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With the dawn of summer upon us, Craig and Kevin are back with a red hot podcast! Intrepid Channel Partners reporter Edward Gately sits down with new Fusion Connect CEO Brian Crotty. There's a lot to talk about as the company recently emerged from bankruptcy. Crotty is tasked with leading the company's transition post-Chapter 11, a discussion that will have a big impact on the partner community. And it might only take two to "Tango," but Craig and Kevin both lined up some questions for Pamela Strong, vice president of global sales at Tango Networks. She talks about the big year for the company and it's Mobile-X product. Meantime, the guys share thoughts on the global push for social and criminal justice reform. The conversation turns to a group in the channel that is pushing for inclusion and diversity. But lest you think this podcast is turning a new leaf and losing it's more humorous side, Craig and Kevin break out their latest CwCK movie trailer. This week's theme?: time travel.

The guys are ready to "tel" you a little about the channel. MetTel and GigTel are a couple of players making waves this spring with SD-WAN and UCaaS, respectively. Up first is MetTel CTO Ed Fox, who discusses how artificial intelligence and SD-WAN are making enterprise networks more efficient. And he ought to know. MetTel just took home a couple of awards for SD-WAN. Then it's Jim Rotondi, national channel manager with GigTel, which you might know better as Endeavor Communications. He talks about how being part of such a well-established organization has helped Gigtel maintain momentum in the market, particularly in UCaaS. And both guests have some great advice on how to work through uncertain times. And that's not all. With the theme of "know-how," Craig and Kevin talk about the many resources online, and in particular, on Channel Partners Online and Channel Futures, that can keep you in the know this summer as you continue to spend more time at home.

After what we'll call a "COVID hiatus," Craig and Kevin are back with some important messages for these trying times. First up, the guys welcome Mike Schmidtmann, business coach and owner of Trans4mers, into the coffeehouse. Mike talks about the current climate for recruiting and hiring talent. He also offers up one big piece of advice for pushing through difficult economic times and coming through stronger than before. Also on the show is Channel Partners' Kris Blackmon. The editor extraordinaire updates us on the 2020 MSP 501, which ranks the world's top managed service providers. MSPs, Kris has all the facts about applying and getting recognized for your outstanding businesses. Furthermore, Kris and Craig will discuss all of the new digital and virtual opportunities available on Channel Partners Online and Channel Futures. With so many events canceled this sprint, we're helping to keep you up to speed on the industry. All that, plus Digi, the podcast's digital services robot mascot, tells us about his

It's another pair of blockbuster guests on the latest episode of the Channel Partners podcast, Coffee with Craig and Kevin. First up is 8x8 channel chief John Delozier, the Channel Partners/Channel Futures Influencer of the Year. He's the first-ever three-time guest on the show. "JD" fills us in on what 8x8 is doing to help its partners and customers through the COVID-19 crisis. He also shares advice on what he thinks it means to be an "influencer." And last but not least, we get an update on how 8x8 is making its Elevate channel program accessible to more partners. But that's not all. The "initial" party continues! J.P. Dundas is someone the channel knows from his days at Fuze, EarthLink and Cbeyond. Now he's taken the reins of the Edify.cx channel. You might not know about Edify yet. So Dundas will talk about the company's cloud-native contact software and how Edify is helping people suddenly working at home. Looking for more? Craig and Kevin will give you a breakdown of the changes to this year's presti

It's a bombastic new Coffee with Craig and Kevin, the 75th edition of the podcast! The guys are celebrating with Dan Saks, co-CEO of AppDirect, who discusses the origin of the company and how the acquisitions of a number of big master agents in the channel furthered his mission to develop AppSmart, the technology-services marketplace. Renee Bergeron, new SVP and GM of AppSmart, also takes part in the conversation, to talk about what drew her to AppSmart from a decade at Ingram Micro and what she has for goals in her first year at the company. Then, one of the hottest companies in all of tech, let alone the channel, drops in for a chat. Kevin Thomsen with Zoom Video Communications tells us why his company's platform is catching on like wildfire. He also offers up some interesting thoughts on the work-from-home phenomenon created by coronavirus concerns nationwide. All that, plus Craig and Kevin break news-- sort of -- on the rescheduling of the Channel Partners Conference & Expo. Plus, they unveil their la

