IoT Is Taking Off: But You Must Make The Big Investments To Score

One of the great of things about CRN and its parent company, The Channel Co., is that we have always made the significant investments necessary to bring together vendors and partners to capture the next big technology tsunami.

Over the past 35 years, we have made sure solution providers caught the next big wave — from PCs to local area networks to client/server to the internet revolution and now, of course, to the digital transformation imperative.

But all of those paradigm shifts pale in comparison to the Internet of Things.

That is why we are once again doing our part to make sure the channel gets it with the launch of IoT Connex Virtual conference — a free virtual conference on Oct. 18, starting at 11:00 a.m. EST.

The virtual conference will feature keynotes from the best and brightest in the channel, including our own Rauline Ochs, who has helped solution providers and vendors navigate the technology landscape for many years; Frank Gillett, the esteemed Forrester Research analyst who is charting the IoT impact; and solution providers delivering game-changing IoT to customers, including Kelly Ireland, founder and CEO of CB Technologies, and Lawrence Van Deusen, director of the wired and wireless networking business for Dimension Data.

The virtual event also will include major addresses from vendors pushing the IoT envelope, a virtual IoT exhibit hall, and a CIO panel for customer perspective. CRN also is shining the spotlight on the solution providers leading the charge with our own IoT Innovator awards.

But the most important investment CRN is making is in the ground-breaking coverage led by our IoT Editor Lindsey O'Donnell, who over the course of the past year has the chronicled the ups, downs, highs and lows of a market moving at blinding speed.

If you want to truly understand the breadth and depth of the challenges facing solution providers and vendors, you must read Lindsey's dispatches from the front lines of the IoT revolution — from a look at how systems integrators are critical in securing connected Industrial IoT applications to the need for greater vertical expertise for partners to much more. Lindsey is doing the listening, digging, analysis and flat-out hard work to drive the market forward.

Some of my favorites from Lindsey's archive: "Open Systems Technologies' IoT University Is Open For Business — And Employees Are The Students," a look at the solution provider's in-house IoT certification program; an eye-opening interview with Schneider Electric Worldwide Channel Chief Nicolas Windpassinger on the "transformation of its products and channels;" and the 10 Coolest IoT startups of 2017.

To succeed in IoT, solution providers need to make the big investments — just as The Channel Co. and CRN have and will continue to do. For me, IoT translates into Investment + Opportunity = Touchdown. Those that want to score in IoT would be wise to attend IoT Connex Virtual and go to CRN.com every day to ensure they have the market knowledge and insight necessary to be successful.

BACKTALK: Are you building up your Internet of Things game? Contact Steven Burke at [email protected].