ChannelNext East Goes Beyond Helping VARS Through the Economic Downturn

The first Channelnext event of the year was another home run for the vendors and VARS. This event continues the focus on how vendors and VARS can do business during these difficult economic conditions.

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The VAR panel explored how they are coping in these times. Speakers from Compugen, Human IT, InfoGlobe, RollingThunder and Loop shared their insights into their success and exchanged ideas with the audience.

Interestingly enough, most are actually hiring new staff. While the general consensus is that most end customers are holding back on some IT spending, there are pockets of growth. Green, Open Source, Managed Services came up as key areas with a common theme of helping customers to save costs while doing more with less resources. See ecntv video coverage on the VAR panel for more details.

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Barry Siskind, one of the VARCoach experts give a seminar on using face-to-face activities to build customer relationships, trust and grow sales. Another VARCoach Brian Pleet, discussed the differences between marketing and sales. These seminars were very well received as it provided VARS and vendors we excellent business skills that could put to use immediately - starting with the business networking activities at the event.

There were several keynotes from Samsung, Autotask and Panda as they presented their latest channel programs. Samsung lunched their amazing new colour printer. Autotask featured a VAR who is currently using their business automation solution to manage all of their service contracts.

Panda announced their latest Managed Service approach in partnership with VARS to help them make more revenues selling IT Security.

MyGreenITDay was launched at this event. It is a nationwide campaign to get all resellers to be "greener". Backed by some of the best recycle and repair providers in Canada, it claims to reduce electronic waste down to 0.2%. It is FREE for all resellers to participate. All resellers have to do is host a my green IT day by encouraging all of their customers to drop off their old equipment to ther office and ship in bulk to the nearest recycle depot. To learn more visit www.mygreenitday.com.

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The networking activities were buzzing all evening long right through to the Curling competition. Congratulations to the winners this year. You had to be there, but the winning shot was almost impossible. If it missed they would loose. If it hit, they would win. And it hit dead-on. As exciting as curling could get, especially during an open bar. All this was going on while the hockey fans were watching the Montreal Canadians loose to Boston in an exciting game.

A great evening of delegates getting together to get to now each other over some memorable fun times at ChannelNext.

Workshops were held on power protection by Eaton as they demonstrated the huge profits that VARS can generate from providing mission critical data protection solutons to their custmers;  IT automation by Kaseya to save costs, time and streamline revenue opportunities, e-commerce backoffice solution by ibiz10 to help VARS buy better from their supliers in real time while saving a lot of time; And mail server solutions that cost up to 72% less than Microsoft Exchange by Kerio. Remember, reducing your customer cost is one of the top requirements for success during in these times. VARS working with just one of these companies will save costs and generate more sales.
 
Of particular note at this event was the 99% turn out. It seems that the VARS were more open-minded than ever before as they truly explored new opportunities. In such a market downturn, it has become even more important to rethink the same-old ways of doing business. Networking and exchanging ideas with other VARS, vendors and experts to refresh your business model may help you to improve your business. The proof was that the opportunities and ides generated at the event far outweighed the downside of the market conditions. For those who refocus their efforts correctly, will come the huge gains in the future.

See you at the next event in Muskoka, Ontario on May 28-29.

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It was great seeing you at the ChannelNext East event. I hope you found our Keynote address and sessions on Bringing Order To Your IT Service Business to be helpful and informative. Thanks again to Eric Rivest of Natrix of Laval for sharing his story. We first met Eric at ChannelNext East in 2008 - and he has accomplished a great deal since then. My favorite quote from Eric: "Losing money is not an option." We're proud to feature Natrix as an Autotask Top Rated IT Service Provider in Quebec.

If you missed our presentation and are still using MS Outlook, whiteboards, home-grown solutions, or disconnected stand-alone applications that don't talk to each other, Autotask can automate the business processes, integrate the technical and financial applications, and help you collaborate with both your customers and business partners.

Our award-winning, web-based solutions combine service desk, project management, dispatching & CRM. The result is increased efficiency, performance and profitability you can measure.

• Increased their billable hours by an average of 15% without increasing staff
• Streamlined their billing process down to minutes instead of hours to weekly invoicing
• Improved their service delivery, using our bullet-proof issue management tools

If you're interested in seeing a Demo on Autotask, feel free to CLICK HERE and see why more IT service pros use our software to run their business, better.

