In 2018, Channel Partners are dealing with a ridiculously high amount of marketing fluff and fear tactics.  Never before has there been so much interest in the channel from Wall Street, equity firms, and end users themselves. All of this attention and spotlight means more vendors developing programs, more complexity as vendors merge with one another, and more emerging solutions that the channel is told to sell lest they miss out on the “skills pivot” that is necessary to handle “digital transformation.”

New SD-WAN 2.0 course on the University of TBI!

Cloud Connect Course on the University of TBI!

New SD-WAN Course on the University of TBI!

We’ve added SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) training to the University of TBI!

Back when I was a collegiate English professor, I built a learning website for each and every one of my classes. These sites handled a lot of different trainings and teaching functions, but the one thing that my students consistently thanked me for was making all reading materials free and accessible online. These sites weren’t just evaluation tools and grading platforms, they were valuable portals to true learning.

On July 14, 2015 Microsoft will cease to support or issue any security updates for Windows Server 2003. That means if your customers continue to run their Windows Server 2003 environment after this date they are going to be opening themselves to potentially disastrous security threats.

Over the course of the past few weeks, Adam Knudsen and I have laid out some foundational information about what Managed IT opportunities look like. We’ve discussed the various solutions and services in a strong Managed IT portfolio, and we’ve also discussed some great entry points for sellers of traditional telecom services.

When we talk about our technology being smart, I think of Buzz Lightyear. Specifically, I think of Buzz in his more delusional days in the first Toy Story film, when he genuinely believed that the laser pointer in his arm was a dangerous laser beam and not simply a red beam of light.

Just yesterday I was attempting to put together a Christmas list. I’m a voracious reader; I read every day for at least an hour, so my go-to gifts are always books. So last night I hopped on Amazon to look up some books that I may be interested in. The problem is, there are so many books on Amazon. So instead of randomly searching a novel in the literature canon or the flavor of the month young adult dystopian adventure novel, I went to the suggestion bar that said “Customers like you also bought…” and after scanning through about 5 pages I had a new book to add to my Christmas list.

“The first rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club!”

Tyler Durden, Fight Club

When TBI talks with its partner community about cloud computing, we find a shockingly similar approach to Tyler Durden’s character in Chuck Palahniuk’s seminal work, Fight Club.

“The first rule of cloud computing is you do not talk about cloud computing.”