Matt Pillar

ARTICLES BY MATT PILLAR

• New Year, New Focus

  11/1/2019

  In 2020, we’ll further refine — and more specifically define — our content efforts, by focusing on the quality and growth of www.VARinsights.com, www.MSPinsights.com, and www.SoftwareBusiness-Growth.com, which represent the largest and most active and engaged readerships in our IT channel media portfolio.

• Channel 2020: Predictions From A Few Of Our Favorite Prognosticators

  11/1/2019

  As we wind down the clock on 2019, it’s a good time to reflect on what the IT services business has in store for the kickoff of a new decade. We gathered a handful of our trusted advisors and asked them to share their thoughts on the best opportunities and biggest risks for the new year. 

• ASCII: 35 Years In The Making

  8/30/2019

  A retrospective look inside the organization that’s supported the IT channel since its inception, and a glimpse into the future at The ASCII Group

• IT And OT Are Now IoT

  8/30/2019

  We’ve been quite vocal about data facilitation and management becoming much more important to channel partners’ client success as time marches forward. The client’s perception of the value in networked IT systems is increasingly data- and intelligence-centric, and it’s decreasingly tactical. Applications and devices are simply expected to work. That’s taken for granted. If your sole purpose in business life is to keep applications and devices working, your business is officially a commodity.

• Fake News In Cybersecurity

  7/1/2019

  Ever since news spread that an HVAC contractor was the alleged vector in the massive Target breach of 2013, IT security consultants have been ringing out a common refrain: thoroughly vet your third-party contractors, especially the small ones. Restrict and monitor their access to your network and applications. Maybe even think about moving away from small business partners in favor of contracting with larger, well-heeled partners who are, presumably better equipped to thwart cyber threats.

• Security: Bake It In

  7/1/2019

  My conversations with IT services and vendor execs and independent channel business gurus have been lopsided of late. Everyone wants to talk about IT security in any manner of its forms. Lead the sale with security or lose it to the competition, say some. Ditch the managed services or VAR personas altogether and redefine yourself as a security provider, managed or otherwise, say others.

• Life Sciences: A Target-Rich Environment For Tech

  6/25/2019

  A bit earlier this month, I had a unique opportunity to travel with a few of my colleagues to the BIO International Convention in Philadelphia. It’s a large conference and exposition, attended by some 17,000 life sciences professionals from 67 different countries. The event focuses largely on the pharma industry. Exhibitors and attendees span the gamut from biopharmaceutical manufacturing equipment builders to therapeutic research scientists to contract pharmaceutical manufacturers. It was a strange new place for a 20-year IT writer. What in the world was I doing there?

• The Channel’s RPA Opportunity

  5/1/2019

  Why RPA is the next big thing, and how Ashling Partners is pioneering its adoption.

• How MNJ Technologies Powered Through A Revenue Stall

  5/1/2019

  For this hundred-million-dollar VAR, beating its biggest growth stall in 17 years required giving up some executive control to a firebrand with new — and at times unorthodox — ideas.

• The New IT Sales Network

  5/1/2019

  "Successful partners will figure out that the intent is not to make 100 percent of $100 but 10 percent of $10,000.” Those words from Forrester Principal Analyst of Global Channels’ Jay McBain have stuck with me. He said them during an interview for a feature story in the February issue of Channel Executive magazine. Smaller pieces of bigger deals. It’s not just an upstream growth strategy; it’s the new reality of a splintered market and loosening definitions of traditional IT service provision business models.