2
November/December 2015
www.techdata.ca
www.techdata.ca
November/December 2015
3
7
10
Executive Address A Year of Wins
2015 Annual Vendor Partner Award Winners
12
The New Faces of Security
course in the face of a changing threat
Recognizing outstanding contributions and support
Intel Security and Symantec chart a different
landscape
16
Business Builder Tour
Wrapping up another successful tour
18 TechSelect Fall Partner Conference
Best-ever attendance from the
21
TechSelect Member Profile
22
Canadian membership
We catch up with igniteCSG from Calgary, Alberta
Tech Data Reseller Adventure, presented exclusively by Lenovo
An adventure of a lifetime in Amsterdam!
Editor Jillian Cahill Art Direction and Design Julie MacAulay Contributing Writers and Editors Irene Buchan, Jillian Cahill, Mary Bonnici, Robert Dutt Project Manager Monisha Sharma Tech Times is published and distributed six times per year to channel resellers across Canada. Š2015 Tech Data Canada Corporation. Prices, promotions, offers & terms and conditions of sale subject to change without notice. Errors and omissions excepted. All manufacturers’ names are registered trademarks of their respective corporations. Comments, suggestions? Tell us what you think! jillian.cahill@techdata.ca
This publication comes to you free from Tech Data Canada Corporation. We received your mailing address from your Tech Data customer account information. To make changes or to unsubscribe, please contact your Tech Data sales team at 800.668.5588 or notify us at emailcanada@techdata.ca. www.techtimesmagazine.ca
www.techdata.ca
November/December 2015
5
6
November/December 2015
www.techdata.ca
ExecutiveAddress
A Year of Wins I can’t believe the holidays are already upon us once again! We are about to close another calendar year and welcome in 2016! As I look back on 2015, I reflect on all of the exciting happenings for Tech Data Canada. We’ve grown stronger and continue to be an essential link in the Canadian IT channel. This has certainly been a year of wins for us. Tech Data Canada was once again recognized as Best Distributor of the Year as voted by reseller partners across Canada in the Reseller Choice awards. We are extremely thankful for your votes for eight consecutive years and hope you will vote for us once again before voting closes in January 2016. We are also proud to say that we were recognized this year by Microsoft for Operational Excellence and were ranked one of the top 25 cloud service providers in the world by Talkin’ Cloud. These awards recognize the expertise and value Tech Data Canada brings to the IT channel. We have also had the opportunity to recognize our 2015 Vendor Partner of the Year award winners. Each of them have demonstrated excellence in service and support and continued partnership In achieving mutual success. With our continued focus on our strategic initiatives, we have expanded our product line card within Cloud, Mobility and Retail, which will provide all of you with more revenue opportunities and enhanced abilities to meet the growing demands of your end customers. We have also had the opportunity to showcase some of our innovative offerings, like the Tech Data Cloud Solutions Store, powered by StreamOne at our Business Builder Tour events throughout the year. With more than 800 reseller partners in attendance at this year’s Business Builder Tour events, we are extremely pleased and look forward to hosting you again next year in the city closest to you.
annual TechSelect Partner Conferences this year have seen record attendance demonstrating the need for reseller partners to spend time with vendor partners and Tech Data executives to develop plans and share best practices and strategies for growth. As I look ahead to 2016, I see more opportunities for accelerated growth in the channel. We’ll continue to bring you best-in-class service and support that you require to meet your business needs. We’ll also continue to develop innovative opportunities and solutions within each of our strategic initiatives. On behalf of the entire Tech Data Canada organization, I’d like to wish each and every one of you a happy holiday season and prosperous New Year! I look forward to our continued mutual success throughout 2016. All the best,
Rick Reid President
TechSelect has also demonstrated continued strength throughout 2015. This community of members has become more engaged than ever. Both of our
www.techdata.ca
November/December 2015
7
8
November/December 2015
www.techdata.ca
Recognizing Outstanding Vendor Partners
Congratulations to our 2015 annual vendor partner award winners! Eight winners were announced at our recent annual Canadian Vendor Summit in November. “I am delighted to recognize our outstanding 2015 Vendor Partner Award Winners,” said Greg Myers, Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing, Tech Data Canada. “Each of this year’s award winners has demonstrated outstanding contributions and support of the continued success of our reseller partners. I’d like to thank them once again on behalf of the Tech Data Canada executive team for their efforts and continued partnership.”
