Podcasts about Vars

The episode identifies a fundamental structural shift in the MSP and IT services landscape: vendor channel consolidation and ecosystem dependency are increasingly determining who controls customer relationships, margins, and access to recurring revenue streams. Companies such as Microsoft, Anthropic, and Huntress are actively reshaping the ecosystem by investing significant resources in partner programs and platform strategies that dictate operational baselines and restrict neutrality. This realignment is driving MSPs to deliberately choose platform alignments, as attempting to remain neutral increasingly results in a loss of relevance and market access. Central to this shift is Anthropic's $100 million investment in launching the Claude Partner Network for 2026, which creates certification and co-sell incentives for firms capable of implementing Claude within enterprise environments. According to Dave Sobel, this is not long-range product development but a concentrated customer acquisition cost to rapidly build channel coverage. In parallel, Microsoft is embedding Anthropic models within Copilot, shifting to a multi-model approach that retains flexibility at the AI model layer while keeping Azure as the entrenched operational platform. Supporting developments reinforce these channel and ecosystem pressures. Huntress's move to expand its partner program to value-added resellers (VARs) dilutes its previously MSP-exclusive channel, removing some of the distribution advantages MSPs may have relied upon. Sonomi's positioning of third-party risk management as an MSP revenue opportunity comes amid rising supply chain risk, as supported by ConnectWise's 2026 MSP Threat Report highlighting increased identity abuse and supply chain attacks. Simultaneously, declining PC shipments—especially for budget devices—are shifting the economic emphasis from hardware projects to operational service engagements such as identity governance and lifecycle management. The operational implications for MSPs are clear: partner program frameworks have become the gatekeepers of pricing, leads, and ongoing service annuities, reducing the room for independent strategy or procurement-driven decisions. Ecosystem alignment must be intentional and based on a realistic assessment of program timelines, certification windows, and revenue structure. As hardware refresh cycles slow and vendors consolidate services and identity requirements, MSPs face increased dependency risk, potential margin erosion, and diminished negotiating leverage. Those failing to anticipate or adapt to these shifts risk being relegated to subcontractor roles without control over customer relationships or recurring revenues. Three things to know today 00:00 AI Channel War 02:27 Identity Baseline Shift 03:43 Refresh Revenue Shift 04:46 Why Do We Care?  Supported by:  Small Biz Thoughts Community   

Send a textNehemia 8:10 Hy het ook vir hulle gesê: “Gaan eet 'n lekker maaltyd en drink soet drankies. Deel ook van die kos met mense wat niks voorberei het nie. Hierdie is 'n dag wat aan ons God toegewy is. Moenie terneergedruk wees nie, want die blydskap wat die Here gee, sal julle krag wees! (NLV) Ons lewens bestaan uit twee afsonderlike dele – die dinge wat uiterlik sigbaar is; die dinge wat ons sien, doen en sê, en die dinge wat ons aan die binnekant dink en voel. Hulle is uiteraard aanmekaar verbind, maar daardie diep innerlike lewe bly vir die res van die wêreld verborge.Elke nou en dan breek ons innerlike lewe deur. Ons woede breek uit in driftige woorde; ons liefde in teerheid.Oor die algemeen probeer ons ons negatiewe emosies wegsteek – ons trots, ons wrokke, ons vrese, ons bekommernisse, ons gevoel van ontoereikendheid, ensovoorts. Hierdie emosies spoel soos ‘n wasmasjien om en om in ons harte, dit verdraai ons perspektief; dit vernietig ons verhoudings. En al probeer ons hulle onderdruk, vreet hulle soos kanker aan ons. Maar, moenie jouself bluf nie, al probeer jy dit wegsteek, weet ander mense dat iets verkeerd is.Hoe oorwin jy jou negatiewe emosies? Hoe keer jy dat hulle nie soos 'n oop sweer jou lewe met hulle gif besmet nie? Jy het bonatuurlike krag nodig om hulle baas te raak, om hulle te oorwin en om hulle finaal uit te wis.Nehemia 8:10 Nehemia het gesê: “Gaan geniet keurige kos en soet drankies, en stuur daarvan aan diegene wat niks voorberei het nie. Hierdie dag is heilig aan ons Here. Moenie treur nie, want die vreugde van die HERE is julle krag.” (NIV)Die mense het gehuil toe God se wet hardop vir hulle voorgelees is en hulle het besef hoe skuldig hulle was. Nehemia het hulle egter vermaan om nie bedroef te wees nie, omdat God behae daarin skep wanneer sy mense vrolik is. Sy genade bring krag wat die negatiewe strominge in ons harte heeltemal oorweldig, heeltemal oorwin, heeltemal uitwis.Hierdie dag is heilig aan ons Here. Moenie treur nie, want die vreugde van die HERE is julle krag.Dis God se Woord. Vars … vir jou … vandag.Support the showEnjoying The Content?For the price of a cup of coffee each month, you can enable Christianityworks to reach 10,000+ people with a message about the love of Jesus!DONATE R50 MONTHLY

Send a textJesaja 6: 8 Toe het ek die Here hoor vra: “Wie kan Ek stuur? Wie sal ons boodskapper wees?” Ek het geantwoord: “Hier is ek! Stuur my!” As jy oortuig is dat God jou roep en dat Hy wil hê dat jy jou gawes tot sy eer moet gebruik – dan is jy werklik geseënd. Maar hier is die probleem: daar is altyd 'n prys daaraan verbonde. En dis dikwels dáárdie prys wat ‘n mens keer om die stap te neem in die rigting wat ware, blywende vervulling bring.David Livingstone het geglo dat God hom as 'n sendeling, en ontdekkingsreisiger na donker Afrika geroep het. Sy primêre doel was om die Evangelie aan onbereikte mense te bring. Maar toe hy die brutaliteit van die slawehandel eerstehands aanskou het, het hy sy ontdekkingsreise ook gesien as ‘n manier om Afrika oop te maak vir die Boodskap van Christus en vir wettige handel, in die hoop om slawerny te beëindig. Vir Livingstone het sy reise nooit oor roem gegaan nie; dit was uit gehoorsaamheid aan God se roeping om te dien, te genees en te bevry.Wanneer God jou roep, kan dit 'n moeilike pad wees. Hy het Jesaja geroep as 'n Profeet vir Israel, wat ver van hul God afgedwaal het. Die man moes God se oordeel oor hulle uitspreek. Hoe gewild dink jy het dit hom gemaak? Ons lees dat Jesaja toe hy in die tempel gebid het …Jesaja 6:8 ...het ek die Here hoor vra: “Wie kan Ek stuur? Wie sal ons boodskapper wees?” Ek het geantwoord: “Hier is ek! Stuur my!”Watter roeping het God op jou lewe geplaas? Het die prys wat dit van jou vra, jou dalk gekeer om te sê: Hier is ek. Stuur my?Livingstone het, na alles wat hy deurgemaak het, gesê: As 'n opdrag deur 'n aardse koning as 'n eer beskou word, hoe kan 'n opdrag deur 'n hemelse koning as 'n opoffering beskou word?”Toe sê ek: “Hier is ek. Stuur my!”Dis God se Woord. Vars … vir jou … vandag.Support the showEnjoying The Content?For the price of a cup of coffee each month, you can enable Christianityworks to reach 10,000+ people with a message about the love of Jesus!DONATE R50 MONTHLY

Send a text2 Korintiërs 3:17-18 Jesus het geweet dat die Vader alles in sy hande gegee het en dat Hy van God gekom het en na God teruggaan. Toe het Hy van die tafel af opgestaan, sy bokleed uitgetrek en 'n handdoek gevat en om Hom vasgemaak. Daarna het Hy water in 'n wasskottel gegooi en begin om sy dissipels se voete te was en dit dan af te droog met die handdoek wat Hy omgehad het. As jy sou terugkyk na hoe jy as persoon, oor die afgelope vyf of tien jaar verander het, sou jy kon aflei dat jy vandag beslis ‘n beter mens is, as wat jy destyds was?Wat beteken dit om 'n beter mens te wees? Miskien het jou selfsug plek gemaak vir vrygewigheid, jou trots vir nederigheid, jou woede vir vriendelikheid. Miskien het jy groter empatie vir ander; miskien help jy hulle, miskien vergewe jy hulle, selfs wanneer hulle dit nie verdien nie. Miskien glimlag jy meer as wat jy frons.Dit wil gedoen wees, nè? Maar dit maak nie saak hoe hard ons daaraan werk om 'n "beter mens" te word nie; is dit moeilik om diepgewortelde houdings en gedrag te verander. Dis amper soos om 'n ernstige siekte te hê en jouself te probeer dokter, in plaas daarvan om na 'n dokter toe te gaan.Daar is natuurlik 'n ander manier; daardie Dokter is Jesus. Laat die groot Geneesheer toe om die geneser van jou hart te wees. Hier is hoe die apostel Paulus dit stel:2 Korintiërs 3:17-18 Jesus het geweet dat die Vader alles in sy hande gegee het en dat Hy van God gekom het en na God teruggaan. Toe het Hy van die tafel af opgestaan, sy bokleed uitgetrek en 'n handdoek gevat en om Hom vasgemaak. Daarna het Hy water in 'n wasskottel gegooi en begin om sy dissipels se voete te was en dit dan af te droog met die handdoek wat Hy omgehad het.Billy Graham verduidelik dit met hierdie woorde van wysheid: Slegs God kan ‘n mens onselfsugtige liefde vir ander gee, wanneer die Heilige Gees jou van binne verander. Dit is waarom jy Christus moet aanneem; want sonder sy Gees kan jy nooit van die kettings van selfsug, jaloesie en onverskilligheid bevry word nie. Vra jouself af: Sal ander mense Christus se liefde vandag in my lewe sien?Laat Jesus jou verander, van binne af na buite toe.Dis God se Woord. Vars … vir jou … vandag.Support the showEnjoying The Content?For the price of a cup of coffee each month, you can enable Christianityworks to reach 10,000+ people with a message about the love of Jesus!DONATE R50 MONTHLY

Send a textJohannes 13 :3-5 Jesus het geweet dat die Vader alles in sy hande gegee het en dat Hy van God gekom het en na God teruggaan. Toe het Hy van die tafel af opgestaan, sy bokleed uitgetrek en 'n handdoek gevat en om Hom vasgemaak. Daarna het Hy water in 'n wasskottel gegooi en begin om sy dissipels se voete te was en dit dan af te droog met die handdoek wat Hy omgehad het. Het jy al ooit na ander mense gekyk en vir jouself gesê: Daardie mense daar oorkant, gedra hulle so sleg. Ek is so bly ek is nie soos hulle nie! Op daardie stadium voel jy trots en moreel meerderwaardig. Jy dink dat jy baie beslis beter as hulle is.Baie mense verwerp Christendom omdat hulle Christene sien optree op maniere wat Jesus se leringe weerspreek. Hulle sien mense se veroordelende houdings; hulle skandalige gedrag, gierigheid, rassisme, misbruik en politieke vooroordeel.Hulle gedrag stem nie ooreen met wat hulle sê hulle glo nie, en dit veroorsaak dat mense vir hulleself sê: As Christene nie soos Christus leef nie, hoekom moet ek hulle geloof ernstig opneem?Dis ‘n ou, ou storie wat vandag steeds afspeel: die morele mislukkings in die Kerk - van korrupte leiers tot die skynheiligheid van die gemeentelede – trek vir die mense daar buite, ‘n rooi streep deur die geloofwaardigheid van die Evangelie.Ongelowiges verwerp nie bloot Christelike leerstellings nie; hulle reageer op dit, wat hulle as geestelike bedrog beskou. Gandhi se bekende woorde som dit so mooi op: Ek hou van julle Christus; maar ek hou nie van julle Christene nie. Julle Christene is so anders as julle Christus.Die eintlike probleem is dus vertroue. As die Kerk nie die liefde, nederigheid en integriteit van Jesus weerspieël nie, waarom moet ‘n mens dan die boodskap glo? En nederigheid is die kern van die Evangelie. Kyk na Jesus se voorbeeld in:Johannes 13:3-5 Jesus het geweet dat die Vader alles in sy hande gegee het en dat Hy van God gekom het en na God teruggaan. Toe het Hy van die tafel af opgestaan, sy bokleed uitgetrek en 'n handdoek gevat en om Hom vasgemaak. Daarna het Hy water in 'n wasskottel gegooi en begin om sy dissipels se voete te was en dit dan af te droog met die handdoek wat Hy omgehad het.Die verskil tussen Jesus en godsdiens is dat godsdiens jou skaam maak omdat jy vuil voete het. Jesus kniel neer om hulle te was.Dis God se Woord. Vars … vir jou … vandag.Support the showEnjoying The Content?For the price of a cup of coffee each month, you can enable Christianityworks to reach 10,000+ people with a message about the love of Jesus!DONATE R50 MONTHLY

Send a textPsalm 62:2,3 Net by God vind ek rus, van Hom kom my redding. Net Hy is my rots en my redding, my veilige vesting, sodat ek vas en stewig staan. Teenspoed is geneig om een van twee verskillende reaksies uit te lok: ons word óf bitter óf beter. En let asseblief daarop, so naby as wat die twee woorde aan mekaar klink – bitter of beter – is hulle onverenigbaar. Bitter, of beter, die een óf die ander. Nooit albei nie. So … wat sal dit wees?John Bunyan en George Fox was albei tydens die 17de-eeu in Engeland gevange geneem omdat hulle sonder die toestemming van die Kerk van Engeland gepreek het. Bunyan, het die tronk as 'n plek gebruik om nader aan God te kom. Hy het ‘n boek, The Pilgrim's Progress, wat een van die klassieke Christelike werke geword het, geskryf. Sy lyding het hom nader aan Jesus laat groei.Fox, die stigter van die Kwaker-beweging, het ook deur ‘n soortgelyke moeilike tyd gegaan, maar hy het bitter en aggressief geword en homself selfs van sy vriende afgesluit. Die twee manne is albei baie onregverdig behandel, maar die een het sy pyn aan God oorgegee en dit het blywende vrugte gebring. Die ander, hoewel opreg,  vol wraakgedagtes. Sy lyding het hom verhard.Dieselfde tipe vervolging het twee baie uiteenlopende reaksies veroorsaak – die een beter, die ander bitter. Dit het onthul wat in hulle harte was.Dit blyk dat dieselfde pot kookwater 'n aartappel sag maak en 'n eier hard. Dit gaan nie soseer oor jou omstandighede nie, maar dit wys watter kaliber mens jy is.So, wat van jou? Wie of wat regeer jou lewe? Vir koning Dawid, was die antwoord, ten spyte van sy omstandighede waar hy moes vlug vir sy lewe, baie duidelik:Psalm 62:2,3 Net by God vind ek rus, van Hom kom my redding. Net Hy is my rots en my redding, my veilige vesting, sodat ek vas en stewig staan.Wanneer God jou lewe regeer, maak sy Gees jou siel stil en stel jou in staat om met stille vertroue te wag, wetende dat Hy jou rots, jou heil en jou veilige vesting is. Wanneer God jou lewe regeer, sal jy nie wankel nie!Dis Sy Woord. Vars ... vir jou ... vandag.Support the showEnjoying The Content?For the price of a cup of coffee each month, you can enable Christianityworks to reach 10,000+ people with a message about the love of Jesus!DONATE R50 MONTHLY