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We really enjoyed the opportunity to connect with you during the Montebello event in March. We were able to meet and present to a lot of you during the two day event. We spoke about Corel Corporation being a leading developer of graphics, productivity and digital media software with more than 40 million users worldwide. With the company's product portfolio consisting of 10 of the most popular and widely recognized global brands, we are now one of the top five consumer software companies in the world today!

We want you to have access to all the information you'll need to increase your bottom line. Visit our secure partner portal, for product descriptions, box shots, price lists, and lots of other important information. If you've not yet signed up on our partner website, please do so today and you'll receive your username and password right away.

You can also call our Reseller Help Line between Monday and Friday, 9 am to 5 pm. We're happy to answer any questions you may have. The number is 877-VAR-HELP.

Let's make 2009 the year to grow together.

The Corel Team

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Dear ChannelNext Attendee and Eaton Power Solutions Reseller,

We wish to heartily thank each and everyone one of you for your spirit, energy and for sharing your valuable time with Eaton at the recent ChannelNext event in Montebello QC.

We had a wonderful time speaking with each of you at the Speed Networking event and shared several “high fives” while sliding and sweeping along the sheets of ice at the evening curling event. However, I think we still need a little more practice before forming our own National Olympic team for 2010!

We’d also like to thank those of you that came to hear about Eaton’s complete lineup of power chain management solutions during our presentation the following morning. We hope you found it refreshing to think of new ways to include Eaton power quality solutions in your complete end to end offerings to customers.

Finally, we closed the show with most of you stopping by the booth to speak with myself and Alain and we have many follow up engagements to plan in the coming weeks as we will both be in the Ottawa/Montreal area again very soon.

As we look forward to the remainder of Q2 and into the rest of 2009 – we want you to know that all of us at Eaton are here to help in any way possible to assist you with power protection opportunities. Please feel free to reach out to us anytime. We are eager to help you win and close new business.

Our Technical Sales Support Team can be reached at:
1-800-461-9166 x 3324 or email us at:  TechnicalSalesSupportPQSOCanada@eaton.com

Visit our public website:
www.eaton.com/powerquality  (choose CANADA)

Register for access to our Sales Web where you’ll find Tools for Success!
www.salesweb.powerware.com
.
Don’t forget our Blackout Tracker on the eChannelNews website, where you can find out all sorts of power problems to help your customers be prepared for the unexpected!
www.echannelnews.com  (click on Eaton Banner)

Ask your local IT Distribution partner about Eaton’s Instant Rebates and other cost savings programs!

See you all soon.
Kind regards,

Jodi Russell
IT Channel Manager-Canada

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Success requires input from many different stakeholders. This simple philosophy makes your feedback invaluable and puts you at the forefront of our objectives.

As a long-time partner of many of Canada’s most prestigious Imaging VAR’s, we understand the importance of the customized, customer-centric approach that your unique solutions provide. Fujitsu offers a diverse range of document scanners designed to meet your specific requirements. Whether part of a desktop, departmental, or enterprise wide production environment, our scanners are designed to fit in the puzzle and make your solution work. With Fujitsu, VARs have direct access to our vast industry knowledge and expertise which enhances your responsiveness to your customers. This is the foundation behind value-add and this is the basis behind our offering to you and your customers.

For more information about our products and how we deliver value-add, please contact us at fci.imaging@ca.fujitsu.com

Thanks again for making ChannelNext a success and we look forward to seeing you at the NEXT event.

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Green Imaging Supplies is the largest Canadian owned remanufacturing company in Canada. Headquartered in Mississauga, Ontario, GIS operates under a 25,000 square feet manufacturing facility. This manufacturing facility is capable to produce 80,000 units/month of imaging supplies for laser printers and copiers.

GIS is capable of drop shipping the product on behalf of its customers.
Customized labeling of the product is another service that GIS is capable of providing to its customers.

GIS employs full-time Engineering staff, to develop product that performs very close to OEM product. GIS adheres to ISO-9001/ISO-14001standard driven standards to control the product and processes. GIS product is certified by CGSB (Canadian General Standard Board).

GIS has a strong relationship with major suppliers of this industry. This provides support and flexibility to maintain and control quality throughout the process.

GIS is truly a green company that offers green solutions as an alternative solution fior printing function. Using GIS manufactured product can save up to one million gallon of oil annually. Re-using cartridge components can save significant amount of energy that is enough to heat approximately 50,000 days of a North American house. "No Waste Policy" worn-out and non usable components and parts of the cartridges are collected and through our plastic, metal, and cardboard recycling partners get completely recycled.

