(3 votes, average: 8 out of 10)
Loading ...Great night at CDN’s Top 100 Solution Provider event
More than 200 solution providers turned out to see where they ranked on the annual CDN Top 100 Solution Provider list.
Softchoice was again the top solution provider of the year, but they were closely followed by Insight Canada, Compugen and Xwave. It was the closest race in years. Following up in the fifth spot was MetaFore IT Solutions. To view the entire list please click here: CDN Top 100 Solution Providers.
There were 12 newcomers to the list this year. The most CDN has ever witnessed. It is great to see smart and savvy new resellers challenging the established partners in the industry. It just makes everyone better, in my opinion. The award for newcomer of the year was handed out to The Herjavec Group, a security solution provider who acquired MetaComm last year. This company was established only a few short years ago and is led by Robert Herjavec, the former president of Brak Systems and current CBC TV personality on the show Dragon’s Den.
The fastest rising company was Epic Information Systems of Winnipeg, who moved up an amazing 27 spots from last year. This company is great in the community as they have their own Technology Day computer show. This show has been put on for five years and attracts more than 350 people from the area. David Reid, the president of Epic, said at the show last night that Winnipeg is the fly over show capital of Canada. All the computer trade shows fly over Winnipeg to get to Toronto or Montreal or from there to Calgary and Vancouver. He said for this market to have a show they would have to do it themselves. And, I have to congratulate Reid and the folks at Epic for the effort and initiative.
The event belonged to everyone in the channel. There were no runaway winners. All the people who attended I would consider winners, whether the made the list or they did not. Two people I would like to thank are Dave Neil of Neil Corporate Services who drove from North Bay, Ont., to make the event and Stuart Crawford of IT Matters of Calgary. Both narrowly missed making the list.
I also enjoyed meeting people such as Gary McNally of Digica Solutions, another newcomer to the CDN Top 100 Solution Provider list. I enjoyed listening to McNally telling me about his company and his future plans for success.
It was also great to catch up with Patrick Power, formerly of OAM and now with Nitro Microsystems after an acquisition. The Nitro/OAM deal is one of those classic cases of a win-win. Similar deals such as Compugen buying Orbex and Epic acquiring Prairie Computers are other examples of win-win deals in the channel. These win-win deals are rare, but they seem to happen more often in the Canadian IT channel. It says something about this community.
I also wanted to mention Bill MacDonald of Genuit and Herb Roblin of Hartco. I enjoyed listening to both of them talk about their days at Compaq and IBM respectively. We can all learn a few things from these veteran executives who are still making waves in the industry.
In closing I want to thank the sponsors for their time and attention to the CDN Top 100 event. They are HP Canada, Cisco Canada, Tech Data Canada, Symantec Canada, NEC Display Solutions and the newest sponsor AMD.
Two quick hits before I go. I has come to my attention that Paul Patterson has left Lexmark Canada. Patterson is a great friend of CDN and an excellent channel executive. I wish him the best.
Also Corel announced that Kris Hagerman, formerly Group President of Symantec’s Data Center Management Group, has been appointed as Corel’s interim Chief Executive Officer. Hagerman will replace the outgoing David Dobson, who accepted a senior executive position at a Fortune 500 company he has yet to name.
Related Posts - No Related posts found
Add to: del.icio.us | Digg IT | Furl | Google | magnolia | StumbleIT | Wink | Yahoo! Technorati
(4 votes, average: 5.5 out of 10) Loading ...Apple iPhone finally coming to Canada
One source from the financial services industry has informed me that Rogers has finally worked out a deal with Apple Canada and yes the much heralded iPhone will be made available to Canadians later on this year.
In typical Rogers and Apple Canada fashion there is no timeline announced and there are no more details about the launch.
The source added that Apple Canada believes this will have Research in Motion shaking in its boots. I found that comment to be ludicrous because, while I can accept that Apple Canada and its customers are excited about the iPhone coming to Canada, the braintrust at RIM are not the sort of people to panic.
Lets not forget that they dominate the market here in Canada and in the U.S. The iPhone has been in the U.S. over two calendar years and it has not be able to displace or come near the Blackberry’s sales performance. According to Gartner Research, the iPhone is at 19 per cent of the market in the U.S., while RIM is at 34 plus per cent. Even the “Other” category beats iPhone by two per cent. Read the rest of this entry »
Related Posts - No Related posts found
Add to: del.icio.us | Digg IT | Furl | Google | magnolia | StumbleIT | Wink | Yahoo! Technorati
(3 votes, average: 6 out of 10) Loading ...The clock is ticking on managed services
Here’s a tip for channel partners who want to catch onto the next big wave and exploit what will likely become a tremendous opportunity.
