Event covers partner education, strategy and future development, giving time and space to plan
After a London-based European IT Nation event last week, ConnectWise is being asked by its European channels to look at similar events and greater localisation in their regions. And as the managed services aspect gets absorbed into the wider IT supply remit, and cloud services growth is predicted, the topics covered are likely to expand as well. At the event, ConnectWise's CEO Arnie Bellini told IT Europa that the term Managed Service Provider was likely to be superceded; read here.
David Bellini, President and Managing Director of ConnectWise International, says the event delivered a strong message to its channel: “A lot of people are very excited by what the keynotes were about: that we are sitting in front of a lot of opportunity and we at ConnectWise have to show that to the partner base, but they have to have the time to get to it.”
For this, the two-and-a-half day long IT Nation gives time to reflect and for consideration: “They need to be able to stand up and look around from time to time. Our product is a platform, and the partners need to understand how to present what they do on top of it.”
That has been a longer term strategy for the software company: “Partners know they have a path, and are looking at the ways forward. It has to be worthwhile attending, and it is important for us that we get them ready for the future.”
“We have had a lot of European partners here and they are saying they want similar events, and localisation.”
“My goal over the next five years is to get to two thousand people at this particular event, taking what we have learned from the US event. And on the content, our average customer has 20-25 employees and running this is very different from running a large enterprise, so we need to get inspirational speakers that can address this business.”
The topics may well cover a range of related topics: the MSPs are becoming more general technology providers, and the agenda gets broader. “Anyone that is servicing customers is relevant, and this is a service industry. Technology service provider is becoming the most common term.”
The coming sales issue is how to run multiple practice areas, including cloud service providers, others doing professional service projects; many firms will have several different practice areas, even including the traditional hardware sales, he concludes. The task is how to combine and manage all these facets.