For more information, please contact: Mehdi Oskui President moskui@greenimagingsupplies.com

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On behalf of the HP Solution Partner Organization Inside Sales Team, Channel Marketing andProCurve Networking, we would like to thank those partners that took time out of their busy scheduled to attend this event.

We found the input from all of the partners to be very formative and appreciated their candor.

As mentioned in our presentation at this event, HP Canada is not new to the channel.  We have been involved with the partner community for over 30+ years.  Everything we do at HP has our valued partners in mind, like the recent development and implementation of our SPO Inside Sales team. This team will be focused on our Preferred Partners greater then $250K and aligns to our new SMB Elite Program.

Roseann Genovese
Channel Program Manager

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Is e-commerce right for difficult market conditions?

ibiz10 outlined how many VARS are already saving significant time while buying at the lowest cost from their suppliers by using their e-commerce solution. The electronic procurement back-office dashboard called ibiz10 e-Proc, will help any reseller to find availability and best price amongst many distributors in just one click. Now there is no need to spend time accessing the individual web sites of each distributor and comparing information.

Estimates provided by ibiz10 shows that a typical reseller with 3 sales people can save up to 37 hours a month or the equivalent to a full time employee for one week. More importantly, the system automatically scans for best availability, ETAs and pricing from every distributor so you are 100% informed to make the right decision. Just these two benefits alone could easily justify the monthly fee of $250.

This real time information can also be very useful in generating sales quotes to clients. Each ibiz10 e-proc solution comes with a quotation module that allows the reseller to generate real-time electronic sales quotes to their clients and keep track of suppliers when time comes to place the order. With the extensive reporting capabilities and seamless quote process between client, reseller and distributor, the reseller can truly generate a huge return on this low-cost investment. All this, without having any web storefront!

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Kaseya would like to thank you for attending last week's ChannelNext Solution Provider West event in Banff. We hope you found the event to be a big success!

We encourage you to visit our site and take a free 30 day trial: CLICK HERE.

We are happy to answer any follow up questions you might have. If you require any additional information, please contact us at sales@kaseya.com.

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Win New Business with Kerio

Kerio Technologies would like to thank you for attending the ChannelNext Solution Provider East event in Montebello. We enjoyed meeting many of you during the Speed Exchange introductions, and we thank those of you that attended our workshop entitled Find New Business Opportunities in a Global Recession, and those of you that we spoke with at the Expo Pavilion.

We shared how Kerio Technologies can help you close new business with high profit, low cost, sustainable revenue streams with Kerio MailServer and Kerio WinRoute Firewall.

In summary, we discussed how you can:

• Gain a competitive edge in today’s economy
• Win new customers by offering solutions that meet their needs and fit their budget
• Modernize legacy mail servers with Kerio MailServer for up to 72% less than Microsoft Exchange
• Improve your customers’ employee productivity with Kerio StaR’s Internet activity reports
• Invest less time per client and maintain high profit service contracts

To ensure that we continue the dialogue, we invite you to become a part of the Kerio Partner community. By joining the Kerio Partner Program, you will immediately have access to generous margin plus all the sales, marketing, and technical tools and resources to help ensure your success.

Remember, when you sign up by May 31, 2009 you will receive a complementary NFR of the Kerio product of your choice.

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To Green Or Not To Green

At ChannelNext East, MyGreenITDay launched its nationwide campaign to help resellers protect the environment from electronic waste being dumped into the landfills across Canada. "Resellers can now reduce the electron waste going into the landfills by as much as 99.8%" says Bob Noori, VP of Electronic Recycling.

The program is encouraging every IT reseller (including all IT products, consumer electronics and cell phones) to host their very own My GREEN IT DAY once per month (or at least once per year), whereby they invite all of their customers and local community to drop off their not-working, broken, used, obsolete equipment to their location.

The resellers will simply package everything on a pallet and ship it to the nearest recycle depot. Resellers can ship it by any courier they wish or they can use the My Green IT Day partner transportation company whereby they will pick up and deliver to the recycle depot at a very low cost and in some cases FREE. The only cost to the reseller is to pay for the shipping charge to send the equipment the recycle depot. That is all the reseller has to do.

"It is a great way for resellers to help the environment while giving their customers another good reason to visit their store. Maybe even sell them some new equipment at the same time." says Julian Lee President of TechnoPlanet.

