Mar/Apr 19 - ChannelVision Magazine

EMERGENT If companies are ready to hire staff for a project, it’s pretty safe to assume they are seriously considering or ready to implement that project. A recent survey by job search site Hired suggests channel partners would benefit from having some proficiency, or at least the ability to talk about, blockchain. Ac- cording to Hired, there’s been a 517% increase in demand for software engineers with blockchain development skills in the past year, and blockchain development skills ranked in the top three job openings in almost every global region. Whether or not enterprises have formal IoT initiatives in place, they are already collecting data from a wide and rapidly expanding array of edge devices, or endpoints, say researchers at 451, and the mountains of data collected are used for a variety of purposes. Convey Services launched its new channel pro- gram for agents or sales partners to refer or resell Convey’s content and marketing portals and portal networks along with supporting services. Convey says it is providing an opportunity for partners to help their customers reduce the high cost and time drain of de- signing, engineering and launching a web portal solu- tion to support sales, operations or membership. Convey is rolling out its portal solutions as partner relationship management (PRM) systems, customer re- source centers, internal knowledge centers and member- ship platforms. Portals can operate as stand-alone solu- tions or be connected together to form industry-focused portal networks. “Our new channel program is fundamental to Convey’s go-to-market strategy, as it takes the complexity out of delivering portal solutions to a variety of vertical markets,” said Carolyn Bradfield, CEO of Convey. “Convey has had tremendous success in accelerating channel revenue in the telecommunications, cloud and IT services industry with our PRM systems deployed to over 50 master agents and channel vendors, who collectively have 23,000 plus sales partners actively engaged. Sales agents, VARs and MSPs can now offer Convey portal services to their cli- ents and receive a referral commission or resell services to their clients with a buy rate/licensing fee. Referring or reselling Convey portal solutions produces a solid recur- ring revenue stream with little or no participation from the agent or sales partner.” Convey’s channel program supports four different partnership models. In a referral sale, partners introduce a prospect then step aside and let Convey take the lead to manage the sale, deliver the portal and manage the customer relationship, said the company. Resellers and system integrators can integrate existing technology with Convey portals to offer a more complex solution, then in- voice and own the customer relationship. Advertising and marketing agencies add portals to their service offerings to generate incremental revenue through portal manage- ment, graphics, content generation and advertising. Mem- ber organizations, non-profits and industry associations offer portals to their members or affiliates and can create an on-going content feed through a portal network. Blockchain Chatter Convey Launches Partner Program for Web Portal Solutions Endpoint Data in Use Endpoint Sources for IoT Data Does your organization gather data or information from any equipment, devices or other connected endpoints? Source: 451 Research Datacenter IT equipment Smartphones and end-user devices Cameras/surveillance equipment Datacenter facilities equipment Buildings and other structures Industry-specific/field equipment Environmental sensors Factory equipment No, we do not gather data from connected endpoints Devices in supply chain Retail operations and physical advertising Automobiles/fleet equipment Medical devices Other 48% 35% 33% 29% 27% 23% 22% 18% 18% 17% 17% 16% 11% 2% Demand Growth for Engineering Roles Blockchain engineer 517% Security engineer 132% Embedded engineer 76% Data engineer 38% Back-end engineer 33% ML engineer 27% Mobile engineer 15% Full-stack engineer 7% Front-end engineer 4% Source: Hired 82 Percent of CIOs recently surveyed by ASG Technologies who say that they plan to increase investment in their data management initiatives by at least 10 percent in 2019. A quarter of CIOs say they will increase investment in data strategy by more than 30 percent. 10 Channel Vision | March - April, 2019