01732 759725 12 NETWORK GROUP ...continued sent business owners event boxes with some decent beers, some fancy coffee, the odd book and other stuff. That enabled us to maintain a revenue stream and we won a CRN Sales and Marketing Award.” y Network Group events have become a four and a half star experience “For one of our virtual events we had a conversation with Ruby Wax, and that is another big change we've seen over the years. Network Group now pays for leading speakers and thought leaders to speak at our events, like Stuart Pearce at Wembley, which we never used to do. “When I first started, I remember going to a meeting in a room bolted onto a Toby Carvery in Wootton, Northamptonshire. There were 30 of us and someone came in to talk about cables or whatever. Since then, we’ve progressed to what I would call three and a half star events and, in the last five or six years, to four and a half star events. “We're more professional now and so are the companies that participate in our events. The founders were telling me that when they started out they used to bring sandwiches to events. The experience is very different today. What hasn’t changed is the ethos of trying to help members be better and be part of something bigger than themselves.” u The MSP has come of age and the evidence is M&A “M&A has been a big change – we would be at over 100 members by now if it wasn't for M&A – and that was driven to a great extent by Covid when PE companies needed something to put their money into. In that sense, MSPs have come of age. “Of course, MSPs have always been important. It’s just no one knew it. Distributors never really knew what an MSP was – they typically thought they were bad resellers because they don’t buy very much. The company I worked for nearly 30 years ago used to say ‘own the network and you own the customer’. Now, if you own the MSP, you own the customer. MSPs have become valuable and everyone wants a piece. “I'm interested to see what M&A does to the market. Vendors upstream have never been further away because they're getting bigger and bigger and we’re just numbers on a spreadsheet. Now we’re starting to see that with MSPs. They are getting bigger and bigger, which means they will get further away from the end user customer.” i Regulation is needed if MSPs are to retain trusted advisor status “At the moment, you can become an MSP just by calling yourself one. That doesn't make you a good MSP. We think accreditation is coming for companies with 50-plus staff and £10 million pounds in turnover. But there aren't many of that size, so does that create a two-tier market? We're keen to use the frameworks that are there to raise the bar. We want to make sure our members go over and above any standards and push each other to be the best.” https://www.nbg.co.uk/ t Covid was a game-changer for Network Group “We've always served a purpose, but Covid really catapulted us into the spotlight. We had our first Zoom call as lockdown was introduced, joined by 75 of our then 80 members, and we've kept them up even since. We have a weekly call every Thursday. It's purely optional and anywhere from five to 40 people normally take part. Sometimes we'll bring a partner in to update us on something, but more often I'll moderate the sessions and say ‘Right, what are we going to talk about this week?’ and they’ll go ‘Well, I'm struggling with this’ or ‘I've got a problem with that’. “Covid could have been really challenging for us. The income from our events helps run the team, so we had to pivot to virtual events. What's worse than a two-day IT conference? A two-day online IT conference. Instead of doing a virtual two-day conference, our Head of Marketing Marie Devlin and I decided to split it up into bite-sized chunks spread across two weeks. We called it Lunch and Learn and Network Group Gala Network Group’s annual Exhibition, Gala and Awards evening at Wembley Stadium was attended by a record 260 members and partners. The itinerary included workshops with leading vendors such as Brigantia, Huntress, N-able, Uptime, Pia, ScalePad, ThreatLocker and Ingram Micro; an expo with 48 exhibitors (see list); and a gala dinner, awards ceremony and charity auction which raised £30,465 for the Street Soccer Foundation. This year’s award winners were: n MSP of the Year (Sub 1500 Endpoints) – 1-Fix n MSP of the Year (Plus 1500 Endpoints) – Morgan & Morgan n New Member of the Year – Start Tech n Member Contribution to Group – Net Primates & Southern IT n Retailer of the Year – DLG Computers n Partner of the Year – Brigantia n New Partner of the Year – Inforcer n Security Vendor of the Year – OpenText Cybersecurity n Account Manager of the Year – Alicia Shepherd, Terra Computer n Channel Champion of the Year – Tim Coach, Pia Exhibitor list Alogic Asanti Augmentt Bloom Cloud Brigantia bvoip Canon CloudOlive Comms365 ConnectSecure ConnectWise CompTIA CyberQP Egnyte Gamma Grenke Huntress immy.bot Inforcer Ingram Micro IT Governance Kaseya Liongard Mesh Microsoft Mi-Crow N-able OpenText Pax8 Pia Pillr QA Rewst Sage Salsbuildr ScalePad Cloud In The Channel Sophos Street Soccer Foundation Technology Reseller Teknov8/Telev8 Terra ThreatLocker Titan HQ Telco To Go Uptime WatchGuard Zest Lifestyle
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