9/11 20th Anniversary: The Channel Reflects
The entire world changed that day. We asked some members of the channel to share their personal memories.
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Marla Ellerman, now executive director of Mobile Marketing and Technology, is the former publisher of Channel Partners. It was Ellerman who decided not to shut down the Channel Partners Conference & Expo that was taking place in Washington, D.C.
““The devastating news of the 9/11 attacks came in the middle of our opening keynote address. At first there was sheer panic, and we weren’t sure what to do. Shut down the show? Forge ahead? As the event host, it was up to me to decide. Once the airports were closed, we became stranded, so the choice was made for me and the show went on but in a different way. We came together as a channel community to mourn the terrible tragedy. We ate together, drank together, watched the news together and some of us even did business. We had nothing else to do but wait and worry. To this day when I run into some of these partners and vendors (they know who they are), we still talk about our experience.”
Like the attendees at the Channel Partners Conference & Expo, Jim Satterwhite, CEO of Venture Pointe, was stranded by the airline stoppage while away from home on a business trip.
“When I did make it home, I found that my car was one of the very few left in the airport garage. The police had come through and towed off any car that could not be actively tied to a local address and flight schedule. The car was literally ringed with police tape and emergency cones. It was very eerie removing all the tape from my car and driving out of the garage with literally no one around. There were no gate workers, nothing — just dead silence throughout the airport property.”
“As for technology, I’m pretty sure we all just had BlackBerrys back then, no FaceTime, Zoom or Teams. Communication was much harder than it would be now. That being said, we also were all better protected against disinformation being spread. Fear and anxiety were high, but people talked to each other, called each other sat with each other sharing their fears and anger.”
“What I recall the most is that America was American. Everyone stood with each other. People came out of their houses and sat with their neighbors. People called longtime friends just to check on them. The country was united. As terrible a time that was for the country, I think it was also the last time the entire country stood together. Wish we had more of that now versus where we have come to as a country.”
For Mary Jo Johnson, CEO and owner of EO Johnson Business Technologies, memories of 9/11 include one incredible twist of fate.
“A few days after 9/11 I heard from a fellow employee whose daughter worked at one of the Towers. She was one of a number of others involved in a downsizing event at the office. So when she left her office the afternoon of 9/10, she was told to report to work the next day at a specific time to go over benefits and the rest of the paperwork. Early the morning of 9/11 she was called by her human resource personnel who informed her to not come in that day as there was some issue with the building and they would reschedule. At the time of the call neither she nor they knew that the office building had been hit by a jet. While it was unfortunate that she had been phased out of a job, it was a blessing that she wasn’t there.”
Frank Rauch is head of worldwide channel sales for Check Point Software Technologies. Like Mary Jo Johnson, he remembers an incredible twist of fate that took place on 9/11. At the time, he was a newly minted HP employee, the result of Compaq being acquired.
“On the 10th, I hosted an event for partners. I had finally talked my vice president, Jack Novia, into coming to Philadelphia. What I didn’t know at the time was that Jack canceled his seat on the doomed United 175 flight to be with my partners.”
“Like the rest of the world, the channel paused and then rallied to help businesses directly impacted by the tragedy. We lost some great colleagues that day in the North Tower. Carly Fiorina and Michael Capellas reassured the new HP company, partners and customers.”
“Personal technology became more valued and important. Physical security became the precursor to digital security. The channel was serving a much more aware customer base with a sense of urgency.”
“The aftermath of the attack changed everything, including the channel. I took my first flight two weeks after 9/11 to host a meeting between Cris Conde (former CEO of Sungard) and Michael Capellas. The conversation was somber, different and charted the future.”
Sam Ruggeri, executive vice president of True Digital Security, also benefited from a twist of fate on 9/11.
“I was supposed to be in the city that day but decided to work from the Long Island office. Why I made that decision I’ll never know. I saw the smoking pile and to this day, I visit the memorial and still shake my head.”
