MAX 2014, the GFI MAX Customer Conference, opens today through September 10 at the Renaissance Orlando at Seaworld in Florida. A provider of integrated RMM, mail security, backup, and anti-virus solutions, with U.S. offices in Durham, N.C., GFI MAX serves a community of more than 10,000 managed service providers (MSPs). This year’s conference features four tracks of business and technical sessions.
Dave Sobel, director of Partner Community for GFI MAX, gives the welcome address. He is followed by the opening keynote from Dr. Alistair Forbes, general manager of GFI MAX, who will discuss the key challenges facing IT support businesses today and how to transition and grow their managed services business for the future.
Other opening day keynotes incude:
- Rob Rae, vice president of business development at Datto Inc.: “How to Position Business Continuity to Win Business”
- Paul Kenny, executive, sales coach, and owner of Ocean Learning Ltd.: “Creating Positive User Experiences Through Technology”
Afternoon breakout sessions include a GFI MAX “state of the nation” talk from Product Manager Brian Mackie on recent and upcoming releases. There are also sessions on recruiting top talent, increasing engineer efficiency, MSP sales and marketing best practices, security, and more.
The evening ends with a CompTIA reception followed by a vendor showcase and awards.
Best-selling author John Warrillow, who wrote Built to Sell: Creating a Business That†Can Thrive Without You, gives the Day 2 keynote. Warrillow is also the founder of The Sellability Score, a cloud-based assessment†tool business owners use to assess the “sellability” of their company.
The keynote is followed by a vendor showcase and a panel discussion on key issues in the channel, led by Sobel and Seth Robinson, director of technology analysis for CompTIA.
In the afternoon, breakout sessions cover backup, keeping and acquiring customers, integration and cloud services, selling and markeing cloud, and more, plus a panel discussion on “How Did We Get Here.” There are also vendor sessions from AffinityLive, Autotask, Dropbox, and RapidFire Tools.
The final day of the conference features five “Lightning Talks”:
- Andrew Harrover, president, Matrix Computer Consulting: “Keeping Clients in the Age of the Cloud”
- Jason Etheridge, president and CEO, Logic Speak: “Technology Humility”
- Tony Hayden, president, Sabre Networks: “The Chick-Fil-A-MSP”
- Manuel W. Lloyd, CEO, Manual W. Lloyd Consulting: “Using a Single Pane of Glass Such as GFI MAX”
- Cristiano Fermo, director at CLS INFORMATICA: “How I Used the Right Tools to Organize and Improve My MSP Practice”
Following the afternoon sessions, Dr. Alistair Forbes and Sobel deliver the closing keynote.
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