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Articles by Heather Margolis
Letter to the editor: Vote 'Yes' to protect Bozeman's excellent schools
Please vote 'Yes' for the 2026 BSD7 school levies. Our public schools face a challenge: State funding has not kept pace with the skyrocketing cost of living, making it difficult to recruit and retain the dedicated teachers and staff our children deserve. In 2022, the Bozeman School District cut $4 million from its budget, tightening operations. Now we must support our entire staff — from teachers to custodians — to help with the skyrocketing cost of living.
Advice for First-Time Founders
First-time founders truly embody the term “learning on the fly.” There are many challenges involved with building and scaling a startup. Founders are responsible for everything from developing product market fit to fundraising to hiring a team. It’s really hard! You can’t act like you’ve been there when you haven’t actually been there. My first experience as a founder began in 2009, when I founded my channel marketing consulting practice, Channel Maven.
Startup Fundraising Advice for Founders
Startup fundraising is one of the most important activities for a founder or early-stage employee. I’ve seen the process from both sides. Before business school, I worked as an executive assistant for a venture capital firm in Boston. More recently, I went through the fundraising process for my demand generation company, Spark Your Channel. We raised our Pre-Seed round with York IE in early 2020 and got acquired by my current employer, 360insights.com, in November 2021.
Through Channel Demand Generation Got Flipped on Its Head
Right now we find ourselves, and our Partners, trying to understand what through-channel demand generation programs aren’t getting used. Between innovations moving at the speed of light and now finding ourselves in the midst of a pandemic, there’s been a huge shift. Let’s stop with the “wait and see approach” and create through-channel demand generation strategies that will actually work. Your Partners need your help, now, more than ever.
Another Great Year at Baptie Channel Focus #CFNA19
Another Great Year at Baptie Channel Focus #CFNA19 Channel Events Heather K. Margolis I know. This is way overdue and we’ve already moved on to other things. But, I felt the need to do a brief recap of this year’s Channel Focus event, hosted by Baptie and Company. This was my 8th year in attendance and I can honestly say it was genuinely the best year yet! What made it so great?
How MSPs Can Create Contagious Sales and Marketing Content
by Heather Margolis • Jan 11, 2019 Most of the Channel Partners we work with are struggling to develop content that gains traction for demand or lead generation. We get it. They are overtaxed with day-to-day fire drills and juggling a stack of Vendors and an even larger stack of incoming emails. Author: Channel Maven Consulting’s Heather K.
Channel Maven Named to Colorado Top 100
We are so incredibly proud and humbled to announce that we have been named one of Colorado’s Top 100 Women Owned Businesses by ColoradoBiz magazine! A huge thank you to all of our clients, partners, and friends who have made all of this possible. On a personal note, this never would have been possible without the amazing team at Channel Maven! I so appreciate that I get to work with each of these people each and every day and that I still love what I do.
6 Proven Tactics that Drive Demand for Channel Partners - ChannelE2E
Want to help your Channel Partners create, execute, and reap the benefits of a social media strategy? Channel Maven highlights these six tips. Ever wonder if your Channel Partners are using social media effectively? It’s a fair question these days as engagement strategies on social continue to shift. Social is designed to bombard but it can also be a great tool for making business connections and believe it or not, there are right and wrong ways to go about it.
Five Questions Vendors Should Ask Partners About Their Channel Program
Five Questions Vendors Should Ask Partners About Their Channel Program Heather K. Margolis, founder, Channel Maven Consulting By Heather K. Margolis, founder, Channel Maven Consulting Thanks to the Internet, cloud adoption, and changes in buyer behavior, the Channel has slowly but steadily shifted towards selling outcomes versus products.
Make Sure Your Channel Marketing Core is Solid - ChannelE2E
If your channel marketing core program isn’t solid, it doesn’t matter how many communications, resources, or incentives you throw at it. I recently pulled out my back. Stay with me, this will make sense for the Channel, I promise. If it doesn’t I’ll blame the muscle relaxers, but stay with me anyway. I pulled out my back, like walking bent over and not able to pick up anything more than my laptop and immediately sought help from a few resources.
Channel Partner Education: Small Steps Lead to Demand Generation - ChannelE2E
When consulting with Vendors on the topic of Partner Education we often hear about goals for To-Partner communications and demand generation initiatives. Everyone, especially Partners, is hyper-focused on generating demand and in many cases conversations with Vendors involve tactics that Partners can self-execute.
Microsoft Unveils Server Design Aimed at Speeding Cloud Setup
Microsoft Corp. is offering up a new server design that it hopes will influence the rest of the data-center industry, a move that keeps pressure on hardware vendors like Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. to lower the price of cloud infrastructure.