“On that day, I lost several friends that I will truly “Never Forget.” I know how fragile life is without a doubt and truly understand the adage about never taking life for granted. The outpouring of people wanting to help showed the good in humanity when it truly is needed.”
As a deeply rooted New Yorker — born and raised — 9/11 had a tremendous effect on me. Even when everyone is going about their day-to-day business, I don’t believe anyone takes their mind off what happened that day. The sadness and bitterness still remain. I take great pride on how we all came together to help, heal and mourn. That’s what got us through it and why we are “New York Strong.”
In the case of Dany Bouchedid, founder and CEO of COLOTRAQ, the events of 9/11 made him the target of misdirected rage and prejudice.
“From the first moment I boarded a plane after 9/11 I could feel every single guy on that plane sizing me up and giving me dirty looks. And it was this way for every plane ride I took. I even shaved my beard after the first few times this happened, so as to not look as much of an Arab.”
“And this wasn’t exclusive to flying. It happened in pretty much any public place — supermarket, retail store, sports or concert venue — anywhere where people might fear a terrorist attack. Hell, even people I knew and friends ‘joking’ around with me for years after that calling me a terrorist until I finally spoke up and said it bothered me.”
“The thing is, to most people, we ‘all look the same’ and they don’t understand or care that some Arabs are not Muslim and even the vast majority of Muslims are peaceful people. I guess it’s just easier to fear and hate than to educate yourself. We are seeing that often these days.”
Marcial Velez, CEO of Xperteks, was able to transform the tragedy of 9/11 into inspiration and action.
“Even though the world seemed like it was all falling apart during the 9/11 attack, I was deeply inspired by the courage and perseverance of my fellow New Yorkers who ran toward danger and gave their lives to help others. I thought that if they had the nerve to run into harm’s way to help others, then ‘What could I possibly do that could ever match their bravery?’ I initially believed there was nothing that I could do that would be as brave. I wasn’t a firefighter, health care worker or any sort of public servant. However, I am a problem solver. Helping people by solving their technology issues is just what I do. Putting my problem-solving skills to work as a full-time entrepreneur was the bravest thing I could do. Everyone else told me I was crazy to start a business two months after 9/11. Nevertheless, I gathered the strength and the courage to start Xperteks as a pioneer in the MSP industry.”
“Looking back, I can’t bear thinking about the tragedy of that day. Instead, I reflect on how many lives we’ve impacted as a company since then. I think about how many careers we’ve launched and how many clients we’ve helped grow. How through all the ups and downs of owning a business, I have personally grown as an executive.”
There’s a Tibetan saying, “Tragedy should be utilized as a source of strength.” By not allowing terrorism to paralyze my future, I found the strength and courage to forge ahead as an entrepreneur. While I will never forget the devastation and lives lost on 9/11, I will always remember all the families and businesses we’ve helped personally and professionally since that tragic day 20 years ago.
Ken Lamneck, president and CEO of Insight, remembers how difficult communication was on 9/11.
“So much has changed in the last 20 years, with technology having a profound impact on how we communicate and gather information. Think about the delays that occurred while alerting people to the attacks on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. We lacked a true connection to the world. The ubiquity of smartphones, social media and the cloud didn’t exist and news spread too slowly. Compare this to our last major crisis a year and a half ago and how resilient we’ve become. Organizations transitioned practically overnight to remote work and transacting digitally. Our channel plays a critical role in continuing to strengthen the world’s digital infrastructure, security and mobile communications, so we can stay ahead of new and evolving threats to our well-being.”
Michael Goldstein is president of LAN Infotech.
“9/11 changed our lives forever. Many of us lost family, friends and colleagues. We watched in horror as two of the largest structures in the world toppled. Technology also changed forever. Advances in critical communications and infrastructure received a major upgrade and companies also reworked new BCDR policies.”
Peter Fidler is president and founding partner of WCA Technologies.
