From The Editor | October 23, 2014

From ASCII Atlantic City: Top 5 Tech Trends Of 2014

jim roddy

By Jim Roddy, VP of Marketing, RSPA

From ASCII Atlantic City

One of the reasons I enjoy attending channel conferences is the opportunity to hear from a variety of perspectives. You think you’ve heard every angle on our industry, but then someone explains their perspective and you think about the IT channel in a different way.

That was the case today at the ASCII Success Summit in Atlantic City when Mark McLaughlin, the director of partner sales at Comcast Business, took to the main stage. Here is McLaughlin’s perspective on the top five technology trends this year.

  1. Web-Scale IT: Cloud delivery of IT
  2. Hybrid Cloud and IT-as-a Service Broker: No cloud service stands alone. Mastery over hybrid IT (hardware moving into the cloud space) will be executed by solutions providers.
  3. Mobile Apps and Applications: Improve the customer experience and incorporate the attributes of successful mobile apps.
  4. Software-Defined Anything: Virtualization provides a foundation for software-defined anything.
  5. The Internet of Everything: 26 billion units will be installed by 2020. Incremental revenue will exceed $300B, mostly in services.

McLaughlin also provided four reasons why this is changing:

  • The cloud is a source of new technology options that are easily accessible to business customers.
  • End user customers have different buying expectations from technology partners.
  • Major buying decisions are being made by line of business owners.
  • Buyers want one partner to provide their complex solutions.

McLaughlin also preached a philosophy the Business Solutions team has been promoting for years. “As we move from a hardware business into a services business, it’s imperative you understand how to model your business from a recurring revenue perspective,” he said.

The ASCII Success Summit – Atlantic City is being held October 22-23 at the Bally’s Atlantic City Hotel and Casino in New Jersey. It is the last of eight solution provider-focused conferences ASCII hosted in 2014. For more information on ASCII, go to www.BSMinfo.com/go/InsideASCII.