MyGreenITDay is a TechnoPlanet initiative in conjunction with some of the leading recycle and repair companies in Canada. To learn more or to register for FREE please go to www.mygreenitday.com

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It was great meeting you at the ChannelNext East event at Montebello! You will agree that our Managed Services platforms are exceptional business opportunities for you, with great margins, potential white label solutions and close to 100% customer retention rates.

Our Presentation “Managed Services – the evolving business model” outlined how you can take advantage of the managed services products offered from Panda and continue to generate revenue in this troubled economic times. It’s time to leverage Panda’s Cloud based Collective Intelligence and offer this new layer of protection to bridge the gap of current installations.
This represents an amazing business opportunity for you waiting to be tapped!

Panda Security is the world’s fourth largest publisher of Security Software. Our TruPrevent proactive technologies, Collective Intelligence and Cloud Based offerings are industry firsts.

Take advantage of our managed services products to create revenue for your business and let us work with you to deliver Panda Security Managed Services to your customers! Find out more by calling us at 1-888-887 3957 and select extension 212.
Or, Click Here to have us give you a call back!

This truly is a “must have” in your toolkit, so let’s connect today!

Thanks,

Subarna Gupta
Manager, Marketing & Services, Panda Security Canada

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Brian Pleet, a long-time VAR Coach, delivered two workshops at ChannelNext in Montebello; A 15 minute teaser  at the event kickoff illustrated why the "sales" function and the "marketing" functions do not work well together. In fact, his presentation: called "Marketing vs. Sales:The Great Divide" clearly addressed the need for integration. Two simple techniques to get them working together were presented on Day 2 to highly engaged VAR representatives. To the question "How many of you are responsible for both sales and marketing? over 2/3 of the attendees raised both hands.

Sales effectiveness is critical to a VAR's success. Few would argue the point. However, business success is unfortunately more related to marketing preparation than any amount of sales training can overcome.

Two techniques encourage marketing and sales to work together; the Product/Market Grid and the Value Proposition. The Product/Market Grid provides a simple to understand, yet powerful tool to express VAR business strategy in a concise visual fashion. A Value Proposition for each offering (the intersection of a product sold to a market) forces marketing to document the value, using customer terminology, that the VAR has already proven effective at addressing customer challenges.

VAR's that manage their products and markets achieve business focus which helps sales be immediately more effective by telling them when to say "no" to opportunities that does not fit the organization. Furthermore, a value proposition for each focused offering lets previous success support new sales rep opportunity hunting and qualification.

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Dear ChannelNext Delegate,

It was my pleasure meeting you at the UniPrint booth in Montebello last week.  I hope you found the visit a gainful experience.

As a recap:

• UniPrint™ are software-based solutions designed to maximize and simplify server-based printing in a cost-effective manner.  UniPrint solutions work seamlessly with multiple server platforms, mainframe environments and client operating systems, and on any client device.  UniPrint users around the world are reaping the benefits of increased productivity and reduced cost.
• The award-winning UniPrint Server is a PDF-based universal printer driver that solves all Citrix/Terminal Server printing problems, promoting fast and reliable printing.
• The UniPrint Host Edition provides a simple way to build an information bridge across LPR/LPD and Windows systems, enabling fast and flexible cross-platform printing.  UniPrint Host Edition is a perfect fit for users accessing their host systems through Citrix XenApp from home or via a mobile device, or requiring batch printing.
• As the world moves toward virtualization, UniPrint offers two innovative products designed to enhance VDI printing:
• UniPrint Gateway Edition manages printing on behalf of thin clients, enabling convenient, fast and secure printing for local and remote users.  Since no client software is required, UniPrint Gateway Edition makes it easy to centrally manage client devices in remote locations.
• The new UniPrint Virtual Desktop Edition enables easy access to virtualized environment, promotes fast printing, and conserves bandwidth utilization by as much as 90%.

For more information on UniPrint and our products, please visit www.uniprint.net or feel free to contact me directly at toll free 1-866-488-3188 extension 8119, cell number 416-436-7578, or e-mail marisol.lopez@uniprint.net. 

I would also like to invite you to download from www.uniprint.net/download.asp#server for a free trial.

I look forward to assisting you with your requirements.

Sincerely,

Marisol Lopez
Territory Manager

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Congratulations to the winners of the Curling Tournament Montebello 2009.

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