One of the benefits of being back at an in-person conference is the ability to roam from general sessions to breakout groups to hallway conversations to get a comprehensive understanding of industry trends and market solutions. As a member of the TD SYNNEX Corporate Communications team, I was also privileged to sit in on media interviews, behind-the-scenes conversations and customer interviews to get a well-rounded representation of what the IT channel is prioritizing and how we’re coming together to solve for end user challenges.
These conversations and agenda topics complement the many tangible and intangible benefits that our CommunitySolv communities, like TechSelect, provide. This is what I learned from a week of listening in on some of the brightest minds in our industry:
1. It’s Time to Boost Your Cybersecurity Stack
This next statement may sound hyperbolic, but I assure you it is not: Cybersecurity was mentioned at least once in every main stage session.
Security is a very ubiquitous, complex landscape, and it’s not a single solution. It is taking more vendors, products and solutions to ensure that you and your customers have mitigated your risk and built the most comprehensive cybersecurity stack available. Even security vendors are working with “competing” security vendors to ensure the channel is protected. Adding security to solutions and devices is a surefire way to build growth and build a strong reputation.
Take our session on new vendor acquisition — our primary goal is to cover as close to 100% of the channel line card as possible, however, many of the next-gen vendors, like complementary security vendors, are in their infancy. As a solutions aggregator, it becomes our job to educate and enable these prospective security vendors to understand the market opportunity of working in the channel. When we add new security vendors, the first thing we ensure is that they play well with already-established hardware and software vendors that we carry. The result is a global reach of end-to-end security performance when we work with our partners.