HTG Moves Toward More Future-Looking Offerings In 2010

Arlin Sorensen, founder of HTG Peer Groups, and I had an interesting conversation about the 2010 plans for that peer-to-peer networking group, including agreeing that we're concerned about the ability for small MSPs to handle the economic recovery.

Sorensen says HTG is focusing on offering some expanded interaction in 2010, namely some groups where business owners with like businesses can connect. "We typically strive for diversity within our peer groups," explains Sorensen. "But we have gotten some feedback that our members sometimes wanted the opportunity to talk to like partners, so we are organizing some of those meetings as well next year."

He adds that HTG is also trying to add more tactical, strategy focused offerings that highlight the future and what steps VARs and MSPs need to take to build toward the recovery portion of the recession that locked up so much capital the last few months. "Much of our focus is backward-looking now — topics like financials — and we want to shift to a more future-looking approach, so we'll start talking about growth, standards of measurement, budgeting, those sort of topics."

At that point, Sorensen and I shared our fears that many MSPs and VARs are not prepared for the point in the future where the recession has faded and recovery begins. "Our members are traditionally cash poor, and they are going to need to be able to handle that wave of work that happens when customers start spending money, and we're trying to get through to them to be prepared," says Sorensen.

The worry, of course, is that customers who have put network upgrades and project work on hold will be ready to launch those projects, and what the work done immediately. That demand could quite likely put a squeeze on IT providers in terms of credit needed to buy hardware and software, the internal infrastructure needed to handle the influx of project planning and billing, and staff, or lack of it. "I'm worried we'll lose more of these guys to the recovery than we did to the recession," cautions Sorensen.