COMPTIA CHANNELCON — CompTIA, the IT industry association, offered attendees plenty of vendors with which to strike up a conversation at its welcome reception for its annual ChannelCon event Monday night in Austin, Texas.

More than 150 exhibitors are taking part in the ever-growing event this week, the association announced.

They include first-timers such as master agent PlanetOne Communications.

“We look forward to ChannelCon and are excited to listen, learn and engage with CompTIA’s communities and members. There is a lot of change and opportunity in and around the LAN and the WAN, and PlanetOne is eager to help our agents and MSPs make the most of both,” said Jonathan Hartman, vice president of sales.

Partners will be interested in several news items that broke at the show on Monday.

Intermedia, the cloud business applications provider, announced two automated marketing campaigns to help solution providers capitalize on interest in stopping ransomware and selling Microsoft Office 365.

“In the age of digital transformation, an effective marketing strategy is business critical for partners,” said Tim Stanton, director of channel marketing at Intermedia. “Partners have minutes to dedicate to marketing, not weeks. We feel it’s our responsibility to make marketing easy. Intermedia’s automated marketing platform gives partners compelling campaign content that helps them generate leads and drive demand for their Intermedia solutions — at no cost and under their own brand.”

Software provider Agiloft added three new platinum-level partners that will expand availability of Agiloft globally; they are Collins Technology Consulting, Saasam and Spectrum Mobility. Each company now can implement Agiloft independently as a result of their lofty status.

“Since we became an Agiloft reseller partner one and a half years ago, we have been able to address customer needs for contract management and business process management across several verticals, including healthcare and oil and gas,” said Aytan Leibowitz, CEO at Spectrum Mobility. “Agiloft supports its partners in sales efforts and our success to date made it an easy decision to pursue platinum-level certification. The Agiloft no-code platform ensures that applications can be easily configured to meet customers’ changing demands.”

Distribution giant Ingram Micro introduced a new Cloud Intelligence Program and online tool designed to help its partners build bigger and more profitable cloud practices.

Developed in partnership with research firm The 2112 Group, the web-based tool, 2112 Group Cloud Altimeter, provides actionable insights that partners can use to understand their competitive position in the marketplace and build new cloud development strategies.

Based on the intelligence gathered from participating channel partners, the 2112 Group Cloud Altimeter evaluates the relative state of readiness and performance of an IT service provider’s cloud practice in comparison to others in the industry.

For more news from CompTIA ChannelCon, click here. And keep tabs on Channel Partners this week for full coverage from ChannelCon.