Theater sessions

Theater sessions focus on specific market segments. Led by a Canalys analyst who will define the market, each theater session will comprise two speakers discussing opportunities for channel partners. By limiting the sessions to 100 people, and allowing ample time for Q&A, each theater session is designed to validate channel partners' own observations, and provide information for medium-term business planning.

Workplace mobility

Deployment of company-owned smart phones and pads will continue to increase, though personal-owned devices brought into the workplace will increase at a faster rate. Training employees on new user interfaces and updating legacy applications to support new operating systems will take time as enterprise IT moves from a Wintel-dominated environment to one that is more fragmented, with new hardware-software ecosystems emerging. This theater will explore emerging channel partner opportunities around workplace mobility.

Integrated security

A comprehensive approach to security is needed, incorporating mobile device management, content security, network security and security management. Offering integrated and modular solutions, managed from a single control panel, will succeed in capitalizing on evolving threats. But it could also mean declining revenue for some standalone security solutions. This theater will assess risks and opportunities for channel partners with security specializations.

Converged infrastructure

Vendors are trying to encourage infrastructure refresh by offering pre-integrated combinations of server, storage, networking and virtualization components in a single appliance, but these potentially eat into channel partners' integration revenue. This theater is designed to help channel partners evaluate exposure to convergence and strategies to maintain the relevance of their data center portfolios.

Reference architectures

Customers who are not open to integrated appliances are nevertheless looking to reduce risk. Channel partners serving these customers have started looking to reference architectures, which offer pre-validated and tested designs of multivendor solutions. But do they go far enough? Join this theater to understand how post-implementation problems can be overcome and to learn how to quantify the benefits of architecture-based project designs.

Hybrid IT consumption

As customers use different IT consumption models, ranging from traditional transactional on-premises deployment to cloud, managed and hosted services, their purchase processes will involve new vendors in new ecosystems. This theater will examine the revenue shift to the cloud, associated profits (if any) and what channel partners need to offer customers who need hybrid options.

Accessible business intelligence

As customers extend analytics into publishable data and visuals that can help business decisions, the link between data, analytics, intelligence and apps will grow and create new opportunities for channel partners. Greater automation means many analytics and business intelligence solutions are more accessible. This theater will assess the skills required for channel partners to supplement existing portfolios with data-related services and solutions.

From people to apps - re-designing services delivery

The new services equation will take advantage of systems performance analytics and user-friendly intelligence to increase the number of self-service delivery systems. The opportunity for channel partners to reduce the cost of service delivery is offset by the real risk of declining services revenue. Join this theater to learn about the new range of value-added services that leverage a broader ecosystem, and provide opportunity to lead through the transition to automation of routine support.

Financing the transition

Vendors have long acknowledged the role financing plays in helping channel partners ease transition pain for customers. The focus on finance will be stronger as IT budgets move from capital-intensive to operational-intensive allocations. This theater is for channel partners who intend to increase financial options offered to customers, and will illustrate risk/reward trade-off and the different ways financing can be used.