Matt Pillar

ARTICLES BY MATT PILLAR

• Fake News In Cybersecurity

  7/1/2019

  Ever since news spread that an HVAC contractor was the alleged vector in the massive Target breach of 2013, IT security consultants have been ringing out a common refrain: thoroughly vet your third-party contractors, especially the small ones. Restrict and monitor their access to your network and applications. Maybe even think about moving away from small business partners in favor of contracting with larger, well-heeled partners who are, presumably better equipped to thwart cyber threats.

• Life Sciences: A Target-Rich Environment For Tech

  6/25/2019

  A bit earlier this month, I had a unique opportunity to travel with a few of my colleagues to the BIO International Convention in Philadelphia. It’s a large conference and exposition, attended by some 17,000 life sciences professionals from 67 different countries. The event focuses largely on the pharma industry. Exhibitors and attendees span the gamut from biopharmaceutical manufacturing equipment builders to therapeutic research scientists to contract pharmaceutical manufacturers. It was a strange new place for a 20-year IT writer. What in the world was I doing there?

• Conversations On The Cloud: A Report From Ingram Cloud Summit X

  3/13/2019

  Gavriella Schuster, VP commercial partnership at Microsoft helped kick off Ingram’s Cloud Summit X in San Diego this week in front of more than 1,500 attendees with an abbreviated history of the IT channel and the rapid change it’s seeing of late. She focused those comments in the context of the cloud’s impact on a channel that’s looked pretty static for the past 40 years.

• Data Analytics Puts Tek Leaders In Overdrive

  3/1/2019

  Responding To The Market’s Data Demands And Shrugging Off Traditional Channel Constraints Grew Devender Reddy Aerrabolu’s It Services Firm From Zero To $25 Million In Five Years.

• Make Room For The Marketplace

  3/1/2019

  The way you procure the technologies that comprise client solutions is shifting very quickly. Rules of engagement are changing, boundaries fading, and familiarity waning. The change is at once uncomfortable and an uncommon opportunity for growth.

• Thoma Bravo Buys ConnectWise, Bellini Stepping Down

  2/25/2019

  Arnie Bellini is stepping down from the role he forged back in 1988, when he transitioned ConnectWise—then a managed services practice—into a business management platform for tech service providers. Under Bellini’s guidance as CEO and in the 31 years since, ConnectWise grew into an IT channel powerhouse that serves more than 25,000 partners in 65+ countries.

• Where’s The Money In Mobility?

  1/31/2019

  Healthcare, government and municipalities, first response, and retail are among several markets that are hot opportunities for the IT services industry. They all share a heavy and increasing dependence on mobile technology. When the technology driving that mobility fails, they pay dearly. Patients, customers, and communities suffer. Sales are lost, topline revenue drops corollary to tanking customer satisfaction, and profit plunges accordingly.

• Marketing Automation For IT Service Providers

  1/31/2019

  BJ Havlik’s career has given him a senior management perspective on virtually every facet of the IT services industry. From client side to services side, from Fortune 500 to SMB, he’s just about seen it all. Here, he shares lessons learned as a client-side IT buyer with multimillion dollar budgets and how those lessons have shaped his persuasions as president and CEO at Green Bay, WI-area MSP, ITSM, and security provider SRC Technologies.

• Jay McBain’s Top 5 Channel Trends For 2019

  1/31/2019

  Jay McBain is a prognosticator, but he never takes a flyer. The rightfully well-known principal analyst for Global Channels at Forrester is a counter, a chronicler, a statistician, and a scientist. He leverages a weeds-deep, fact-based analysis of the past and present to prepare channel partners for the future. There’s no one I’d more confidently ask for some 2019 predictions, and there’s no one happier and more confident to offer them up. Here, McBain reflects on 2018 and offers up his thoughts on the year ahead.

• Client Security Training: Partnership Drives The Opportunity

  12/19/2018

  In a sweeping interview for Channel Executive Magazine, seasoned IT executive and SRC Technologies President and CEO BJ Havlik shared the wisdom behind his new-solution onboarding philosophy. In doing so, he zeroed in directly on the relatively new client IT security training opportunity.