Business Speak

I catch up with a busy Pat Hurley, Vice President and General Manager/Americas at Acronis and we discuss baseball, F1 racing and a new October 2019 conference (Acronis Cyber Protection Summit) plus much more. 

By Stacy West, Vice President, Marketing, SolarWinds MSP

Long before social media became a cultural phenomenon, it was simply a platform for connecting people who shared similar interests or common experiences. Fast-forward to today and social media still serves as a connector, but it has also become a valuable business tool.

Whew – what a whirlwind mega conference South-by-Southwest (SxSW) is! Over 300,000 people attended over ten days in what I consider a top ten conference in the world. SxSW was it all.

Late this week I was speaking with thought leader and analyst Howard Cohen (contributor at Redmond Channel Partner magazine) on a catch-up call and he shared how his scope of coverage has expanded to include Independent Software Vendors (ISVs). I proffered that the momentum at Microsoft itself has been to make ISVs the “flavor of the month” often at the expense of its SMB partners. It’s all about getting the love.

TIDWIT is focused on digital interconnectivity of ecosystems. They are working with some of the largest brands: Microsoft, Accenture, CenturyLink…and some of the smallest. Simply stated, it’s a partner digital ecosystem that connects partners together in the ISV’s partner program.   

At the recent Ingram Cloud X conference, I made “Women in Technology” a pillar coverage area. There are important reasons for this – Ingram Micro has made it a solid pre-day session at it’s spring show. And more research is coming out that speaks towards the “Middle School cliff”