As a solutions aggregator, we sit in the center of the IT ecosystem with visibility into the innovation of our vendors and the trending requirements of our customers. As a result… we’ve got a lot to say. In the past year, we’ve published more than 80 articles right here on Medium hoping to give our readers a unique insight into how our thought leaders are building a vision for the future of tech.

Rather than taking our word on what’s happening, we decided to check the pulse of the channel by speaking directly with several of our TechSelect members who were in attendance at the 2022 TechSelect Spring Conference in Phoenix. Directly from three of our customers, here’s where their priorities lie for the second half of 2022 and beyond.

Elements of this article are extracts from an interview transcript. The responses have been edited for clarity and brevity.

Bob Glasgow — President and Founder, JB Systems

Which market trends are you watching closely right now?
Everything that we’re paying attention to right now all has to do with the security environment, so we are placing our biggest concentration on security. Cybersecurity is ever-evolving, so will continue to keep our fingerprints on it as we watch how things progress.

What are the technology solutions your end user customers are asking for?
A lot of our customers are looking at expanding their mobility practice. We’re seeing mobility in schools as far as one-to-one device programs. A lot of our services customers are expanding their mobility by giving their security technicians devices in the field to better complete their jobs. With that mobility shift, we’ve been fine-tuning their environments to refine what they’re doing and streamline their applications.

How has digital transformation affected your business over the past two years?
We started our company in 1996 before MSPs were even a thing, but we’ve always been a service company. Considering that the MSP role has evolved over the years, it has made it so that we are relying more on the data coming through our systems. We are a lot more reliant on remote services that we didn’t always have to rely on in the past.

How do you, personally, stay in touch with today’s innovation?
I can always turn to the people at TD SYNNEX and ask the questions I need to ask, and I also pay attention to a lot of the marketing and communications materials that come in from TD SYNNEX. I also rely on my staff that goes out and looks for the different technologies out there. They bring them to a committee and decide what we want to bring to the table. Sometimes, the customers come to us and say, ‘this is what we’re needing, where do we go?’ so for us, it’s a mash-up of relying on TD SYNNEX, my people and different solutions from our customers.

Josh Thomas — President, Superior Turnkey Solutions

Which market trends are you watching closely right now?
Right now it’s the multi-cloud environment where you have customers using multiple clouds, yet have part of their systems in-house and designated to remote offices. There’s also two-factor authentication going on, which comes with a lot of complexity in the security of that. Over the last two years, customers have opened up their firewalls to accommodate remote users and they really haven’t done enough security lockdown testing.

What are the technology solutions your end user customers are asking for?
Customers have matured in their cloud technology. They’re finding that there can be high cost and low controllability in the public cloud. While they’ve developed some of those tools, they’re starting to bring some of them back in-house, so they’re building more of a balanced environment. Originally, they were going to do everything in the cloud, but found that the cloud can be uncontrollable and cost more money than their budget planned for.

We’re also seeing customers moving to an operational budget (OpEx) rather than a capital budget (CapEx), so they’re putting more into their expenses. Five years ago, they didn’t care about operational budget, as it was primarily basic renewals, but now it’s become quite expensive.

What are the technologies that are driving the world in your business?
Security is one because it can be an open checkbook. Companies are still trying to put an entire umbrella over the security aspect, from endpoint computing to the data center to the cloud, and then also contract to other clients. We’re often trying to help our customers to solve for these challenges.

What digital transformation trends have you seen in the past two years?
One quarter before [the COVID-19 pandemic], I built an office in my house, which a lot of people have done now. With [remote] tools like Office 365 and central IP systems, training is a big thing because people are harder to train when they’re at home than when they’re in the office. Taking someone out for 2 hours isn’t something you can really do in Zoom meetings, where people can get bored after 15 minutes.

How are you staying on top of the leading edge?
I don’t have all of the solutions, so that’s one of the reasons why I came to this conference and I’ll be going to a couple of other conferences this month. I’m trying to understand how other resellers are adapting. The beauty of being a reseller is we don’t have to invent anything, we just have to be good at applying technologies to our customers’ needs. That’s the key to being successful is learning something new and being the first on the block to sell something.

There’s so much information out there, a fire hydrant that is on all the time. I think the way to make it more digestible and meaningful is through council groups where peers can collaborate with other organizations that are struggling with the same type of ideas and problems. There’s just so much noise out there that this can help figure out the way to go.

Raj Patel — Director of Procurement, Future Computing Solutions

What market trends are you watching closely right now?
Mainly, we are looking at the Energy Information Administration (EIA) trends, cybersecurity and cloud computing.

What are the technology solutions that your end user customers are asking for?
Right now, many customers are looking at cybersecurity because of the COVID-19 pandemic. A lot of customers started working remotely and are asking for more remote services.

What are you hoping to learn from events like this?
I’ve been coming to these kinds of events for years and the main thing I get out of it is new manufacturing friends, communicating with venture partners, what they have to offer and then taking it back to the office with new ideas.

Thank you to all of our TechSelect attendees and those that spent the time to interview with us!