Insights and interchanges at CRN Pipeline Melbourne

CRN editorial director Steven Kiernan kicked off the conference with insights from our 'Channel 360' research into buyers, partners and vendors.

CRN Pipeline tours to Sydney on 6-7 April. If you would like to request a ticket, please email crnevents@nextmedia.com.au

The first Platinum session of the day was Telstra. Charlotte Schraa, head of specialist partner channel, invited two of the company's fastest-growing partners to the stage: Oreta and AppScore.

Oreta provides advisory, delivery and managed services supported by Telstra, while Appscore is a Melbourne-based Android and iOS developer.

CRN Pipeline tours to Sydney on 6-7 April. If you would like to request a ticket, please email crnevents@nextmedia.com.au

Oreta managing director Sachin Verma explained how he left his career within Telstra to establish his own cloud advisory and services company.

CRN Pipeline tours to Sydney on 6-7 April. If you would like to request a ticket, please email crnevents@nextmedia.com.au

Alex Louey, director at Appscore, discussed how the app builder works with Telstra to deliver customer outcomes.

New to CRN Pipeline this year are our 'boardroom sessions', exclusive breakouts where Platinum and Gold sponsors can meet with channel leaders.

Here, Aaron Steppat, senior product marketing manager at VMware, meets with existing and prospective partners to discuss the opportunity with VMware.

In another boardroom session, CRN's Nate Cochrane facilitates the conversation with Veeam and a range of channel partners, led by the business continuity vendor's head of systems engineering, Nathan Steiner.

Hong Huynh from Advance Vision Technology

On the main stage, guest speaker, John Daley, chief executive of the Grattan Institute, presented a session entitled 'Tech in the Trump era'.

Armed with exclusive data from Grattan, John's talk brought together a broad sweep topics, from macro-economics in our federal and state governments, to the transition from products to services and how myriad trends have influenced a rise in populism.

Sponsors and delegates mixed in the exhibitor hall

Chris Trevitt, Hewlett Packard Enterprise's director of partner sales and commercial business, was another of our Platinum speakers. In his session, Chris delved into HPE's transformation since splitting out as a standalone company.

He looked at how HPE has both grown through acquisitions such as Simplivity and Aruba, as well as become more targeted by spinning off non-core units such as Enterprise Services and its software division.

This was all tied together with HPE's message to partners around the opportunities in hybrid cloud.

A "fireside chat" with Chris Trevitt, Hewlett Packard Enterprise's director of partner sales and commercial business.

Delegates took part in further boardroom sessions over lunch, this one with HPE Pointnext.

Pointnext is the newest member of the HPE's family after the company rebranded its technology services business unit just weeks ago.

One of the highlights for many attendees was this panel discussion on "Attracting investment: from M&A to building business to exit strategies".

We gathered a panel of high-profile executives to discuss strategies for attracting investments, making investments and buying and selling businesses.

The panel (left to right): Craig Deveson (Cloudability), Annaliese Kloe (Klugo Group), John Weste (AFG Venture Group), Julie-Ann Kerin (CSG) and Dave Stevens (Brennan IT).

The "Attracting investment" panel discussion at CRN Pipeline Melbourne.

David Elliott, channel sales director at HPE Aruba, presented a session on the opportunities with the wireless vendor, including Skype for Business projects, BYOD, remote locations and customer engagement.

Patrick Matthews, head of contracts & data centre care at HPE Pointnext, introduced newest member of the HPE family and explained how the services division would work with the channel.

The Telstra boardroom session was packed, hosted by Mert Mustafa, GM of ICT channel sales & development (right) and Charlotte Schraa, head of specialist partner channel.

CRN Pipeline tours to Sydney on 6-7 April. If you would like to request a ticket, please email crnevents@nextmedia.com.au

Michael Pascoe from Olikka (left) at the exhibitor hub

The closing session of day one saw five startups present their wares to the Pipeline audience.

First cab off the rank was Alistair Michener from Drawboard, a collaborative drawing markup technology.

Dave Slutzkin from Stax pitched the audience on the company's cloud technology management tool. Stax was spun out of Melbourne cloud solutions firm Versent.

Tom Mcleod of Myagi, a smart learning platform for the retail sector.

Regan McKay presented his startup, Netcrypt, which protects and encrypts data on the server and in networked drives and has been built as 100 percent channel.