Google-Microsoft Cyberthreat Debate Raises Questions for the Channel
We all know that cyber-attacks are on the rise. Vendors and partners are in agreement that for businesses, it isn’t a question of if a data breach will happen, but rather what contingencies are in place to deal with it when one happens. To that end, disaster-recover-as-a-service (DRaaS) and backup-as-a-service (BaaS) solutions are growing more advanced and more integral to comprehensive security offerings.
CenturyLink to Buy Level 3 for $34 Billion in Cash, Stock
CenturyLink Inc. agreed to buy Level 3 Communications Inc. for about $34 billion in cash and stock, creating a more formidable competitor to AT&T Inc. in the market to handle heavy internet traffic for businesses.
The Right Networking Solution Can Make a Big Difference for Partners
For IT VARs and MSPs, choosing the right networking solution to deploy with a client can make a big difference to the bottom line. For networking hardware, like switches and access points, there are three factors to consider when trying to understand the real cost: there is the initial cost to purchase the hardware, there are the potential monthly or annual fees for ongoing management, and there is the cost to maintain the equipment or roll a truck when hardware doesn’t work correctly.
CompTIA: Study Shows Reality is Pulling the Channel’s Head out of the Cloud
Every once in a while, a reality check hits you. Is my kid really Harvard material? Will I ever fit into my 10-year-old clothes again? Am I honestly cut out to run this bed and breakfast? It’s what we do as human beings -- second-guessing, tinkering, course-correcting. Reflective thinking is also the smart way to operate a business, though not always a pleasant exercise. Just ask practitioners in the IT channel.
Channel Experts: One Piece of Advice for Growing Partners
I think it comes down to just leveraging that partner and getting the training that you need. I've seen a lot of people go out and try to sell our product and fail miserably because they didn't have the training associated with it. When they go through the training process, really learning how to open the doors, how to have those conversations...then they just bring us in as that subject matter expert so that they look great. We're helping them do all the work to get it done.
Meet the Channel: Stephen Thomas, VP of Sales, Cyberbit
This week, we spoke to Stephen Thomas, vice president of Sales at Cyberbit, a company specializing in enterprise IT cybersecurity solutions. Thomas joined Cyberbit earlier this year following an 8-year stint at Symantec, where he served in a number of executive-level roles, and most recently served as the company’s vice president of Americas channel sales. TVG: You’ve been in the tech market for 20 years, and have managed channel programs internationally.
Special Report: All About Growth
A Penton Technology Channel Group spotlight on strategies for partners to grow their businesses. New customers. New offerings. New adjacent markets. In this special edition, Penton’s channel brands examines all the way VARs and MSPs are funding new growth, finding growth prospects and managing it internally. If you’re looking to add muscle in the next year, then this package is for you.?
Vendor Perceptions and Realities in the World of SME
There is definitely a litany of advantages to working for a company as well known and world renowned as SAP--the primary one being our reputation as a first-class organization. But the downside to having your logo on the side of stadiums and on billboards that people see as they walk through airport terminals is that there is the perception--and I stress the word perception--that SAP is too large to provide solutions for small and midsize companies.
Distribution Watch: Avant Discusses The Changing Nature of Distribution in a Cloud-Centric World
With the advent of cloud technology, professionals in the channel are seeing the traditional business models of old fall away and evolve into something unrecognizable, complicated and difficult to navigate. It’s no wonder the channel is collectively sweating. As Drew Lydecker, president at AVANT puts it, “I think that the cloud is probably the best and worst of a subset of technology ever.
New Fujitsu-Lenovo Alliance May Mean More Consolidation in PC Market
Fujitsu Ltd. shares surged to a nine-month high after the Japanese company revealed it was in discussions with China’s Lenovo Group Ltd. about collaborating on everything from research and computer design to manufacturing.
Qualcomm to Buy NXP Semiconductors in $47 Billion Deal
Qualcomm Inc., the largest maker of mobile-phone chips, will acquire NXP Semiconductors NV in a transaction valued at $47 billion, aiming to speed an expansion into new industries and reduce its dependence on the smartphone market.
The CIO's Ever-Changing Role
The chief information officer (CIO) job title is one that seems to cover an ever-changing combination of roles, responsibilities and duties, especially over the past few years, as the cloud and its associated technologies become more prevalent. The job title of the CIO is one that is morphing to meet new requirements from all areas of business. Overseeing everything from rogue cloud usage to business units developing their own cloud environments can be a lot to manage.
