Partners Enable Desktops on the Go
As wireless devices go IP and business users implement wireless LANs in greater numbers, new opportunities and challenges arise for solutions providers. During todays session, Desktops on the Go, panelists Carol Blanchar, principal and CEO of Conexo Inc.; Paul Janik, president of MidCo Inc.; and John Gaudu, president and CEO of Microtech Information Systems Inc., will discuss the corporate worlds move to wireless and how channel partners can benefit from it.
Blanchar will kick off the discussion with a look at the market drivers pushing mobility in the workforce and what solutions providers need to do to capitalize on this change. Blanchar notes businesses and other organizations increasingly are setting up WLANs either to allow mobile workers to connect with the Internet or general corporate online resources while away from their desks, or to enable specific vertical wireless applications.
In the first case, Blanchar says solutions providers can use that situation as an opportunity to sell Wi-Fi-enabled laptops, and even shared database applications, along with the WLAN and metro and wide-area networking solutions.
But, she adds, the really interesting part of WLAN for the channel is the vertical applications for the medical community or for retail outlets, as two examples, it enables. Such applications, she says, require suppliers to put together specific equipment and communications packages for customers.
For the channel, its a more complex offer, so theres that challenge, says Blanchar. So the channel will have to sell differently. That lends itself to a payback to the customer that goes beyond price. So the channel will have to go beyond just price and also talk about how that business will be better and more competitive as a result.
Solutions providers Janik and Gaudu, hailing, respectively, from interconnect and data VAR roots, will bring the discussion into the trenches. They will each identify hot voice and data mobility applications as well as enabling technologies and vendors they have used in real-world deployments. They also will share their implementation experiences and successes selling to particular vertical markets.
Gaudu has 25 years of experience in complex enterprise rollouts. His firm, Microtech Information Systems is a growing consulting and systems integration firm with four locations supporting the enterprise clients in the northeastern United States and Canada.
Janik has been involved in the communications and security industries for more than 30 years. His firm, MidCo, is consistently recognized as being among the top 30 systems integrators in the United States.
