Preview: Six Trends At Ingram Micro Seismic Partner Conference

In a few hours, more than 275 managed service provides will converge on Dallas for the third annual Ingram Micro Seismic Partner Conference. So, what should MSPs expect from the event? Here are six key managed services trends and developments I’ll be tracking at the event (May 4-6, Dallas).

1. Partnerships: Watch for Ingram to announce new Seismic relationships with CA Inc. (involving Instant Recovery on Demand and NetEnrich (involving 24×7 network operation center services). I previewed both anticipated announcements in this April 28 blog entry.

2. Business Intelligence: What if an individual Seismic MSP could measure its performance vs. Seismic community norms and averages. I hear Ingram is heading in that direction with a new business intelligence-type tool that will be announced at the event. Also, stay tuned for a central user interface for managing all Seismic services. The dashboard is in its early stages but should be announced/shown at the event.

3. Pockets of Growth: Did you notice Ingram announced falling profits last week but the company’s stock jumped more than 10 percent on the week? (I did.) Turns our Ingram delivered better quarterly results than Wall Street expected. And while Ingram does not break out results for the Seismic business, I hear Seismic is meeting some aggressive growth goals for 2009. Generally speaking, the Seismic team has been adding 35 to 50 new MSPs to the Seismic community each month.

4. Managed Print Services: A major managed print services conference was held April 26-28 in San Antonio. And managed print has been a hot topic of discussion in recent weeks on MSPmentor. Watch for the MPS dialog to get even louder at the Seismic conference.

5. Branding, Marketing, PR and Sales: Those four items differentiate great MSPs from good and average MSPs. And to Ingram’s credit, much of the annual Seismic conference typically focuses on those four areas. I’ll report back with related trends throughout the conference.

6. The Economy: Sorry folks. There’s no avoiding this topic. How did Seismic MSPs perform in Q1? Did the first month of Q2 offer any real surprises? I’ll be asking attendees those questions throughout the event.

If you’re at the conference and want to meet, send me email (joe [at] ninelivesmediainc.com) or catch my eye while I’m blogging live from the event Monday night, Tuesday and Wednesday.

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