Send a textPsalm 27:4,5 Net een ding het ek van die Here gevra en dit sal ek najaag: dat ek my hele lewe lank in sy huis mag woon om sy goedheid te belewe en daaroor na te dink in sy tempel. Op die dag van gevaar sal die Here my wegsteek in sy huis, my veilig laat skuil in sy woonplek, my hoog op 'n rots laat staan; Teenspoed, is nooit welkom nie. Ek verstaan dit. En tog, wanneer dit wel toeslaan, hoe pynlik dit ook al mag wees, is dit waarskynlik een van die grootste geleenthede wat God jou ooit sal gee.In die 1930's is Esther Kim, 'n Koreaanse Christen, deur die Japannese gevange geneem omdat sy geweier het om voor 'n Shinto-beeld te buig. Omdat sy geweet het wat watter straf sy gaan kry, het sy maande lank gevas, gebid en die Skrif gememoriseer.In die tronk is sy gemartel, sy is verhonger, en sy het siek geword, maar sy het God se Teenwoordigheid as haar daaglikse krag beskryf. Sy het later geskryf: My lyding het die poort geword om Hom dieper te ken. Sy het deur hierdie aaklige omstandighede radikaal verander. Deur haar isolasie en mishandeling, het sy God op intieme, glorieryke maniere ontmoet.Koning Dawid was nóg iemand wat drieduisend jaar gelede deur sy verskriklike beproewinge dieselfde ding ontdek het: Psalm 27:4 Net een ding het ek van die Here gevra en dit sal ek najaag: dat ek my hele lewe lank in sy huis mag woon om sy goedheid te belewe en daaroor na te dink in sy tempel. Op die dag van gevaar sal die Here my wegsteek in sy huis, my veilig laat skuil in sy woonplek, my hoog op 'n rots laat staan;As die antwoord so duidelik is, kan ‘n mense nie verstaan waarom mense in hul donkerste uur sê dat hulle nie tyd kan vind om saam met God deur te bring nie. Die bekende skrywer Richard Blackaby het gesê: As jy dink jy is te besig om tyd saam met God deur te bring, is jou opinie van God heeltemal te laag en jou opinie van jouself heeltemal te hoog.Bring tyd in God se Teenwoordigheid deur. Waardeer sy skoonheid. En onthou in jou donkerste oomblikke, dit is waarskynlik die grootste geleentheid wat Hy jou ooit sal gee om sy krag te beleef.Dis God se Woord. Vars … vir jou … vandag.Support the showEnjoying The Content?For the price of a cup of coffee each month, you can enable Christianityworks to reach 10,000+ people with a message about the love of Jesus!DONATE R50 MONTHLY

Jack Hirsch, vice president of product at Okta The rise of AI in the workplace is creating a new kind of risk for organizations: shadow AI. Employees can now spin up AI agents that connect directly to emails, files, and business systems—often without IT oversight. These agents can access sensitive data, and without proper controls, they become prime targets for cyberattacks. In this episode of the podcast, we're joined by Jack Hirsch, vice president of product at Okta, to explore what shadow AI is, why it matters for Canadian organizations, and how IT partners can help their customers manage it. Jack discusses Okta's latest tools, which provide real-time visibility into AI agents and their permissions. These capabilities make it easier for security teams to discover unmanaged agents, understand their access, and quickly bring them under identity-based controls. We also touch on regulatory implications, including Canada's proposed Bill C-8, which heightens expectations around cyber risk accountability, access controls, and transparency. As legislation moves forward, organizations will need to prove they understand not just who has access to sensitive systems—but which AI agents do as well. For MSPs and IT resellers, this emerging landscape represents both a challenge and an opportunity. Jack shares insights into how partners can position themselves as trusted advisors for clients navigating AI risk, turning a potentially complex problem into a service opportunity. Tune in to hear why identity management is becoming central to securing the agentic enterprise—and what your customers will need to stay ahead of shadow AI risks. Read Full Transcript Hello and welcome to the ChannelBuzz.ca podcast, bringing news and information to the Canadian IT channel for the last 16 years. I’m Robert Dutt, editor of ChannelBuzz.ca, and as always, your host for the show. Okta has announced a new set of capabilities designed to help organizations uncover and manage a fast-growing risk: shadow AI. As AI tools become easier to use, employees are increasingly creating their own AI agents, connecting them to emails, files, SaaS apps, and internal systems to get work done faster. The problem is that many of these agents are created without security oversight, governance, or clear ownership. Once they’re connected to sensitive systems, they can quietly gain broad access to data, making them attractive targets for attackers and a potential liability for organizations. Okta’s new solution is designed to address that gap. It gives security teams real-time visibility into AI agents across the enterprise, showing which agents exist, what they can access, and what permissions they’ve been granted. Just as importantly, it allows organizations to quickly bring unmanaged or risky agents under identity controls, treating them more like digital employees than anonymous tools. That visibility matters even more in Canada, where proposed legislation like Bill C-8 is raising expectations around cyber risk accountability, access controls, and transparency. As AI becomes embedded into everyday workflows, organizations will be expected to know not just who has access to what sensitive data, but what machines and agents do as well. To unpack what shadow AI really means, why identity has become central to managing AI risk, and what all this creates in terms of opportunity for Canadian IT partners, I’m joined today by Jack Hirsch, Vice President of Product at Okta. Let’s dive in. Robert Dutt: Jack, thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it. Jack Hirsch: My pleasure. Thank you for having me. Robert Dutt: It feels like this is a topic that a lot of folks in the channel have been through with different flavors in the past. When you say “shadow X,” it certainly brings up memories of transitions past, but just to level set and set the parameters here, can you give me a quick definition on shadow AI? I almost said shadow IT. Can you give me a quick definition on shadow AI, and why it’s becoming both a security and governance issue? Jack Hirsch: Sure. Well, look, it’s no secret now that AI is changing the shape of how work gets done in the modern era. You have these non-deterministic entities running around, and fundamentally, they’re exciting, they’re interesting on their own, but where they really light up in value, where you start to see efficiency and effectiveness gains from your carbon-based workforces, is when you start connecting them to tools. They need resource access to be truly productive. So AI agents need resource access, and that’s when it can start to get scary, and that’s when shadow AI starts to create a ton of risk for modern organizations. We know that the point of authentication is now much stronger with phishing-resistant auth. However, post-auth security is the primary breach vector for the vast majority of cybersecurity incidents now, meaning the session token’s been cut. There’s access out in the ecosystem, and that’s why shadow AI is terrifying. Unfortunately, the options available to the ecosystem to secure AI and to build it quickly have been not good enough, to put it bluntly. This leaves security leaders with this very, very difficult challenge of moving fast and potentially breaking things and giving away the keys to the kingdom to OpenClaw, or whatever it is that you want to do, or potentially stifling innovation. That’s a really, really difficult spot for security leaders to be in. So yeah, shadow AI is everywhere. The challenges are greater. The stakes have never been higher. Robert Dutt: Yeah, so that’s sort of the problem space. So when employees spin up AI agents and connect them to emails, to files, to internal data, to systems, whatever it may be, I presume most of the problems emerge from unintended consequences, as is so often the case in technology. But what are some of the common ways that sensitive data ends up exposed without anyone really necessarily realizing it, or is that the nature of the problem? Jack Hirsch: Well, look, I think there’s sort of the naive answer, and not to say that it’s easy or trivial. I don’t want to trivialize this, but the naive answer is, “Oh, prompt injection, data leakage, data poisoning. Oh yeah, who knows what the LLM will spit out?” But the actual scarier risk is around inadvertent access and the standing credentials that need to be given to AI agents for them to be productive. If Rob, you and I work at Acme Corp, and we’re working on a project together and we want to spin up an AI agent, whose permissions do we give it? Most of the time now, a security leader is not going to be able to jump in front of every single moving train and slow them. They’ll just say, “Oh yeah, give it a set of static credentials. Give it an API key, but don’t give it Rob’s access. Don’t give it Jack’s access. Give it super user access, and we’ll trust it to do the right thing.” And so you’re giving this untrained, very influenceable, non-deterministic entity the keys to the kingdom. And that’s really the primary risk vector here. And so it’s all an identity and access management problem. Fundamentally, these are identities that need to be discovered. They need to be controlled. They need to be governed. And their access needs to be managed in the same way that their carbon-based peers, us as humans, need to be governed as well. Robert Dutt: So with that framing, it sounds like maybe identity is more important than traditional network or endpoint controls in terms of security in this world, where there are all these agents running around and doing whatever it is, hopefully, we want them to do and potentially what we don’t want them to do. Jack Hirsch: I think this is where the traditional model of endpoint or network or identity-based detection and response falls flat. You can’t keep up with the incredible volume of AI agent activity out in the ecosystem to detect it all. Every single, even approved platforms are now starting to put AI sprinkles throughout their products. And so it’s sort of fighting an uphill battle there. And so the reason this is truly an identity-centric problem is because, again, all those agents need access to resources inside of organizations. And the way that AI grew, and we saw this with how OpenAI and Anthropic and even Google with Gemini, their sort of growth paths were primarily consumer driven. And in a consumer world, it’s really easy. I’m spinning up, I’m literally sitting next to a machine that has a Claude bot spun up in a fully isolated environment, but I’m an individual user in that scenario. And so if I want to give it access, I can just OAuth myself. It’s super easy. And so the authorization mechanism wasn’t really thought about in an enterprise context. And then when you get into an enterprise context, you have individuals that want to do exactly the same thing and access corporate resources. So it really is a new type of identity. We can talk about some of the differences between human and AI agent, but it’s fundamentally an identity and access management problem. These are digital identities, non-human identities that need access to resources within an organization. And you actually see this being recognized by broader standards bodies. So for example, Cross App Access was something that we’ve been working on. It’s a new standard, it’s an extension of the OAuth protocol. And it’s something that we’ve been working on for years, two, three years now at this point. And we reintroduced it to the ecosystem this past summer, summer of 2025. And we introduced it first to ISVs and the people that were sort of around the Okta ecosystem had heard about it before. But then the rest of the ecosystem, the adoption was wild because MCP had become a thing and people were trying to deploy MCP servers and AI agents into their enterprises. And no one, not at the time Anthropic or OpenAI or any of the big model providers, had taken on the challenge of enterprise authorization for AI agents. And so this standard that had been sort of latent and sitting somewhere in an IETF draft for a while got picked up and started gaining a ton of steam. And just in November, right before Anthropic split off MCP and gave it away to the open ecosystem, it got merged into the MCP repo as the new default enterprise authorization mechanism for MCP. And so this isn’t something that’s Okta owned, it’s just a standard that we developed because we are independent. And as such, we are the sort of standard-bearer for the open security ecosystem. We believe that we need to be the rising tide that lifts all ships. And that’s why we develop open standards like Cross App Access. So now, really excited, we’ve taken our own engineers and pushed this authorization code out into the open ecosystem so that many applications start picking up this capability, this new OAuth extension. Robert Dutt: So at a high level, when you talk about the products that you guys are bringing to market, the solutions to address this, at a high level, what kind of new visibility or new insights are you giving organizations that are using these tools that they simply didn’t have before when it comes to discovering AI agents, the privileges they have, and what they’re up to? Jack Hirsch: Yeah. So, I mean, maybe if I can even blow it up further and say, let’s talk about maybe three steps: discovery, then control, and governance. So on the discovery side, there are many ways to discover, let’s date ourselves, shadow IT. There are many ways to discover, right? You can have a browser extension, you can have some sort of endpoint monitoring, you can have network monitoring. You can also check the resources themselves for access. And so we took a, initially, we’re taking a multi-pronged approach to doing the discovery, but we’re doing what we do best, which is integrating into over 8,000 ISVs and checking for resource access. And so who’s accessing these resources? Are they carbon-based? Are they digital-based? And so the first phase of discovery with our ISPM product is being able to see who’s accessing these resources and why. And so that extended very, very nicely to AI agents. And it doesn’t really matter where the AI agents exist, right? It doesn’t matter if they’re part of a larger platform with something like Salesforce and Agentforce, or whether they’re homegrown, built off in some skunkworks team off to the side. Ultimately, when they get access to the resource, we see it. And then you get into the control plane. So that’s just the discovery. Within the control plane, we want to meet our customers where they are. And we know that the vast majority of these things are going to be granted access via static credentials, just the god-mode tokens. And for those, we can harden them. We can effectively bring them under management. We can bring those credentials under management. We can observe them. We can rotate them. We can observe for anomalous behavior, et cetera. And so that’s like what you would consider a traditional PAM use case or maybe a modern IGA use case. But then also with control, we give Cross App Access, which is a new mechanism that extends the amazing innovation that was OAuth and OAuth scopes, basically extending that to say, instead of checking with the end user for access to this resource, we can set policy. Now the IDP can set policy to control access to those resources. And then to close the loop, there’s governance. And so standard governance flow, and actually I don’t even want to say standard governance flow because governance historically has this GRC compliance lens, but it’s very much a security-forward technology here. When you get to the state where you need to govern these identities and their access, we can run access certs in the exact same way based on whether or not they’re human or non-human. And so every one of those agentic identities gets pulled into Okta’s Universal Directory. All of their access is controlled. All of it is governed. We still gather the same risk signal and risk pattern behavior from the Identity Threat Protection product. And that’s, I wish I could say that 10 years ago, we knew we were building an identity security fabric, this new category of product that’s going to cover every identity use case, every resource type, and every user type. However, that was the strategy, not knowing that AI agents were going to be born in the 2020s. And it just makes it so that we are really well positioned to capitalize on this opportunity. And it gives us a very novel approach to how we secure AI in a way that, it’s because we have this unified identity security fabric. A basket of tools that don’t talk to each other, if you have a disparate IAM and IGA and PAM set of tools, in theory, you could stitch it all together, but you end up with higher costs and worse security outcomes. And so we actually took a much harder approach to market. And this is many years ago. Again, this predates the rise of AI agents, but we decided that we were not going to take an acquisitive strategy where we just bolt on a bunch of things and call them a “platform” in air quotes. And your order form would look like a drugstore receipt. And so you’re not buying a list of products that happen to be on the same order form because we want to satisfy a CFO. We’re taking an approach that we want to drive end-to-end identity security outcomes for CISOs and IT leaders. So we’re doing the hard work deeply integrating these products across the fabric so that we can truly secure every identity, every use case, and every resource type. Robert Dutt: Close to home here in Canada, we have a proposed Bill C-8 on the table. It’s raising expectations around visibility, around access control, accountability, risk, all of these things. I know there are similar ideas out there in terms of government around the world. How does legislation along these lines change the conversation for IT leaders, especially around the topic of shadow AI? Jack Hirsch: So look, I am such a fan of this type of regulation because it pushes… When we enter highly regulated markets, regardless of where they are, and we can talk about C-8, I think it really does align with our identity security fabric narrative and what we’re angling for. But fundamentally, what we’re talking about is trust. If I’m not mistaken, C-8 talks about resilience and reliability. Okta has industry leading availability and resilience. We proudly espouse our four nines of availability, but in reality, it’s much higher. And we target much higher. With the launch of our cell in Canada, and we can talk about the nature of that launch, but with the launch of our cell in Canada, we not only get multi-region disaster recovery, but we get Enhanced Disaster Recovery, which is a product that I really wanted to call Instant DR, because it’s a DNS flip, but the lawyers didn’t like that. So it’s Enhanced Disaster Recovery. And so when you’re talking about resilience and reliability and running critical infrastructure, fundamentally, identity is critical infrastructure. We support governments, financial services, militaries, supply chain logistics with organizations like FedEx, healthcare. And so maybe bringing it back to C-8, data residency, check, highly invested, especially with de-globalization pressures around the world. Supply chain governance, super, super important for us to maintain our independent posture here and to say, look, it doesn’t matter whether you’re buying from a monolithic platform or an independent provider of identity security. We are invested in making sure that your entire enterprise is secure. And so just the same way FedRAMP was a standard-bearer and STIGs in the US were standard-bearers, or IRAP was pushing us in the right direction in Australia, or ISMAP in Japan, I think C-8 is a very, very welcome change. I think it highlights the need for robust identity security and it should put identity at the foundation of every security leader’s agenda this year. Robert Dutt: Well, these pieces of legislation are still in the process and we can look forward. This is likely to see the light of day in some shape or another, but there’s still that sort of sense of maybe we should wait and see. I guess what I’m getting at is what’s the danger or the risk involved in waiting until regulations are finalized, on the books and in place, before starting to take action? Jack Hirsch: So let’s just say at a personal level, I am not into promoting scare tactics. I know that it is very common in the security space for colors to be red. Our colors are blue. That’s not our vibe at Okta. And so look, every organization has their own risk barometer. What I can say is the vast majority of breaches stem from some form of attack on identity. The vast majority of breaches, the implications of having a data breach, oftentimes they go, I think the average time to detection for a data breach is somewhere just shy of 300 days. And so you’re talking about millions of dollars in damages, huge reputational hit. And there are scenarios, and I will not point to any recent security incidents that might have impacted large swaths of the industry, but not Okta. But I’ll just say the reason is because we believe strongly that having a lower risk profile should be easier, should be more elegant. People come to Okta not because of the, “Oh, you get it all done by the CLI.” Yeah, you can, but it’s elegant. It’s intuitive. It’s easier to use. It de-complexifies the world of identity security. I’m sitting in front of my notepad here to take notes, and one of our product principles is productizing best practices. And so we want to make it easier for organizations to reduce their risk profile and make the end user experience elegant and memorable when it needs to be, and disappear into the background when it shouldn’t be memorable. And so with that, look, I would advise everyone go down the rabbit hole. Just look at recent breaches. Look at how widely pervasive these breaches are. Look how easy it is to go after a phish, to buy a phishing kit on the dark web, and see the types of organizations that get hit by these and it’s everyone. And so whether you’re waiting for legislation to be imposed to drive the standards or you are just looking to have an appropriate barometer of risk for your organization, you shouldn’t have to choose between ease of use and cost and lower risk and greater security. And so I would just say everyone’s going to be on their own journey. I’m not a salesperson. I’m on the product team. But I fundamentally think that identity is one of the pillars of Zero Trust. I believe that it should be. It’s foundational. It is the foundation. If I had nothing else to do, if I were starting my own company today and I wanted to build a security practice for my company to manage our organizational risk, it would start with identity, 110%. Robert Dutt: We’ve taken sort of a general market-wide view of the technology problem and now of the regulatory side of things. This is a podcast for IT solution providers. So sort of going with that “if I were starting a business today” line that you just started there, for MSPs and resellers, where do you see the biggest opportunity to help customers get ahead of shadow AI, both in terms of reducing customer risk and in terms of new services, new types of services that they can bring to market? Jack Hirsch: I’ll take it in two parts. One is just you can’t control what you don’t see. And so for VARs and MSPs and sort of operators in the technology ecosystem, I would say look at Okta’s ISPM product. It is amazing what you learn by wiring it. And it’s not just for Okta as an IDP. It’ll wire into any IDP. It will wire into multiple IDPs. It’ll wire into over 300 SCIM-based apps because it’s wired into the Okta Integration Network, and there’s a large set of SCIM apps that work natively with ISPM. And just see what you can find. I optimized my life, my product world for hugs and high fives. And I’ll never forget, I’m sure this person knows exactly who they are. It was a security leader in Australia, ran out of their office after trying ISPM during a merger and they used it to reduce risk during the merger as they were establishing a trust relationship between their organizations. And it basically made this person look like a superstar in front of their C-suite and board because it was like the entire risk burndown chart for their entire M&A transaction to establish the technical risk barometer. So I would just say ISPM is an incredible starting point. A+, highly recommend. You can’t control what you can’t see. And then I think on the second part, of course ISPM will discover AI as well. And then the second part is just, I wouldn’t lose sight of the experience. And so making sure that you’re creating an elegant experience by your choice of products, not only for the admins that you might work directly with or the leadership that might be engaging with you, but also for the end users. And knowing when tools should be elegant, easy to use, easy to configure, and when they should just sort of fade into the background. That’s ultimately what we work on at Okta. It’s our strong conviction from a product standpoint, that it needs to be an absolutely elegant, unmatched user experience for partners, for admins, for end users, and for customers. Robert Dutt: I think we’ve gone over a lot of the territory that I wanted to go over, but just to kind of bring things home, looking ahead over the balance of 2026 or into the first half of next year, what do you think are going to be the biggest mistakes that organizations might make when it comes to agents and identity? And what can solution providers be doing now to make sure their customers don’t make those mistakes? Jack Hirsch: This is an easy one. I think there’s sort of two categories of mistakes. One is getting worried because everything is moving so fast, getting that sort of analysis paralysis to say, “I’m going to see where it shakes out. How important is this AI thing?” Or even if you’re an AI bull, waiting to see who the winners and losers are before you establish any sort of program around it. That’s, I think, one big category of things not to do. I would say, go after it immediately. The capabilities you need are already out there. They might be newer. They might feel a little bit less familiar. But again, ultimately, these are identities that need access to your corporate resources. So I think that is one big category. The other big category is, I would not look at point solutions for this. Anyone that is saying, “We’re going to secure your AI.” That’s great. But what is an AI? It’s an identity. It can be a resource in some scenarios, right? With agent-to-agent, agents acting as resources, but ultimately they’re just identities. That’s for the identity nerds. Sorry. Just as a caveat for the identity nerds out there like myself. But fundamentally, you need a unified platform that gives you that unified view of core access management, core governance, core privileged access, brings all of those identities, whether it be human or non-human, into a single directory and can discover them, can control them, can govern them. And it shouldn’t matter whether they were built by your users, by third parties, by partners, by your supply chain contractors. That unified identity security fabric will deliver comprehensive security and it should be deeply orchestrated into any technology stack. And those products already exist, and it just so happens that Okta is building a reference implementation. Robert Dutt: Works out well for you then, doesn’t it? Jack Hirsch: It does. Robert Dutt: I appreciate your taking the time, Jack. It’s been an interesting conversation and it’s a fascinating and ever-evolving area. Jack Hirsch: Thank you very much. All right. Thanks, Rob. And thanks everyone. Appreciate the time. There you have it, a look at shadow AI through an identity lens with Jack Hirsch from Okta. I’d like to thank Jack for joining us for the show and thank you for listening today. The podcast will be back in your feed tomorrow as we take a look at the launch of Lexful, an AI-first documentation tool for MSPs that boasts, if you can believe it, a robotic channel chief. We’ll find out all about that tomorrow. You’ll want to be sure to catch that, so please subscribe to or follow the podcast in your podcast app of choice. And if it allows you to do so, please consider leaving a rating or review of the show. Until tomorrow, I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca and I’ll see you in the channel.

