XChange 2018 Coverage

CRN is live in San Antonio for XChange 2018.

Get all of CRN's coverage of the event here and follow along on Twitter at #XCH18.

August 22nd

25 Hottest IT Products And Services To Check Out Now
Dozens of new IT products and services for the channel were on display at XChange 2018. Here's the hottest offerings for solution providers that caught our attention.

Expert: Safety Will Trump Compliance In Future Security Conversations
The cybersecurity challenges of tomorrow will go beyond laws and get info personal safety as autonomous vehicles and IoT-enabled biomedical devices become more pervasive, says cybersecurity consultant Candy Alexander.

Intermedia Sales Leader On 50 Percent Partner Margins And UCaaS Surge
Intermedia's global channel sales leader, Eric Roach, talks to CRN about the massive margin opportunity for partners and 'huge growth' in the Unified-Communications-as-a-Service market with its new Unite platform.

IT Sales Superstars To Solution Providers: Don't Sell Technology, Tell A Story
‘We equipped all of our sales teams with particular stories to go tell around all of our different products. We had a service and a story to go with it,’ says David Powell, general manager at LogicMonitor.

WATCH: How The Channel Can Win With DropBox
‘Dropbox and the channel have been really successful in working with managed service providers who are thinking about Dropbox as infrastructure modernization,’ says Rob Lai, enterprise account executive at Dropbox. during XChange 2018.

StorageCraft: One Size Does Not Fit All For A Solution Provider’s Business Model
The day after unveiling its OneXafe and ShadowXafe products, a StorageCraft executive tells solution providers at XChange 2018 how they can take the ground-breaking products to a range of customers.

Aerohive: We’re Solving MSPs’ Pain Points
Complimentary configuration services and a free service for creating networking heat maps are among key benefits partners receive, says Aerohive executive John Vincent in a session at XChange 2018.

August 21st

The Channel Company CEO Skelley: Partners Need To Evolve To Become Hybrid Solution Providers
"Customers are driving partners to a deeper level of engagement and insight into their business," said Skelley. "This is about evolving and adapting so partners remain relevant to their customers to continue to realize great growth opportunities."

D&H Is Driving HPE Sales Growth With HERO Program
The SMB-focused distributor is helping SMB-focused partners bring HPE technology to market.

Opaq: Replacing MPLS With SD-WAN Helps Save Money, Boost Security
Businesses that move away from depending on MPLS are able to pay much less for connectivity while getting a far higher level of security, according to Opaq’s Derek Gabbard.

Health-Care Industry 'Ripe' For VMware Partners To Sell vSAN, Hyper-Converged Solutions
‘Our MX platform is differentiated without a mid-plane, unlike any other offer in the industry, which is an important breakthrough in modular systems,’ says Dell EMC vice president Brian Payne.

Thundercat CEO On Living Your Company’s Values
Tom Deierlein offers hard-earned advice to fellow solution providers about never giving up and how to apply that lesson to leading their own organization.

Ruckus Exec Touts Product Reliability, Investments In 'Private LTE' Technology
Ruckus Networks executive Jeanette Lee speaks at XChange 2018 about Ruckus’ strategy for meeting the needs of customers in both the wired and wireless networking categories.

Digital Transformation Advice: 'Be The Automator, Not The Automated'
Forrester Research’s Glenn O'Donnell says that automation technologies will produce massive job losses --as well as an influx of new jobs -- within the next decade.

MSP Passion For D&H Spills Over At XChange 2018 Session
Once one MSP voiced his frustration with a different distribution partner, it unleashed a flood of praise for D&H from conference attendees.

Intel U.S. Channel Chief: Increasing Amounts Of Data Creating An ‘Almost Unlimited Demand For Compute’
Jason Kimrey tells solution providers at XChange 2018 that Intel now has a broader portfolio of products — from Optane memory to reprogrammable FPGAs — to address emerging workloads, including artificial intelligence.

The Channel Company CEO Bob Skelley's Five Keys To Success In Hybrid Solution Provider Era
"Customers no longer want to talk about products and technology, they want to talk about solving a business need and the business outcomes they are trying to drive."

