CRN Pipeline 2024 Day Two: cyber resiliency, cloud and channel evolution

The Australian channel convened at the Sheraton Grand Mirage Resort in the Gold Coast for another jam-packed day of CRN Pipeline 2024.

Following on from an animated Welcome Barbecue the night before, Day Two kicked off with a robust discussion about Australia’s cyber landscape.

The panel session, Evolving Your IT Cybersecurity Practice for Tomorrow's Market, unpacked evolving customer needs, SMBs’ resistance to spending on security, and “cyber fatigue”.

On the subject of cyber spending, Tracie Orisko, senior director of community and business development Huntress, stressed that: “That doing something is better than nothing.

“If [something] doesn’t work, what difference does what it cost make? It’s doing nothing for you.”

Partners, unsurprisingly, have a critical role to play in helping customers overcome some of their reticence towards deeper investment into cyber security and resilience.

“MSPs are configured perfectly as the key person or technology influencers for their customers,” said Tim Stephinson, COO, of SherpaTech .

“Whatever products or services you’re selling... try and build on that over the years, so when the market moves, you’re positioned to help and advise those customers.”

Andrew Winter, head of public sector channel and alliances ANZ for Amazon Web Services, reminded the delegates that amid the hype around GenAI, cloud remains a critical area for the channel.

“We are seeing more customers – right from the very top level of the public sector– move more workloads into the AWS cloud,” he said. “It’s only going to accelerate with the onset of GenAI now: if you don’t have cloud, you don’t have GenAI.

“We reckon 85 percent of workloads still haven't gone into cloud yet. [The other] fifteen percent is pretty well aligned with early adopters in cloud. So, there's still lots to go, still lots of opportunity in the next phase of crossing this chasm.”

Shifting the conversation, meanwhile, was John Butel, mindset coach from Organised Solutions, speaking about the evolution of IT channel sales.

Melanie Unwin, co-founder at B2B marketing firm Mogrify, took to the stage to discuss the evolution of IT marketing.

“This has been the most tumultuous year in marketing, certainly in my career, that we've seen with the rise of GenAI,” she told the audience.

“And this is now all about aiming for seamless experience via on the channel. [We’re] moving away from multi-channel and approaching a much more integrated, seamless communication with our customers.”

Remote work is another business trend that has shown no sign of abating in 2024. This, according to Ben Kelly, head of business development at Access4, has completely reshaped the cloud voice and communications market, opening up more opportunities for partners, including those who are not yet offering voice.

Last but not least, Trevor Clarke, co-founder and Asia Pacific Research Director, Tech Research Asia, shared more key insights into the Australian channel landscape in 2024.

Understandably, AI is the biggest tech trend for partners currently, according to Clarke. However, it does not necessarily mean partners have to jump straight into the deep end.

"Accept that you will have to invest in [AI],” he explained. “But we're not suggesting that you need to go and say: here's our AI practice. It's something separate. What we're saying is build those capabilities into your existing practices. If you have a customer experience practice, the Number One use case that customers are telling us that they're doing is customer experience projects.”

Another issue, he noted, however, is the capacity required for AI workloads. Amid more cost awareness around usage of hyperscale cloud, partners are exploring other options, Clarke said.

"An emerging conversation [is] around other private clouds and the potential for this, but is there enough supply of GPUs to support it that actually have the power available? "That's still a question that's not resolved or answered at the moment."

Following on from the main stage’s activities, partners also joined breakout sessions with N-able and Arctic Wolf, discussing MDR solutions and the “real cost of cyber risk in mid-market Australia and New Zealand”, respectively.

Due to poor weather, delegates later spent the afternoon unwinding over a lively trivia competition and a game of indoor golf, before heading to evening dinner and drinks at Surfers Pavilion.