Send a textJohannes 1:5 Die lig skyn in die duisternis, die duisternis kon dit nie uitdoof nie. Lig en donkerte, dag en nag vorm die siklus van ons lewens. Jou tye van wakkerwees en van slaap is 'n siklus wat meer as sewe en twintig duisend keer in ‘n gemiddelde leeftyd herhaal word.Ons ken almal donker tye in die lewe; tye wanneer hoop op die toekoms nie bestaan nie; tye wanneer dit lyk asof die donkerte die lig verslaan het.Vandag, word die Chinese Lanternfees gevier. Dis 'n familiebyeenkoms; ‘n nag van lig en vreugde. Mense hang oral kleurvolle, hoofsaaklik rooi, lanterns met handgeskrewe raaisels in hulle strate en huise op. Hulle laat in die nag die lanterns in die lug vry, om te wys dat die verlede verby is en dat daar hoop op ‘n rooskleurige toekoms voorlê. Wanneer jy ‘n lantern vang, is dit groot pret om die raaisels, te probeer oplos.‘n Mens kry in baie kulture verskillende seremonies, wat 'n gevoel van hoop op die toekoms versterk. Dis interessant dat lig hierdie fees se hooftema is.Die raaisels wat die lanterns bevat, vertel ons ook dat die lewe inderdaad 'n raaisel is. Ons het geen idee wat vir ons voorlê nie. Sal dit lig wees, of sal dit donker wees? So, wanneer duisternis jou lewe oorskadu – of dit nou die boosheid van hierdie wêreld is, of dit nou pyn en lyding, of eensaamheid is, of wat ook al is – waar kom jóú lig vandaan?In sy kort opsomming van die Skepping van die heelal, wys die apostel Johannes dat Jesus nie net die Skepper daarvan is nie, maar dat Hy meer, baie meer is!Johannes 1:5 Die lig skyn in die duisternis, die duisternis kon dit nie uitdoof nie.Jesus skyn nie net lig in ons lewens nie; Hy is die Lig van die wêreld. Dit maak nie saak watter duisternis jou mag bedreig nie, onthou: Die lig skyn in die duisternis, die duisternis kon dit nie uitdoof nie.Dis God se Woord. Vars … vir jou … vandag.Support the showEnjoying The Content?For the price of a cup of coffee each month, you can enable Christianityworks to reach 10,000+ people with a message about the love of Jesus!DONATE R50 MONTHLY

Today is Monday, March 2, 2026. Welcome to In Case You Missed It, our weekly five-minute rundown of important channel news stories that might have flown under the radar last week. In this edition: Component shortages start hitting the channel: Rising memory and storage costs are prompting vendors to revisit pricing and deal protections, highlighted by a letter from Cisco to partners and reinforced by warnings from other vendors, distributors, and suppliers as availability tightens across servers, storage, and PCs. Pure Storage rebrands as Everpure: Pure Storage has rebranded to Everpure, signaling a shift toward AI-ready data management and rolling out partner program changes aimed at supporting subscription services and platform-led growth. WatchGuard targets MSPs with enterprise-grade security: WatchGuard says new platform enhancements allow MSPs to deliver enterprise-level security outcomes — including zero trust, MDR, and unified management — without enterprise-level complexity. AWS threat research highlights AI-driven attacks: New findings from Amazon Web Services show attackers using AI-assisted techniques to accelerate exploitation of perimeter devices, including firewalls, underscoring how rapidly the threat landscape is evolving. Read Full Transcript Hello and welcome to In Case You Missed It from ChannelBuzz.ca, your Monday morning recap where we catch you up on some of the channel news and trend headlines you may have missed in the last week. I’m Robert Dutt, editor of ChannelBuzz.ca. Today is Monday, March 2, 2026. Let’s get your week started right. This week, the IT channel is being forced to confront an uncomfortable reality. Global components shortages and memory price spikes are fundamentally reshaping how hardware deals are negotiated and fulfilled, and vendors are already updating partner policies as they try to cope. At the center of the storm is a note from Cisco Systems to partners, which was obtained by CRN, in which Cisco says it’ll adjust partner contract terms in response to rapidly rising memory costs and supply volatility. The company now reserves the right to cancel compute orders up to 45 days prior to shipment and to adjust pricing between order and shipment date if component costs, tariffs, or other external factors shift dramatically. That’s a significant departure from the traditional price protection norms. And this isn’t isolated. Executives from major distributors told CRN that memory and storage shortages, particularly DRAM and SSDs, are pushing prices up and tightening supplies across servers, storage, and PC portfolios. Memory prices are reported to have doubled year over year in early 2026, and are expected to continue rising, leading many distributors to shorten their own validities and revisit backlog pricing with vendors. Vendors themselves are directly advising partners of pricing shifts too. Lenovo has warned partners that select PC and server products will see price hikes in March unless orders are placed and shipped promptly, reflecting those costs. And hardware availability is also tightening in real terms. For example, Western Digital says its entire 2026 hard drive production capacity is already spoken for, with most allocations locked up in long-term agreements with hyperscale cloud and AI customers, a trend that could push prices higher and leave less inventory for channel projects. As memory, storage, and other components become harder to source and pricier to procure, partners may face shortened quote windows, less pricing certainty, and project timing risk, compelling MSPs and VARs to rethink their own quoting strategies, accelerate their sales cycles, and build supply chain agility into their roadmaps. Good luck out there. Also worth noting, Everpure, the company formerly known as Pure Storage, has completed a major strategic evolution, rebranding itself to signal a transition from traditional storage vendor to a broader AI-ready data management platform and announcing changes that partners should really pay attention to. The name change, which takes effect on the New York Stock Exchange March 5, reflects the company’s push into enterprise data orchestration and intelligence beyond simply shipping storage hardware and arrays. Central to this transformation is Everpure’s planned acquisition of data intelligence firm 1touch, a move designed to bring automated data discovery, classification, and semantic enrichment capabilities into its portfolio. This expands the enterprise data cloud vision, equipping enterprises to make data inherently AI-ready and more valuable across hybrid environments. Alongside that rebrand, Everpure has updated its partner engagement model with a new tiering structure that gives MSPs, resellers, and distributors clearer pathways to profitability and growth, reflecting the broader mission of the company going forward. Recent results show that the demand for data management and subscription services are driving double-digit growth, the company says, underscoring why partners should lean into Everpure’s evolving platform play. For channel pros, the message is that Everpure sees partners as critical to selling data-centric solutions in the AI era and is aligning its incentives and program structure accordingly. Up next, WatchGuard is positioning its latest platform updates as a way for MSPs to deliver what it calls enterprise-grade security to small and mid-sized customers, without the complexity typically associated with large enterprise tools. The company says the enhancements are focused on unifying endpoint, network, identity, and MDR capabilities into a single manageable platform designed for service providers. Key to the message is simplification. WatchGuard is emphasizing centralized management, automated threat response, and bundled security services that allow MSPs to deploy advanced protection like zero-trust network access, AI-driven threat detection, and 24/7 monitoring at scale and under predictable pricing models. For MSPs, the pitch is that this closes a long-standing gap, giving smaller customers access to security capabilities that more rival enterprise deployments, while still fitting MSP operational and margin requirements. WatchGuard argues that as threats become more sophisticated, the ability to offer enterprise-grade outcomes without enterprise-grade overhead is becoming a baseline expectation rather than a premium add-on. And speaking of more sophisticated threats to bring this week’s roundup home, new threat research from Amazon Web Services adding to the evidence that AI is actively changing how attacks are carried out, not just how they’re defended against. AWS researchers report seeing threat actors use AI-assisted techniques to more quickly identify and exploit vulnerabilities in perimeter devices, including Fortinet FortiGate firewalls, reducing the time between disclosure and real-world exploitation. The finding reinforces a growing concern for solution providers. Attackers are using AI to scale reconnaissance, speed up exploit development, and adapt attacks faster than traditional defenses expect. For MSPs and VARs, the implication is clear. Staying ahead now requires faster patching cycles, continuous monitoring, and security platforms that assume AI-accelerated threats are the norm and not an edge case. Those are some of the things we were paying attention to last week. This week on the podcast, expect to hear how Citrix is thinking of partners as it hands off more of its channel management to Arrow Electronics, a look at the role of identity in taming shadow AI, and how startup Lexful is aiming to redefine how MSPs think about documentation. I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca. Have a great week!

Send a textPsalm 8:4,5 As ek u hemel aanskou, die werk van u vingers, die maan en die sterre waaraan U 'n plek gegee het, wat is die mens dan dat U aan hom dink, die mensekind dat U na hom omsien? Of jy ‘n student is, ‘n voltydse beroep het, of afgetree is; is ‘n Maandagoggend die begin van ‘n nuwe week en die begin van die weeklikse geswoeg. Dis onafwendbaar – die naweek is verby; jy's weer terug in dieselfde ou patroon. En selfs al geniet jy werklik wat jy doen, kan die eentonigheid daarvan jou onderkry.Het jy al ooit gevoel jou lewe is afgesaag? Daar is niks wat regtig uitstaan nie; niks wat jou onderskei van die res van die massas gesiglose mense wat na hul werksplek toe pendel en voortgaan met ‘n kleurlose bestaan nie. Of dalk is jy ‘n tuisblyer met ‘n kleurlose roetine van wasgoed, skoonmaak, kos koop, kosmaak, ens. ens. Dit is ongelukkig die realiteit van baie mense se lewens waar hulle week na week in eentonigheid vasgevang is; waar hulle vassit in die modderige klei en waar hulle toelaat dat die daaglikse geswoeg hulle afstomp. Ons weet dis ‘n sieldodende manier om te leef. Jy het ongetwyfeld al gehoor hoe mense vir jou sê jy moet die regte perspektief kry, diep asemhaal en die aangename dinge in die lewe leer geniet, eerder as om deur die lewe te sukkel. Dis die waarheid; jy moet dit doen, maar dis eenvoudig nie genoeg nie. Waar is daardie gevoel van verwondering wat jy eens as kind gehad het; jou ontsag vir die heelal?Te midde van sy daaglikse geswoeg het koning Dawid dikwels stilgestaan en in verwondering met God gepraat ...Psalm 8:4-5 As ek u hemel aanskou, die werk van u vingers, die maan en die sterre waaraan U 'n plek gegee het, wat is die mens dan dat U aan hom dink, die mensekind dat U na hom omsien?Hy was oorweldig deur God se majesteit en goedheid, en terselfdertyd het hy nederig en met verwondering besef dat so 'n glorieryke God persoonlik vir Hom sorg.Wanneer jou lewe ontaard in ‘n roetine van een lang reis sonder enige uitdagings, onthou dat God se heerlikheid jou omring; Sy goedheid is by jou ... presies op die plek waar jy jou bevind.Slaan jou oë op, aanskou sy heerlikheid!Dis God se Woord. Vars ... vir jou ... vandag.Support the showEnjoying The Content?For the price of a cup of coffee each month, you can enable Christianityworks to reach 10,000+ people with a message about the love of Jesus!DONATE R50 MONTHLY