Think seriously about becoming a managed-services provider. But don’t think too long because the clock is ticking.
It’s no small undertaking to construct a managed service. It can take a long time. Long View Systems of Calgary, for example, took more than three years to get its managed services offering up and running. And, that company started in 2000. Today its managed services business is “through the roof,” according to Don Sottile, a vice-president at the company.
One route a VAR can take is through Ingram Micro and its Seismic offering. The distributor lets VARs resell managed services its backend infrastructure, including network operations centre (NOC) and help desk services. Read the rest of this entry »
Related Posts - No Related posts found
Add to: del.icio.us | Digg IT | Furl | Google | magnolia | StumbleIT | Wink | Yahoo! Technorati
(6 votes, average: 4.17 out of 10) Loading ...Dell Canada’s first ever channel chief is no more
Official word out of Dell is that Frank Fuser, Dell Canada’s first ever channel chief, has retired.
His retirement comes just after accepting a promotion to this post on March 7th.
I find Fuser’s retirement five weeks after being promoted to a senior position incredibly hard to believe.
One source close to the situation called Fuser’s announced retirement “strange.”
At a channel event last month many partners speculated that Fuser was not long for the job.
I wrote a blog suggesting that Fuser was in for an uphill battle because of his lack of channel experience. After I interviewed Fuser, he emailed me to ask me out to lunch. I found this strange because PR practitioners would set up these lunch meetings for executives. This is normally the case for some new to the channel or to the Canadian market. Read the rest of this entry »
Related Posts - Dell stuck in the middle (1) |
Add to: del.icio.us | Digg IT | Furl | Google | magnolia | StumbleIT | Wink | Yahoo! Technorati
(3 votes, average: 6.33 out of 10) Loading ...Cisco’s Partner Exchange program needs trust
Networking giant Cisco Systems wants partners to come together.
They’re hoping to encourage collaboration by reseller partners with Cisco, with customers and with other partners. Collaborating with Cisco and with customers seems straightforward enough. But partner-to-partner collaboration is tricky.
Cisco last week announced the creation a portal site and program called the Partner Exchange, designed to help partners learn the fine art of partner-to-partner collaboration.
The partners with whom I spoke – both Canadian and U.S.-based – say they believe it will be difficult to collaborate with competing partners, especially in local markets or smaller geographies.
Read the rest of this entry »
Related Posts - No Related posts found
Add to: del.icio.us | Digg IT | Furl | Google | magnolia | StumbleIT | Wink | Yahoo! Technorati
(2 votes, average: 9 out of 10) Loading ...Golden opportunity in the data centre
By Paolo Del Nibletto
Cisco’s latest announcement on Data Center 3.0 may look from the outset to be a lucrative opportunity for just Gold partners, but there will be an opportunity for premier and other Cisco partners.
When Edison Peres, Cisco’s VP of worldwide channels, tabulated the money opportunity for partners in data centers at US$14 billion over the next few years it got a lot of Gold partners in Canada looking to line their pockets with profits.
Remember that several of those Gold partners in Canada started out as data centre builders before moving into networking, so they have a lot of those customers already.
But I do see the premier and other Cisco partners getting involved by either partnering with these gold partners or mining their own local community for these opportunities.
Related Posts - No Related posts found
Add to: del.icio.us | Digg IT | Furl | Google | magnolia | StumbleIT | Wink | Yahoo! Technorati
(8 votes, average: 6.13 out of 10) Loading ...Does anyone want a Linux desktop?
Dell was the first to ship PCs and notebooks with Ubuntu Linux, while Lenovo is giving Linux a whirl in the U.S. only. At the recently concluded Novell Brainshare conference, HP announced it, too, will ship PCs and notebooks with SuSe Linux.
But does anyone really care about Linux? All this activity might suggest Linux is effectively competing with Windows in the marketplace. Judging by what many in the marketplace say, Linux still continues to barely make a dent in the world of desktop OS.
Solution providers have told me for years that customers are simply not interested in switching from Windows variants over to Linux. The main reason is support. Few are trained on Linux so many partners and end users simply can’t support the platform. The Linux community like many other sectors also faces an IT worker shortfall. There aren’t enough IT people in general and certainly much fewer Linux experts.
Microsoft is hardly shaking in its boots at the news that even its top three hardware partners are offering Linux options.
