Changing Channels

Women in the IT channel face unique career challenges. These include skill development, gaining experience, and demonstrating their value for advancement in a predominantly male industry while also balancing motherhood and family responsibilities. Simply put, men don’t face the same pressures as women. Progress is evident, though, with more women holding leadership positions and rising through the...

No one technology vendor has all the products and services that businesses need to operate efficiently and effectively. Even the best vendors with the broadest portfolios have limitations. They need to partner with complementary products and services to extend the value of their applications. This need is at the heart of what makes ecosystems valuable. Through ecosystems vendors and partners are a...

The term "ecosystem" has become increasingly prevalent in recent years, steadily replacing "channels" to denote indirect sales processes. By definition, ecosystems is the collaboration between two or more companies to address a customer's needs. Nevertheless, there is a trend where the term "ecosystems" is also applied to describe channel populations and communities, leading to some confusion. Thi...

In the latest episode of the podcast “Changing Channels,” host Larry Walsh spoke with Trevor Vickery, the vice president and general manager of Intel's global partners and support organization, about the concept of the "Siliconomy" – or the Silicon Economy – and how semiconductors are driving a new wave of innovation and opportunity. The Siliconomy, a term coined by Intel, refers to the ubiquity o...

The tech industry is the generator of great wealth and a contributor to economic growth. The industry has provided trillions of dollars in opportunities to entrepreneurs and investors around the world, and it has offered a pathway to a better life for millions. The last two years haven’t been kind to the tech industry. Many companies and their partners are struggling against strong economic headwi...

Paul Hunter, managing director of North America at HPE, joins Changing Channel’s Larry Walsh to discuss the traditional data center hardware company’s transition to the Everything-as-a-Service model and what it meant to its channel program. In recent years, vendors across the tech industry have wholeheartedly embraced the Everything-as-a-Service (XaaS) model. This revolutionary approach involves s...

Eric Hembree, director of Internet of Things at Ingram Micro, joins Changing Channel’s Larry Walsh to discuss the state of Extended Reality and IoT in the channel.  The reputation of Extended Reality (XR) technology is taking a hit as some consumer vendors are pulling back on their market development ambitions. But in the commercial segment, XR is just getting warmed up.  Ingram Micro, one of the...

Economic uncertainty remains high, even as the general indicators start to point away from a recession disrupting the market in 2023. Channelnomics is adding to this more optimistic outlook with the recently released annual Channel Forecast report, which found that technology vendors believe indirect sales will increase this year.  The prospect of a good sales and revenue year is somewhat surprisi...

David Rogers, senior vice president of alliances and global channel sales at Netskope, talks to Larry Walsh about the security risks of the expanding world of ecosystems. “Ecosystems” is a buzzword that everyone is talking about these days. In these collaborative networks of technology and value providers, vendors, distributors, resellers, service providers, and integrators work together to combin...

Ross Brown, senior vice president of North America Cloud Ecosystem Partners at Oracle, talks to Larry Walsh about what it means to make money in cloud computing. The cloud is now mainstream. Vendors and partners make more money on cloud and other automated services sold through subscriptions than they do through traditional hardware and software products. A large part of cloud computing’s appeal i...

Karl Soderlund, senior vice president of North America ecosystems at Palo Alto Networks, joins Larry Walsh to talk about what it takes for channel leadership and teams to continuously challenge themselves to look for improvements and better ways of doing things. Technology is a driving force behind the transformation of the way businesses operate. One important aspect of this transformation is the...

Changing Channels welcomed dozens of seasoned and insightful channel leaders from around the world and across the industry to share their experiences in developing modern routes to market. As we transition to the new year, Channelnomics is revisiting some of the best moments of Changing Channels over the last 12 months. We’re looking back at the deep thoughts and experiences shared by numerous ind...

Cheryl Cook, senior vice president of global channel marketing at Dell Technologies, joins Larry Walsh to talk about the state of channel marketing, how marketing to and through the channel is evolving, and how to craft market-leading channel marketing programs. Successful channels require a combination of good products with demonstrable value propositions, training and enablement to transfer skil...