**The interviews for this episode of Coffee with Craig and Kevin were done prior to the difficult decision that was made to officially postpone the event. Stay tuned to this podcast stream for updates on when it will be rescheduled.** Craig and Kevin offer their famous pre-show edition of the podcast, where they break down some of their favorite things to come at the Channel Partners Conference & Expo, March 9-12, in Las Vegas. The guys interview two companies that will make big waves at the event. First up is Pilot Fiber's Mike Egbert, the company's director of sales. He gets us up to speed on the competitive market for fiber and internet services. Then comes Jasmina Muller, the 8x8 and CenturyLink channel vet who just took on a big new role with Everbridge, the critical event management provider for the channel. She explains how partners can get a conversation around CEM started with their customers.

With just a week and a half before the BIG SHOW, the Channel Partners Conference & Expo in Las Vegas, Craig and Kevin are hard at work not only prepping for the event but also garnering interviews with some of the big players who will be in the expo hall and beyond. First up is Rob Messmer, channel chief with CBTS, who strolls into the coffeehouse to update us on the company's foray into SD-WAN and unique efforts to build its channel community. Then it's Jed Kenzy, managing partner with Innovative Business Solutions, who talks about the master agent's relationships with the big cable companies and its Cablefinder.net service. And of course, both companies can be found all over the Channel Partners Conference & Expo, March 9-12, whether it be in the expo hall, in meeting rooms, on the keynote stage and more. Finally,  Craig and Kevin will give you a top-three countdown of tips for attending the show.

Craig and Kevin packed a lot into this episode with just a little more than three weeks to go before the Channel Partners Conference & Expo in Las Vegas. First up is the channel team from Oracle. They get into the nitty gritty of SD-WAN and security. You might be surprised at the strides that this networking, cloud and enterprise software company is making in the channel. Also, our Edward Gately scored an interview Avaya's channel chief to learn more about Avaya Cloud Office, which the company is betting on as a huge success when it debuts this spring. He also learned how Avaya plans to turn around four years of declining channel revenue. And just when you thought that awards season was over, the guys discuss the many honors that will be doled out at the Channel Partners Conference & Expo, March 9-12, in Las Vegas. Among them: the Excellence in Digital Services Awards, the Channel Influencer Awards and the Channel Partners Circle of Excellence. Speaking of awards, did you know that this podcast was up for

We're just one month away from the Channel Partners Conference & Expo, so the guys lined up an interview with Nerdio, which is poised to help drive even more managed service providers to the event. Also on the show, intrepid Channel Partners editor Edward Gately files a report from the Check Point Software CPX 360 event, where he caught up with the company's channel chief, Frank Rauch. Check Point is making some significant changes to its channel program. What's more, we'll break down the upcoming Business Success Workshop preconference ahead of the Channel Partners show and fill you in some of the networking opportunities available at this year's BIG SHOW. Finally, Craig and Kevin get their Super Bowl predictions in--yes, we recorded this before the big game--and let's just say the result was better for Craig than it was Kevin.

Craig and Kevin are back with their first episode of the new year, the new decade! You might say they've got 2020 vision in great new interviews with Poly and Webroot. Poly channel chief Nick Tidd, one of our Channel Partners Top Gun 51 award winners from 2019, tells us how partners have reacted to the changes at the company -- namely the merger of Plantronics and Polycom, followed by the rebrand to Poly. He also touches on new products and services rolling out at the company over the past few months and the exciting things coming down the road. The guys also up their security game by welcoming George Anderson of Webroot to the show. He gets us caught up on advice for partners approaching their customers about security spending and the urgency for SMBs to stop thinking they're immune from cyberattacks. And it wouldn't be a new year without one of Kevin's whimsical industry metaphors. We've also got a preview of the hot keynotes and conference education tracks on tap for the upcoming Channel Partners Confe

