As the traditional “channel” for technology product and service sales mixes with new options and new buyers, IT industry association CompTIA has announced the formation of its Business Applications Advisory Council to bring clarity to this fast-changing market.
“Companies represented on the council come from the ‘as a service’ world, with applications and solutions delivered via the cloud and sold to customers as subscriptions,” says Annette Taber, vice president, industry outreach, CompTIA.
“But while their route to market may differ from traditional channel companies, we believe there are many opportunities for the two to co-exist and cooperate,” adds Taber. “Our goal is to identify opportunities for collaboration and create the tools to make it possible.”
Marc Monday, vice president of global business development for Concur, and Sunir Shah, co-founder and president of the Small Business Web, have been named co-chairs of the CompTIA Business Applications Advisory Council.
“Now more than ever technology providers and partnering organizations need to be agile,” says Monday. “As the IT market shifts to the cloud, it’s important to continue to grow and strengthen the traditional IT partner community, whilst embracing the changes in the marketplace. Partners and vendors alike need to evolve to address the blurring of lines between IT, operations, finance, and other functional departments that rely on and increasingly self-manage SaaS apps and cloud services.”
“We look forward to working with other CompTIA members to improve business models for both vendors and partners, address common industry and regulatory concerns, and facilitate market relationships to build an ecosystem of SaaS vendors and partners than can provide complete solutions to customer/client problems,” says Shah.
John Scola, global vice president, cloud channels and transformation, SAP, will serve as the council’s vice-chair. Other council members include:
- Gavin Gamber vice president, channel sales and alliances, ConnectWise
- Marc Haskelson, president and CEO, Compliancy Group LLC
- Nate Olsen, managing director of business development, Insperity
- Evan Rice, vice president, sales and marketing, Rev.io
- Len DiCostanzo, senior vice president of channel development, Autotask
- Dina Moskowitz, founder and CEO, SaaSMAX Corp.
- Jay McBain, global strategy advisor, Channel Mechanics
Organizations interested in joining the CompTIA Business Applications Advisory Council can visit www.comptia.org for more information.