Business Partner Account Manager of the Year – Darren Gumbley, Intel Security
More than 80 vendor partners were in attendance at the event which took place at the Terrace on the Green in Brampton, Ontario. The 2015 Tech Data Vendor Partner of the Year winners are: • Difference Maker Business Partner – Cisco • Best SMB Focused Business Partner – Lenovo • Sales and Marketing Innovator – HP • Growth Business Partner - Dell • Cloud Services Partner of the Year – Microsoft • Mobility Partner of the Year – MOBI • Retail Partner of the Year - ACCO Kensington • Business Partner Account Manager of the Year – Darren Gumbley, Intel Security Congratulations once again to all of our 2015 Vendor Partner of the Year Award winners!
www.techdata.ca
November/December 2015
9
10
September/October 2015
www.techdata.ca
www.techdata.ca
September/October 2015
11
The new faces of security Intel Security and Symantec chart a different course in the face of a changing threat landscape by Rob Dutt
Security is a hot space. But more than that, it’s a hot, volatile, everchanging space, which has long been characterized by a cat and mouse game between those who seek to breach defenses and those who seek to either create defenses, or to not themselves be breached. It’s a market where even the most optimistic security professional will admit the good guys are at least one step behind the bad guys – the good guys, after all, are burdened by such concerns as not crippling their clients’ business by restricting everything, and by laws. In the face of more coordinated, individualized attacks that have moved from the domain of hacktivists and lone “script kiddies” to organized crime and 12
November/December 2015
nation states, security vendors are changing their approach to add more intelligence and take a more full view of clients’ security standpoints. Here’s a view from the front lines of the cyber-defense battle, with the latest developments from two of the major channel-friendly security players, Symantec and Intel Security.
Protect, detect, correct In its first Focus event fully under its new name, Intel Security unveiled its new strategy in Las Vegas, one that it says takes the ideas of its Security Connected approach and extends it for a more holistic approach to security. Under the new strategy, the company aims to more fully cover
what it calls the threat defense lifecycle, which includes protecting against threats, detecting threats that do get through, and correcting situations that lead to those threats getting through. While all security systems typically involve elements of all three parts of that approach, too many are too focused on just the first element, said Chris Young, senior vice president and general manager of Intel Security. “We studied what we were doing, what we were saying, and it was obvious to me that we had an interesting and differentiated strategy with Security Connected, but it wasn’t enough,” Young told the company’s partners. “It was about how we did what we did, not what the customer actually gets from us.”
www.techdata.ca
So the new strategy and messaging picks up the mantle of focusing on customer outcomes, increasingly the focal point of many company strategies and messages. And in Intel Security’s particular variety of that centres around the “protect, detect, correct” concept, the three things that all security operations are about, Young said. “They all have to work together, because there’s no one piece you can leave out. They build on each other, and if you do it well, you can be better and faster at resolving more threats, and doing so with fewer resources,” Young said. The point of automation is critical to the equation. The idea, Young said, is to free up valuable security resources for “hunting” those threats that can’t be found by automated systems. “We do not have enough talent to be successful at dealing with the threats we’re facing,” Young said. “There are not enough good, trained professionals.” The new strategy keeps the core of the security connected message, which involves viewing all products in the vendor’s lineup as parts of an interconnected system where all parts communicate and act together on what they have to see. Last year, the company expanded the role of that inter-product communications with the introduction of its Data Exchange Layer (DXL) and Threat Intelligence Exchange (TIE), which respectively provide the means for security software to share the information it finds and act on that shared information. Fast forward a year, and the company is showing the technology off, as well as key integrations from third-party vendors.
Advanced Threat Protection
Over at Symantec, the approach is similar but different. At its first Partner Engage event since its
split with Veritas, held in Orlando, the company introduced a product it calls Advanced Threat Protection, which promises to bring together a variety of security solutions under one central management offerings. ATP allows customers to “uncover, prioritize, and remediated advanced threats across all control points, said Amit Jasuja, executive vice president and general manager of the enterprise security business at Symantec.