The guys return with their final podcast of the year, celebrating the holidays and thanking listeners for their devotion to Coffee with Craig and Kevin throughout 2019. And a classic Craig & Kevin tradition returns -- a special CwCK movie trailer celebrating the "space" everyone in the channel loves to occupy. They've also lined up a pair of great guests. First up is Andrew Pryfogle, chief market development officer at cloud distributor Pax8. He'll be on a panel debating IT and telecom convergence at the upcoming Channel Partners Conference & Expo in March. You'll want to hear what he has to say. Also, Vonage channel chief Mario DeRiggi talks to Craig and Kevin about the company's new channel program in the U.K. -- perfect timing coming off our inaugural Channel Evolution Europe show -- as well as Vonage's revitalized branding as a B2B SaaS company. What's it all mean to partners? Listen and find out.

The push is on to Channel Evolution Europe, less than three weeks away in London. It's our inaugural European show, where we'll welcome top vendors and partners to Park Plaza Victoria, Dec. 2-3. A key player in the event will be Dave Sobel, IT industry and MSP expert, most recently at SolarWinds, who is doing a couple of his own podcasts to evangelize for the channel. We sat down with him to hear what he's been up to, what he has planned for Channel Evolution Europe, and how he'll be working with Channel Partners and Channel Futures over the next few months -- not to mention pick his brain for channel-related advice. Oh, and get this: Sobel says the "trusted adviser" is dead. That ought to perk up some ears. The guys also welcome the team from Vade Secure, the email security company, to learn about new technology they're offering and get the inside scoop on the latest in phishing attacks. All that, plus we take our first look at the upcoming Channel Partners Conference & Expo in Las Vegas, slated for Marc

Welcome to November! Craig and Kevin welcome Lisa Citron, vice president of America channel sales at F5 Networks, to the coffeehouse. She talks about F5's recent acquisition of NGINX and what that's doing for the company's partner community. Beyond that, we learn about growth in F5's Unity+ Partner Program. We also catch up with roving reporter Edward Gately, who just returned from Las Vegas and Splunk .conf, where he caught up with channel leader Brooke Cunningham to talk about the company's message to partners and the new products Splunk is rolling out for partners to sell. Plus, Channel Evolution Europe, our inaugural event in the U.K., is just a month away. We offer a preview. And in an edition dedicated to rock 'n' roll, Kevin breaks out another one of his whimsical industry metaphors to compare the channel to the history of rock.

After their post-Evolution layoff, the guys are back with a new podcast that packs in three interviews from some of the biggest names in the business. While Channel Partners Evolution is the fall's biggest independent channel event--and we'll recap it here--it's not the only event with a channel focus happening this fall. Channel Partners editor Edward Gately caught up with McAfee's channel chief at the company's MPower event in Las Vegas, and learned about some big changes coming to McAfee's partner program. Then editor James Anderson gives us a two-fer from his trips to Florida for Tech Data's TechSelect conference and Intelisys Channel Connect in Monterey, California. Hope ya missed us a little bit. We're back with regularly scheduled podcasts for the rest of the year.

Dude, we're getting Dell! That's right, Dell Expert Network, the tech giant's business unit dedicated to serving MSPs and the SMB community, will be on hand at Channel Partners Evolution. They're setting up shop in the expo hall, meeting with prospective partners and sponsoring the Robin Robins sales and marketing preconference workshop. But we got them first on Coffee with Craig and Kevin to discuss the need for something like Dell Expert Network in the market and more about what they have planned for next week's show in Washington, D.C. TBI's Bryan Reynolds also joins for his third in a series of appearances to tell us what he's doing to get "pumped up" for moderating the "Thunderdomes" at Channel Partners Evolution and what the master agent is doing to help partners sell SD-WAN. Noticing a theme here? It's the Evolution pre-show edition! We'll cover the can't-miss highlights of the event and get you stoked for what will be four days of top-notch education and networking.

