Plotting a Path to Success With the Channelnomics Growth Calculator

Vendors talk about the need to grow, and solution providers often express their growth aspirations. Left out of the equation: Exactly what it takes to grow a business. That’s where the Channelnomics Growth Calculator comes in.

Developed by The 2112 Group, a channel research and professional services firm, the Channelnomics Growth Calculator gives solution providers precise revenue targets to achieve growth goals.

The calculator is sponsored exclusively by Ingram Micro for use by the whole channel community. All reports generated are free.

What do you need to use the tool? Just your current year’s revenue, your revenue goal for growing your business and the number of years you’re allowing to grow your business.

The Channelnomics Growth Calculator produces an individual report that plots annual revenue targets, annual rate of growth and how your growth ambitions compare to the rest of the channel community.

It’s that simple. It’s easy, free and fun to use. Most important, it gives you valuable information for establishing a business plan for growing your business.

Get started on the path to success today. Try the Channelnomics Growth Calculator and see what it takes to grow your business to higher levels.

Hear the Secrets of SMB Success At CompTIA ChannelCon

3:30–5:30 p.m. in Bayhill 32 on Monday, July 29

Join Ingram Micro for a two-hour breakout session focused entirely on SMB success. Get business advice from an industry expert, a fellow solution provider, and Ingram Micro’s own SMB sales and marketing specialists. Plus, learn about the essential elements of a successful SMB business and find out how your SMB business can look and act bigger. While the event is open to any CompTIA attendee, Ingram Micro partners will have the exclusive opportunity to sign up for a free business plan as well.

Where To Find Us At ChannelCon

• Monday, 6–8 p.m.: Visit Ingram Micro Booth 417 during the Technology Fair, where Ingram Micro’s cloud, SMB, mobility, managed print services, and marketing teams can answer your questions about how we’re helping our partners build their businesses.
• Tuesday, 11:45 a.m.–1:15 p.m.: Jason Bystrak, director of sales for Ingram Micro’s cloud division, is part of the Distributor Power Panel: The Cloud Evolution
• Tuesday, 4–7 p.m.: Visit Ingram Micro Booth 417 during the Technology Fair

Free Registration

• Use the Ingram Micro Promo Code to secure your free registration for this respected channel education event, being held July 29-July 31 at the Peabody Hotel in Orlando. When you use the Ingram Micro promo code, CompTIA ChannelCon registration is free—an $899 value! (Attendees are responsible for travel and room costs.)

We’ll see you there!

Be an Ingram Micro Guest at CompTIA ChannelCon!

Free Registration: CompTIA ChannelCon

If you haven’t already made plans to attend this year’s CompTIA ChannelCon (formerly Breakaway), it’s not too late. Use the Ingram Micro Promo Code to register free for this much-anticipated channel education event, July 29-July 31 at the Peabody Hotel in Orlando. Deadline to register is July 24th.

Here’s where to find us while you’re there:

SMB Success

101 Join us on Monday, July 29, from 3:30–5:30 p.m. in Bayhill 32 for a two-hour breakout session exclusively for Ingram Micro partners. Get business advice from industry experts, fellow solution providers, and Ingram Micro’s own marketing and branding specialists. Plus, learn about some of the essential elements of a successful SMB business and find out how your SMB business can look and act bigger.

Distributor Power Panel: The Cloud Evolution

Jason Bystrak, director of sales for Ingram Micro’s cloud division, will take the stage as part of this informative panel from 11:45 a.m. – 1:15 p.m. on Tuesday, July 30.

Technology Fair

Visit us at Booth #417 during the Technology Fair on Monday, 6 to 8 p.m. and Tuesday, 4 to 7 p.m. OurCloud, SMB, Mobility, Managed Print Services, Marketing and Financial Services teams will be on hand to answer your questions and discuss how Ingram Micro is helping our partners build their businesses to new heights of growth and profitability.

