CHANNEL PARTNERS CONFERENCE & EXPO — Young technology and up-and-coming companies flocked to Las Vegas for the Channel Partners Conference & Expo.

Tech professionals of diverse backgrounds and skill sets mingled during the First-Time Attendee Reception sponsored by Verizon. We made the rounds and encountered a mix of partners, vendors and everything in between. The show is seeing a growing embrace of managed service providers and emerging technologies like AI and SD-WAN.

Xeo.ai’s Monali Supramanyam

Monali Supramanyam works for Xeo.ai,  an AI-powered information, communications and technology (ICT) platform.

Xeo.ai is based in Mississauga, Ontario, and works with vendors, partners and end-users in Canada and the U.S. She hopes to meet other technology vendors that could potentially join Xeo’s platform.  IBM partnered early on with Xeo for security.  Supramanyam said Xeo is on the lookout for emerging technologies, such as AI, security, blockchain and SD-WAN.

Supramanyam previously attended the Channel Partners shows while working for Bell, but Xeo is making its first appearance. The show experience is much different from that during her tenure at Bell, as she’s used to mainly doing presentations rather than taking pitches from other companies.

“We’ve always tried to get people to partner with us, as opposed to, ‘Hey, we want to sign up and resell your services,'” she said.

She also noted that she’s seeing more executive-level participation at this year’s show than in previous years.

Lisbon Creek Systems’ Earl Ziebell

Earl Ziebell works for Lisbon Creek Systems out of Sussex, Wisconsin. The managed services provider and security systems integrator is attending the show for the first time after hearing about it at a recent show in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Ziebell told Channel Partners that his company is using the show to evaluate its SIP service providers.

He and co-owner Ken Vandervest founded the company in 2016, bringing a combination of telecommunications and security experience. They said they hope Lisbon Creek will become a “one-stop-shop” for its customers’ technology needs.

Bolstra’s Haresh Gangwani

Haresh Gangwani founded an Indianapolis-based software company called Bolstra in 2015. He’s on the lookout for new partners as the company grows its indirect channel. Bolstra’s software tackles the problem of customer churn.

“In a recurring revenue economy that we live in, customer churn is a death sentence,” Gangwani said. “So they use our software to retain customers and build lifetime value.”

Check out our recap from the First-Time Attendee Reception at last fall’s Channel Partners Evolution conference in Philadelphia.