INGRAM MICRO ONE — Security, IoT, UCaaS and partnering are just some of the hot topics for partners at this year’s Ingram Micro One conference, being held this week in Aurora, Colorado. That’s what Tom Allen, CTO, Virtual Technologies Group, Maumee, Ohio; John Carson, vice president and co-founder, Alphalink Technologies, Newark, Ohio; and Steve Schallert, president, CEO and owner of SDS Technology, Effingham, Illinois, shared with Channel Futures as we discussed their objectives for attending this event and their business vision for the new year.

Allen, Carson and Schallert, are three of the 740 partners, 80% of whom are either Trust X Alliance or SMB Alliance community members, here at Ingram Micro One, that boasts approximately 1,500 attendees, including some 390 vendors.

Virtual Technologies Group (VTG), founded in 1962, is an MSP with about 60 employees. The partner also does project work and some break-fix for customers who haven’t yet made the shift to managed services. The company differentiates itself with enhanced customer satisfaction, meaning listening to the customer and fixing their problems using technology to do it. Staying relevant is key to the company’s success, no easy feat for a 50-year-old-plus company. So, what’s relevant for VTG and its customer’s today — many of those customers who are virtual schools and in the manufacturing sector?

VTG’s Tom Allen

“Security is the hot topic that everybody is going to talk about. How do I protect our borders? What devices am I using to protect infrastructure? How do I train and educate users on how not let the bad people in?” said Allen.

A longtime Ingram Micro partner, Allen says the distributor is a large company “that can enable anything that we want to do.”

VTG has ventured into IoT and has plans to do more with it down the road.

“It hasn’t been a driving factor from the customer perspective yet. I’ve seen it in farms and fields – agriculture – but not so much for us. I’ve also seen it in large hotel chains — again, not for us,” said Allen.

A key driver for Allen attending Ingram Micro One is meeting up with Trust X Alliance members and Ohioan Carson. Not only is Carson a business friend and fellow partner, but he’s also a VTG customer. VTG has a booth displaying its hosted PBX voice product offering.

“And even when it’s not about our hosted PBX voice offering, I’m very interested in partnering on other things,” said Allen. “I have customers in Texas, Arizona, all over the place like a lot of us do, and since we do, having someone from Ingram and Trust X a part of our group makes it easier for us.”

VTG has been a Trust X Alliance member for about a decade.

Carson has been a Trust X Alliance member for two decades. Alphalink Technologies, about 36 years in business, does managed services and project work, serves SMB businesses and works in verticals such as health care and local government.

Meeting up with other partners and building relationships is one key reason Carson is attending Ingram Micro One.

“One of the things I was most interested in this year is trying to get our feet wet with IoT,” he said. “I always want to pick out one or two new services that we can offer our customers. I’m always looking for anything that’s recurring revenue. That’s our major goal — to build as much recurring revenue as we can.”

During the morning keynote, Eric Hembree, director of IoT at Ingram Micro, said IoT is encompassing so many things, like containerization, security, big data, AI, analytics, hardware, platforms, software, application layer and DevOps.

“That’s what’s exciting about IoT. IT is going to become an old term and IoT will take over because it will encompass all of those areas,” he said.

There’s a big role for partners in IoT; they just need to get started.

“The market opportunity is here. The solutions are here and they’re easy to use, easy to deploy, easy to manage and you can start to make money today,” said Hembree. “Partners don’t have to …

… become experts on all things IoT before they even get started. Realize the opportunity is here and now.”

What are the 2020 business resolutions that Allen and Carson have for their respective businesses?

“I have a lot of them, but the short focus is security — it’s ever changing and there’s a lot that encompasses security. There’s a huge attack surface and everyone wants more — your refrigerator now has an internet connection, your oven, your car, all the information that’s on your phone. Some of the more creative ones, attacks are coming in through thermometers and HVAC systems, things like that,” said Allen.

Another 2020 focus for VTG is its hosted phone system.

“We pride ourselves on that and staying relevant among changing communication and collaboration platforms. So we do integration with [Microsoft] Teams and from the PBX we’re doing integration with IoT devices, so access control, door control, surveillance and things like that and wrapping it all up into one product line. It keeps the PBX relevant and it also adds additional value for the customer,” said Allen.

Security is also top of mind for Carson and his customers.

“You’ve got the basic virus protection, intrusion protection, cryptoprotection and resolution — from the firewall back to the individual device. As we get more into IoT, that’s going to be a whole different animal,” he said.

Schallert, an SMB Alliance member, attends Ingram Micro One to stay current with technology, new opportunities and ways to grow his 35-year old company. In a rural location, SDS customers tend to be small businesses.

SDS Technology’s Steve Schallert

“We do a lot of UCaaS, it’s growing and we’re looking to doing even more, more in the cloud, and with managed services,” said Schallert.

He explained that in his area of the country, the MSP model isn’t that popular.

“We’re not a full managed service provider; we’re more of a hybrid. We charge a flat fee for a software stack that includes monitoring that runs on each of the customer’s nodes. If they need billable work, we do that for what needs to be done — could be a project or even a hard drive that needs to be replaced,” he said.

What’s ahead for SDS Technology in 2020?

“We’re hoping to grow our business quite a bit, but like everyone else one of our challenges is finding and keeping talent. In 2020 I’d like to find some good technology people – networking, computer repair, people that understand cloud software implementations – to grow the company; without it we can’t grow,” said Schallert. “SD-WAN and UCaaS are high on our list for 2020. Also, some cloud backup — our customers are small, so they don’t want to pay a high price for cloud backup. The other thing is infrastructure for networking. Our customers don’t have benefit of high-speed internet in our part of the country. We still have some customers who are still on dial-up.”

Schalllert does turn to Ingram Micro for services to help his company.