New Windows 10 Update Could Provide Selling Opportunities in New Verticals
Microsoft Corp. plans to release an update to Windows 10 software in the spring that will add creative features especially conducive for virtual and augmented reality. The update will be free to current Windows 10 users and will include tools to invent and share 3-D objects, said Microsoft Windows chief Terry Myerson.
Cyberwarfare: The Next President’s Most Pressing Battleground
The next president to take up residence in the White House will face a challenge more daunting than the 2016 election cycle: cyberwarfare. Cyberattacks have grown more common and more brazen – as evidenced by the recent attempted interference with the American election season.
A New Way of Thinking About IT
It’s not exactly news to say that technology is a big deal for business these days. Even with a long history of companies using computing, there has recently been a tipping point in the world becoming digital and organizations following suit. Whether they are pursuing new customers, developing new products, or extending their brand, businesses are starting to directly drive their outcomes with new technology and new approaches.
Yesterday, the Cloud. Today, IoT. Tomorrow's Tech Trend? Blockchain.
Time to put the blockchain hype to the test. After a year of promises that the technology would revolutionize Wall Street, anyone can now download an entire blockchain specifically built for financial services.
After the Ink Is the Dry: Life After an Acquisition
Many channel partners work long and hard to get their practice to a point where it's attractive to potential buyers. It's the brass ring, right? Once you're acquired, it's all green fields. But the truth is, there's no way to really predict what life will look like post-acquisition. Because there are an endless variety of acquisition situations, there are just as many ways that being bought out can affect business owners in the channel. Will your business continue to flourish?
Migrating SMB Clients to the Cloud? Beware of These Five Common Mistakes
Small and midsize businesses (SMBs) want to lower operating expenses and improve application performance. That's why so many of them are counting on solutions and service providers like you to migrate their IT operations to the cloud. Emergent Research predicts that 78% of U.S. small businesses will be fully migrated to the cloud by 2020. That’s a gigantic opportunity for channel partners who know how to get the job done right. Just be careful because cloud migrations can quickly go haywire.
Dyn Hack Shows IoT Brings Channel Huge Security-as-a-Service Opportunity
A Chinese security camera maker said its products were used to launch a cyber-attack that severed internet access for millions of users, highlighting the threat posed by the global proliferation of connected devices.
Meet the Channel: Margie Sims, Dizzion Inc.
This week in Meet the Channel, we caught up with Margie Sims, the vice president of Sales at Dizzion Inc., a company specializing in cloud computing solutions and services for end users. Sims joined Dizzion last year, and previously spent 16 years in various sales leadership roles at ViaWest. Since joining Dizzion, Sims has worked to build the company’s channel partner efforts by improving partner relations. What's your favorite thing about the people who make up the channel?
Biggest Ever Women-in-Computing Conference Belies Fragile Gains
The 12,000 women technology workers cheering at Houston’s Toyota Center arena this week are a far cry from the 500 who showed up for the first Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing.
8 Endpoint Security Strategies for MSP Success
As the managed services market continues to grow, it’s more important than ever that MSPs find ways to differentiate themselves. That means not only offering superior services to their clients, but also partnering with solution providers who are committed to supporting and enabling MSPs to maximize their cost efficiency, profitability and client retention. Here are eight key security traits for successful next-gen MSPs: 1.
Security Central: Fancy Bear Bites Again, the Internet of Things Moves Toward Security
It appears that the Bears are at it again. No, not those Bears. Think more the hacking, Russian kind. A new report released by the SecureWorks cybersecurity company has revealed the method used by Russian government hacking group Fancy Bear to get inside the systems of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and members of Hillary Clinton’s senior campaign staff.
Michael Dell Outlines Framework for IT Dominance at Dell EMC World 2016
For Michael Dell, the journey from the company he started out of his dorm room at the University of Texas at Austin in 1984 to standing on the stage of Dell EMC World in front of 8,000 people this week has been a “long, strange trip.” Today, Dell Technologies is the largest enterprise systems company in the world, and Dell can’t wait to provide the infrastructure for the new, connected world that’s being built around us. “It’s the sunrise of a new era,” he said on Wednesday.
Intel Fourth-Quarter Sales May Miss Estimates on PC Doldrums
Intel Corp. gave a disappointing forecast for sales in the current quarter, signaling lackluster year-end demand for personal computers, servers and the chips that run them.
BREAKING NEWS: Details of Dell EMC Partner Program Announced at Global Partner Summit
The first Global Partner Summit at Dell EMC World kicked off on Tuesday with a keynote from John Byrne, President of Global Channels. In front of an audience of nearly 1,500, Byrne outlined the details of the newly combined channel program for Dell Technologies Dell Technologies, which is the result of the $67 billion merger of Dell and EMC finalized in early September, is now the largest privately owned IT organization on the planet.
