Trusted Business Advisor

NOW is the Time to Become an MSP!!!

Tuesday, November 1, 2011 – 12:30 pm ET

Around The Channel with Robert M. Cohen, CEO, Business Editor, ChannelLine

The IT industry has been talking since the mid 80s about providing SMBs with enterprise quality solutions at prices that they can afford to pay. Now ... this is finally becoming a reality. In fact, due to managed services, TaaS, Cloud based computing and thousands of custom apps, SMBs can enjoy and take advantage of more computing benefits at a lower overall cost.

Join us for a special Around the Channel event with our guest Robert M. Cohen, CEO, Business Editor, ChannelLine to learn more about why - NOW is the Time to Become an MSP!!!

Touch-points for discussion include:

What is the paradigm shift we are talking about?
What do you mean by more computing benefits?
Should a Channel Partner become a pure play managed services provider?
Does the end user customer want all of this?
How should Channel Partners begin the process to become managed service providers?

Questions? Just submit them during our live event for follow-up during our Q & A Session. We look forward to seeing you online!

I would like to personally invite you to attend a webinar that I will be moderating on Tuesday, June 28, 2011 at 11:00 am PT/2:00 pm ET.

With the ever-changing spin of technology, businesses of all sizes are constantly in need of computers and servers of every type and size that are reliable and durable. If you want to offer your customers and prospects Lenovo products with a low cost of ownership this is a must attend webinar. It will show you a profitable new product line. Register now at https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/786822977.

Who should attend:
VARs and Solution Providers who wish to add highly profitable desktop, notebook and server lines powered by the 2nd generation Intel Core processor family to their Product and Service offerings.

I see a whole new crop of resellers out there. Resellers who have successfully made the jump from:

- selling products and doing break/fix to providing IT centric business solutions and more efficient ways of keeping their customers up all the time.
- going to the free industry events and playing games to paying to go to the shows where they will get business value at.
- being followers and whining about the industry to being thought leaders and moving things forward (Managed Services, Virtualization, Cloud, apps, etc.).
- protecting themselves from other resellers to forming strong alliances with other resellers who can help them grow their business.
- being reclusive techies to being professional business people.- refusing to do the basic thins a business has to do, to paying money to get the tools they need to successfully run their business, including accounting, back office, marketing and sales. As well as targeting specific niche markets where they have a unique differentiator as opposed to going after every potential customer.
- being resellers to being Trusted Business Advisors.

What are you seeing???

D&H AND SMB NATION TO HOST “BEERFEST” RESELLER RECEPTION IN TORONTO FEB. 24

MISSISSAUGA, ONT, February 23, 2011 – D&H Distributing has teamed with SMB Nation’s prominent reseller community to present an educational reception for Toronto-area VARs on February 24, from 6:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m. This “BeerFest” event features networking opportunities with representatives from D&H Canada, Cisco and Microsoft. The reception, which will take place at ORO Restaurant in downtown Toronto, is an in-person program intended to enrich the SMB Nation community and foster long-term professional relationships among small business resellers in the territory. Participants can expect both business content and casual conversation during the proceedings.

“SMB Nation hosts these events more than 20 times per year to build the reseller community the old-fashioned way: through face-to-face introductions. Online communities are fantastic, but there is nothing like a meet-and-greet to get to know your fellow SBM VARs,” cited Harry Brelsford, CEO of SMB Nation. “We also took a page out of ‘Old Europe’ by calling these gatherings ‘BeerFests,’ celebrating the informal and friendly nature of the SMB community and its relationships. And of course, we’ll have fun.”

“It’s an honor to be part of The BeerFest event, and to help reintroduce SMB Nation as a source of enjoyable and educational opportunities for SMB resellers in Canada,” said Greg Tobin, general manager, D&H Canada. “We expect to generate some enthusiastic reseller engagement, and we look forward to future occasions where both our organizations can connect with solution providers.”

Are you a hardware or software company that wants a relatively easy and low cost way to increase your presence or get into the US and Canadian markets ... and wants to go through the IT channel?

With over 30 years of experience in the IT Channel and the CEO and co-founder of a channel focused company that includes an:
- industry analyst practice
- channel publishing
- channel tools, including automated tools that make it easy for vendors and Vars to work together to reach and sell to targeted corporate and public sector markets.

Interested in getting more details? Please contact me.

Robert M. Cohen
CEO, Business Editor, ChannelLine
rcohen@channelline.com
Phone: (416) 568-2059
Fax: (905) 886-6216