“I remember being in the city at the time and being in shock. Business did not matter. Only the safety of family, friends and co-workers did. After a few days we started to get calls from clients about getting back up and running. This began the discussion of resiliency, disaster recovery and work from home.”
Dave White, managing director of U.K.-bsed ITRM, remembers the nearly devastating impact 9/11 had on the company. The company was around two years old at the time and had been formed “without funding, with staff and without a single day one customer,” he said.
The firm dealt with a number of financial institutions and as a result saw a dramatic drop in revenue. “The vast majority of projects that were live were put on hold and those opportunities at presales stage were scrapped.”
“It took several years for our business to recover to the position it was in prior to September 11th 2001, but our hardship was truly insignificant in comparison to the many thousands of people whose lives were changed forever.”
Steve Lewis is CEO of Dataprise.
“I suspect my day was like so many others — watching the events unfold with fear and sadness, but also uplifted by how our country came together as one. I’m grateful that my family, friends and colleagues were so fortunate when so many others were not.”
“Today my stepson is a firefighter / paramedic and runs into burning buildings and saves lives on a regular basis. The truly remarkable aspect of 9/11 was the first responders– police, fire, medical personnel and other heroes — who stepped, up and with no thought of personal safety went to work to save lives.”
“9/11 provided a key impetus to remote managed services providing clear illustration to all the benefits of having redundant distributed infrastructure that could be remotely managed. In these respects, I’d suggest that 9/11 had a profound impact on shaping IT topology as we know it.”
“But in the end, my takeaway is deep sorrow for the lives that were lost and tremendous admiration for America’s first responders.”
Paul Cronin is CEO of Apogee IT Services.
“One important lesson for us as IT provider that we can gleam from this catastrophic event of 911 is that we will always be under attack and we must be on guard for the predictable and unrecognizable threats. With the current rate of adoption in technologies and advancements in emerging technologies like IOT and AI the opportunity for a cyberattack attach from foreign state actors has never been greater. Recent cyberattacks on water distribution systems, public transportation, utilities, businesses and financial institutions is evidence that there is a major focus on disrupting the world we call home. The threats come in ways that we have never seen before. Our roles as stewards of our client’s IT environment requires us to educate them, prepare them and protect them from all types of enemies and forms of attacks. This is why we can’t sleep and why our clients depend on us to protect them.”
Holly Dowden is vice president of marketing and demand generation for Ntiva.
“9/11 was a tragedy that none of us will never forget. Since that day, a new generation has grown up with few if any memories of the event. They’ve also grown up in a world that has experienced substantial changes, especially in technology.”
“I’m not sure that any of us knew how dramatically things would shift, from the way news now spreads to changes in our communications infrastructure.”
“But along with these digital advances came challenges. I’m thinking specifically of cyber warfare. It’s no longer planes crashing into buildings or explosive devices that are the greatest threat. Major changes are needed in order to safeguard critical infrastructure, financial networks, health care … the list goes on. And when it comes to surveillance and cyber protection, we’re going to have to make some hard decisions on the balance between privacy invasion vs. government power in order to maintain national security.”
“The pace of digital change is not showing any signs of slowing, and we have some big challenges that lie ahead, especially when it comes to cyber security. This has become an urgent matter and it will likely require a coordinated global response to address this alarming trend, which has the power to significantly disrupt business as we know it.”
James Turgal is vice president of cyber risk, strategy and transformation for Optiv.
“Having been a special agent for the FBI, I have seen crisis situations large and small. I have arrested, interviewed and looked criminals in the face, but Sept. 11, 2001, was the day that evil came to the United States. Americans witnessed real evil firsthand.”
The physical attacks on Washington, D.C., and New York were a pivot point in American history. Innovation and technology (in the form of commercial jet airplanes) were used as a vehicle to carry out the attacks. We were forced to identify weaknesses in our physical security systems. We were awakened to the intersection of physical security and cybersecurity.”