Perhaps there’s an opportunity for other PC makers. Might this action by HP, Lenovo and Dell prompt Acer and Toshiba to demand better OEM pricing from Microsoft because of exclusivity to Windows? Acer and Toshiba could use a bit of a competitive advantage in the market place. What about Tier 2 vendors such as Asus, Fujitsu, Sony and MSI or even the “white label” system builder community? Should they be rewarded for exclusive Windows loyalty?
Linux often gains a foothold with customers with lean or slashed budgets. As Microsoft licensing costs increase it does prompt some to look for alternatives. But while some organizations have in the past reportedly switched to the Linux environment for the desktop, many have likewise switched back to Windows, often because they can’t find or afford the support for the OS.
Notebook and desktop makers may want to offer Linux as an option to buyers, but I really have to wonder who’s interested.
One quick hit before I go. I was happy to learn that Mary Ann Yule has been promoted to Canadian GM of CDW. She is a highly skilled executive with great passion for this industry. I have written a lot lately about local leadership and I tip my hat to CDW for recognizing that and promoting from within the subsidiary. Pete Edwards leaves CDW Canada for a position in the company’s Arizona office.
Related Posts - No Related posts found
Add to: del.icio.us | Digg IT | Furl | Google | magnolia | StumbleIT | Wink | Yahoo! Technorati
(19 votes, average: 5.68 out of 10) Loading ...Dell cheapens its image at HP channel event
Dell Computer might want to rethink a recent channel recruitment promotion.
During a recent channel conference hosted by Hewlett-Packard Co. at the Las Vegas Caesars‘ Palace, I was lined up for a taxi and approached by two rather attractive women who claimed to work in casino promotions.
One of them asked if I had just attended the HP channel event inside the hotel. I said, “yes” and was then handed a paper flyer.
I initially thought I’d been given some sort of exclusive invitation to one of the many night clubs on the Las Vegas strip. To my amazement I’d been handed a Dell flyer that told me the company was driving some US$9 billion in channel business and claimed more than 30,000 solution providers in its North American partner network. Let me speak to the marketing tactic presently. The Dell flyer itself cited numbers that were at best somewhat inflated. I’d heard Dell worldwide channel chief Greg Davis say there were approximately 15,000 partners in the U.S. while in Canada, local channel manager Frank Fuser says there are about 2,000 partners here. If you also add in the 5,000 Equallogic partners then the total sits at around 23,000, significantly below this stated 30,000. Read the rest of this entry »
Related Posts - No Related posts found
Add to: del.icio.us | Digg IT | Furl | Google | magnolia | StumbleIT | Wink | Yahoo! Technorati
(7 votes, average: 8 out of 10) Loading ...Canadian success can’t happen without local leadership
Bruno Pupo’s exit as area director for NEC Display Solutions in Canada is unfortunate for Pupo individually and for NEC in the Canadian market.
Pupo’s job with the Canadian subsidiary was eliminated by the Itasca, Ill.-based American parent company as NEC goes through a re-organization. Pupo, who dedicated more than 18-years of his career to NEC, was an area director who lost his job.
Likewise long-time channel executive Alex Nobile is looking for gainful employment after 20 years spent in the IT business. Nobile had left his job at Synnex Canada to become NComputing’s country manager. NComputing was named a vendor to watch by CDN in 2007. But after eight months of excellent growth, NComputing management decided to eliminate the country manager position and handle Canadian business out of the U.S. Read the rest of this entry »
Related Posts - No Related posts found
Add to: del.icio.us | Digg IT | Furl | Google | magnolia | StumbleIT | Wink | Yahoo! Technorati
(2 votes, average: 6.5 out of 10) Loading ...Nick Tidd is no longer 3Com Canada’s last man standing
If you had occasion to deal with 3Com in Canada during this decade then you probably knew Nick Tidd, the former country manager who in recent years has traveled the globe preaching the networking gospel of a dying company.
Earlier this month, Nick Tidd the long time face of the company who had been a one-man show for 3Com in Canada was finally relieved of his job.
3Com has been spinning its wheels for a long time. Since the high-tech crash of 2000, 3Com has been a rapidly declining and ultimately insignificant industry player. It wasn’t the case when Tidd joined the company from U.S. Robotics back in the 1990s. It’s hard to believe that at one time 3Com and Cisco Systems were equals in terms of revenue and market share.
With Tidd now gone at 3Com one wonders why a Canadian channel partner would continue reselling its products. Read the rest of this entry »
Related Posts - No Related posts found
Add to: del.icio.us | Digg IT | Furl | Google | magnolia | StumbleIT | Wink | Yahoo! Technorati