XChange 2018: Probe Human Behavior To Boost Employee Engagement
Businesses need to understand what job fit, manager impact, culture and team dynamics look like to ensure that employees are engaged, says Kinsey Management President Brandon Kinsey.

August 20th

HPE Partners Are Driving Robust SMB Channel Growth With SimpliVity, Nimble
"We have had three quarters of strong (SMB) channel performance," said Hewlett Packard Enterprise Vice President of Small and Medium Business (SMB) Sales Jas Sood in a keynote at XChange 2018. "We have had great success with SimpliVity and Nimble with a 100 percent channel route to market."

Axcient/eFolder Moving To 'Partner Only' Model, Prepping New Channel Program
"Anybody that's in this business that is not 'partner first' can't stay," said Chief Revenue Officer Jeff Cummings.

Hear How Cambium Networks' Wi-Fi Technology Helped Save Thai Boys Trapped In Caves
"Our equipment was really put to the test because it was a rugged area," said Cambium Networks channel sales executive Judy McCall.

Digital Transformation Advice: 'Be The Automator, Not The Automated'
Forrester Research's Glenn O'Donnell says that automation technologies will produce massive job losses --as well as an influx of new jobs -- within the next decade.

Why Culture Needs To Come First In Business
'If your technicians are going to work with customers and they are literally wiping tears out of their eyes because they hate going to work every day, your customer is going to pick up on this stuff,' a ConnectWise executive says in an XChange 2018 session.

WatchGuard: Boost Managed Security Profitability By Finding Hidden Costs
Soft costs associated with managing, protecting and making a managed security offering visible often get overlooked since they're tied up in the day-of-day experience of delivering the service itself, says WatchGuard’s Himanshu Verma.

Eaton Goes The Extra Mile To Drive Partner Services And Independence
'We will even walk in there wearing your shirt because we don't take that business – that's your business,' said Eaton National Account Manager of Distribution Rick James during a session at Change 2018.

Best In Class: Winners Of The Inaugural B2B Channel Performance Awards
The new awards presented by The NPD Group at XChange 2018 celebrate 12 winners across categories such as cloud, cybersecurity and hyper-converged systems in the U.S. B2B indirect markets.

Forrester SVP: VMware Is One Of The 'Exciting' Stars Of IT Automation Era
"I would say in IT automation, one of the more exciting vendors is a vendor that some people think is not exciting, and that's VMware," said Glenn O’Donnell, senior vice president and research director of Forrester in a keynote address at XChange 2018.

Over 80 Percent Of New Business At Intermedia Is Coming From Partners
Channel veteran and Intermedia Chief Revenue Officer Eric Martorano talks to CRN about the channel investments that separate Intermedia from its UCaaS competitors.

Fortinet: Firms Adopting Managed Security Services For Ease Of Use
Customers want to migrate risk out of their IT department and avoid having to worry themselves about the loss of intellectual property, compliance regulations, or associated fines, according to Fortinet’s Stephan Tallent.

August 19th

2018 Annual Report Card Winners: Solution Providers Give Top Marks To Key Vendors
For the 33rd year, solution providers scored vendors in 24 product categories based on their performance in product innovation, support and partnership.

Two Big Reasons Companies Fail At Digital Transformation
CIO and best-selling author Chris Laping says solution providers have a big opportunity to help their customers overcome these two major obstacles to digital transformation.

The Secret To SLED Market Success? Easy Detective Work
"Any [solution provider] who bothers to put together even the scantest amount of information is many steps ahead of a competitor," said SLED analyst Chris Dixon at XChange 2018.

Texas CIO: Shared Services Contracts Hold Great Potential For Channel
Solution providers need to understand what areas of IT are being delivered as a shared service in state government accounts such as Texas, according to state CIO Todd Kimbriel, as well as which vendors are the prime contractor for what components.

Emerging Tech: Reducing Complexity Is 'Fundamental' For Solution Providers
Forrester Research Vice President Glenn O'Donnell told XChange 2018 attendees that the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence and zero-trust security technologies continue to provide major opportunities for growth.

Pax8 Finds Cloud Growth By 'Tearing Up' Legacy Distribution Processes
Cloud distributor Pax8 is winning kudos from MSPs for its ease of use around integration and billing.