Plus, you’ll have the chance to square off against your peers in a showdown of infrastructure skills … and win a portable pop-up speaker for your tablet, smartphone or laptop. Stop by on the half-hour to try your hand at building the best and tallest tower to win!

Remember, when you use your Ingram Micro promo code, CompTIA ChannelCon registration is free – an $899 value! Plus, you get access to a vendor-neutral channel event dedicated to education – in fact, you can earn certifications in cloud, mobility, disaster recovery and social business while at the event.

We’ll see you there!

Big Data Opportunities for SMBs

Big Data isn’t just for large companies anymore. If your customers are recording data, they’re likely looking for ways to analyze it and then use those insights to capitalize on the information. Ingram Micro speaks Big Data and SMB–we’re here to help you take the conversation from idea to implementation, and introduce you to new revenue opportunities.

Insights Illustrated

Today, business success is about solving customer problems by finding a use case, asking the right questions and applying them to the client’s business. “Recently, there was a Big Data story about an East Coast bakery. Through analysis of their data and weather reports they found that when it rains, customers preferred to buy cakes. When it’s sunny, their customers bought more sandwiches,” says Tommy Mac, Ingram Micro field technical consultant, Advanced Computing Division. “This anecdote demonstrates how small businesses can capitalize on their data and potentially reduce operational costs through the use of Big Data.”

Opening the Door to Sales

The idea of Big Data may seem intimidating, but if your customers are looking for ways to better understand the data they’ve captured, Ingram Micro can help lead the way. “As soon as our SMB partners identify a need for Big Data, we can help push the door open and have meaningful conversations with the end customer about high-performance computing and Big Data,” says Rick Young, Ingram Micro senior channel account executive. “We can then formulate the appropriate hardware pieces for that particular project in mind. Ingram Micro has the technical engineers and resources to bring to bear.”

Recurring Services Opportunities

Opportunity doesn’t end at the sale. “Big Data’s a new revenue stream for SMBs, says Rick. “Once the solution is dropped off at the end-customer’s site, SMB partners have the opportunity to come in and conduct final deployment, including integration and deployment. The services they render are new revenue streams.”

Next Steps

To learn more about how you can leverage Ingram Micro and Big Data with your customers, call Rick Young, Ingram Micro senior channel account executive, at (847) 809-6876.

Three Ingram Micro Leaders Nominated For SMB 150 Influencer List!

VP of Marketing for North America Jennifer Anaya, VP of Channel Marketing for North America Kirk Robinson, and Sales Director Jamie Ferullo have been nominated for the 2013 SMB 150 awards. The SMB 150, a collaboration between SMB Nation and SMB Technology Network, recognizes the top 150 influencers within the worldwide SMB IT channel.

The first phase of the award’s selection process has already begun and consists of online community voting, open to anyone at smb150.com. Visitors may vote for candidates up to once per day. Open voting lasts until January 18, 2013, at which point a panel of industry experts will certify the online ballots and cast their own votes for nominees. Community voting counts for 40% of each nominee’s score, with the remainder (60%) determined by the expert panel’s votes.

Harry Brelsford, Founder and Chairman of SMB Nation, congratulated Anaya, Robinson and Ferullo, along with every other SMB 150 nominee. “I’m excited for all of our SMB 150 nominees. Each and every one of them has worked tirelessly to improve the SMB IT channel—and, by extension, the small business sector as a whole. I hope that everyone who has benefited from our nominees’ expertise will show their support and appreciation at smb150.com.”

In addition to inclusion on the SMB 150 list in the SMB Nation magazine, each SMB 150 winner will receive a badge and certificate.

Introducing the AMD Opteron 6200 Series Processors (Interlagos)

Depending on the workload, expect up to 35% more processing throughput, 160% more cores and 73% more memory throughput because of several innovations, including a 16-core processor, boost capability up to 1GHz above base frequency, the means to operate (2) 128-bit floating point operations independently or combine them to run (1) 256-bit operation, and the ability to run add and multiple functions in the same clock cycle.

