Hang With the Lab Rat Pack At Channel Partners Las Vegas

By Bob Titsch

What started as a casual conversation among our editors, a few agents and some industry suppliers about what they could do to help channel partners build a lucrative practice around cloud-migration products has morphed into a group of advocates driving the first-ever Cloud Migration Lab during Channel Partners Las Vegas, March 16-18.

In the spirit of the Expo’s host city, we’re calling the people involved in the project the “Lab Rat Pack.” The famous Rat Pack in the 1960s included Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford and Joey Bishop. Often, when one entertainer was scheduled to perform in Las Vegas, the rest of the Pack would join him for an impromptu show. Their events were, not surprisingly, very popular.

Similarly, we expect our Lab Rat Pack to draw lots of interest and grow in numbers as channel partners flow through the Lab to take in a range of presentations and demos showing them how to migrate their clients’ data and applications from on-premises systems to the cloud.

The Lab will have a stage and seating area for scheduled “performances,” and several kiosks sponsored by leading cloud solution providers including Microsoft, Rackspace, Evolve IP, Sungard, NaviSite, 2600hz and SkyKick. The goal is to give channel partners a first-hand look at the simplicity of setting up or moving a variety of workloads with recovery and scale. To that end, sponsors and channel partners often will team together in on-stage and kiosk presentations to share their insights and provide case studies as well as real-time examples of workload migrations.

The Lab runs for two days. On Wed., March 16, the focus will be on end-user application migration involving email, office-productivity applications and data. On Thurs., March 17, the emphasis will be on business-application migration for purposes of disaster recovery.  The education program is still under development, but the following 30-minute presentations have already been scheduled:

March 16

March 17

A frequent lament among members of our Lab Rat Pack who already sell and implement cloud solutions is that many of their colleagues – especially agents with a background in telecom – resist the transition to cloud because it’s unfamiliar, and they presume it’s really difficult. But it’s simpler to get started than newcomers think. (Did you know that you can become a Microsoft digital partner of record for your clients who already use Microsoft cloud solutions, and earn additional commissions without having to do much of anything but service the account as you ordinarily do?)  

More importantly, given the accelerating rate at which businesses are moving to the cloud, it’s essential that channel partners add migration products to their repertoire not only to increase residual income, but to protect their book of business. 

Sinatra once said, “People often remark that I’m pretty lucky. Luck is only important in so far as getting the chance to sell yourself at the right moment. After that, you’ve got to have talent and know how to use it.” That’s pretty good advice for the channel — you get a chance to sell, you need the chops to back it all up. That’s our goal. So stop by and join our Lab Rat Pack. We want to help you better understand the cloud migration process, the relevant technologies and their value to end-user customers so you can tap into the opportunity.

Bob Titsch is the Cloud Migration Program Manager for the Channel Partners Conference and Expo. He can be reached at [email protected].