“The paper-based system I created at the FBI to ensure terrorists could never get on another commercial airplane has become a beacon of international intelligence fusion and cyber acuity (the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center). The attacks changed the FBI and the intelligence community forever, presenting the realization that future wars would be fought in cyberspace, where malicious code and malware are the weapons of choice.”
Carl Katz, senior vice president of worldwide partner sales for ThreatProtector Cybersecurity Advisors, offered some thoughts on how 9/11 impacted the path of technology.
“The 9/11 attack was an unprecedented tragic event that made every American realize that we are not immune to the potential of an attack emanating beyond our borders. The attack just happened to occur during an unprecedented technological evolution that would eventually bring the world together through stronger networks and newer technologies. At the time, products such as DSL, fiber optics, VoIP, MPLS and others were being made available to sell within the channel. That caused an acceleration in adoption and brought the world closer. Increasing sales and decreasing the sales cycle through a ‘trusted adviser’ alternate channel model provided technology companies the benefit of scale without the upfront costs of hiring direct sales reps. Although tragic, the 9/11 event helped the channel rise from the ‘dark side’ to a viable mainstream sales division within technology companies.”
“In the aftermath of 9/11 U.S. businesses realized that their networks weren’t as robust and redundant as previously thought. After the World Trade Center was hit, millions of customers’ internet and networks went down. This event was a contributing factor in accelerating the need for a more fully meshed network — the impetus for the rise of MPLS. In order to have an effective MPLS network, partners were tasked to sell complex solutions to create a unique topology limiting downtime. As opposed to a direct sales rep providing one offering, partners were trained on multiple solutions so that they alone could create a more holistic network topology. This proved to be valuable to prospective customers.”
Shannon Hulbert, CEO of Opus Interactive, wasn’t working in the channel on 9/11. In the years since then, though, she has witnessed the tremendous advances that technology has made.
“At the time, I worked for a vinyl sign company that specialized in in-store displays. Project management for Hollywood Video graphics took up 60% of my workload – they were opening a store every two days at the time. On the morning of the attacks, I was in Klamath Falls, Oregon. I spent the morning watching the news from my family’s home there and drove home during the evening. I remember in the morning switching channels to get the most up-to-date information from every news source that was reporting — and in the evening, arriving home to a silence overhead that was broken only by patrolling F-15s. All other planes had been grounded.”
“We’ve come a long way from television as the news source. And e-commerce and cloud-based streaming are making analog solutions like brick and mortar and DVD rentals a preference, not an absolute. A single Hollywood Video store stands today – it’s a novelty Airbnb”.
“Today, the world has the cloud. And social media is always on, so humanity faces tragedy together in real time. And, planes have the internet. So much so that when Alexi Navalni returned to Russia recently, journalists, family and supporters used a flight tracking application to see when and where he was landing. News crews were on the ground and Navalni and his wife tweeted before, during and at landing. The event went viral on social media around the world.”
“As an organization you can see the evolution in our service offering. We’ve evolved from ISP to colocation to cloud to hybrid and multicloud provider.”
Max Silber, vice president of mobility and IoT for MetTel, was close to Ground Zero on 9/11. The events of that day made him realize what was most important to him.
“It’s hard to believe that it’s been 20 years since that heartbreaking day. I was living and working in the financial district, a few blocks south of the Twin Towers. I remember walking my dog on that clear morning and noticing something strange. Pieces of paper were floating all around me, like it was a ticker-tape parade, only they had burn marks on them. I still had no idea Tower One was on fire. I dropped my dog off at my apartment and started my walk to work when the second plane roared over my head, moments before the horrible impact. That moment changed me and my perception of personal success. Heading a tech firm in the midst of the dot com era, I was focused on innovation and personal financial success. We were transforming point-to-point terrestrial and satellite circuits to a new, more redundant protocol called IP. Something that still benefits business today, especially over the recent pandemic. But at that moment, I understood the importance of people, above all else. Less than a year later I met my beautiful wife and started a family. My advice: Respect people and love what you do.”