Send a textLukas 16:10 “Wie in die kleinste dinge betroubaar is, is ook in die groot dinge betroubaar; en wie in die kleinste dinge oneerlik is, is ook in groot dinge oneerlik. Kan ek jou vandag vra om terug te kyk oor jou lewe tot dusver en op 'n skaal van nul tot tien, te besluit ... hoe suksesvol jy was. Wel, hoe suksesvol was jy?Jy voel nie so suksesvol wanneer jy in die hitte van die stryd is nie, nè? Jy ervaar die druk van alle kante af en dan is daar nog boonop allerhande ou dingetjies waarmee jy dag na dag moet worstel. Ek is al 'n paar dekades betrokke by die bediening van Christianityworks (wat hierdie Fresh en Vars-boodskappe produseer). Ek kan jou verseker, daar was 'n paar moeilike situasies langs die pad – verwerpings, mislukkings en kontantvloei-tekorte. Sommige dae het dit gevoel asof ons van een krisis na die volgende geslinger geword.Dit is eers wanneer ons, as 'n span, terugkyk na die verlede met sy hoogtepunte wat baie meer is as die laagtepunte, dat ons die wonderlike dinge sien, wat God oor daardie tyd gedoen het. Dis ervarings wat ons in staat stel om elke week miljoene mense dwarsdeur die wêreld deur die media met die Goeie Nuus van Jesus te bereik. En dit verseker ons dat hierdie reis die moeitewerd was. Jesus het dit so gestel:Lukas 16:10 “Wie in die kleinste dinge betroubaar is, is ook in die groot dinge betroubaar; en wie in die kleinste dinge oneerlik is, is ook in groot dinge oneerlik.As jy dit uit Jesus se oogpunt beskou, word sukses nie beperk tot een groot ding nie, maar lê dit in 'n reeks klein oorwinninkies wat geleidelik deur getrouheid, deursettingsvermoë en gehoorsaamheid bereik word.En weet jy, met elke klein oorwinninkie berei Hy jou vir groter dinge voor.Dis God se Woord. Vars ... vir jou ... vandag. Support the showEnjoying The Content?For the price of a cup of coffee each month, you can enable Christianityworks to reach 10,000+ people with a message about the love of Jesus!DONATE R50 MONTHLY

Send a textKolossense 3:12 Julle is die uitverkore volk van God wat Hy baie liefhet. Daarom moet julle meelewend, goedgesind, nederig, sagmoedig en verdraagsaam wees Ons moet in hierdie lewe alte dikwels moeilike besluite neem. Ons word gekonfronteer met morele dilemmas, en op die ou end moet ons die opsie kies wat die minste sleg is. Dis nie maklik nie. So, wat kies jy in daardie kritieke oomblikke wat jy keuses moet maak wat reuse gevolge kan hê? Wat is jou wenresep wanneer dinge onduidelik en duister lyk?In 1940 het Joodse vlugtelinge wat van Nazi-vervolging gevlug het, vir ‘n Japannese konsul, gesmeek om vir hulle visums te gee. Japannese wetgewing het dit egter verbied om enige visums sonder behoorlike dokumente, uit te reik. Die konsul het 'n ernstige morele dilemma in die gesig gestaar: gehoorsaam hy sy land se wet of red hy hierdie Joodse vlugtelinge se lewens.Hy het uit empatie die laasgenoemde gekies en vir weke het hy duisende visums met die hand geskryf, dikwels vir 18 uur per dag; ál het hy geweet dat dit hom sy loopbaan kon kos. Maar weet jy, as gevolg van sy besluit is daar na raming 6 000 Jode se lewens gered.Is dit nou nie dapper nie? Wat sou jy in sy skoene gedoen het? Die probleem is dat wanneer jy daardie moeilike besluite moet neem; het jy die moed van jou oortuiging nodig.Kolossense 3:12 Julle is die uitverkore volk van God wat Hy baie liefhet. Daarom moet julle meelewend, goedgesind, nederig, sagmoedig en verdraagsaam wees.Daardie woord "uitverkore" beteken om vir 'n goeie doel afgesonder te wees. Dit beteken om anders te wees; om in die duisternis te oorleef en alleen te moet staan wanneer jy 'n lig moet wees. Daardie woord "uitverkore" rol so maklik van die tong af, maar in die onheilige wêreld waarin ons leef, het ons ‘n baie belangrike lewensroeping.Empatie, vriendelikheid, nederigheid, sagmoedigheid en geduld hang nie af van omstandighede nie; dis deel van die Christen se daaglikse mondering. Plaas jouself in die ander een se skoene wanneer jy onseker is oor hoe om te reageer.Dis God se Woord. Vars ... vir jou ... vandag.Support the showEnjoying The Content?For the price of a cup of coffee each month, you can enable Christianityworks to reach 10,000+ people with a message about the love of Jesus!DONATE R50 MONTHLY

Send a textRut 1:16-17 Maar Rut het geantwoord: “Moet my tog nie dwing om van u af weg te gaan en om om te draai nie, want waar u gaan, sal ek gaan; waar u bly, sal ek bly; u volk is my volk; u God is my God; waar u sterf, sal ek sterf en daar sal ek begrawe word. Ek lê 'n eed af voor die Here: net die dood sal ons skei.” In die vinnig veranderende wêreld waarin ons leef, kan vriendskappe wispelturig wees. Alte dikwels laat jou vriende jou in die steek wanneer dinge langs die pad moeilik raak en wanneer jy hulle op jou nodigste het. Maar aan die anderkant is daar tog dié paar vriende wat deur dik en dun by jou sal staan.Naomi was 'n Joodse vrou wat tydens 'n groot hongersnood saam met haar man en twee seuns na Moab verhuis het. Die seuns is met plaaslike meisies, Orpa en Rut, getroud.Maar nadat haar man en haar twee seuns gesterf het, het Naomi besluit om na Betlehem terug te trek, aangesien die Moabiete en Jode geswore vyande was. Jy kan jou voorstel watter moeilike tyd sy gehad het. Naomi het besef dat dit onredelik van haar sou wees om van haar Moabitiese skoondogters te verwag om hulle eie mense te verlaat. Sy het Orpa en Rut aangespoor om agter te bly en nuwe lewens in hul eie gemeenskap te begin.Rut 1:16-17 Maar Rut het geantwoord: “Moet my tog nie dwing om van u af weg te gaan en om om te draai nie, want waar u gaan, sal ek gaan; waar u bly, sal ek bly; u volk is my volk; u God is my God; waar u sterf, sal ek sterf en daar sal ek begrawe word. Ek lê 'n eed af voor die Here: net die dood sal ons skei.”Orpa het omgedraai, maar Rut was lojaal teenoor haar skoonma, Naomi; en sy was bereid om die opoffering te maak om as 'n Moabiet na Israel te verhuis.As jy die res van hulle geskiedenis lees, sien jy dat God Rut ryklik geseën het; en nie net vir haar nie, maar déúr haar, die res van die wêreld; aangesien Jesus een van haar direkte afstammelinge is.God eer lojaliteit. Wees daardie vriend wat onder alle omstandighede getrou bly. Dis God se Woord. Vars … vir jou … vandag.Support the showEnjoying The Content?For the price of a cup of coffee each month, you can enable Christianityworks to reach 10,000+ people with a message about the love of Jesus!DONATE R50 MONTHLY

Episode 151 of “The Trusted Advisor” features tech entrepreneur, futurist, author, and speaker Byron Reese. Reese was a recent featured guest for an RSPA Emerging Technologies Advisory Group meeting.  Reese, who has 25 years of experience as a successful technology entrepreneur, answers questions about AI's impact, the expanding role of trusted advisors in a changing world, and why the jobs of tomorrow will be relationship-based.  Reese holds numerous patents and has started and sold multiple companies, including two NASDAQ IPOs. He's been featured in major media outlets including the Washington Post, New York Times, Wired, Entrepreneur, Bloomberg Businessweek, USA Today, and NPR. Two of his recent books are:  The Fourth Age: Smart Robots, Conscious Computers, and the Future of Humanity  We Are Agora: How Humanity Functions as a Single Superorganism That Shapes Our World and Our Future  Reese first crossed paths with many RSPA members when he keynoted ScanSource's 2025 Partner First Conference in Arlington, TX.  “The Trusted Advisor,” powered by the Retail Solutions Providers Association (RSPA), is an award-winning content series designed specifically for retail IT VARs and software providers. Our goal is to educate you on the topics of leadership, management, hiring, sales, and other small business best practices. For more insights, visit the RSPA blog at www.GoRSPA.org.   The RSPA is North America's largest community of VARs, software providers, vendors, and distributors in the retail, restaurant, and grocery verticals. The mission of the RSPA is to accelerate the success of its members in the retail technology ecosystem by providing knowledge and connections. The organization offers member-to-member warm introductions, education, legal advice, industry advocacy, and other services to assist members with becoming and remaining successful. RSPA is most well-known for its signature events, RetailNOW and Inspire, which provide face-to-face learning and networking opportunities. Learn more by visiting www.GoRSPA.org. 

Send a textMatteus 5:16 Laat julle lig so voor die mense skyn, dat hulle julle goeie werke kan sien en julle Vader wat in die hemel is, verheerlik.” Baie mense dink jy kan iemand verander deur hom te beheer en deur hom te dwing om na jou pype te dans. Maar dis nie waar nie, jou invloed is soveel kragtiger.John Newton, was aanvanklik 'n wrede slawehandelaar, maar  sy lewe het verander toe hy een nag desperaat tot God gebid het tydens ‘n verskriklike storm toe sy skip besig was om te sink. Hy het sy Bybel begin lees en later radikaal tot bekering gekom toe hy Christene ontmoet het. Hy was veral beïnvloed deur Christene soos William Wilberforce, want hy het sy vriendelikheid, geloof en volharding gesien. Hy het die Lig wat Christene het, begeer. Newton het later 'n pastoor geword en die mensehandel, waaruit hy eens baie geld gemaak het, in die openbaar veroordeel. Die voorbeeld van Christene se nederige goedheid het 'n bose man in ‘n kragtige evangelis verander.Newton was ‘n baie gerespekteerde prediker en hy het ‘n groot invloed op baie mense gehad. Hy het onder andere vir Thomas Scott, ‘n voltydse pastoor, wat sy bediening slegs as ‘n loopbaan beskou het, gehelp om ‘n ware geloof in Christus te ontdek. Scott het as gevolg van Newton se invloed later ook ‘n medestigter van ‘n groot Sendinggenootskap geword.Newton is vandag bekend vir die talle lofliedere wat hy geskryf het; onder andere Amazing Grace.Matteus 5:16 Laat julle lig so voor die mense skyn, dat hulle julle goeie werke kan sien en julle Vader wat in die hemel is, verheerlik.”Dit blyk dat jy reproduseer wat jy lewe. Wanneer die Lig van die liefde van Jesus Christus uit mense se harte na die duisternis rondom ons skyn, sal dit die wêreld verander.Lig transformeer mense; dit trek hulle nader. En wanneer jou lewe liefde, hoop, geloof en vriendelikheid uitstraal, word ander nie net na jou getrek nie, maar na Christus self.Dis God se Woord. Vars ... vir jou ... vandag.Support the showEnjoying The Content?For the price of a cup of coffee each month, you can enable Christianityworks to reach 10,000+ people with a message about the love of Jesus!DONATE R50 MONTHLY

Send a textEster 4:13-16 “Moenie dink net jy van al die Jode sal vrykom omdat jy in die koning se paleis is nie. As jy nóú swyg en daar kom van 'n ander kant af uitkoms en redding vir die Jode, sal jy en jou familie omkom. Wie weet, miskien is dit juis met die oog op 'n tyd soos hierdie dat jy koningin geword het!”Ester het toe vir Mordegai laat weet: “Gaan maak al die Jode wat in Susan is, bymekaar en vas ter wille van my. Julle moet drie dae, dag en nag, niks eet en drink nie. Ek en my kamerpersoneel sal ook vas. Daarna sal ek na die koning toe gaan, al is dit teen die wet. As ek moet omkom, moet ek maar omkom.” Daar is tye in die lewe wanneer jy moet vasstaan en dapper wees om te doen wat reg is; om te doen wat jy weet jy moet doen. As jy 'n gebore entrepreneur is, kan risiko-neem maklik wees. Maar vir die meeste mense is dit beslis nie so maklik nie.In die 5de eeu v.C. het Ester, ‘n Joodse meisie, die koningin van Persië geword toe sy getroud is met koning Xerxes. Die koning is deur ‘n jaloerse man, Haman, bedrieg om ‘n bevel uit te vaardig dat al die Jode doodgemaak moet word. Ester wou na haar man, die koning, gaan om by hom te pleit om haar volk te red.Daar was slegs een probleem. Die Persiese wet het enigiemand, selfs die koningin, verbied om ongenooid na die koning te gaan. As die koning nie sy goue septer uitgesteek het na die persoon wat na hom toe wil kom nie, is die skuldige doodgemaak. Haar oom, Mordegai, het vir haar hierdie boodskap van buite die paleis gestuur:Ester 4:13-14 “Moenie dink net jy van al die Jode sal vrykom omdat jy in die koning se paleis is nie. As jy nóú swyg en daar kom van 'n ander kant af uitkoms en redding vir die Jode, sal jy en jou familie omkom. Wie weet, miskien is dit juis met die oog op 'n tyd soos hierdie dat jy koningin geword het!” Dit was die uitdaging aan Ester. Hoe sou sy reageer?Ester 4:15-16 Ester het toe vir Mordegai laat weet: “Gaan maak al die Jode wat in Susan is, bymekaar en vas ter wille van my. Julle moet drie dae, dag en nag, niks eet en drink nie. Ek en my kamerpersoneel sal ook vas. Daarna sal ek na die koning toe gaan, al is dit teen die wet. As ek moet omkom, moet ek maar omkom.”Soms vereis geloof dat ons alles op die spel plaas. Maar wees gerus: God bepaal die uitkoms. Dis Sy Woord. Vars … vir jou … vandag.Support the showEnjoying The Content?For the price of a cup of coffee each month, you can enable Christianityworks to reach 10,000+ people with a message about the love of Jesus!DONATE R50 MONTHLY

Send a textSpreuke 24:16 Al val die regverdige hoeveel keer, hy staan weer op, maar die goddeloses word deur rampe vernietig. Ons hou nie daarvan om oor ons mislukkings te praat nie. Ons het almal al misluk, en as jy daaraan terugdink, maak dit nogal seer, nè? Maar hoe dikwels het jy al misluk omdat jy nie opgestaan het nadat jy oor ‘n hobbel in die pad gestruikel het nie? Dink ‘n bietjie daaroor na.In die middel van die 18de eeu was Vitus Bering, 'n Deense ontdekkingsreisiger, aangestel om kaarte te teken van die gedeelte tussen Siberië en Noord-Amerika. Nadat hy Alaska suksesvol bereik het, het sy bemanning siek geword en die voorrade het begin opraak. Bering kón die omstandighede oorleef en suksesvol teruggekeer het, maar hy het moed verloor. Hy het tou opgegooi en sy bemanning toegelaat om doelloos uiteen te dryf.Die hele ekspedisie het op die rotse geloop. Bering is dood, en alles was verlore. As hy net 'n bietjie langer vasgebyt het en sy bemanning beheer het en bymekaargehou het, sou hy waarskynlik veilig na sy huis teruggekeer het en sy nalatenskap as een van die geskiedenis se groot ontdekkingsreisigers verseker het.Wanneer ons teëspoed beleef en wanneer ons jammerlik misluk; het ons 'n keuse: om op te staan of om moed te verloor en om op te gee.Spreuke 24:16 Al val die regverdige hoeveel keer, hy staan weer op, maar die goddeloses word deur rampe vernietig.God beskou dit nie as ‘n mislukking wanneer ‘n mens val nie. Wat hy wel as ‘n mislukking beskou, is wanneer jy weier om weer op te staan. Wat wil jy graag bereik? Watter struikelblok het oor jou pad gekom: watter teëspoed het jou getref? Hoe sterk is die versoeking om moed op te gee? Dit is beslis moeilike vrae, maar vrae wat jy jouself moet afvra … want jou deursettingsvermoë gaan jou uiteindelik suksesvol maak.Al val die regverdige hoeveel keer, hy staan weer op, maar die goddeloses word deur rampe vernietig.Dis God se Woord. Vars … vir jou … vandag.Support the showEnjoying The Content?For the price of a cup of coffee each month, you can enable Christianityworks to reach 10,000+ people with a message about the love of Jesus!DONATE R50 MONTHLY

