CRN Pipeline 2024 kicked off at the Sheraton Grand Mirage Resort in the Gold Coast with more than 150 Australian resellers, vendors and distributors in attendance.
Focusing on the theme of evolution in the channel, CRN Pipeline Day One saw Australia’s top technology talent hear and share expertise across a range of pressing topics.
Microsoft’s Asia channel sales director Sarah Bowden kicked off the event on August 13 with a deep dive into the business AI journey.
Noting that more Australian businesses are moving from Copilot experimentation to GenAI deployment, Bowden explained why it is essential for partners to build strong capabilities in these technologies.
“If you're not eating your own dog food, why would your customers want to eat it?,” she said.
“There is so much opportunity with Copilot. But at the same time, how do you help your businesses understand the value that you're creating?”
Speaking about Microsoft’s own role in helping partners generate the best value for customers.
“We're getting really close with our customers,” she explained. “They come to us with a partner that's got this capability. Now in our tools at Microsoft, [our salespeople] have visibility of our partners, designations and their specialisations. Machine learning is bubbling up that capability to help us add and attach partners to those opportunities.”
The implications GenAI has for the channel was also made clear through the partnership of ONGC and Ecosure.
Brisbane-based Ecosure is one of the largest ecologically specialised companies in Australia, and has been working with ONGC to bring Copilot into its business.
Speaking during a panel session, Steve Dawson, CEO of ONGC Systems and Phill Bracks, CEO of Ecosure, explained how the use of Copilot had played a significant role in the latter’s business, especially helping with areas such as writing tender proposals.
“The ability for us to get single point of entry data capture and the workflows to point that data to the right people to make decisions is huge, and it's huge for any business,” Bracks told the audience.
Speaking more broadly about AI’s evolution, Dawson added: “I'm a big advocate for AI in businesses actually promoting more human-to-human connection. And I think tools like Copilot are definitely going to force us to stop being on the keyboard and actually become a bit more human-connected.”
AvePoint ‘s Oliver Gohl, Barhead’s John Orrock and Platinum Technology’s Steve Raw also took to the stage to unveil their strategies to capitalise on the AI opportunity.
Speaking during a panel session, Gohl, however, noted this has come amid a growing fatigue around the presence of AI in everyday tech conversations.
“I think everyone's a little bit exhausted with GenAI,” he said. “AI-washing is probably the hottest topic on Wall Street. Everyone's been following it; about 94 percent of companies their last earnings call mentioned and AI.”
For Orrock, the industry’s openness towards AI-driven solutions such as Copilot has been key. “I think, in the in the past, but we've had a lot of pushbacks around features like security. But we're not getting that push back anymore. We're basically treating it as a gateway.”
Discussing Platinum Technology’s own strategies for future growth, Raw added that changes in the tech landscape were allowing the company to work with companies it had never encountered before.
In addition to that, however, he noted that Platinum Technology remains focused on its current client base -- and ensuring they are constantly moving in the right direction.
However, AI wasn’t the only subject on the agenda. For panelists Nick Beaugeard, of World of Workflows, and IMF’s John Mackenzie, evolving from a traditional managed services provider into a business enabler is a key priority.
For Intel regional director, Client AI PC Category, Dino Strkljevic, preparing for the next wave of technology innovation means having the right hardware underpinning it.
Speaking on stage, Strkljevic said: “A great AI PC has to be a great PC, first and foremost in commercial minds.”
Trends and transformation
Following afternoon tea, delegates were once again immersed in a deep discussion, this time covering transformative business models for partners.
Astrid Groves, general manager of IT & Edge at APC by Schneider Electric, was joined on stage by Norm Jefferies, managing director of Truis and Faith Rees, founder and director of SixPivot, co-founder and CEO of Cloud Ctrl to unpack how technology innovation has disrupted current models.
Rees, for example, spoke of cloud’s impact on partners’ running costs and predictive modelling.
“What we've seen is that convergence with it and finance really fighting over what cloud costs mean, and who owns it, and who's going to manage those things coming forward,” she said.
For Jeffries, one of the biggest concerns is around constantly remaining relevant to customers, which led to an overhaul of Truis' own business model.
“Probably the fear many of us as owners of the business here is that you want to stay relevant to your customers,” he said. “We felt our existing model like that and we just want[ed] to try something different.”
For Groves, however, the key word is upskilling; whether exploring sustainability or AI, partners must have the right skills to meet future needs, she explained.
“I can't stress how much or how important leads to continually upskill your staff and leverage some of the resources that are available,” she added.
In his presentation to the audience, HPE’s Aman Deep, APJ Lead for channels, also echoed remarks concerning the rapid pace of change.
“The industry is disrupted, not only from a channel point of view, but from a customer point of view,” he said. “All of our customers are disrupted.”
Rounding off the afternoon was another panel session concerning the future of vendor and distribution relationships.
This was discussed by Chuong Mai-Viet, managing director at Fuse Technology , Erica Smith, head of marketing and vendor alliance at Blue Connections IT, Steven Gray MAICD, founder and director at Utilise IT and Scott Mathrick director and business owner at Kaine Mathrick Tech.
To wrap the day up, Tech Research Asia’s Trevor Clarke delivered his keynote on the evolution of the channel.
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