IT Channel Gets a ‘Gut Check’ at AMM

During the second of three General Sessions held at CompTIA’s Annual Member Meeting, happening this week at the Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers, the audience got a “Gut Check” in the form of a panel moderated by Carolyn April, director of industry analysis at CompTIA. The panel was comprised of Scott Barlow, vice president of sales and marketing at Reflexion Networks; Eric Long, CEO of Information Technology Solutions; Quy Nguyen, CEO of Allyance Communications; and Angela Trillhaase, a business development executive at IBM.

When the panel was asked what is keeping them up at night, Barlow reported that Reflexion Networks simply needs more people. He said the company currently has six open positions and just can’t find the right interviewees – and that it recently hired a high school teacher it believes will grow into his role. He also said that Reflexion sees potential clients asking if it’s HIPAA compliant, which is “the wrong question to be asking” – i.e. not the way to actually achieve compliance.

Toward the end of the panel discussion, Barlow relayed a cautionary tale of a tech firm that was providing its client an “all you can eat” service. The client was sued by another company, demanding electronic records within 30 days, which the tech firm could not produce. So that company is now suing the tech firm itself, because, as Barlow said, “all you can eat wasn’t really all you can eat” – the point being companies need to be careful what they promise clients, especially when it comes to things like compliance and legal requirements.

Trillhaase halted the discussion at one point to, as she said, get up on her soapbox to wish that vendors could be called something else; that “vendor” sounds like “someone who fills your pop machine” and it’d be more accurate to call them suppliers, manufacturers or, ideally, partners. Several members of the audience and panel then countered that to be treated like a partner, a vendor has to act like one.

Trillhaase also cited the statistic that it’s believed 30 percent of technology sold today is sold by MSPs, who she worries won’t communicate the value proposition of IBM’s products. April, meanwhile, called for a show of hands of those in the room who call themselves MSPs. Most hands in the room went up. She then asked how many people in the room derive 75 percent of their revenue from managed services. Few hands went up; illustrating that the true definition of an MSP remains hazy. The panel also debated whether SMBs can be considered a vertical, not coming to any real conclusion.

As the discussion became pretty loose, Nguyen said he’d like to see a collective report card of good and bad vendor executives, and Barlow quickly added that he’d also like to see one for solution providers. In concluding its remarks, every member of the panel emphasized building and maintaining relationships as essential to doing business, which had been a persistent running thread of the entire discussion.