Send a textHandelinge 2:41-42 Dié wat sy woorde aangeneem het, is gedoop, en omtrent drie duisend mense is op daardie dag by die getal van die gelowiges gevoeg. Hulle het hulle heelhartig toegelê op die leer van die apostels en die onderlinge verbondenheid, die gemeenskaplike maaltyd en die gebede. Wie is die mense met wie jy assosieer; jou vriendekring; diegene wat ‘n invloed het op hoe jy leef, hoe jy dink en wat jy glo? Wie is hulle en watter impak het hulle op jou lewe?In die 5de eeu v.C. was daar ‘n aantreklike, begaafde, goeie en invloedryke man, Alcibiades, wat onder die bekende Sokrates gestudeer het. Hy het geweldige potensiaal gehad en in ‘n briljante staatsman en generaal ontwikkel. Ja, hy het alles in sy guns gehad om 'n suksesvolle lewe te lei. Maar hy het in die politieke kringe met ambisieuse, roekelose mense te doen gekry. Hy wou mag hê en die belangrike mense se goedkeuring wegdra. Dit het hom tot verraad gelei. Alhoewel hy eens bewonder is, het hy kompromieë met twyfelagtige bondgenote aangegaan en dit het uiteindelik tot sy ondergang gelei en hom sy reputasie gekos. Die verkeerde geselskap het die wysheid wat Sokrates hom probeer leer het, uitgewis.En dis 'n scenario wat ons al so dikwels in die geskiedenis gesien het. Goeie mense word deur slegte geselskap vernietig. Maar die teenoorgestelde is ook waar. Ons lees van die vroeë kerk uit die 1ste eeu n.C. in:Handelinge 2:41-42 Dié wat sy woorde aangeneem het, is gedoop, en omtrent drie duisend mense is op daardie dag by die getal van die gelowiges gevoeg. Hulle het hulle heelhartig toegelê op die leer van die apostels en die onderlinge verbondenheid, die gemeenskaplike maaltyd en die gebede.Hierdie geesvervulde groep se radikale liefde het daagliks mense aangetrek. God het hul karakter deur hul gemeenskap gevorm, en hulle het die wêreld verander. Die waarheid is dat jou vriendekring jou gesindheid teenoor die lewe positief of negatief beïnvloed. Die mense met wie jy omgaan, is uiteindelik wie jy sal word. Kuier dus saam met die regte mense.Dis God se Woord. Vars ... vir jou ... vandag. Support the showEnjoying The Content?For the price of a cup of coffee each month, you can enable Christianityworks to reach 10,000+ people with a message about the love of Jesus!DONATE R50 MONTHLY

Send a textJosua 1:9 Ek self gee jou die opdrag. Wees sterk, wees vasberade. Moenie skrik nie, moenie bang wees nie, want Ek, die Here jou God, is by jou oral waar jy gaan. Was jy al ooit so bang dat dit jou gekeer het om die regte ding te doen? Daardie ding wat jy geweet het jy behoort te doen? Of, miskien was jy te versigtig om die regte ding te doen. Omdat ek al in so ‘n situasie was, en die skaamte en teleurstelling beleef het, weet ek dat ons elkeen hoop dat ons volgende keer 'n bietjie meer moed aan die dag sal lê.Toe God uit die brandende bos vir Moses opdrag gegee het om terug te gaan na Egipte, het hy in plaas daarvan om dadelik in te stem, met God geargumenteer; want hy was bang. Moses het gevrees dat die Israeliete hom sal verwerp; dat hulle nie na hom sal luister nie en nie sal glo dat God hom gestuur het nie.Ten spyte van Moses se aanvanklike huiwering en vrees, het God met geduld en gerusstelling gereageer. God het beloof dat Hy by Moses sal wees; Hy het wonderbaarlike tekens gedoen om Moses te oortuig; en Hy het praktiese hulp aangebied in die vorm van Moses se broer, Aäron, om namens hom te praat. Moses het uiteindelik gehoorsaam; sy vrese in die gesig gestaar; en voortgegaan om sy roeping as leier, wat sy volk uit Egipte moet lei, te vervul.Na Moses se dood moes Josua die Israeliete die Beloofde Land inlei. Dit was 'n baie gevaarlike situasie, want die land was vol van vyandige heidense nasies in die gebied wat hulle moes inneem. Die toekoms van Israel het in die weegskaal gehang. Toe sê God vir hom …Josua 1:9 Ek self gee jou die opdrag. Wees sterk, wees vasberade. Moenie skrik nie, moenie bang wees nie, want Ek, die Here jou God, is by jou oral waar jy gaan.En dis hoe God werk. Wanneer God jou roep om dít te doen waarvoor Hy jou geroep het, en jy gehoorsaam, sal Hy met jou wees waar jy ook al gaan. Moenie in vrees terugdeins nie. Moenie toelaat dat vrees jou terughou van dít wat goed is, en van dít wat reg is nie. Moenie toelaat dat vrees die besluite in jou lewe neem nie.Moenie skrik nie, moenie bang wees nie, want Ek, die Here jou God, is by jou oral waar jy gaan.Dis Sy Woord. Vars … vir jou … vandag.Support the showEnjoying The Content?For the price of a cup of coffee each month, you can enable Christianityworks to reach 10,000+ people with a message about the love of Jesus!DONATE R50 MONTHLY

Send a textGenesis 50:20 Julle wou my kwaad aandoen, maar God wou daarmee goed doen: Hy het gesorg dat 'n groot volk nou in die lewe gebly het. Die lewe is vol krissise. Jy het ongetwyfeld ook al baie beleef, of hoe? Party wat jy goed kan onthou - die grotes en die kleintjies. Alhoewel dit destyds ontstellend was, was dit op die ou end toe nie so sleg as wat jy gedink het dit sal wees nie. Ons lees in die Ou Testament van Josef. Hy was Jakob se jongste en ook sy gunsteling seun. Sy broers was so jaloers op Josef dat hulle saamgesweer het om hom dood te maak. Uiteindelik het hulle hom egter as slaaf aan Egiptenare verkoop. Daar het hy jare in die tronk deurgebring vir 'n misdaad wat hy nie gepleeg het nie.Die arme jongman het terugslag na terugslag beleef. Maar hy het elke keer opgestaan en dapper voortgegaan. Wanneer jy Josef se verhaal in Genesis, hoofstukke 37 tot 50 lees, sien jy hoe hy elke terugslag met integriteit hanteer het en hoe God dit geëer het.Josef was uiteindelik die Eerste Minister van Egipte; ja, hy was tweede in bevel, net onder Farao. Tydens 'n groot hongersnood, het dieselfde broers wat hom aan Egiptiese handelaars verkoop het, voor hom gestaan om kos te kom bedel. Josef het letterlik die mag van lewe en dood oor hulle gehad. Tog het hy so gereageer:Genesis 50:20 Julle wou my kwaad aandoen, maar God wou daarmee goed doen: Hy het gesorg dat 'n groot volk nou in die lewe gebly het.Alhoewel hy gehaat is, as slaaf verkoop is, valslik beskuldig is en gevange geneem is; het elkeen van hierdie massiewe terugslae Josef nader aan God se doel vir sy lewe gebring: naamlik om baie lewens te red. Ons sien in God se koninkryk is 'n terugslag die voorbereiding vir iets groter.Dis Sy Woord. Vars ... vir jou ... vandag Support the showEnjoying The Content?For the price of a cup of coffee each month, you can enable Christianityworks to reach 10,000+ people with a message about the love of Jesus!DONATE R50 MONTHLY

Send a textLukas 24:32 Hulle sê toe vir mekaar: “Het ons hart nie warm geword toe Hy op die pad met ons gepraat en vir ons die Skrif uitgelê het nie?” Het jy al ooit iemand wat jy ken op 'n onverwagte plek of in ‘n vreemde konteks raakgeloop? Jy herken hulle op ‘n manier, maar jy kan hulle nie heeltemal plaas nie. Soms herken jy hulle glad nie eers nie. Daardie onverwagte konteks verwar jou.Dis wat met die twee dissipels op pad na Emmaus gebeur het. Hulle het geloop en gesels oor die ontstellende gebeure van Jesus se kruisiging tydens die Pasgafees. Hulle was getraumatiseer toe hulle besef dat Jesus dood is, want hulle het nog gehoop dat Hy hulle van die Romeine sal red. Terwyl hulle oor die gebeure van die afgelope paar dae gepraat het, het 'n ander man langs hulle begin stap. Hulle het natuurlik nooit verwag dat daardie persoon Jesus kon wees nie, want Hy  was immers die man aan die kruis. Hy was immers dood. Maar terwyl Hy gepraat het, het 'n vreemde, bonatuurlike gevoel oor hulle gekom.Toe Jesus weg is, het hulle tot hul ontsteltenis ontdek dat hulle Hom nie herken het nie …Lukas 24:32 Hulle sê toe vir mekaar: “Het ons hart nie warm geword toe Hy op die pad met ons gepraat en vir ons die Skrif uitgelê het nie?”Soms is goeie terapie om saam met 'n vriend te stap. En weet jy, die beste terapie, die beste genesing om die trauma diep binne-in te oorkom, is om saam met Jesus te stap.Dieselfde opgestane Jesus, die een wat vir jou gesterf en weer opgestaan het, leef en is gesond … en gereed om saam met jou te stap en te praat. Hy kan, en Hy sal jou siel diep binne-in jou genees. Hy het immers opgestaan om vir jou 'n nuwe lewe te gee.Mag dieselfde vuur in jou brand.Dis God se Woord. Vars … vir jou … vandag.Support the showEnjoying The Content?For the price of a cup of coffee each month, you can enable Christianityworks to reach 10,000+ people with a message about the love of Jesus!DONATE R50 MONTHLY

Send a textSpreuke 27:17 Yster slyp yster, vriende vorm mekaar. Ons weet almal hoe die uitvinding van die motorkar ‘n totale omwenteling in die wêreld teweeggebring het. Sedert die eerste motor in 1886 gebou is, het dit gegroei tot meer as 1.5 miljard voertuie op die pad vandag. Maar dit was eers in 1913, toe Ford met massaproduksie begin het, dat dinge regtig vlamgevat het.In die vroeë dae het Henry Ford gedink hy is die slimste ou en hy kan op sy eie regkom. Sy eerste pogings het nie regtig geslaag nie. Dit was te duur, en te stadig. Maar toe het hy slim geword. En toe het die groot uitbreiding gekom. Ford het 'n span ingenieurs, werktuigkundiges en sakelui bymekaargemaak en hulle het almal bygedra om die aanvanklike konsep te verbeter. Hulle het saamgewerk en ‘n bewegende produksiebaan ontwikkel en die produksietyd vir 'n Model T aansienlik verminder. Henry Ford kon op sy eie één motor bou, maar met 'n span, het hy 'n bedryf gebou en die wêreld “wiele gegee”.Ons wil al te dikwels dinge alleen doen en onsself verbeel dat ons dit deur ons eie vindingrykheid en energie kan laat gebeur. Dit is immers harde werk om spanne nukkerige individue wat soms in verskillende rigtings wil afdwaal, te lei, maar die waarheid is …Spreuke 27:17 Yster slyp yster, vriende vorm mekaar.Vonke vlieg wanneer yster yster slyp, maar as daar een ding is wat ek oor byna vyftig jaar in die arbeidsmag geleer het, is dit: alhoewel ek op my eie baie vinniger kan werk; kan ek nie so baie en sulke goeie werk gedaan kry nie.Ja, die verskillende vaardighede, perspektiewe en idees rondom die tafel kán vonke laat spat. Maar saam behaal hulle ook die beste resultate. Moet daarom nie bang wees vir die vonke nie, want net soos yster yster slyp, so dra een persoon by tot die volgende persoon se briljante idees. Dis God se Woord. Vars … vir jou … vandag.Support the showEnjoying The Content?For the price of a cup of coffee each month, you can enable Christianityworks to reach 10,000+ people with a message about the love of Jesus!DONATE R50 MONTHLY

Send a textJesaja  43:18-21 Maar moenie net aan die vroeëre dinge dink en by die verlede stilstaan nie. Kyk, Ek gaan iets nuuts doen, dit staan op die punt om te gebeur, julle kan dit al sien kom; Ek maak in die woestyn 'n pad, Ek laat in die droë wêreld riviere ontspring. Die wilde diere sal My vereer, die jakkalse en die volstruise, omdat Ek water gee in die woestyn, riviere in die droë wêreld om my volk, my uitverkore volk, se dors te les. Dit is die volk wat Ek vir My geskep het, en wat my lof sal verkondig. Dis so hartseer om te sien hoe mense met soveel potensiaal, teruggehou word deur boeie; boeie van spyt en boeie van hul verlede. Hulle moet oppas dat hulle nie hulle verlede toelaat om hul lewens te vernietig nie. As jy om jou kyk, sien jy dat baie mense in daardie strik trap.Watter nare stories uit jou verlede gee jy die duiwel toestemming om oor en oor in jou oor te fluister? Vir party mense het die lewe hulle geleer om dié leuen te glo dat hulle eenvoudig nie goedgenoeg is nie. Vir ander mense spook vorige mislukkings by hulle.Dis selfs pynlik om te erken dat die verlede so deel van ons lewens is, dat ons nie 'n toekoms daarsonder kan voorstel nie.As enige van hierdie dinge oor die verlede jou laat nadink, het ek vandag wonderlike goeie nuus vir jou. Dit kom van God self, waar Hy met sy volk, Israel, praat, toe hulle wanhopig en moedeloos was:Jesaja 43:18-21 Maar moenie net aan die vroeëre dinge dink en by die verlede stilstaan nie. Kyk, Ek gaan iets nuuts doen, dit staan op die punt om te gebeur, julle kan dit al sien kom; Ek maak in die woestyn 'n pad, Ek laat in die droë wêreld riviere ontspring. Die wilde diere sal My vereer, die jakkalse en die volstruise, omdat Ek water gee in die woestyn, riviere in die droë wêreld om my volk, my uitverkore volk, se dors te les. Dit is die volk wat Ek vir My geskep het, en wat my lof sal verkondig.Ja, ons weet almal jy kan die verlede nie verander nie. Maar God wil jou toekoms verander! Hy roep jou om nie in gister se mislukkings te leef nie, maar om vorentoe te beweeg in dít wat Hy op die punt staan om te doen.Moet dus nie die hele tyd terugdink aan wat in die verlede verkeerd geloop het nie, want Hy sê: Ek gaan iets nuuts doen, dit staan op die punt om te gebeur!Dis God se Woord. Vars ... vir jou ... vandag.Support the showEnjoying The Content?For the price of a cup of coffee each month, you can enable Christianityworks to reach 10,000+ people with a message about the love of Jesus!DONATE R50 MONTHLY

Hör allt om det svenska uppfostrandet och hur det kan få ett helt långpass att gå om intet, i det här avsnittets uppsnack.Veckans ämne rör sig kanska mer om det egna uppfostrandet, eller i alla fall den egna disciplinen. Varsågoda, en kopp ljumet vatten och en örfil.Veckans fyrbåkar i mörkret.funmed.se Kod: COLTINGcoltingcoaching.se