The unofficial end of summer is almost here with Labor Day just around the corner. For the Channel Partners team, that means putting the finishing touches on preps for Channel Partners Evolution. One of the vendors pitching a tent in the expo hall will be Bigleaf, which will espouse the virtues of its "cloud-first SD-WAN to partners. Jeff Burchett, co-founder and VP of sales and marketing at Bigleaf, gives Craig and Kevin a preview: "It is definitely a crowded space right now. One of the biggest challenges we have as a company ... it really comes down to differentiation, helping partners understand where we fit uniquely relative to the rest of the market ..., said Burchett. "We got started with a very specific problem in mind that we wanted to address ... the unique needs of SaaS and cloud and UCaaS applications when you're accessing them over the public internet." Also on the show, T.C. Doyle, senior director of content for Channel Partners and Channel Futures, interviews Josh Wilhelm, the new president o

The arrival of Channel Partners Evolution is imminent, with just 26 days, as of this recording, Aug. 14, of kicking off in Washington, D.C. So we're upping the frequency of our podcasts! That's right, Craig and Kevin are back just nine days after their last effort to bring you updates from last week's Telarus Partner Summit in Aurora, Colorado, and the Black Hat USA event in Las Vegas. Craig sits down with Adam Edwards, CEO of Telarus, to talk about the remarkable sales growth of the master agent's partners, what Telarus is doing internationally, and how Partner Summit itself has grown so rapidly. Also, our road warrior and intrepid security reporter Edward Gately chats with leaders from Cisco and Duo Security to get an update on how the former's acquisition of the latter is impacting the partner community. And that's not all for our "On the Road" segment--Kevin talks about his visit to CompTIA's ChannelCon in Vegas. All that, plus the guys discuss what they are looking forward to most at the upcoming Ch

We're into the home stretch. We're just five weeks away from Channel Partners Evolution, where more than 3,200 channel professionals will gather for education, networking and more. In this week's edition of Coffee with Craig and Kevin, we catch up with Lorna Garey, Channel Partners' editor-in-chief, the driving force between Channel Partners' new Alliance Makers program, which will give supplier reps at Evolution a chance to increase their sales and marketing knowledge, plus a chance to get on the line cards of some of the biggest master agents and distributors in the business. Janet Schijns, former Verizon channel chief, will be a big part of that program, hosting our Shark Stage on Thursday, Sept. 12. She, too, joins the podcast to explain why she thinks Alliance Makers is so important and offers some tips on channel vendors can develop that "it" factor. Of course, all of this supplier education is on top of Channel Partners Evolution's great history of conference tracks for our partner audience. Think

It's master mania on this episode of Coffee with Craig and Kevin! First, Bryan Reynolds of TBI is back with the second in a series of appearances on the podcast, leading up to his emcee duties as moderator of our 5G, RMM and UCaaS "Thunderdome" panels. We also get to know about a lesser-known master agent, iTelecom, which will be setting up shop on the Channel Partners Evolution show floor as a new exhibitor just a few weeks from now. Speaking of Evolution, we'll have a rundown of some of the great education conference tracks at the event, and a discussion about our expanded focus on education for our supplier audience. All that, plus Kevin "channels" Queen with another edition of our summer game show, "Random Personal Question." Bring your earplugs!

The heat of summer is here, so Craig and Kevin are bringing you a red-hot version of the Channel Partners podcast! The guys are excited to welcome to the show Robin Robins, the well-known IT marketing and sales consultant, who is getting ready for her four-hour preconference workshop at the upcoming Channel Partners Evolution, the channel's biggest fall event. Robin explains why you should attend the event and drops a number of important sales and marketing tips that you can apply to your business before you even get to Washington, D.C. "I think this is what gets many small business owners in trouble. They don't really understand marketing, so they think it's branding, a beautiful logo and a dynamic website. It's really none of those things. I'm a salesperson. A salesperson thinks differently about marketing. ... People are going to buy from us because we provide real value, we can solve a problem for them and we are positioned properly." Speaking of Evolution, to be held Sept. 9-12, we'll explore some of