“We do not have enough talent to be successful at dealing with the threats we’re facing,” “In the market, we see people have different technology for different things – for endpoint, for e-mail, for the network. Everybody has a different product. So you end up using three solutions for detection, and a separate product for remediation,” Jasuja said. “And you end up with six products, and on top of that, often multiple agents on your endpoints.” This leads to a bit of a catch 22, where a lot of time and money is being spent on deploying and managing security solutions, and channel partners have a lot of different offerings from disparate vendors in their repertoire, but customers don’t feel secure. “ATP gives us the ability to work with our channel partners to go in with just one product, from just one company, and provide a full solution that’s the easiest to deploy.” Symantec’s approach to automation and prioritization is to use the cloud, effectively
www.techdata.ca
feeding the experiences of all of its customers into its Global Intelligence Network. It’s done that for a long time, as have many security players. However, now rather than just logging data and offering analysts an opportunity to spot trends, the software uses what it’s learned to identify and prioritize. The goal, Jasuja said, is that rather than spending a good deal of their time trying to identify the major issues they need to address, the software offers a list of the top items for customer or solution providers security analysts to act on immediately. “We’ve done the correlation, the prioritization, and the filtering for you. It makes life a lot more efficient and a lot more productive, and it removes that need to look for the needle in the haystack.” Those issues that can be dealt with automatically are, and those that require more intervention on the part of the customer or solution provider – such as evidence that a sophisticated and long-term intrusion may be ongoing – are presented right at the top of the security to do list. There are some differences in how the two companies are approaching the changing security game, but the trend is clear – as the bad guys come up with new, more inventive attacks, and as the good guys continue to be constrained by the resources allotted to dealing with security issues, it’s becoming increasingly important to automate everything that can be automated to free up valuable staff time to go after the hard-to-find attacks. If these new approaches succeed, it will mean an interesting shift for all involved, with good news for the vendors, whose new wares will sell well, for the customers, who will hopefully end up with a stronger security posture, and for solution providers, who can offer deeper and more meaningful services with automation taking care of much of the table stakes. November/December 2015
13
14
November/December 2015
www.techdata.ca
a
www.techdata.ca
November/December 2015
15
Another Successful Year for our Business Builder Tour! More than 800 solution providers attended one of our six Business Builder Tour (BBT) stops throughout 2015. Solution providers took the time to network with more than 30 vendor partners at each show who were showcasing new and emerging technologies, promotions and programs.
This year’s tour stops included Quebec City, Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver and Ottawa. With nine years of experience, the award-winning BBT technology showcase has gained traction in each city and has become an extremely valuable event for solution providers to learn about what’s new in the channel. Educational workshops provided further opportunities for knowledge and best practice sharing. Thank you to all who attended one of our shows this year and to our 2015 participating vendor partners. We couldn’t have done it without you! We’ll be back in 2016 and hope to see you in the city nearest you.
16
November/December 2015
www.techdata.ca
18
November/December 2015
www.techdata.ca
TechSelect 2015 Fall Conference
Canadian members meet in the Sunshine State for Annual TechSelect Partner Conference The sunshine state with its golden Boca Raton coast was the perfect destination for the TechSelect Fall Partner Conference. Almost 400 IT solution providers dedicated to supporting the technology needs of small- to medium-sized businesses in North America headed to the Boca Raton Resort & Club. Included in that group were over 60 TechSelect Canadian community members, all ready to show their Canuck pride! Once again, we had the best-ever attendance from the Canadian membership at a US conference. Over 40 members had the chance to hear what’s new and upcoming from our fantastic line-up of TechSelect vendor partners including Cisco, Eaton, HP, Intel Security, Lenovo, Microsoft, Symantec/ Veritas and VMware. The community was also introduced to Tech Data’s fresh, new company logo and look and heard from keynote speaker Chris Chute, a vice president with IDC’s Global Small/MidSized Business (SMB) and Digital Imaging practices. Chute discussed how SMBs are embracing cloud IT, which solutions have been the most strongly adopted, and how partners should position the cloud to their SMB customers – all valuable and interest topics that had everyone’s ear. Attendees also heard from Senior Executive Coach and bestselling author Mark Thompson, whose most recent bestseller ADMIRED is a primer on how the world’s “Most Admired Companies” achieve long-term success and growth. The group did find some time to recognize its outstanding and fastest-growing members. Winners of the 2015 TechSelect Member Achievement Awards are: Steven Taylor, from igniteCSG for Best TechSelect Canada Newcomer. Darryl Lowe, from TeraMach Technologies Inc. for Best Year Over Year Performance. And as voted by his peers John McLaughlin, from Next Digital Inc. once again won the Rick Uhrich Community Award. A BIG thank you to all those that joined us! We look forward to seeing you all in Winnipeg for the Spring Partner Conference! www.techdata.ca
November/December 2015
19
20
November/December 2015
www.techdata.ca
a
In this edition of Tech Times, we catch up with igniteCSG to hear how TechSelect membership has provide invaluable benefits to their business.