Send a textJohannes 14:1-3 “Julle moet nie ontsteld wees nie. Glo in God; glo ook in My. In die huis van my Vader is daar baie woonplek. As dit nie so was nie, sou Ek nie vir julle gesê het Ek gaan om vir julle plek gereed te maak nie. En as Ek gegaan het en vir julle plek gereed gemaak het, kom Ek terug en sal julle na My toe neem, sodat julle ook kan wees waar Ek is. Reünies is so ongelooflik spesiaal. Familie-reünies. Klas-reünies. Dis die geleenthede waar jy die kans kry om met mense met wie jy oor die jare 'n diep band ontwikkel het, weer te sien.Vir diegene van Chinese afkoms, is die Chinese Nuwejaar so 'n tyd. Families reis lang afstande om bymekaar te kom en die belangrikste maaltyd van die jaar te deel.Ek weet dat wanneer ek en die manne met wie ek amper vyftig jaar gelede as weermagsoffisiere opgelei is, bymekaarkom, is daar ‘n wonderlike diep, familieband. Ons voel asof ons bestem is om saam te wees.En met my hele hart, kan ek sê: ons is ook gemaak om een met God te wees. Hy verlang na ons. Hy het Jesus gestuur om aan die kruis te sterf sodat ons sondes vergewe kan word wanneer ons in Hom glo. Maar Jesus het die dood oorwin; Hy het opgestaan om vir ons 'n nuwe lewe te bring. ‘n Lewe van vryheid, van diep innerlike vrede en van die oorwinning oor die sonde wat ons lewens plunder.En moenie jou misgis nie, Hy kom terug ... om die perfekte reünie te vier. Jesus het net voordat Hy gekruisig is, aan sy dissipels gesê:Johannes 14:1-3 “Julle moet nie ontsteld wees nie. Glo in God; glo ook in My. In die huis van my Vader is daar baie woonplek. As dit nie so was nie, sou Ek nie vir julle gesê het Ek gaan om vir julle plek gereed te maak nie. En as Ek gegaan het en vir julle plek gereed gemaak het, kom Ek terug en sal julle na My toe neem, sodat julle ook kan wees waar Ek is.Vertrou Hom. Ek kom terug en sal julle na My toe neem. Hy kom terug ... vir jou!Dis God se Woord. Vars ... vir jou ... vandag.Support the showEnjoying The Content?For the price of a cup of coffee each month, you can enable Christianityworks to reach 10,000+ people with a message about the love of Jesus!DONATE R50 MONTHLY

Send a texthttps://www.nispomcentral.comhttps://www.nispom.comStop Managing FSO Tasks by Email: Use Fillable Forms and an FSO Workbook for DISS and NISPOM ComplianceJeff Bennett, an FSO expert with NISPOM Central, explains why using email to execute FSO tasks creates excessive administrative burden and potential security vulnerabilities, especially when emails are not encrypted. He uses visit authorization requests (VARs) as an example, noting that repeated email back-and-forth often happens because employees don't provide all required information needed to enter data into DISS. While some organizations use dashboards to capture required fields, many FSOs serve as additional-duty personnel without resources or experience, making email-driven workflows inefficient and time-consuming. He recommends replacing task execution via email with standardized fillable forms that capture DISS-required fields once, storing and archiving them in an “FSO workbook” that can also support NISPOM compliance and self-inspections. Email should be used only for notifications and reminders (e.g., training reminders), not for collecting VAR, training, foreign travel, or other reporting information through multiple messages. He offers sample forms, consultations, and access to the FSO workbook and downloadable files via NISPOM Central's websites.00:00 Welcome & Why FSOs Struggle With Task Management00:58 The Email Trap: VAR Requests Turning Into 10+ Messages02:19 Why VARs Need So Much Data (and Why Employees Miss It)02:47 Big-Budget Dashboards vs. Additional-Duty FSOs04:22 A Better System: The FSO Workbook & Fillable Forms05:01 Security Risk: Unencrypted Email and Sensitive Data05:17 How to Build Your Own Forms + Shared Drive Workflow05:54 Use Email for Notifications—Not for Doing the Work07:06 Get a Sample Form, Consultation, and Download Resources07:46 Final Takeaway: Stop Running FSO Tasks Through EmailNISPOM CentralProviding security clearance books, training, and resources for cleared defense contractors.Clearance, NISPOM, and FSO ConsultingThrive Analysis Group Inc is your resource for security clearance, NISPOM, and FSO consulting.Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.Support the showFSO Consulting:https://thriveanalysis.comNISPOM Compliancehttps://www.nispomcentral.comWe provide facility security clearance, personnel security clearance, FSO consulting and NISPOM consulting. Personnel Security Clearances How to get a clearance What to expect once you get a clearance What you can do to prepare for a clearance Facility Security Clearance ✓Become a CDC Contractor ✓Determine security requirements for SECRET, TOP SECRET and SCI Clearances ✓Establish a security team to protect classified information ✓Develop and provide required security training ✓Prepare for government inspections ✓Interpret Contract specifications ✓Fight Insider threat ✓Learn Security clearance levels ✓Process Classified information ✓Prepare Derivative Classification

Send a textPsalm 51:12-14 Skep vir my 'n rein hart, o God, vernuwe my gees en maak my standvastig. Moet my tog nie van U af wegdryf en u Heilige Gees van my af wegneem nie! Laat my weer die blydskap ervaar van iemand wat deur U verlos is, Laat my U weer met toewyding dien.Het jy ook sulke klein ou dingetjies in jou lewe wat pla en jou sommer ongemaklik en moeg laat voel? Ek praat nie van groot en pynlike dinge wat jou lewe ontwrig nie; maar daardie gevoel van ongemak wat jou permanent gespanne en omgekrap laat voel.Neem byvoorbeeld jou slaap. Jy kan vir 'n rukkie, selfs vir jare, met onvoldoende slaap klaarkom; totdat jy op ‘n dag besef dat dit tot stres, hoë bloeddruk, selfs suikersiekte en hartsiektes bydra. En jy weet dat, tensy jy iets daaraan doen ... dit jou sal doodmaak.Dieselfde geld vir die woelinge wat in jou hart aangaan; die dinge wat emosioneel en geestelik skadelik is en die dinge wat verhoudings belemmer. Neem byvoorbeeld chroniese woede. Dink jy dis goed vir jou vrede, jou huwelik en selfs jou verhouding met God?Dawid het met die probleem van wellus geworstel. Hy het egbreuk gepleeg en selfs ‘n man laat doodmaak sodat hy die ou  se vrou in die hande kon kry. Sy lewe was op 'n afwaartse pad ... totdat hy tot sy sinne gekom het en hierdie gebed gebid het:Psalm 51:12-14 Skep vir my 'n rein hart, o God, vernuwe my gees en maak my standvastig. Moet my tog nie van U af wegdryf en u Heilige Gees van my af wegneem nie! Laat my weer die blydskap ervaar van iemand wat deur U verlos is, Laat my U weer met toewyding dien.Wat is daar in jou lewe wat jou van vrede en blydskap beroof? Miskien is vandag die dag vir jou om tot jou sinne te kom. Miskien is vandag die dag vir jou om huis skoon te maak.Skep vir my 'n rein hart, o God, vernuwe my gees en maak my standvastigDis God se Woord. Vars ... vir jou ... vandag. Support the showEnjoying The Content?For the price of a cup of coffee each month, you can enable Christianityworks to reach 10,000+ people with a message about the love of Jesus!DONATE R50 MONTHLY

Send a textSpreuke 3:5-6 Vertrou volkome op die Here en moenie op jou eie insigte staatmaak nie. Ken Hom in alles wat jy doen en Hy sal jou die regte pad laat loop. Het jy al ooit heeltemal onbekwaam vir 'n taak gevoel?  Ja, ek het beslis ook al dikwels onnosel gevoel! Ignatius van Loyola was 'n ydel, glorie-honger jong soldaat in die 16de eeu in Spanje. Hy was meer geïnteresseerd in roem en romanse as geloof. Hy het eer op die slagveld nagejaag totdat 'n kanonkoël sy been én sy planne verpletter het. Tydens 'n lang, pynlike herstelproses het hy niks anders te doen gehad as om stories van Jesus en die heiliges te lees nie.Stadigaan het sy nuutgevonde oortuiging sy ambisie vervang. Die eens doellose dromer het hom aan Christus oorgegee en een van die invloedrykste sending- en opvoedkundige bewegings in die geskiedenis, die Jesuïete, tot stand gebring.Soms roep God die onkundiges nie omdat hulle gereed is nie, maar omdat Hy op die punt staan om hulle gereed te maak.Ek kan myself so inleef in so ‘n situasie. Wat van jou? Toe ek ingespring het om die mediabediening van Christianityworks te lei, was ek nie net onkundig nie, ek was totaal onbekwaam en nogal naïef. Ek het absoluut geen idee gehad van wat om te doen nie. Ek het geroepe gevoel; ek het kinderlike geloof gehad; ek het besigheidsvaardighede gehad, maar om 'n sterwende bediening op die randjie van ineenstorting te laat herleef, was heeltemal bo my vuurmaakplek.Wat Ignatius ontdek het, en wat ek en soveel ander deur die eeue ontdek het, is, dat wanneer jy in God se diens is, jy nie in beheer is nie. Dit beteken dis oukei om nie alles vooraf honderdpersent uitgepluis te hê nie.Spreuke 3:5-6 Vertrou volkome op die Here en moenie op jou eie insigte staatmaak nie. Ken Hom in alles wat jy doen en Hy sal jou die regte pad laat loop.Met ander woorde, ons is nie veronderstel om alles perfek te verstaan nie. God vereis nie perfekte planne van ons kant nie; Hy vra bloot vir ons vertroue. Sy leiding kom wanneer ons saam met Hom werk, nie wanneer ons ons eie minder-as-briljante planne volg nie.Dis God se Woord. Vars ... vir jou ... vandag.Support the showEnjoying The Content?For the price of a cup of coffee each month, you can enable Christianityworks to reach 10,000+ people with a message about the love of Jesus!DONATE R50 MONTHLY

Send a textGoeiemôre aan al ons VARS-potgooivriende.  Ek is Jokkie Gauché en hier is VARSVANDAG se Eerste  Februarie Nuusbrief. Ek vertrou dat dit goed gaan met jou. Ons hoor van die verskriklike vure in die Suide en die ontsettende vloede in die Noorde, die ellende van Bek-en-Klouseer en ons wil vir julle almal sterkte en seën toebid.  Die boodskap van 3 Februarie oor die dissipels se ervaring tydens die storm op die see het my herinner aan iets wat ek ‘n ruk gelede oor Noag se Ark gelees het. Ontspan en DryfDie mees indrukwekkende detail van Noag se Ark is nie die grootte en krag van die vloed nie. Dit is die ontwerp van die boot. In Genesis 6 het God vir Noag baie spesifieke instruksies gegee oor die konstruksie van die boot. Maar enige ou sal jou vertel dat God baie noodsaaklike komponente uitgelaat het. Daar is geen stuur, geen seil, geen enjin en geen navigasie toerusting nie. Hoe kan dit werk? Noag sal geen beheer oor hierdie massiewe vaartuig hê nie. Hy sal nie van rotse kan wegstuur nie; hy sal dit nie in die golwe kan draai nie. Noag se werk sal wees om die Passasier, nie die Kaptein, te wees nie. God is die Kaptein. Dit is 'n prentjie van jou lewe. Jy probeer om te stuur in 'n situasie waar God wil hê jy net moet dryf. God het ‘n plan vir jou lewe...buite jou gemaksone! Dis so maklik vir jou om vir ander tot seën te wees ... Deur jou bydrae maak jy dit moontlik vir ons om duisende mense dwarsdeur die wêreld in Afrikaans te bereik. Wanneer ons praat van jou bydrae, praat ons nie net van geld nie, (alhoewel ons dit ook broodnodig het) maar veral van jou gebede vir die uitbreiding van Koninkryk van ons Here Jesus Christus deur die media. Kan jy dink dat iemand op pad na sy werk ‘toevallig' die radio aanskakel en ‘n boodskap hoor wat hom na Jesus lei? Of wat van daardie ouma, wat net rustig sit en brei met die radio in die agtergrond...Maar hoe kan 'n mens Hom aanroep as jy nie in Hom glo nie? En hoe kan jy in Hom glo as jy nie van Hom gehoor het nie (Romeine 10:14)Seënwense en mooi loopJokkie en Annelie en die VARS-span Aanlyn Betalingsopsies vir Christianityworks se bediening in RSA:Bank:                      First National Bank (FNB)Rekening naam:       Christianityworks NPCTakkode:                 250655Rekeningnommer:   6286 0951 550 https://christianityworks.co.za/af/donate/ vir aanlyn betalingsopsies.Support the showEnjoying The Content?For the price of a cup of coffee each month, you can enable Christianityworks to reach 10,000+ people with a message about the love of Jesus!DONATE R50 MONTHLY

Send a text2 Korintiërs 12:8-10 Drie maal het ek die Here gebid dat dit van my af weggeneem moet word. Sy antwoord was: “My genade is vir jou genoeg. My krag kom juis tot volle werking wanneer jy swak is.” Daarom sal ek baie liewer oor my swakhede roem, sodat die krag van Christus my beskutting kan wees. Daarom is ek bly oor swakhede, beledigings, ontberings, vervolging en moeilikhede ter wille van Christus, want as ek swak is, is ek sterk. Een van die dinge wat vir ons as mense moeilik is om te verstaan, is dat God ons toelaat om te ly. Ek wens ek kon vir jou die "hoekoms en waaroms" verduidelik, maar ek kan nie. Wat ek wel kan sê, is dat Hy nie eers vir Jesus, sy Seun, die lyding gespaar het nie; Hy moes vir my en vir jou aan 'n kruis sterf. In hierdie onvolmaakte, gevalle wêreld waarin ons leef, is dit redelik voor die hand liggend dat lyding 'n noodsaaklike deel van liefde is.In 1967, op 17-jarige ouderdom, is Joni Eareckson in 'n duikongeluk van die nek af verlam. Jare lank het sy God gesmeek om haar te genees. Hy het nie – ten minste nie fisies nie.Maar ons het seker almal gehoor hoe sy deur haar gestremdheid iets buitengewoons bereik het. Joni het as 'n spreker, ‘n skrywer van meer as 40 boeke, ‘n kampvegter vir mense met gestremdhede en ‘n aktrise van ‘n outobiografiese film, bekendheid verwerf. Hier benewens, skilder sy met haar mond en lei 'n wêreldwye bediening. Deur dekades van pyn het sy hierdie woorde uitgeleef:2 Korintiërs 12:8-10 Drie maal het ek die Here gebid dat dit van my af weggeneem moet word. Sy antwoord was: “My genade is vir jou genoeg. My krag kom juis tot volle werking wanneer jy swak is.” Daarom sal ek baie liewer oor my swakhede roem, sodat die krag van Christus my beskutting kan wees. Daarom is ek bly oor swakhede, beledigings, ontberings, vervolging en moeilikhede ter wille van Christus, want as ek swak is, is ek sterk.Net soos die apostel Paulus, wat hierdie brief geskryf het, het Joni ontdek dat ware krag nie van onsself of ons omstandighede kom nie, maar van Christus wat in ons woon.Jou grootste swakheid, jou grootste karakterfout, jou grootste beperking, is juis dié plek waar sy krag na vore kom en jy groei. Die slotsom: in Christus is jy baie sterker as wat jy dink, want sy genade is vir jou genoeg.Dis God se Woord. Vars … vir jou … vandag.Support the showEnjoying The Content?For the price of a cup of coffee each month, you can enable Christianityworks to reach 10,000+ people with a message about the love of Jesus!DONATE R50 MONTHLY

Send a textFilippense 3:13-14 Nee, broers en susters, ek reken self nie dat ek al is wat ek moet wees nie, maar een ding is seker: ek vergeet dit wat agter my lê, en strek my uit na dit wat voorlê. Ek jaag wenpaal toe, na die hemelse prys wat God deur Christus Jesus aan my gee. (NLV) Ongelukkig wil baie mense nie terugdink aan die ongeneesde wonde uit hulle verlede nie; hulle wil die seerkry van afknouery op die skoolterrein, afbrekende woorde van 'n ouer of onderwyser, 'n gebroke verhouding, of 'n onopgeloste skuldgevoel ignoreer, asof dit nooit gebeur het nie. Maar, om vry te kom van die seer van die verlede, moet ons tog daaraan dink en dit hanteer.Laat my toe om jou van my seerkry te vertel. My eerste vrou het my vir een van my beste vriende verlaat. Ek was nie 'n slegte mens nie, maar 'n gedrewe, Tipe-A-presteerder, en ek verstaan dit nou, dekades later, eers heeltemal. Maar, weet jy, daardie verwerping het 'n diep wond gelaat.Die onvermydelike rouproses het 'n paar jaar geneem, maar ek moes die besluit neem om met die seerkry te breek. Op die ou end moet ons elkeen 'n besluit neem. Ons kan óf kies om die wond te versorg, wat onvermydelike verandering gaan behels, óf ons kan aanhou om die roof af te krap, wat gaan lei tot bloeding en infeksie.Ongelukkig kies baie mense laasgenoemde. Hulle kom nooit oor die seer van die verlede nie en neem nie verantwoordelikheid vir die veranderinge wat hulle moet maak nie.Filippense 3:13-14 Nee, broers en susters, ek reken self nie dat ek al is wat ek moet wees nie, maar een ding is seker: ek vergeet dit wat agter my lê, en strek my uit na dit wat voorlê. Ek jaag wenpaal toe, na die hemelse prys wat God deur Christus Jesus aan my gee. (NLV)Die apostel Paulus, wat hierdie brief aan die mense in Filippi geskryf het, moes sy pynlike verlede van vervolging van Christene hanteer. Tog het hy gekies om nie toe te laat dat dit hom definieer nie. In plaas daarvan het hy doelgerig vorentoe gegaan, gefokus op God se roeping, eerder as die selfverwyt oor sy verlede.Moenie antwoord wanneer die verlede roep nie.Dis God se Woord. Vars ... vir jou ... vandag.Support the showEnjoying The Content?For the price of a cup of coffee each month, you can enable Christianityworks to reach 10,000+ people with a message about the love of Jesus!DONATE R50 MONTHLY