Max Silber, vice president of mobility and IoT for MetTel, was close to Ground Zero on 9/11. The events of that day made him realize what was most important to him.
“It’s hard to believe that it’s been 20 years since that heartbreaking day. I was living and working in the financial district, a few blocks south of the Twin Towers. I remember walking my dog on that clear morning and noticing something strange. Pieces of paper were floating all around me, like it was a ticker-tape parade, only they had burn marks on them. I still had no idea Tower One was on fire. I dropped my dog off at my apartment and started my walk to work when the second plane roared over my head, moments before the horrible impact. That moment changed me and my perception of personal success. Heading a tech firm in the midst of the dot com era, I was focused on innovation and personal financial success. We were transforming point-to-point terrestrial and satellite circuits to a new, more redundant protocol called IP. Something that still benefits business today, especially over the recent pandemic. But at that moment, I understood the importance of people, above all else. Less than a year later I met my beautiful wife and started a family. My advice: Respect people and love what you do.”
Tomorrow is the 9/11 20th anniversary. All of us remember where we were and what we were doing when we first heard about planes flying into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, as well as the plane that crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania after passengers rushed the terrorists.
Nearly 3,000 innocent people died in those attacks: 246 in the four planes, 2,606 in and around the World Trade Center and 125 at the Pentagon. In addition, in the years since the attacks there have been more than 2,000 deaths attributed to 9/11 illnesses.
The attack on America changed the entire world. Our lifestyles, modes of communication, travel and work habits — and, sadly, the way we look at and treat one another — have never been the same.
Sept.11, 2001, was the second day of the inaugural Channel Partners Conference & Expo. It was being held at the Marriott Wardman Park in Washington, D.C.
Threatpoint’s Tara Seals
Tara Seals, then an editor with Channel Partners and now senior editor at Threatpost, was at that conference. A few weeks later she posted a blog on what that day had been like.
Because everyone at the show was essentially stranded due to the grounding of all airplanes, the decision was made to continue with the planned events. The Expo Hall remained open, panel discussions took place, session speakers (including Vince Bradley and PlanetOne’s Ted Schuman) made their presentations and keynotes were delivered.
“No Way to ‘Mark Yourself Safe’”
In looking back on that day, Seals recalls people gathering around televisions trying to learn what was happening, “In the era before smartphones, TV broadcast was the only conduit for information.”
People had cellphones, of course. We all remember the sad stories of last messages that victims left on loved ones’ phones. But this was before the day of phones that could take photos and videos or surf the internet. As Seals notes, “There was no Facebook or social media. No way to ‘mark yourself safe.’ Only a hope that someone would answer the phone.”
No Such Thing as Telecommuting
Seals also remembers that even after people were able to return home, many were unable to return to work. “We couldn’t work from home,” she said. “We didn’t have the technology in place. Eventually they put in VoIP and telecommuting, but this was long before that — and obviously long before working at home from your laptop, keeping in touch, collaborating and getting work done via the cloud and mobile devices and web-based apps.”
“The stark difference between how companies were able to deal with COVID and how companies in 2001 would have had to deal with terror-threat closures — different crisis, same level of risk in many ways — is really notable. Getting employees to agree to not be paid in the event of an issue was actually seen as a viable alternative to address business risk [in 2001]. And obviously the innovation that’s happened between now and then is head-spinning. And it translates directly to how the channel opportunity has changed — not just in terms of what channel partners sell, but how they sell it, the conversations they can have.”
Like Seals, many other members of the channel have vivid memories of that day and how it has impacted their lives. Scroll through the gallery above to share their stories.
Want to contact the author directly about this story? Have ideas for a follow-up article? Email Buffy Naylor or connect with her on LinkedIn. |
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