Tell us a little about your organization: igniteCSG is a collaboration organization focused on helping customers with reliable voice, video and audio visual solutions. We concentrate on working from the user experience back to the technology to keep ease of use as the main component of any solution. This approach helps ensure a high level of adoption of the communication tools and ensures our customers realize the return on their investment. Q: What challenges are you facing and how do you overcome them? As an organization, not quite five years old, we face many challenges ranging from resource acquisition and development to brand awareness. We attack each challenge by looking internally to see if we have skills that can support them and if not we look to our network of advisors for guidance and direction. The team realizes we do not know everything and pretending we do can impact the business negatively. This ideal has enabled our organization to overcome situations which may have damaged the business or the brand. Q: What would you like to see from vendor partners? We look for vendor partners that support our view of the market and the potential opportunity. This type of alignment enables joint planning of activities and a mutual understanding of how to support each other as business partners. Additionally, as a new to the market startup we look for partners that understand the building process surrounding certifications, internal process development, credit availability and growth expectations.
Q: What are your organization’s goals for the next five years? In the next five years igniteCSG would like to continue to grow through the existing lines of business and add others which support the collaboration focus of the organization. We see a true mixture of cloud and on-premises solutions in the collaboration space and intend to provide options to our customers along either path. We are committed to growing with the right resources, adding expertise and skill set across all lines of business. The key here will be to maintain the existing corporate culture which is based on a solution first approach. We aim to deliver reliable experiences for our customers. Q: How has the TechSelect program helped you? Or helped you meet your organization’s goals? As a new member of the TechSelect community, we are starting to realize the value of the program and the different ways igniteCSG can benefit. The access to other business owners and executives, the ability to connect with and discuss growth strategies and
www.techdata.ca
challenges is invaluable. Reaching out to a group of potential partners across the country is a huge opportunity to grow our business. This partner eco system provides a two-way lead passing process and a “go to” support option for geographies we are not physically in. We are excited to be part of this vibrant group of companies and look forward to a long relationship with the other members and Tech Data.
Q: What is your outlook for 2016? We are excited about 2016 and expect to see growth for the remainder of 2015. The adoption of collaboration tools is a fantastic opportunity for our organization. It helps support the upgrade of older solutions and the development of new solutions. Additionally, we believe there will be increase pressure on organizations to become more efficient and effective especially with the economic climate in western Canada. Collaboration tools can be part of the solution and we look forward to helping customers develop a strategy to realize the benefits and return on investment. November/December 2015
21
22
November/December 2015
www.techdata.ca
Nineteen reseller partners and their guests joined Lenovo and Tech Data executives in Amsterdam, the Netherlands October 14 to 18 for an adventure of a lifetime. The Annual Tech Data Reseller Adventure, presented exclusively by Lenovo brings an elite group of partners together to network, share ideas, build upon initiatives and opportunities and share in several exciting activities that allow the group to experience local culture. Each year, the Tech Data Reseller Adventure, presented exclusively by Lenovo, strengthens business relationships, allows partners to discuss strategies to meet their business needs and learn ways to accelerate growth. This year’s attendees also enjoyed a bike tour of the countryside, private canal cruise, high tea at the Museum of Bags and Purses, a Dutch lunch, fabulous dinners at unique venues and much more! Thank you to all of the attending reseller partners for making this a true adventure of a lifetime! Stay tuned for all of the exciting details of our 2016 Reseller Adventure.
www.techdata.ca
November/December 2015
23
www.techdata.ca
November/December 2015
25
26
November/December 2015
www.techdata.ca
a
www.techdata.ca
November/December 2015
27