OK, I do love double meanings….

In this case, it came in the form of Hurricane Nicole, which hit Florida during the recent Ingram Micro ONE event in Orlando, where solution providers, vendors, and industry leaders, either in-person at the Gaylord Palms Resort, or virtually, explored what's next in technology, and how Ingram Micro is transforming to better support the complex ecosystem of IT vendors, IT partners, and their joint customers.

ESG On Location – VMware Explore 2022

Sporting a new name, the long anticipated in-person event, VMware Explore, was back this year with new innovation, new conversations, and a new theme, “Cloud Chaos.” The ESG analyst team was there, on location, and in this video, you will hear from me, as well as Mark Bowker, Bob Laliberte, Paul Nashawaty, and Kevin Rhone, on the most impressive announcements and insights from the event.

Check out the video and hope to see you in person at next year’s event.

I recently recorded a couple of short videos with my colleague and Lead ESG Analyst, Mark Bowker where we had an informal conversation about trends in end-user computing (EUC) and how partners are adapting their go-to-market strategies to respond to their customer asks.

One may think that the pace of cloud innovation and changing consumption models have simplified life for IT professionals. However, ESG's annual Technology Spending Intentions Survey highlighted that 75% of organizations believe IT complexity has increased over the last 2 years. Dell Technologies World was packed with announcements and information to help IT professionals address this complexity and transform operations. Listen in as Mark Peters, Practice Director; Kevin Rhone, Director ESG Channel Acceleration; Scott Sinclair, ESG Senior Analyst; and I share our thoughts on the event and the potential Dell is creating with Apex.

It bears repeating that events like Dell Technologies World cover way too much ground to ever cover everything in a brief post. So we won't try! Instead, my ESG colleagues and myself are talking the "bite-sized-chunks" approach, dipping into various topics in reports, blogs, and videos as appropriate. One of the biggest announcements at this year's digital event ("big" as in likely impact rather than elapsed time on the virtual "stage") was Apex - Dell's as-a-service umbrella commitment - and we've already chatted about that in another single-topic video. 

The data protection space relies on a very diverse and complex ecosystem of channel players. How has the COVID-19 crisis affected the channel? I discuss this important topic in a new video with resident expert and lead of ESG's channel practice Kevin Rhone.

Been thinking a lot while hunkered down, about how the partner community must address two critically important issues during and after the coronavirus pandemic changes work, home, and lives: the joint challenges of safely helping their teams, their vendors, and their customers move forward to the new IT and tech world.

Spring brings things you expect – tax day (in the US), storms and showers (in much of the Northern hemisphere), and some variant of Dell/EMC/Dell Technologies World (in whatever Las Vegas is!). But this Spring brought something unexpected too – at Dell Technologies World the discussion for the closing general session panel centered on “optimism and happiness in the digital age.” So there!