Our team recently returned from Microsoft Inspire, the firm's global partner conference boasting 18,000 attendees, with three solid insights into the future of the channel and how to reach it through Tech Data's expanded array of products and services. Held from July 9-13 in Washington, D.C., Microsoft partners had the opportunity to experience Tech Data’s “data center to the living room” approach to providing end-to-end solutions.

The first ever Tech Data Cloud Hackathon event, held in the heart of London’s Shoreditch hi-tech district, was filled with powerful ideas and innovation. 

What Is a Hackathon?

A hackathon is an event that brings together a wide range of people with different skill sets, backgrounds, and complementary expertise. We spend time in a creative environment, focused on generating and developing ideas that may be based on redesigning, developing, or combining aspects of services, products, and technology.

The managed services market is more competitive than ever before. Automation of activities and standardization of technologies offered are accelerating commoditization. This commoditization is driving price competition and putting a squeeze on margins. But not for everyone.

Speed to market is essential to your bottom line, and time is money. The same also applies to your small business/startup customers. Cloud computing has enabled technology partners to set new speed records for installing IT infrastructure and making businesses fully operational. From purchase to final configurations, you could be looking at under an hour. If that isn’t great enough, it makes your proof of concept inexpensive, quick, and mostly painless.

One of the biggest frustrations managed service providers (MSPs) have is when a customer is resistant to integrating new and more effective technologies into their business strategy. We know of one MSP in particular that overcame this challenge by leveraging a unique set of cloud computing solutions. Here’s their story: 

Reselling cloud solutions seems like a simple task. It’s just another product to promote, right? Not quite. Many businesses, like you, have already started offering cloud solutions to their clients, because the client asked for it. Now it’s time to consider promoting it as part of your offering. Before you can successfully market your new cloud offering, consider these six areas as a guide to determine if you’re truly cloud ready.

As a cloud solution provider, getting control of monthly recurring revenue processes is paramount to successfully scale your business. Some vendors offer cloud-based services in an annual pre-pay, but to cloud purists, this isn’t truly a cloud model. Outside of the frequency that invoices are received, there are two common ways a cloud product is billed to resellers and/or clients: subscription and consumption.

Tech Data / Technology Solutions’ booth display at this month’s Dell EMC World 2017 had a decidedly aviation-esque theme. As a self-anointed airplane aficionado, the cutaway jet fuselage was one of my favorite event displays in recent memory. Our onsite “cabin crew” offered discussions and demonstrations focused on software-defined storage solutions and the journey to the hybrid-cloud and software-defined data center.

Tech Data's booth display at this month’s Dell EMC World 2017 had a decidedly aviation-esque theme. As a self-anointed airplane aficionado, the cutaway jet fuselage was one of my favorite event displays in recent memory. Our onsite “cabin crew” offered discussions and demonstrations focused on software-defined storage solutions and the journey to the hybrid-cloud and software-defined data center.

The “As-a-Service” label has become a common way to describe technology in the cloud arena, with software-as-a-service and infrastructure-as-a-service leading the pack. But one area that is starting to see traction is Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS). DaaS is all of your desktop apps and infrastructure, conveniently streamed to all of your client’s devices via a cloud service provider. It’s a sector that’s expected to grow by 27 percent each year until at least 2020, according to RnR Market Research.