Forrester Predicts Increased Tech Market Growth in 2017
Analyst firm Forrester has weighed in on the U.S. election cycle…kind of. In a recent blog post, Andrew Bartels said that under a continuation of the economic policies instituted under the Obama Administration and a Republican-majority Congress, Forrester is projecting an increased growth in the tech industry of 5.1 percent, up from its previous forecast of 4.4 percent.
Security Central: Apple and the FBI Spar, Microsoft Opens a Cybersecurity Center
This past week has been one of continuing sagas, unfolding cause and effect scenarios and “now whats?” Our first story resurfaces the ongoing battle between Apple and the FBI. These guys really just can’t seem to get along. At a press conference in St. Cloud, Minn., last Friday, FBI special agent Rich Thorton made statements bemoaning the fact that the agency is unable to unlock the iPhone of Dahir Adan, the man who attacked and stabbed 10 people in a Minnesota mall last month.
Pragmatism in the History of GNU, Linux and Free/Open Source Software
If you ask a lot of people why Linus Torvalds and the Linux kernel that he wrote became one of the most prominent open source projects of all time, while Richard Stallman's GNU project has received much less attention beyond hacker circles, they'll tell you the difference has to do with Stallman's excessive commitment to an uncompromising ideology. Is that really accurate?
HP Plans Up to 4,000 Job Cuts Over Three Years Amid PC Slump
HP Inc. plans to cut 3,000 to 4,000 jobs over the next three years to help bring costs in line with slumping demand in the market for personal computers and printers.
Effective Consulting in the Face of New Technology: Part 2
When I first joined the consulting ranks in the early 1990s, my customers expected their technology implementations to take a year or more. And that was acceptable. After all, how could people possibly learn that stuff any faster? Then came the sudden realization that a century was coming to an end and current software programs were using two-digit years instead of four. As Y2K approached, the software industry boomed--businesses needed to upgrade their software or risk implosion.
Apple and the FBI Spar, Microsoft Opens a Cybersecurity Center
This past week has been one of continuing sagas, unfolding cause and effect scenarios and “now whats?” Our first story resurfaces the ongoing battle between Apple and the FBI. These guys really just can’t seem to get along. At a press conference in St. Cloud, Minn., last Friday, FBI special agent Rich Thorton made statements bemoaning the fact that the agency is unable to unlock the iPhone of Dahir Adan, the man who attacked and stabbed 10 people in a Minnesota mall last month.
Meet the Channel: Tracy Pallas, illusive networks
This week in Meet the Channel we sat down with Tracy Pallas, the vice president of channel sales at illusive networks, a company specializing in protecting organizations from targeted cyber attacks. Pallas has spent more than 20 years in the IT and cybersecurity space, and has served as a channel manager at companies including Ironport, Palo Alto Networks and Extreme Networks.
How to Protect Customers and Maximize Your Backup
The number one cloud application for 2016 remains backup and recovery, according to various studies. It also remains one of the most lucrative and low-barriers-to-entry-kind of cloud opportunities for solution providers of all types to provide. This suite of offerings affords the channel a tremendous way to offer a robust set of cloud solutions to different verticals and sizes of companies.
NetSuite Shares Fall After Oracle Says Deal Needs More Support
NetSuite Inc. fell the most since June after its suitor, Oracle Corp., announced it only has 22 percent of the stock needed to close the $9.3 billion acquisition, raising doubts about the deal.
Availability made Simple: Veeam Availability Solution for HPE StoreOnce
Veeam now offers an integrated data Availability solution based on Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) server and StoreOnce technology combined with Veeam® Software. The Veeam Availability Solution for HPE StoreOnce is a pre-assembled solution that is simple to purchase, deploy and manage. The Veeam Availability Solution leverages the HPE's ProLiant DL380 server platform and StoreOnce VSA software combined with a choice of Veeam software, for a complete turn-key solution for data Availability.
Obama Administration Formally Accuses Russia of Cyber-Shenanigans
We've all been saying for months that Putin has been behind a series of cyber-attacks on U.S. entities, including the Democratic National Committee and certain high-ranking individuals. On Friday, the Obama administration officially pointed the finger at Russia.
Should Resellers Outsource Support for Office 365?
Ask any IT provider and they’ll tell you the same story: Offering high-level cloud support to clients is a tough job. Microsoft’s Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program has been touted as a great opportunity for resellers to tap into the booming market for Office 365. But, to qualify as a Direct CSP partner, you have to be ready to offer your customers 24/7 technical support. Are you up for this? Quite frankly, few resellers are. Competition is fierce, and customers keep asking for more.
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