Biggest News Headlines From the Channel Partners Conference & Expo

It’s hard to keep up with news headlines at the Channel Partners Conference & Expo when you’re busy in meetings, networking and cruising the expo hall.

Now that we’re a couple of weeks past the event, we thought it would be a good idea to put together a recap of the biggest news announced at the show. This slide show isn’t comprehensive, but it highlights a handful of the most notable announcements that could impact partners’ businesses in the near future.

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AT&T Control Center will enable solution providers in the carrier’s Partner Exchange program to deploy, manage and scale IoT services with connectivity to the carrier’s 4G LTE network. The cloud-based platform powered by Jasper will support the sale of IoT services to customers across different verticals. It is designed to give partners access via APIs to monitor and control all of the endpoints on their connected-devices network, and rapidly scale on the platform.

Read more about AT&T Control Center and the partner opportunity here.

Windstream’s move aims to give partners dedicated support and access to additional resources, information and tools. The redesign will help partners win and retain customers, while also allowing the company to deliver more “efficiency, better prioritization and an improved customer experience.” The company now dedicates sales engineering, support, order coordination and account management to the indirect channel to improve communication, marketing ability, sales enablement planning and customer base management.

Click here to read more about the redesign.

Vonage was one of several companies to use the Channel Partners Conference & Expo as an opportunity to reward its top partners. The UCaaS and VoIP provider recognized the following businesses as the latest members of its President’s Club: 3D, ARG, Austin Telephone, CarrierSales, Concierge, Intelisys, iSymplify, Onward Communications, PlanetOne, Renodis, Sandler Partners, Tel Affinity and Telarus.

Read more about Vonage’s awards here.

Master agent Intelisys announced that its sales partners now can sell cloud services from Google as well as Microsoft (previously announced), including licensing, consultation, deployment and migration, training and managed services. It’s part of a partnership between Intelisys and Sada Systems, a cloud and IT consulting company. Intelisys partners will be able to upsell to a complete solution that incorporates SADA’s full range of cloud managed services and support expertise, wrapped around product licenses.

This is where to learn more about the new partnership.

The first-ever Microsoft Cloud Migration lab featured vendor kiosks, presentations and discussions around application migration and disaster recovery. Sherman Crancer, partner channel development manager with Microsoft, encouraged partners not to overthinking the migration process. Timothy Dennis, a SkyKick account executive, said it’s important for partners to know the ease of migration and how to generate recurring revenue once a client base has been moved to the cloud.

If you missed the lab at the show, you can read more about it here.

Comcast is giving business customers private-network connectivity to their AWS Cloud services. With up to 10 Gbps of dedicated Ethernet connectivity to AWS, the cableco says organizations with multiple locations can maximize performance using AWS’s compute and storage services. As a member of the AWS Partner Network, Comcast also has the ability to connect more than 1 million Ethernet-enabled buildings in its network to additional AWS services like Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, Amazon Simple Storage Solution, and Amazon Virtual Private Cloud.

Interested in learning more? Click here.

Channel Partners honored 15 members of its Circle of Excellence with dinner and a private ceremony at the Palazzo Hotel’s Carnevino Restaurant in Las Vegas. These channel chiefs and supplier execs were chosen for their leadership, vision and innovation. We also celebrated the 25 winners of the 2016 Channel Partners 360° Business Value Awards. These partner companies took home some hardware for their own innovation in this converging industry of IT, telecom and cloud.

Learn more about our 2016 Circle of Excellence honorees here and this year’s 360° winners here.

NTT’s partner program exceeded its goals for master agents selling the company’s Enterprise Cloud, so it is rolling out an enhanced version to subagents. For the remainder of 2016, the program will focus on empowering the greater subagent network to create new business opportunities through the resale of NTT Com’s entire suite of domestic and international ICT services. The company says it is accelerating investments in the development, training and education of its partners to ensure subagents are equipped with the knowledge and expertise necessary to secure these opportunities.

Read our interview with NTT’s channel chief here.

Cloud Girls and Women in the Channel announced the winners of the inaugural Cloud Girl Rising Awards, honored on the BIG Stage sponsored by Jive. The Cloud Girl Rising award was created to honor women in the telecom and IT channels who have shown leadership and innovation in the emerging cloud space, as well as to inspire more women to step forward and follow their example. Winners were Verizon’s Janet Schijns and Datto’s Samantha Ciaccia.

Learn more about the two recipients here.

MegaPath announced further enhancements to its channel partner program, designed to better assist and incentivize its partners. The updates align sales, service delivery and support teams with MegaPath partners and their customers. The company offers a full suite of cloud communications to meet the needs of all sizes of businesses.

Click here to read more about MegaPath’s channel-program enhancements.