Best Of Breed Conference 2019

CRN is live in Philadelphia for the Best of Breed Conference.

Get all of CRN's coverage of the event here and follow along on Twitter at #BOB19.

October 15th

Antonio Neri: Outposts Is AWS’ Bid To Lock Data In Public Cloud
‘To me, Outposts is just a way to continue to lure you to move to the [public] cloud because their ultimate objective is to move your data to the [public] cloud,’ says HPE President and CEO Antonio Neri. ‘We have this saying: When you check into the public cloud, it is like checking into the Hotel California. You check in and you never check out. What customers are realizing now is that the cost of egressing that data back is enormous. Enormous.’

Marketing Message? Run It By Grandma First
'Try and explain your company and what you do to your grandmother. If she understands, then you’re good. If she doesn’t understand, then you have to work on it,' says Jennifer Anaya, vice president of marketing for Ingram Micro.

Antonio Neri: HPE Bringing ‘True Private LTE’ With 5G-Aruba Integration
“The opportunity is to integrate 5G and Wi-Fi in this new spectrum to deliver a true private LTE, so that’s where the integration of 5G with Aruba makes complete sense,” said HPE CEO Antonio Neri.

Dell's Marius Haas Lays Out Partner Opportunities Around VMware-Pivotal, 5G And Flexible Consumption
‘By putting [Pivotal] inside of VMware, now we've got a tremendous software development application platform sitting on top of an amazing industry-leading management platform for our customers and our partners,’ says the Dell Technologies president and chief commercial officer.

Rob Cato: Lenovo Uniquely Qualified To Help Partners Embrace IoT, AI’
'At the end of the day, we're not going to have an end-to-end solution every single time. You, as a partner, are going to be able to provide that for your customers,' Lenovo exec Rob Cato says of IoT and AI opportunities for the channel.

NetApp Exec: The Challenge Of Digital Transformation Is That People Are ‘Scared’
'They’re concerned about it, but everybody says it has to happen. So when you look at it, when you look at the principles that are driving us towards this, it’s really around the simplification of IT,’ says NetApp’s Chris Lamborn.

Insight Enterprises’ Lamneck: AI, Cloud Have ‘Leveled The Whole Playing Field’
'All these small to medium companies have the ability to become really large-scale with their capabilities with things like the cloud,’ says Insight Enterprises President and CEO Ken Lamneck.

Friend Or Foe? Dell’s Marius Haas On AWS Outposts
"At first when I saw [VMware CEO] Pat [Gelsinger] and VMware get really close in aligning with AWS, I was worried. I said, ‘Where is this going? Are we creating our own competitive ecosystem?’” says Marius Haas, president and chief commercial officer at Dell Technologies.

6 Reasons The U.S. Economy Is Thriving, According To Star Economist Todd Buchholz
Despite the current technological and political turmoil, the U.S. is also in the midst of a golden age of prosperity, says Buchholz.

October 14th

CEO Kevin Mandia: FireEye Has A 90 Percent Success Rate Cracking Corporate Networks
"The only unvarnished truth any Chief Information Security Officer can really get is can someone break into my network from the internet and get to the CEO's email or get to business-critical applications," said FireEye CEO Kevin Mandia.

Kevin Mandia: Detect Spear Phishing, Lock Down CEO Email To Stay Safe
Spear phishing remains the most common way for adversaries to compromise organizations, and businesses need a technology or two that are exceptional at detecting it, says FireEye CEO Kevin Mandia.

Ingram Micro’s Kirk Robinson: ‘Get Comfortable Being Uncomfortable’
‘The industry we're in if you're comfortable, you're either probably not growing or you're getting run over,’ says Ingram Micro Chief Country Executive for the U.S. Kirk Robinson in a keynote at the Best of Breed conference.

What Recession? Solution Providers Bullish On 2020 Economic Opportunities
In a recent survey of solution provider CEOs attending this month’s Best of Breed channel thought leadership conference, 69 percent of those surveyed said they do not expect a recession next year.

‘A Very Resilient Economy’ -- Why Former White House Chief Economist Dr. Douglas Holtz-Eakin Is ‘Cautiously Optimistic’
Economist Dr. Douglas Holtz-Eakin spoke with CRN about his economic forecast, the upbeat 2020 forecast from the CRN BoB Conference CEOs, and why the broad consensus of CEOs fear a recession.