In terms of efficiency, you can get as little as 5.3W/core with 16 active cores and the processor power at idle has been reduced by up to 46% when compared to its predecessor, the AMD Opteron 6100 Series.  These fantastic efficiency benefits are a result of two innovations.

The modular architecture allows the processor to share resources for parts of the CPU that are generally low utilization and over provisioned, allowing for lower power consumption and lower prices.  For those areas that could potentially be a bottleneck, like the integer schedulers and pipeline, there are dedicated resources to help ensure maximum throughput.

By making the processor smarter, AMD has been able to improve power efficiency.  The new processors based on the “Bulldozer” architecture all support the 1.25 ultra low voltage memory.

For more information, click here.

A Message From Cisco About Cisco Unified Workspace

Cisco Unified Workspace

By Amy Blanchard

“While I was visiting my 6 year old niece in Denver last week, she amazed me with her agility when navigating the iPad.  I watched in awe as she surfed the American Girl website, downloaded videos from YouTube, and played games.  With children engaging so well with personal devices, it’s no wonder educators want to leverage technology as a learning tool.

While a BYOD-friendly environment certainly lends itself to greater productivity, mobility, flexibility and employee satisfaction, it also raises certain challenges, especially in education settings. After all, when it comes to schools, we’re not just talking about employees; staff, teachers and, most importantly, students all must be taken into consideration.”

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Adobe Acrobat XI — the Ideal Companion to Microsoft Office

Any time you are selling Microsoft Office software is the perfect time to grow your sales by offering Adobe Acrobat XI software along with it. Office 2010 gave users the ability to create static PDFs from Office applications, but adding Acrobat XI extends the functionality of Office with true Adobe dynamic PDF.

Top Benefits of Adobe Acrobat XI for Microsoft Office users:
• Re-use valuable content by converting existing PDFs to fully functional Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents, maintaining fonts, layout, and formatting
• Better and more easily secure PDF documents in Acrobat and Microsoft Office
• Edit PDF documents, including text and images, right in Acrobat — without having to return to the original application and regenerate the PDF
• Enable Adobe Reader users to comment on and save PDFs
• Incorporate audio, video and interactive content into PDFs
• Create Adobe PDF files with one-button ease from the Acrobat task ribbon in select Office 2010 applications

Handling Objections
Objection: “Microsoft offers PDF functionality in Office, so our organization doesn’t need Acrobat.”
What to Say: Acrobat XI helps users do more with Microsoft Office and work with PDF files more easily:
• Better PDF security — Acrobat offers robust document security for PDF files. Microsoft offers only open password security for PDF files created with Word and Publisher.
• More PDF capabilities — Acrobat XI enables users to combine PDF files, create and edit PDF Portfolios and collaborate via shared review capabilities.
• Wider PDF support — Acrobat integrates with virtually any desktop application your users rely on and provides tight integration with Microsoft Office for seamless PDF file creation.

For more information, visit www.adobe.com/partners to download the Acrobat XI Channel Kit today or contact Adobe Market Development Specialist Alex Dockstader at Alexandra.Dockstader@ingrammicro.com.

Visit the Trend Micro Cloud Security Blog to Read Up on APTs

Changing Seasons in Security bring APTs to Forefront
By Tom Kellermann

“Birds are beginning to leave their nests and fly south as winter slowly encroaches. The migration of our feathered friends ushers in the new season. As the seasons change so to have the targeted attacks in 2012. The surge of targeted attacks against remote users is exacerbating the Cybersecurity landscape. Remote access compromises are again the primary attack vector employed this year…”

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Brother Monthly Instant Rebates Exclusive to SMB Resellers

When you need reliable, high-speed, economical office solutions, look to Brother first. Brother offers monthly instant rebate promotions for our SMB customers. These instant rebates are on our top selling multi-function machines, printers, faxes, scanners and label machines. Please contact your Ingram rep for this month’s rebates and thank you very much for your continued support of Brother. Brother, expect more and get it!

Click here to register for the Brother Preferred Partner Program