MSPWorld 2010 Lands At ITEXPO West

MSPWorld, the MSPAlliance’s conference for managed services providers, will be co-located this year at ITExpo West 2010, scheduled for Oct. 4-6 in Los Angeles. The move potentially opens up MSPWorld to a broader audience of Internet Telephony experts, but MSPWorld will also need to compete with roughly six other conferences that will be co-located at ITExpo. Here are the details.

In a press release, MSPAlliance President and Founder Charles Weaver points out some potential synergies between MSPWorld and ITExpo. Weaver says the co-located event brings together “MSPs and end-user companies in a forum through which they can directly engage each other on VoIP, Unified Communications, and other telephony managed services.”

Connecting the dots between MSPs and end-customers is a key need in the market. If the MSPAlliance and ITExpo can help to trigger those types of MSP-customer conversations, that’s a win for the managed services market.

Also of note: Unified Communications (UC) remains a hot topic for many MSPs. Nearly 39 percent of MSPmentor 100 survey participants say they promote UC to customers, and 26 percent promote hosted VoIP services to end customers, the same survey finds. Plus, companies like Cisco Systems and Juniper Networks have been building partner programs for MSPs in the past year.

Multiple Brands on Stage

Still, MSPWorld will also face some challenges at ITExpo West. For starters there apparently are six other shows co-located at ITExpo West — including:

• 4G Wireless Solution conference
• ChannelVision Expo
• Cloud Communications Summit
• Machine to Machine conference
• SmartGrid conference
• Smart Product Ecosystem Conference (SPEC)

Also during the week of MSPWorld, PSA software provider Tigerpaw is set to host its first partner summit in Dallas, Texas.

Evolving Strategy

The MSPAlliance has been evolving its event strategy in recent years. The conference brand shifted from MSP Summit to MSPWorld in January 2009. By April 2009, the MSPAlliance partnered with Channel Insider to collaborate on MSPAlliance event content.

Fast forward to 2010, and the MSPAlliance is hosting multiple smaller, one-day regional events leading up to the MSPWorld conference with ITExpo in October.