This month, TD SYNNEX hosted its first combined SYNNEX Summit, a virtual experience for channel partners to learn about channel trends, get motivated for the year ahead and celebrate the year that was. This year’s theme, Make Your Move focused on collaboratively exploring the current IT market and how we will move forward together. Thought leaders from TD SYNNEX, our amazing vendors and industry firms took the stage to discuss how the market is moving faster than ever and what we can be doing to address this rapid transformation.
TD SYNNEX Summit provided attendees with the unique insights and helpful tools needed to navigate the complex IT economy. Virtual participants were able to connect, share best practices and engage in real-time, meaningful discussions that resulted in business growth opportunities around the channel. With an open agenda and replay sessions available on demand, TD SYNNEX Summit 2021 was the most customizable experience to date, with deep-dive learning tracks and additional access to event commentary and behind-the-scenes resources.
We hope all attendees enjoyed their experience at SYNNEX Summit, but for those that were unable to attend, we’ve captured the five biggest takeaways from the event:
1. Anticipate a Smooth Integration
With the recent Tech Data and SYNNEX merger finalizing last month, channel partners have wondered what it means for them and how it will impact their business. In short: only positives. Partners can and should continue to work with their existing legacy Tech Data or legacy SYNNEX contacts to ensure products, solutions and services continue to reach deadlines to fulfill all current and future customer orders. Partners should also continue using their existing services and platforms available to them, like STELLR or StreamOne.
Moving forward, partners are no longer working with just a distributor… they can expect to be working with one of the world’s leading solutions aggregators; a single company with the mission of solving complex IT challenges and delivering business outcomes. Imagine waking up and being twice as strong, twice as agile, double your perspective on life with double the personal limits. That’s what it’s like working with the combined TD SYNNEX, offering twice the scale and capabilities than operating independently. Together, we were years away from bringing the future to today; now, that future is a lot more within reach.
This new alignment, what we’re dubbing as “the power of us,” is not just great for the success of TD SYNNEX, but for the success of our partner and vendor community. SYNNEX, known for its agility and flexibility and Tech Data, known for its best practices in optimization, now combine those features for the best of both worlds. The combined TD SYNNEX now carries the vendors that represent 94% of channel revenue, becoming a true one stop shop, especially for partners interested in getting started with new vendors.
“TD SYNNEX is uniquely positioned to work together with our channel partners to capitalize on relentlessly transforming opportunities by raising the value that we provide, through unparalleled access to distribution platforms and best-in-class products and services in cloud, security, IoT, data analytics, mobility and everything-as-a-service.” — Rich Hume, CEO
2. One Plus One is Greater than Two
“Welcome to a time where unity equals opportunity and success for those we serve.” CEO Rich Hume said it best when describing what the joining of Tech Data and SYNNEX means for our partners. Together, TD SYNNEX serves as an extension of your team, never competing in the spaces that our base of 4,000+ customers operate in. With the merger comes a wider portfolio of offerings, with deeper, more comprehensive insight to go along with it.
Today’s modern data center is full of advanced solutions, like hybrid cloud environments, analytics applications, data management software, networking and connectivity, all overlaid by security solutions. The key word, solutions, is a term that is far more complex than it used to be, and you’re going to hear it frequently moving forward, as TD SYNNEX becomes the industry’s trusted source for solutions aggregation and channel orchestration. TD SYNNEX can serve in this role in large part due to the expertise of its services organization. For instance, the presales technical integration team now boasts more than 340 pre-sales team members with more than 4,000 technical certifications between them.
As Jessica Yeck put it, “the sky is the limit,” as you pair this technical expertise with the financial/credit services, global reach, go-to-market assessments and other services available to drive business outcomes:
- Presales engineering
- Integration services
- Contract renewals
- Everything-as-a-service (XaaS)
- Field technical services
- Product maintenance and support
- Asset disposition
- Enablement
- Demand generation
Our operations know that the most critical ingredient to maximizing the partner experience is providing the right order in the right condition at the right time to deliver results. As we continue to prioritize this partner experience, we want to act quickly and thoughtfully by using your feedback. Continue to provide your TD SYNNEX representatives with thoughts on what we can be doing better to serve your needs.
