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LiveBlog from Managing for Success 2012 Keynote – Day 2

June 27, 2012 , 0 Frank Gurnee

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Keynote Speaker: Karl Palachuk

Topic: Keynote “Only the excellent will survive”

Conference Starts@9:00am PST

9:00 Karl comes on and discusses recap of day 1,  Bob Godgart gave a great overview of the future ahead and changes in the industry. Len DiCostanza and Dave Sobel provided pricing information importance of measuring and metrics, Barbara Dove spoke about Marketing and George Sierchio discussed Mergers and Acquisitions (watch for a full story on this topic on lookscloudy today)

9:10 Trends in the industry Moore’s Law technology and everything we do is accelerating, specialization becomes clear and important.  Importance of professionalism through peer interaction, conferences, certifications, associations, and training. Larger companies are forcing smaller companies to be more professional and IT solution businesses are being held to a higher standard.

9:15 Cloud solutions are changing the market. The market is tough and it continues Karl sees the next 5-10yrs as a tough market to be in. The biggest trend is dis intermediary the direct model is becoming more prominent. Microsoft strategies Karl believes Microsoft wants to find an elegant solution that allows them to own a market without maintenance. The perfect product for Microsoft is one without support. Majority of support calls for MS on SBS was licensing. This is a great point, Microsoft has created nightmare situations with licensing. Karl points out essentials was a much better way of licensing MS just included a specific number of licenses which brought their support costs down.

9:24 MSFT is creating easier ways for typical users to manage and install products without technical knowledge. The evolution has been that providers or partners are being eliminated based on this. It may or may not be that MS has purposely created this or it has just happened based on an expected easier experience.

9:28 The way to stay in the game is to not chase the customer. Low touch solutions and creating products and services that you don’t have to support but make money on is the only way to stay relevant. This speaks to done for you services and is the forward thinking mindset behind the ExchangeDefender managed messaging solution.

9:35 Excellence and differentiation are important in a changing environment. The day will include topics that cover this topic.

9:41 Bundling services and adding low cost products to your bundle over time increases value and helps to retain customers. Staff reductions are another way to reduce costs. I agree that creating a slim, well oiled machine, allows your company to run as efficient as possible. With cloud and done for you services a sales centric company allows greatest profitability.

9:51 Keynote Closes