreading at the bottom for the first tweets, and move up the page inchronological order.
And if you haven’t yet, be sure to follow @CompDealerNews on Twitter.
• Symantec Canada’s Fred Patterson introduces CDN’s No. 1 Solution Provider of 2008, Softchoice Corp. of Toronto #cdn100
• Tech Data Canada president Rick Reid presents the No. 2 Solution Provider award to Compugen Inc. of Richmond Hill #cdn100
• Holmes: If you have a sale on hot cakes, what are they sellinglike? Do you think global warming is affecting Earth, Wind and Fire?#cdn100
• D-Link Canada’s Nick Tidd presents the CDN Top New SolutionProvider of the Year award to Richmond Hill’s Visual Defence Inc.#cdn100
• HP Canada’s Dave Frederickson presents CDN’s No. 3 Solution Provider award to Montreal’s Insight Canada #cdn100
• What HP’s Dave Frederickson says he has learned from the channel: to drink! Just kidding, he adds #cdn100
• Samsung Canada’s Ron Hulse presents CDN’s fastest riser award, up10 spots from last year, to Calgary’s Mainland Information Systems#cdn100
• AMD channel marketing manager Jason Mitchell presents #4 solutionprovider award to CCSI Technology Solutions of Mississauga #cdn100
• Comptia CEO Todd Thibodaux presents #5 Solution Provider award to xwave of St John, New Brunswick #cdn100
• CDN editor Paolo Del Nibletto said channel doing well, Top 100grew by 13 per cent over last year, speaks to strength of channel#cdn100
• MC tonight is comedian Jessica Holmes from Air Farce, she comes insinging as Celine Dion, wants the channel to have “faith” #cdn100
• IT World publisher Joe Tersigni says thanks to sponsors D-Link, CompTIA, AMD, Samsung, Symantec, HP and Tech Data #cdn100
• BREAKING NEWS: Derek Smith has left HP Canada to become the next Apple Canada president #cdn100
• Alexander VARs who say Dell is their top vendor aren’t frustratedat all that Dell sells direct too, must be expectation going in #cdn100
• Alexander Canadian VARs are a happy bunch, but top issues are lackof direct vendor contact and direct/indirect conflict #cdn100
• Alexander channel seems to be riding out the economic storm butsystems integrators most likely to see significant revenue declines#cdn100
• Alexander services are margin and margin is king, cost and skills primary factors driving outsourcing #cdn100
• Alexander social networking holds interest but older comms methodsstill preferred, biz are very open to web portals though #cdn100
• Alexander the major drivers of open source are also the majordeterrents. It’s a religious argument. His view either way costs same#cdn100
• Alexander users increasingly see value in other methods ofsoftware delivery in enterprise like SaaS, channel needs to be onboard#cdn100
• Alexander If customer wants service VAR doesn’t have VARs willingto partner with other VARs but not resell vendor service packs #cdn100
• Alexander Customer won’t leave on price unless its a bigdifference, but they will leave on service, will go if not feeling thelove #cdn100
• Alexander storage customers not satisfied with pre-sale technicalconsultation and remote monitoring and management VARs must do btr#cdn100
• Alexander Gartner has Magic Quadrant, Info Tech has Decision Diamond. Its the quadrant turned 45 degrees #cdn100
• Infotech Research analyst James Alexander presents at #cdn100 http://twitpic.com/3sdrl
• Alexander Software buy biz more concerned about price because knowwill cost $ for long time want to understand whole cost upfront #cdn100
• Alexander Also ask trusted peers. Case studies work in SMB theywant to see how like companies solved issues Invest your MDF$ here#cdn100
• Alexander midmarket doesn’t buy on product features it buys on pain, and asks trusted partners to take it away #cdn100
• Alexander Server virtualization may seem old hat to VARs but itsstill a big opp in the market if upgrading inf always pitch virt #cdn100
• Alexander Top enduser server buy drivers: refresh aging inf,address growth, replace apps, consolidation/virtualization #cdn100
• Alexander Smaller companies want solutions not point offerings, as they get larger want to be their own integrator #cdn100
• Alexander If you can stay involved in supporting and educatingcustomer after implementation will be involved identifying next need#cdn100
• Alexander No. 1 reason biz by from VARs is because they like you.It’s the personal relationship, that they can pick up the phone #cdn100
• Alexander Smaller companies business more involved in buyingdecision, with SMBs important to develop relationships w/biz side#cdn100
• Alexander 4 What drives partner success? He says more importantthan partner satisfaction is right support for right partners #cdn100
• Alexander 3 What do customers want? They often don’t know #cdn100
• Alexander 2 who sells my stuff? Large companies are separated fromend users by disties and partners and don’t know what’s happening#cdn100
• Alexander 1 as IT staff reach certain inflection points their taskbegins to outstrip their capability, even in large firms, need VARs#cdn100
• Alexander 4 A-ha’s drove our research. First is the SAG gap: Solution/Adoption gap #cdn100
• Alexander: the best thing I’ve learned about being an analyst isits easier to tell people what to do than to actually do it #cdn100
• Infotech Research analyst James Alexander’s #CDN100 presentationto partners: Buyer Behaviour in the Channel Ecosystem in 2009
