During the week of June 12 – 16, Tech Data held the annual Channel Link partner conference in National Harbor, Maryland. More than 300 of the firm’s SMB partners attended this event and had the opportunity to meet with our 56 sponsoring vendor partners.

At this event, vendors and resellers came together to discuss the future of business and technology. Our partners had two full days of networking with our vendors, receiving valuable insights at the general sessions, and attending breakout sessions that’ll help them grow their business.

If you’ve been listening to the industry analysts you are probably aware of the rapid growth trajectory for enterprise mobility. Mobility is one of the fastest-growing segments of the enterprise technology market. IT spending on mobility-related products, projects, and initiatives is expected to grow from 25% of IT budgets in 2015 to 40% of large enterprise IT budgets in 2018. It is an area that is growing very rapidly, both in strategic importance for enterprises, as well as IT spend and market opportunity for the channel.

Security is especially essential for healthcare organizations, as they are a top target for cyberattacks . Healthcare records can sell for up to ten times more than a credit card number, making them a very popular mark for cyber criminals. Additionally, the Health Insurance Accountability and Portability Act (HIPAA) require healthcare organizations to protect the privacy of their patient information.

According to a series of recent reports, there are approximately one million job openings for cybersecurity professionals today. Even more telling, is that figure is expected to grow to 1.5 million unfilled positions by 2019 and accelerate to more than three million by 2021.¹ Robert Herjavec, of Shark Tank TV fame and the CEO of the cybersecurity firm The Herjavec Group stated, “Unfortunately the pipeline of security talent isn’t where it needs to be to help curb the cybercrime epidemic.”²