Live from the Summit: #AcronisCyberFitSummit Day Two Highlights

Another amazing day the Acronis #CyberFit Summit in Miami is in the books! Whether you joined us in Miami, online, or are just getting caught up on what the world’s premier cyber protection event has to offer your MSP business – here’s a quick look back at some of the top moments and takeaways from our second day at the Acronis #CyberFit Miami 2021.

Before you kick off our third day – dedicated to training sessions with the Acronis Academy team – take a moment to check out this Day Two recap to make sure you don’t miss out on any of the business-building benefits that attendees gained so far.

There’s still tons of sessions, panels, workshops, and exclusive events to check out! Log in to the event site or event app to continue your Summit experience tomorrow.

Day two of the Acronis #CyberFit Summit in Miami kicked off with an inspiring panel featuring five female leaders from across the IT industry and led by author and former CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin. The panel, composed of Amy Luby, Katya Ivanova, Amy O’Connor, Ann Cloyd, and Dr. Wanda Eugene, shared experiences from their career path and offered advice for IT professionals to help foster more inclusivity and equality in the field.

Focusing on how more women can get involved in IT, the panel offered a wealth of insight – particularly about the importance community, camaraderie, and intentionality play. “Fostering allies within companies and within the business is key,” explained O’Connor. She and her fellow panelists went on to discuss how women can support other women and advocate for others when they see instances of bias or micro-aggression. Ultimately, however, the panel noted that this wasn’t a fight for women, alone – that everyone has a role to play in addressing and eliminating inequities in the field based on gender, race, culture, and more.

Amy Luby followed up her appearance on the Women in Tech panel with a fascinating conversation with former FBI negotiator and CEO of the Black Swan Group, Chris Voss. Together, the two discussed how to effectively negotiate – whether it be in a business agreement or a ransomware response. In all cases, Voss explained that the fundamentals are the same: “Empathy is a universal skill. It isn’t sympathy. It isn’t agreement. It’s a demonstration of understanding.”

He went on to note that in his career of high-stakes negotiations establishing this level of understanding has been crucial. “Everyone resonates with feeling heard,” Voss explained. “When you feel heard you relax. You’re more amenable. You take it easier on the person making you feel heard. When taking part in a ransom negotiation, making sure the other side feels heard is key to helping you reach success.”

For modern MSPs, opportunities are enormous. The managed services industry is growing rapidly, customers are increasingly turning to IT service providers, and high profile cyberthreats are encouraging even more to make the shift. But maximizing the productivity and profitability of a modern MSP continues to be a puzzle for many. To help attendees achieve these goals in the year ahead, a number of Miami Summit sessions focused on simple steps that MSPs can take to see greater returns.

·       A Panel of Experts on How Automation and Delivery Drive Profits and Better Customer Outcomes: In this panel, IT business experts explored the role that integrations and automation have on a business’ bottom line: both reducing stress and freeing up time to explore innovative new ideas. Acronis Chief Success Officer Gaidar Magdanurov put this succinctly, saying, “Everything should be automated. We have too many tools. Too many updates, licenses, reports. Without automations and integrations there’s no way to manage it all.”

·       Maximizing your Relationship with Acronis - Getting and Staying #CyberFit: Achieving your business goals doesn’t need to be a solo effort, of course. In this session, three Acronis leaders led attendees through the programs they can access to sell and market more effectively, streamline support, gain profit-building certifications, and become the official service provider to professional sports teams around the world. Acronis Channel Chief Alex Ruslyakov explained why all of these efforts are available to Acronis partners, “We grow when you grow. We are fully committed to making Acronis your number one vendor.”

·       Capture and Retain – Keeping Engaged with Profitable Customers: CEO and Chief Analyst of The 2112 Group Larry Walsh rounded out this profitability conversation, offering research insights in this session to help MSPs reduce client churn and maintain better relationships and growth. Interestingly, Walsh reported that most channel partners are losing two out of three service accounts due to lack of planning, process, and investment in customer success. “Over time a customer’s perception of the value of your service will decrease if you aren’t actively engaging with them,” he advised. “Never take a customer for granted. Renewals aren’t automatic and shouldn’t be expected.” Instead, Walsh recommends MSPs invest in their customer experience and create measured KPIs to constantly fine-tune the service they offer.

As a final highlight from Day Two of the Acronis #CyberFit Summit in Miami, we recommend everyone take a look back at the five-year predictions Acronis Business President Ezequiel Steiner offered in our Leadership Roundtable:

·       The talent shortage will continue to worsen as technology becomes more sophisticated and more varied. This will result in a greater need for integrations and automation.

·       Customers will continue to move to the cloud. As business becomes more decentralized, the cloud migration will become more ubiquitous.

·       Cyberthreats will grow to be a bigger challenge. This will overwhelm many SMBs, leading to more demand for MSP services.

Steiner added that the integrated cyber protection approach Acronis offers is designed to help MSPs address this and made a point to ask for the partner community’s engagement in making cyber protection as helpful and valuable as possible. “We want to help you guys be more effective and successful. To do that, we need to know what you’re doing, what you’re using, and so on.” Acronis CTO Oleg Melnikov added. “What we’re doing is connecting all of the different things in your toolbox to help you streamline and stay successful.”

The Acronis #CyberFit Summit in Miami isn’t over! Log in to the event site or event app tomorrow morning to continue your Summit experience and take part in our free Acronis Acronis Academy training courses.