NetCrypt is a finalist in the CRN Impact Awards

The final startup to present was Joel Thomson from SalesPreso. The company, which recently completed its Series A funding round, offers a way to improve salespeople's presentation decks, allowing the sales team to spend less time creating presentations and more time talking to customers.

The Huawei boardroom session during happy hour at the end of day one.

Lucy Hardy from HPE's service provider team

The SAP boardroom session during happy hour at the end of day one.

Jon Paior (Geek) at the networking hub

CRN Pipeline tours to Sydney on 6-7 April. If you would like to request a ticket, please email crnevents@nextmedia.com.au

Kenedi Celik (Infoblox)

A one-to-one meeting with Platinum sponsor Telstra

Stefanie Dixon (Brother)

Blue Apache's Chris Marshall (right) on the HPE Aruba stand

The APC by Schneider Electric stand

CRN Pipeline tours to Sydney on 6-7 April. If you would like to request a ticket, please email crnevents@nextmedia.com.au

DiUS managing director Joe Losinno (second from left) speaks with Uptake Digital's Brenton Johnson (right)

Sponsors and delegates mixed in the exhibitor hall

Delegates were invited to have breakfast with some of the most exciting cloud and digital vendors around. Speakers from Facebook, Salesforce, Hubspot, Xero and Github looked at how to "Build a digital business and deliver a beautiful customer experience".

Speakers (left to right): Charles Woodall, vice president GTM alliances APAC, Salesforce; Samuel Hunt, sales director, GitHub; Rob Stone, national partner director, Xero; Ryan Bonnici, marketing director, HubSpot; Jason Juma-Ross, head of tech, entertainment, comms, Facebook; and CRN contributing editor Nate Cochrane

Facebook's Jason Juma-Ross discussed how Facebook operates a mobile-first strategy, and how it spun out Facebook Workplace from its own internal version of Facebook.

A panel of IT customers joined our panel entitled "Meet the IT buyers of tomorrow".

As more and more CIOs and IT leaders include cloud as a central part of their technology investment strategy, we wanted to understand why.

From left to right: Claudine Ogilvie, CIO, Jetstar; Sam Stewart, Head of Technology, Culture Amp; Tomas Varsavsky, CTO, REA Group; Simon Raik-Allen, CTO, MYOB and Dave Glover, CTO, Salmat

Tomas Varsavsky, CTO of one of Australia's leading digital businesses, REA Group, explained how the company approaches technology procurement.

A project with REA Group led by DiUS is a finalists in the CRN Impact Awards.

Paul Vinton (Vintek) and Arthur Marinis (base2services).

CRN Pipeline tours to Sydney on 6-7 April. If you would like to request a ticket, please email crnevents@nextmedia.com.au

The final Platinum speaker of CRN Pipeline Melbourne was Huawei. Senior technologist Andrew McGee offered 'A View From The Tower'.

Sam Henderson from SAP's partner team holds the floor at the company's boardroom session

CRN Pipeline Melbourne concluded with what was the highlight session for many delegates.

Matthew Michalewicz, CEO of Adelaide-based artificial intelligence and big data company Complexica, enthralled the audience with his stories of emigrating to Australia and setting up numerous AI companies, the first of which sold to IBM and the second to Schneider Electric.

Matthew then demonstrated Complexica, which uses machine learning for a range of use cases, including fast-moving consumer goods as well as what he called an "invisible" CRM that uses AI to get better outcomes from salespeople.

Delegates and sponsors pre-arranged one-to-one meetings using our booking system, and caught up during CRN Pipeline. Here, Andrew Wilmot from Cloudifi meets with SAP.

The one-to-one networking section of CRN Pipeline was a hive of activity with pre-booked and impromptu interactions.

During breaks in the session on the main stage, delegates and sponsors took part in both pre-booked and impromptu one-to-one meetings

Marius van der Merwe from Zettagrid.

CRN Pipeline tours to Sydney on 6-7 April. If you would like to request a ticket, please email crnevents@nextmedia.com.au

Andrew Leigh from Allcom Networks

Lee Scott from Leading Edge Computers catches up with Ingram Micro.

CRN Pipeline tours to Sydney on 6-7 April. If you would like to request a ticket, please email crnevents@nextmedia.com.au