Dan Tomaszewski, executive vice president of channels at Kaseya, joins Larry Walsh to talk about what it takes to enable managed service providers for success and how to get partners to put skin in the game on joint efforts that result in growth.   Managed services providers (MSPs) are the most sought-after partners in the channel. Built on recurring revenue models and service delivery, MSPs have...

Eric Buck, director of commercial partners and global distribution at Google Cloud, joins Larry Walsh to talk about the role two-tier distribution models and distributors play in aiding cloud service providers in engaging channels and supporting partners.   Technology is increasingly being delivered via the cloud and sold through subscription payment models. End customers — from SMBs to enterprise...

Todd Palmer, senior vice president of global partner sales at Tanium, joins Larry Walsh to talk about the mythical “right partners” that vendors always seek to sell their products and why it’s important to set the right expectations when developing go-to-market partnerships.  Vendors often say that they want to work with the right partners — resellers and solution providers with the ability and wi...

Lou Serlenga, chief revenue officer at Nile, joins Larry Walsh to talk about the launch of a new Network-as-a-Service company that’s leveraging channel partnerships to take on the incumbents in the staid, commoditized networking segment. New technology companies spring onto the IT landscape all the time, but few launch into a well-established and commoditized segment that’s dominated by a giant su...

T.C. Doyle, vice president of strategic content at Channelnomics, joins Changing Channels host Larry Walsh to discuss the challenges all vendors face in transitioning from transactional to recurring revenue models. Services sold through subscription or recurring contracts are fast becoming the dominant go-to-market model for all vendors. While cloud service providers are built on the recurring-rev...

Justin Crotty, senior vice president of channels at Netenrich, joins Channelnomics Changing Channels host Larry Walsh to discuss how data and device telemetry is transforming managed service delivery and value propositions.  Managed services in the channel are nothing new. Partners started delivering them more than 20 years ago, augmenting and replacing their legacy break/fix support with remote m...

Larry Walsh, chief analyst at Channelnomics, discusses the performance challenges that channel chiefs face, explaining that they’re rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of partner business models and ill-conceived presumptions about partner capabilities. Being a channel chief isn’t easy. Channel leaders face numerous challenges, including getting partners to perform in a way that contributes t...

Ingram Micro Cloud’s John Dusett joins Changing Channels host Larry Walsh to discuss new cloud research — conducted by Channelnomics and supported by Ingram Micro Cloud, Microsoft, and Google Workspace — and how the customer experience is crucial when it comes to service renewals and expansions. The cloud computing market continues to grow at double-digit rates. Over the next decade, businesses wi...

TeamViewer’s Patty Nagle and Rob Thiele join Changing Channel’s Larry Walsh to discuss how they’re revamping their channel program to accelerate the company’s evolution into more use cases and market opportunities beyond their remote-access foundation. Many products start out as free, consumer-oriented offerings to capture market share for what’s often a singular purpose or value proposition. Over...

Larry Walsh, chief analyst at Channelnomics, provides an overview of how the Russian war on Ukraine is affecting global and regional economies, and how the conflict will impact the technology industry and channels. The Russian war on Ukraine isn’t a regional conflict. While the fighting is happening across the plains and marshlands of the Ukrainian heartland, the war is having a cascading effect o...

Larry Walsh talks to Hitachi Vantara Senior Vice President of Strategic Partners and Alliances Kim King on automating quoting for partners to ensure fast, easy access to accurate pricing with minimal human interaction. Buyer expectations have evolved. No longer are companies willing to wait for weeks for quotes on their IT projects. They want the same “Amazon Experience” in their business purchasi...

Larry Walsh talks with Acronis CEO Patrick Pulvermueller about the impact the war in Ukraine is having on the technology market and channel, efforts made to help refugees, and how the Russian invasion is changing strategic and contingency planning. The war in Ukraine, now raging for more than a month, woke governments and companies around the world out of their complacency. The dystopian-like orde...