7global shortlisted in CRN Channel Awards

Found out we've been shortlisted for the CRN Channel Awards. Huzzar! Pleased with that as it's based on the relationships with partners and clients that we've developed over the years. It's for the Reseller ‘Services Provider of the Year’ so it's right up our street.

A lot of our business, especially within the Dynamics space, is based on these strong business relationships so it's great from my perspective.

So, I'll cut to the chase and ask you to vote for us! All you need to do is click here, (briefly) register and then select the 'Reseller' category and the 'Services Provider of the Year’ sub category and give us your vote. Wow- I sound like a politician. Actually, scrub that (it's hardly a vote winner these days!).

New Year, New Hangover, New Challenges

So, 2008’s gone and 2009 is here. 2008 is already being clumsily auto archived by my brain so it now seems like a year ago as opposed to a few days. However, addled by Christmas and New Year festivities though my poor brain is, I think it is on to something. 2009 certainly will be throwing up brand new challenges in the marketplace and as firms seem to be going bust everyday, knowing who will be here and who will not is a scary consideration.

That said, from 7global’s perspective the message we can bring to businesses is, if anything, even stronger. Essentially, organisations still need cutting edge IT solutions to compete. I would say that is even more important as margins are cut and marketplace is squeezed. Rather than employing new staff or redirecting existing employees I think we have an extremely powerful ‘spend money with us to save money’ message.

Take hosted applications, like Microsoft Dynamics CRM or Exchange. Why spend money building and maintaining an infrastructure, 24 x 7 management, buying hardware and training staff unless absolutely necessary (I concede there will be times when on premise is the only solution)?

Take bespoke managed hosting. Why go through the very real pain of providing a top tier hosting environment when you can plumb in your solution to an existing infrastructure (preferably ours!) which manages all the pain for you? Or hire consultants to specify solutions when we can do that for you as well as deploy it?

Take outsourced network services. With 7global managing firewall, SSL-VPNs and other on premise devices it can take the hassle and cost out of using new or existing staff on doing something on which we can bring our engineering and support teams, not to mention special relations with vendors such as SonicWALL and Cisco, to bear.

Something to ponder over your Alka-Seltzer, perhaps…