GTEC conference material posted at Sun Microsystems

A couple of months back I attended the GTEC conference in Ottawa Canada as a partner of Sun Microsystems. The conference is designed as a technology show for IT folks in the Canadian federal government circles. I had the opportunity to meet with the Sun folks in Ottawa for extended periods of time, worked with some of them in the Sun Microsystems booth, and also met a couple of their reseller partners from the Ottawa region.

I noticed some interesting trends at the show. Several major vendors scaled back their presence significantly, including EMC, Oracle and Symantec. I mention these three because I frequently come across either the vendor or their partners at tradeshows. Also of note was a significant variance in attendance at the workshops. Folks seemed to be really interested in security, records management, and regulatory issues for IT. There was not as much attendance at purely technical presentations or demonstrations.

On the second day I presented a brief discussion of the risks and benefits associated with regulatory compliance, and some of the tools and technology that Sun Microsystems and AXS-One offer. The link to my presentation can be found at the Sun Microsystems site here.

Channel Management News blog

In 2006 I published an online newsletter for channel managers, called Channel Management. At the time I was the Regional Sales Manager for Canada and the East USA for Blueroads, a channel management software vendor that offered channel CRM as a service. It was an exciting time and industry to participate in. Unfortunately, the Board of Directors did not like the direction that the CEO was taking the company in, and decided to make some serious changes to the sales model and management team. As a result, I was let go as were the other sales managers. I made some new friends, learned a lot, and still maintain relationships with many of the people whom I met in the short time at the company.

One of the more interesting folks I have stayed in touch with is Axel Schultze, who was the founder and CEO of Blueroads. Since then, he has published a few blogs, written a book, started an organization and also kicked off a couple of new companies. He is a true advocate of software-as-a-service, and sincerely believes that it is the best way to interact electronically between sales channel partners. I will post more about Axel in an upcoming post.

Some people have been asking me what I have been doing since the Blueroads days. You can read more about my professional life at LinkedIn.

Personal Blog

Ok, I finally decided that it is time to get my own blog online. Stay tuned for more...