3. There’s Confidence in Commitment
“We focus on four things when connecting with our partners: desire, commitment, responsibility and outlook.” During the opening panel session, Brian Ellis discussed our approach in building trust with partners to help them set milestones, create accountability and execute on goals to meet customer demand. Asking simple, different questions, such as, “what keeps you up at night?” is a great way for TD SYNNEX to get on the same page with our partners, just as that same question can help partners get on the same page with their end user customers.
Sitting in the center of the IT ecosystem, it’s our job to have a pulse on the market. In order to drive business outcomes for our channel partners, we are relentlessly committed to consistency and communication and have thorough levels of enablement, demand generation, go-to-market development and integration support services. Partners are encouraged to take advantage of these support services to gain confidence and understanding of key technical and sales areas.
One of the ways this confidence is established is through our practice builder methodology and solutions factory preconfiguration, setting up partners to establish and grow their cloud/IoT/security/data practice quickly and effectively.
4. Cybersecurity awareness needs to be part of an organizations’ culture
As mentioned time and time again during the event, having a dedicated security practice is an absolute prerequisite to moving forward with any other IT initiatives. 2021 saw the highest per-data breach cost than any year in the past two decades, resulting in $1.2m in losses per breach. By the end of the year, there will be more than $20B in losses from ransomware attacks alone. TD SYNNEX wants to not only address but predict our customers’ vulnerabilities.
CIOs understand that today’s hybrid work environments have changed everything; data is spread all over the place, whether it’s on the public cloud or personal devices, so we’re increasing the focus on simplifying infrastructure, supporting digital transformation journeys and ensuring all partners have long-term strategies with solutions like VPN, password managers, antivirus software, device policies, zero trust, MFA, end point protection and perhaps most importantly, training and education for co-workers to fully put cybersecurity awareness at the forefront of everything they do.
While we had some fun on stage playing “Are you smarter than a security expert?” we gained some key takeaways and statistics that should raise some alarms within the IT channel:
- Hackers attack every 39 seconds, largely focusing on simple or unchanged passwords
- More than 500,000 instances of malware are created daily, many from untrusted email attachments
- More than 90% of healthcare organizations have reported at least one data breach in the last three years
- One in every five Americans are a victim of ransomware each year
Performing a risk assessment with TD SYNNEX is completely complimentary and also includes detailed work from home assessments to help show where your data lives today. One thing you can do immediately is to encourage cybercrime awareness internally — it has to be part of company culture.
5. Live life on the edge… and the cloud… and the modern data center…
Experts predict that five years of transformation happened within the first two months of the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, 90% of all big data was produced within the past two years, with 127 new devices connecting to the internet every second. Organizations that weren’t prepared were forced to accelerate and adapt quickly. And it wasn’t just organizations trying to adapt. Nearly 18 million students didn’t have sufficient broadband internet or technology to support remote learning within the past 18 months. All of this acceleration equates to tremendous channel opportunity, specifically in next-gen areas like edge computing, IoT and data analytics, hybrid cloud technologies and modern workforces through the advanced data center.
This is where specialization drives value. These days, it’s more difficult to find a general practitioner than it is to find a specialist for medical needs. The same can be said about today’s MSPs and resellers. Several speakers, including Francisco Criado and Mike Heintzelman encouraged partners to explore these next-gen areas to find their niche and take that risk of becoming a specialist in today’s IT economy.
As Americas’ President Michael Urban helped close the final general session, he emphasized our vision:
“We are the one source to connect the global IT ecosystem and unlock its digital potential for all.”
One source. Connect. Unlock. Digital. From the edge to the cloud, our priorities and investments reflect collaborative efforts to drive simplicity and success for our channel partners.
Thank you to all attendees for joining us for the inaugural combined TD SYNNEX Summit and we look forward to working with everyone throughout the year ahead of TD SYNNEX Summit 2022. And thank you to all of the event’s general session and Masters Series speakers, including (in order of appearance) Rich Hume, Stacy Nethercoat, Bob Stegner, Jessica McDowell, Francisco Criado, Steve Flynn, Mike Heintzelman, Phillip Privett, Jessica Yeck, Brian Ellis, Steve Jow, James Lee, Stacy Wight, Peter Larocque, Nate Herz, Alan Buttery, David Jordan, Brian Davis, Calhoun Taylor, Jim MacBride, Matt Stephens, Sammy Kinlaw, Marc McClure, Vince Steman, Eddie Franklin, Kaye McMillan, Vlad Rozanovich, Gary Palenbaum, Matt Dyenson and Michael Urban.