Send a textGalasiërs 1:10 Hoe klink dit vir julle? Wil ek in mense se goeie boekies kom? Of wil ek God tevrede stel? Probeer ek mense gelukkig maak? As ek nog steeds mense gelukkig wil maak, is ek nie 'n dienskneg van Christus nie. (NLV) Ek dink nie daar is een van ons wat nie goeie verhoudings begeer nie. Dit behels in ‘n mate om aan ander mense se verwagtinge te voldoen, wat tot 'n sekere punt goed is. Maar wanneer ons dinge bloot doen om mense tevrede te probeer stel, word die lewe inderdaad ellendig. Mense is wispelturig. Jy kan eenvoudig nie ten alle tye mense tevrede stel nie. In 19de-eeu in Amerika was ‘n vrou veronderstel om slegs ‘n besadigde huisvrou en moeder te wees. Harriet Beecher Stowe het aanvanklik by die prentjie ingepas. Sy was die tipiese stil, pligsgetroue vrou, moeder en dogter van ‘n pastoor, wat streng binne die sosiale reëls van die tyd opgetree het, veral wanneer dit by politieke of morele twispunte gekom het. Harriet het aan die begin veilige literatuur geskryf en konfrontasie vermy, veral oor verdelende kwessies soos slawerny. Maar toe die Wet Amerikaners gedwing het om ontsnapte slawe na hul eienaars terug te stuur, kon sy nie meer stilbly nie. Sy het ‘n kontroversiële boek: Uncle Tom's Cabin geskryf. Dit was 'n boek wat 'n nasie geskud en dwarsdeur die wêreld mense wat slawerny wou beëindig, opgesweep het. Harriet het die geskiedenis verander, omdat sy haar nie daaraan gesteur het om mense tevrede te stel, of om die sosiale standaarde van haar tyd te handhaaf nie. Het die behoefte om ander mense tevrede te stel jou in die verlede al stilgemaak; jou aan onregverdige reëls laat onderwerp; of jou gekeer om die waarheid te praat? Die apostel Paulus skryf in: Galasiërs 1:10 Hoe klink dit vir julle? Wil ek in mense se goeie boekies kom? Of wil ek God tevrede stel? Probeer ek mense gelukkig maak? As ek nog steeds mense gelukkig wil maak, is ek nie 'n dienskneg van Christus nie. (NLV) Paulus trek hier 'n streep: die opinies van mense wat God se roeping op jou lewe teenstaan of verkeerd verstaan, maak nie regtig saak nie. Wat saak maak, is God se goedkeuring, en die ondersteuning van diegene wat jou werklik liefhet en in die Gees wandel. Dink hieraan: Die mense wat aanstoot neem, maak nie saak nie en die mense wat saakmaak, neem nie aanstoot nie. Dis God se Woord. Vars … vir jou … vandag.Support the showEnjoying The Content?For the price of a cup of coffee each month, you can enable Christianityworks to reach 10,000+ people with a message about the love of Jesus!DONATE R50 MONTHLY

In Episode 150 of “The Trusted Advisor,” RSPA CEO Jim Roddy talks “flexible leadership” with Bill Fultz, the General Manager of software provider LINGA. Among the topics discussed are adapting your leadership approach to each individual vs. having one set leadership style, slowing initiatives down to ensure they have a strong foundation and can survive over time, and delivering candid feedback most effectively. “The Trusted Advisor,” powered by the Retail Solutions Providers Association (RSPA), is an award-winning content series designed specifically for retail IT VARs and software providers. Our goal is to educate you on the topics of leadership, management, hiring, sales, and other small business best practices. For more insights, visit the RSPA blog at www.GoRSPA.org.  The RSPA is North America's largest community of VARs, software providers, vendors, and distributors in the retail, restaurant, and grocery verticals. The mission of the RSPA is to accelerate the success of its members in the retail technology ecosystem by providing knowledge and connections. The organization offers member-to-member warm introductions, education, legal advice, industry advocacy, and other services to assist members with becoming and remaining successful. RSPA is most well-known for its signature events, RetailNOW and Inspire, which provide face-to-face learning and networking opportunities. Learn more by visiting www.GoRSPA.org.

If your AR feels like a maze of phone calls, spreadsheets, and “we'll match it later,” this conversation shows a cleaner path. We sit down with Fauwaz Hussain, Senior Director of B2B Partnerships and Strategy at Global Payments, to break down what actually speeds cash and what quietly stalls it. From card-not-present realities to complex terms and partial shipments, we map the B2B differences that make order-to-cash harder and the practical changes that remove friction fast.We get specific about embedding payments inside your ERP so invoices, settlements, and the general ledger line up automatically. That shift kills rekeying errors, collapses department silos, and gives support, sales, and finance the same live truth. Security gets stronger when card data never touches email or recorded calls, and PCI compliance becomes manageable when you use certified, cloud-based vaults and enforce simple rules like “no cards by phone.” Fauwaz explains why publishers like Microsoft, SAP, and Sage now run tighter marketplaces, how VARs and ISVs evaluate payment apps, and why a one-stop provider reduces risk across gateways, vaults, and processing.We also cover the cash-flow moves that work right away: self-serve portals with open invoices, one-click payment links by email or text, stored credentials for auto-pay, and accepting multiple methods from ACH to single-use virtual cards. Then we look forward - AI-driven cash application, predictive delinquencies, Level 2/3 data validation, and API-first architectures that connect e-commerce, field service, and ERP into a single payment fabric. If you're leading AR, finance, or operations, you'll leave with a clear playbook to modernize without compromising compliance.

Jason Beal, President, Americas, and Danielle Skipper, HR Business Partner at Exclusive Networks, joined Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, to discuss one of the most pressing challenges facing MSPs and VARs today: the shortage of qualified cybersecurity talent and the need for practical, scalable solutions. Beal opened the conversation by describing Exclusive Networks as a global go-to-market specialist and value-added distributor focused on cybersecurity and security-adjacent technologies. As the company worked closely with vendors and channel partners worldwide, a consistent theme emerged—partners were struggling not only to attract skilled cybersecurity professionals but also to retain them. “We heard over and over from our partners and vendors that they were really struggling with attracting the right talent and retaining that talent,” Beal said, noting that this feedback prompted Exclusive Networks to develop a structured response. That response is CyberFarm, a university-based workforce development program launched at Cal Poly that combines hands-on experience with real-world channel exposure. Skipper explained that the program began four years ago with just three students and has since grown to support more than two dozen at a time, with over 100 students having passed through the initiative overall. “Imagine having someone who's spent two years learning the channel, working with vendors, earning certifications, and supporting real partners—by the time they graduate, they're ready to hit the ground running,” Skipper said. Unlike traditional internships, CyberFarm students work for at least 12 months—often two years or more—supporting both Exclusive Networks and its ecosystem of partners and vendors. Participants gain experience across a wide range of functions, including SOC analysis, business development, marketing, content creation, and sales operations. For MSPs and VARs, this creates access to a proven talent pool with significantly reduced ramp-up time and risk compared to traditional hiring. The discussion also highlighted how CyberFarm enables partner growth. Skipper shared examples of MSPs using CyberFarm talent to scale operations rapidly, adding capacity in engineering, marketing, and renewal management at critical growth stages. “For some partners, CyberFarm has been the difference between staying flat and scaling their business two, three, or four times,” she said. Beyond talent development, Beal outlined Exclusive Networks' broader enablement strategy for the channel. This includes pre- and post-sales technical services, go-to-market support, authorized training and certification programs, and CloudRise, a security services organization acquired by Exclusive Networks to act as a virtual engineering bench for partners. “Enablement isn't just a buzzword for us,” Beal said. “It's about putting MSPs in a position to succeed—technically, operationally, and now from a talent perspective as well.” As the conversation wrapped up, both guests emphasized that while AI and automation are reshaping cybersecurity, human expertise remains essential. Exclusive Networks' approach blends “AI and AIR”—artificial intelligence alongside authentic human relationships—to help partners grow sustainably. More information about Exclusive Networks and its channel programs is available at https://www.exclusive-networks.com/.

As 2026 rolls along, Microsoft partners understand that they operate in an ecosystem dominated by AI ambitions. But the channel story goes a lot deeper, and attendees at PartnerIn's inaugural Vibe conference brought a broad range of ideas, experiences, and stories with them. The event did not ignore AI, and some sessions dove into topics around how partners are incorporating it into end-to-end business processes, data mining, agent development, and security. But when Microsoft isn't overpowering the conversation, partners also enjoy opening up about other topics like business process standardization, managing consulting teams, creating more effective relationships between ISVs and VARs, and improving sales pipelines. In this MSDW Podcast episode, we share conversations recorded on-site at Vibe with three presenters: Joel Leichty of Cooptimize, Carol Smock of TechFluent Academy, and Tanya Henderson and Steve Endow of Blue Dragonfly. They each share a bit about what they brought to the event, what they were learning from others, and their outlook on operating in the Microsoft channel in 2026.

GSA is moving quickly on multiple fronts from refreshing its major GWACs to gathering fresh data from VARs—signaling a continued shift toward tighter oversight of how agencies buy services and technology. At the same time, Treasury's cancellation of its Booz Allen Hamilton contracts has raised new questions about how far that scrutiny will go across the government. We'll sort out the implications for agencies and contractors with the president of the Professional Services Council, Stephanie Kostro.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Cristiano Ronaldo Biography Flash a weekly Biography.Hey folks, Tyler Tye Morgan here, your ex-athlete turned sports storyteller, powered by AI for that lightning-fast scoop on the legends thats a game-changer, ha, keeps me sharper than my old cleats. Cristiano Ronaldo, the GOAT whos still defying Father Time at 41, lit up the past few days with pure fire. On Wednesday, January 21, CR7 banged in his 960th career goal a screamer from a Joao Felix pass in Al-Nassrs gritty 2-1 road win over Damac, ESPN reports, pushing them to second in the Saudi Pro League, just four points off leaders Al-Hilal. Portugal's national team hailed him as the ultimate GOAT on socials, Marca says, with fans buzzing worldwide. Hell, hes still the leagues top scorer at 16 goals through 17 matchweeks, per Ummid, even after a disallowed second strike for offside yeah, VARs got no heart.No fresh public appearances or social media blasts popped in the last 24 hours, but the big whispers? Fox Sports and talkSPORT tease Ronaldo likely bouncing from Al-Nassr summer 2027, maybe retiring post-2026 World Cup his self-declared final international hurrah, where hell chase six World Cups and Klose's goal record, SI predicts. Saudi bosses are plotting wild a 50-star recruitment blitz post-World Cup, eyeing Salah, Fernandes, Vinicius, even Lewandowski to keep the spotlight hot till CR7 potentially grabs more equity or owners hat. WorldsoccerTalk notes Al-Nassr snagged young Iraqi forward Hayder Abdulkareem as their first 2026 signing Ronaldo himself welcomed the kid. Business-wise, hes cemented as the leagues cash king, no trophies yet but closing fast.This chapters got that long-tail bio weight Ronaldo eyeing 1000 goals before the curtain, rewriting history. Whew, gets me pumped just saying it.Thanks for tuning in, listeners subscribe now to never miss a CR7 update, and search Biography Flash for more epic bios. Catch ya next time.And that is it for today. Make sure you hit the subscribe button and never miss an update on Cristiano Ronaldo. Thanks for listening. This has been a Quiet Please production."Get the best deals https://amzn.to/42YoQGIThis content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI

The General Services Administration is seeking input from the technology reseller community on how the agency can improve the federal procurement process, particularly regarding value-added resellers (VARs). The GSA issued a request for information Thursday, stating that it hopes to receive cost-reduction strategies for products resold to the government rather than those purchased directly from vendors. VARs, a type of government reseller, purchase infrastructure or software from original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and enhance them with certain features or services before reselling to the government. An analysis of major VARs found significant differences in the services offered and markup percentages applied to the vendor pricing, according to the RFI. The market research will help determine whether the agency needs additional controls to ensure the government receives fair and reasonable pricing when markups exceed a specified percentage threshold, per the document. “The RFI seeks to gain a clearer understanding of the value added by resellers, and the resulting impact of these services on pricing and the ability to meet the government's requirements,” GSA wrote in a press release Thursday. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is “trying to automate as many of our business functions as possible,” the Department of Homeland Security component's top IT official said at an event Thursday in Washington, D.C. Dustin Goetz, ICE's chief information officer, said onstage during a Homeland Security and Defense Forum event that the agency is already tapping its automation toolset for compliance checks on applications, code review and identification of issues in infrastructure — but it's now looking to beef up capabilities. Goetz pointed to lower-level roles in cybersecurity, the service desk and administrative functions as prime areas for automation, saying those things can be automated with the data the agency currently has, it just needs to train models. Additionally, ICE has started using an internal AI chatbot called Stella, a project led by the DHS division's chief innovation and AI officer. The agency is open to bringing on industry partners to sharpen the tool and help ICE reach its automation goals. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

Det nya året fortsätter med ett utfyllnadsavsnitt i väntan på [NOTY] Del 2, där du får nöja dig med en duo bestående av DupoKjellin, inspelad och lokalproducerad i SNIKT STUDIO i Tyresö! Varsågod & Förlåt. Peter och Vanne är det som denna vecka håller ställningarna och drar igenom det senaste av det senaste som inkluderar såväl Oscars– som Razzie-nomineringar, den nya Masters of the Universe-trailern och lite andra nyheter. Därefter berättar Dupo om sina äventyr i The Sims 4 och expansionerna Enchanted By Nature och Cottage Living som gått varmt på familjens nyinförskaffade hemdator. Sedan flikar Kjellin in och tar tempen på nya serien A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms i en slags liten Westerosrapport kring adaptionen av George RR Martins novelltrilogi Tales of Dunk and Egg vars första avsnitt har haft premiär. Avslutningsvis berättar Vanne om boken For Whom the Belle Tolls av författaren Jaysea Lynn och deklarerar att hon gett sig in i Outlander-träsket lagom till den stundande 8:e och sista säsongen som har premiär i vår… någonstans… Sedan stängs butiken, för det har blivit dags för Vanne att dra hem Arc Raiders och för Peter att lägga ut denna podd för lyssning! Tack & Förlåt! Puss Hej!

In Episode 149 of “The Trusted Advisor,” RSPA CEO Jim Roddy talks about the history and future of the retail IT channel with Brett Van Riper, Channel Account Manager for Epson. Among the topics discussed are how trends from the 1990s and 2000s are parallel to today's channel, the importance of VARs remaining independent, how distributors drive success for channel partners, and why innovation the POS industry is driven by Main Street, not Park Avenue. “The Trusted Advisor,” powered by the Retail Solutions Providers Association (RSPA), is an award-winning content series designed specifically for retail IT VARs and software providers. Our goal is to educate you on the topics of leadership, management, hiring, sales, and other small business best practices. For more insights, visit the RSPA blog at www.GoRSPA.org.  The RSPA is North America's largest community of VARs, software providers, vendors, and distributors in the retail, restaurant, and grocery verticals. The mission of the RSPA is to accelerate the success of its members in the retail technology ecosystem by providing knowledge and connections. The organization offers member-to-member warm introductions, education, legal advice, industry advocacy, and other services to assist members with becoming and remaining successful. RSPA is most well-known for its signature events, RetailNOW and Inspire, which provide face-to-face learning and networking opportunities. Learn more by visiting www.GoRSPA.org. 

Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ In this high-impact podcast episode to kick off 2026, Vince Menzione sits down with Jay McBain (Canalys/Informa) to decode the tectonic shifts reshaping the technology ecosystem. Jay reveals why the tech economy is forecasting double-digit growth while the broader economy lags, introducing a “Tale of Two Cities” where direct infrastructure sales are booming but partner influence is more critical than ever. He explains the drop in channel transact share to 66.7% and why the “96% Partner Assist” is the new metric for success. Jay also details the shift away from traditional “Gold/Silver/Bronze” programs toward point systems that recognize partners at every one of the “28 moments” in the customer journey, from influence to long-term retention. Key Takeaways The tech industry is forecast to grow 10.2% in 2026, outpacing the global economy’s 2.7% growth. Channel transact share has dropped from 75% to a forecast of 66.7% as infrastructure deals go direct. Nvidia and the “Magnificent Seven” are driving a massive direct infrastructure build-out for the next era. Microsoft measures a 96% “Partner Assist” rate, with up to seven partners involved in every deal. 80% of customers now prioritize partner certifications and competencies over relationships when choosing partners. The number one request from partners is to be recognized for value across all 28 moments, not just the point of sale. If you're ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags: Jay McBain, Canalys, Informa Tech, Partner Assist, 28 Moments, Tech Growth 2026, Channel Strategy, Nvidia, Infrastructure Buildout, Partner Economics, Microsoft Ecosystem, AWS, Direct Sales, Indirect Sales, Partner Influence, Multiplier Effect, Customer Journey, Partner Programs, Tech Economy, Ecosystem Orchestration. https://youtu.be/ntogEr6mjKg?si=_AaBPBfv9KcMRA9D Transcript: [00:00:00] Jay McBain: By the way, marketplaces, the massive growth in marketplaces for everyone that doesn’t own the marketplace is also an indirect sale. It should be helping these numbers. Yeah, so, but there’s one company that’s driving and happens to be the most valuable company in the world right now. [00:00:15] Vince Menzione: Let’s start off with the first, my burning question I have first, let’s cover it first. [00:00:21] Vince Menzione: If you had a sum up 2026 for partners in one sentence. What is it and what are people still underestimating? [00:00:29] Jay McBain: Yeah, it’s one, one word is probably opportunity. Opportunity. Um, so we look around the world, uh, the world economy without technology in it is gonna grow at 2.7%. That’s about $120 trillion with technology in it, technology industry, we’re forecasting to grow by double digits. [00:00:47] Jay McBain: Amazing. You know, in a world that’s growing at two, uh, we’re expecting 10.2%. Growth. And this industry, as you know, is surrounded by partners. Yes. And there are opportunities in hardware, in software, in services, in telco, all the different parts of the customer’s budget. And to look through the double digits though, I mean the, the extension of the sentence is, it’s a tale of two cities. [00:01:11] Jay McBain: Yeah. I was gonna ask you about this. Police do. There isn’t an opportunity in every slice. You know, some of the slices are shrinking by single digits. Some of them are growing by low single digits, but some of them are in the 20, 30, 40% growth range. And this is what partners are starting to think, these tectonic shifts that are happening, the ultimate partnerships that are happening are in very specific places that you kicked off this session talking about. [00:01:35] Vince Menzione: Yeah. So I would love to di dive in here because we have your, we have your slide up behind us. In fact, in talking about this $6.1 trillion economy around te uh, tech and telco and this opportunity. So, you know, we’re, there are gonna be winners and losers right in, in terms of these, uh, these segments or slices of the economy. [00:01:55] Vince Menzione: We can talk about that now. I, I think maybe it would be a good idea to talk about both the channel and, and why the par the channel plays such a big role in this growth. And then talk about what the winners and losers are gonna be. [00:02:07] Jay McBain: Yeah, I mean, broader. Um, actually if we go to the next, uh, slide, there is, um, a declining number and in the world economy that 120 trillion, 75% of it. [00:02:20] Jay McBain: Uh, moves indirectly. You bought your last car from a dealer. Yeah. You bought your last, uh, TV from a retailer, you know, peanut butter from a grocer, that type of thing. But the agencies, the brokers, the resellers, the retailers, the franchisees, the gas stations, pharmacies, grocery, all the different parts of the 27 industries, you know, play an incredible role. [00:02:40] Jay McBain: Our industry was at 75, not just three years ago. Wow. It dropped to 73.2. Two years ago, down to 70.1 last year, and this year’s forecast to be 66.7, so it’s dropping by about 3% each year and it’s this how money changes hands. Yeah. By the way, marketplaces, the massive growth in marketplaces for everyone that doesn’t own the marketplace is also an indirect sale. [00:03:05] Jay McBain: It should be helping these numbers. Yeah, so, but there’s one company that’s driving and happens to be the most valuable company in the world right now, Nvidia. Yeah. And the broader data center buildup mostly on consumer side, but this infrastructure data center build out globally happening right now is mostly happening direct. [00:03:22] Jay McBain: Yeah. There are the magnificent seven who are spending hundreds of billions of dollars each. On these chips and on this, uh, capability and capacity for this next 20 year era. And this is not a resell gain. They’re not buying through distribution and not buying through a reseller. And that’s where you talk about haves and have nots. [00:03:40] Jay McBain: You talk about this economy that, you know, Nvidia for example, was growing at triple digits, quarter in, quarter out, you know, becoming the most valuable company. And it’s not. A traditional technology opportunity, right? There isn’t managed service providers inside these data centers. There isn’t technology folks like VARs and system integrators in plugging in the equipment. [00:04:02] Jay McBain: Yeah. So we gotta watch and, and look at where this next shift takes us and where this multiplier opportunity wraps around it. So that’s the second number here. 96%. Which hasn’t changed. This is a number by the way, that Microsoft measures Yes. Understand. And, and Microsoft looks at it and, you know, second most valuable company in the world measures every deal they’re in and then have been for decades. [00:04:26] Jay McBain: And they measure this 96% of partner assist upwards of seven partners in every one of their deals. And looking at this partner assist number is what drives them. And in Microsoft’s case. You know, perhaps without a better product price or uh, promotion than their lead competitor. AWS, they’ve outgrown them for 26 straight quarters. [00:04:45] Jay McBain: Yes. And they point to place as the reason why that two, three, maybe even four of those seven partners may be leading with Microsoft in critical moments. And so every company, large, medium, and small, look at this partner assist number. And this is where we take that ecosystem conversation. [00:05:02] Vince Menzione: So with 96% partner assist, why do partners touch, touching, everything still feel invisible in many cases. [00:05:11] Vince Menzione: And what’s the one move that they, they make? Or need to make to make them undeniable to [00:05:15] Jay McBain: vendors in 2026? Yeah, I mean, this is a long legacy. There’s 44 years of legacy of being measured at the point of sale where programs were built and paid at the point of sale. Yeah. Assuming you did a bunch of stuff like consulting and design and advisory before the point of sale, assuming you’re gonna stay after the sale and get the renewal and get the upsell, cross sell, and enrichment, there was this assumption, but you were really recognized only at one moment. [00:05:41] Jay McBain: And when we did the survey last year across, you know, 20,000 partners around the world, the number one thing they’re asking vendors for now. Is to recognize, measure monitor me at every moment. Mm-hmm. 28 of them before the sale every 30 days. Forever after the sale. Yep. At the point of sale, the provisioning, the procurement, all the pieces of where we add value. [00:06:02] Jay McBain: And now Microsoft was one of the leaders that came out with a point system over three years ago to say, we’re gonna start measuring and, you know, spreading the program dollars around a little bit like peanut butter. There’s over 400 companies now who have followed suit. You know, Cisco goes live in two weeks, so we’re in this mode now where the world is changing of economics, of partnering. [00:06:23] Jay McBain: It’s changing how recognition happens and it’s the number one thing partners want. [00:06:27] Vince Menzione: Yeah, we’re moving away from the gold, silver, bronze, uh, days of the past and, and tying ’em to these moments. In particular, the Ultimate Partner Winter retreat is gonna be here in the Boca Studio. This is the third year. [00:06:41] Vince Menzione: That we’re gonna be here in Boca. This is always a favorite of our community members, our executive members, our sponsors and speakers. We’ll all be here in the studio, which is a really intimate setting. We can see it upwards of 40, 50 people. We’ll be hosting an incredible dinner at the Boca Resort overlooking the golf course. [00:07:01] Vince Menzione: That’s an incredible property and uh, we’d love to have you join us. Thank you for being part of the ultimate Partner community, and I hope to see you this year at one of our events. Thank you.

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In Episode 148 of “The Trusted Advisor,” RSPA CEO Jim Roddy shares accounts of mistreatment of women at industry events and issues a call to action for male leaders to step up and ensure the retail IT channel is a safe and professional environment for everyone. “The Trusted Advisor,” powered by the Retail Solutions Providers Association (RSPA), is an award-winning content series designed specifically for retail IT VARs and software providers. Our goal is to educate you on the topics of leadership, management, hiring, sales, and other small business best practices. For more insights, visit the RSPA blog at www.GoRSPA.org. The RSPA is North America's largest community of VARs, software providers, vendors, and distributors in the retail, restaurant, and grocery verticals. The mission of the RSPA is to accelerate the success of its members in the retail technology ecosystem by providing knowledge and connections. The organization offers member-to-member warm introductions, education, legal advice, industry advocacy, and other services to assist members with becoming and remaining successful. RSPA is most well-known for its signature events, RetailNOW and Inspire, which provide face-to-face learning and networking opportunities. Learn more by visiting www.GoRSPA.org.

Welcome back to the Ultimate Guide to Partnering® Podcast. AI agents are your next customers. Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX:https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ https://youtu.be/vEdq8rpBM3I In this data-rich keynote, Jay McBain deconstructs the tectonic shifts reshaping the $5.3 trillion global technology industry, arguing that we are entering a new 20-year cycle where traditional direct sales models are obsolete. McBain explains why 96% of the industry is now surrounded by partners and how successful companies must pivot from “flywheels and theory” to a granular strategy focused on the seven specific partners present in every deal. From the explosion of agentic AI and the $163 billion marketplace revolution to the specific mechanics of multiplier economics, this discussion provides a roadmap for navigating the “decade of the ecosystem” where influence, trust, and integration—not just product—determine winners and losers. Key Takeaways Half of today's Fortune 500 companies will likely vanish in the next 20 years due to the shift toward AI and ecosystem-led models. Every B2B deal now involves an average of seven trusted partners who influence the decision before a vendor even knows a deal exists. Microsoft has outpaced AWS growth for 26 consecutive quarters largely because of a superior partner-led geographic strategy. Marketplaces are projected to grow to $163 billion by 2030, with nearly 60% of deals involving partner funding or private offers. The “Multiplier Effect” is the new ROI, where partners can make up to $8.45 for every dollar of vendor product sold. Future dominance relies on five key pillars: Platform, Service Partnerships, Channel Partnerships, Alliances, and Go-to-Market orchestration. If you're ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Keywords: Jay McBain, Canalys, partner ecosystem, channel chief, agentic AI, marketplace growth, multiplier economics, B2B sales trends, tech industry forecast, service partnerships, strategic alliances, Microsoft vs AWS, distribution transformation, managed services growth, SaaS platforms, customer journey mapping, 28 moments of truth, future of reselling, technology spending 2025, ecosystem orchestration, partner multipliers. T Transcript: Jay McBain WORKFILE FOR TRANSCRIPT [00:00:00] Vince Menzione: Just up from, did you Puerto Rico last night? Puerto Rico, yes. Puerto Rico. He dodged the hurricane. Um, you all know him. Uh, let him introduce himself for those of you who don’t, but just thrilled to have on the stage, again, somebody who knows more about what’s going on in, in the, and has the pulse on this industry probably than just about anybody I know personally. [00:00:21] Vince Menzione: J Jay McBain. Jay, great to see you my friend. Alright, thank you. We have to come all the way. We live, we live uh, about 20 minutes from each other. We have to come all the way to Reston, Virginia to see each other, right? That’s right. Very good. Well, uh, that’s all over to you, sir. Thank you. [00:00:35] Jay McBain: Alright, well thank you so much. [00:00:36] Jay McBain: I went from 85 degrees yesterday to 45 today, but I was able to dodge that, uh, that hurricane, uh, that we kind of had to fly through the northern edge of, uh, wanna talk today about our industry, about the ultimate partner. I’m gonna try to frame up the ultimate partner as I walk through the data and the latest research that, uh, that we’ve been doing in the market. [00:00:56] Jay McBain: But I wanted to start here ’cause our industry moves in 20 year cycles, and if you look at the Fortune 500 and dial back 20 years from today, 52% of them no longer exist. As we step into the next 20 year AI era, half of the companies that we know and love today are not gonna exist. So we look at this, and by the way, if you’re not in the Fortune 500 and you don’t have deep pockets to buy your way outta problems, 71% of tech companies fail over the course of 10 years. [00:01:30] Jay McBain: Those are statistics from the US government. So I start to look at our industry and you know, you may look at the, you know, mainframe era from the sixties and seventies, mini computers, August the 12th, 1981, that first IBM, PC with Microsoft dos, version one, you know, triggered. A new 20 year era of client server. [00:01:51] Jay McBain: It was the time and I worked at IBM for 17 years, but there was a time where Bill Gates flew into Boca Raton, Florida and met with the IBM team and did that, you know, fancy licensing agreement. But after, you know, 20 years of being the most valuable company in the world and 13 years of antitrust and getting broken up, almost like at and TIBM almost didn’t make payroll. [00:02:14] Jay McBain: 13 years after meeting Bill Gates. Yeah, that’s how quickly things change in these eras. In 1999, a small company outta San Francisco called salesforce.com got its start. About 10 years later, Jeff Bezos asked a question in a boardroom, could we rent out our excess capacity and would other companies buy it? [00:02:35] Jay McBain: Which, you know, most people in the room laughed at ’em at the time. But it created a 20 year cloud era when our friends, our neighbors, our family. Saw Chachi PT for the first time in March of 2023. They saw the deep fakes, they saw the poetry, they saw the music. They came to us as tech people and said, did we just light up Skynet? [00:02:58] Jay McBain: And that consumer trend has triggered this next 20 years. I could walk through the richest people in the world through those trends. I could walk through the most valuable companies. It all aligns. ’cause by the way, Apple’s no longer at the top. Nvidia is at the top, Microsoft. Second, things change really quickly. [00:03:17] Jay McBain: So in that course of time, you start to look at our industry and as people are talking about a six and a half or $7 trillion build out of ai, that’s open AI and Microsoft numbers, that is bigger than our industry that’s taken over 50 years to build. This year, we’re gonna finish the year at $5.3 trillion. [00:03:36] Jay McBain: That’s from the smallest flower shop to the biggest bank. Biggest governments that Caresoft would, uh, serve biggest customer in the world is actually the federal government of the us. But you look at this pie chart and you look at the changes that we’re gonna go through over the next 20 years, there’s about a trillion dollars in hardware. [00:03:54] Jay McBain: There’s about a trillion dollars in software. If you look forward through all of the merging trends, quantum computing, humanoid robots, all the things that are coming that dollar to dollar software to hardware will continue to exist all the way through. We see services making up almost two thirds of this pie. [00:04:13] Jay McBain: Yesterday I was in a telco conference with at and t and Verizon and T-Mobile and some of the biggest wireless players and IT services, which happen to be growing faster than products. At the moment, there is more work to be done wrapping around the deal than the actual products that the customer is buying. [00:04:32] Jay McBain: So in an industry that’s growing at 7%. On top of the world economy that’s grown at 2.2. This is the fastest growing industry, and it will be at least for the next 10 years, if not 2070 0.1% of this entire $5 trillion gets transacted through partners. While what we’re talking to today about the ultimate partner, 96% of this industry is surrounded by partners in one way or another. [00:05:01] Jay McBain: They’re there before the deal. They’re there at the deal. They’re there after the deal. Two thirds of our industry is now subscription consumption based. So every 30 days forever, and a customer for life becomes everything. So if every deal in medium, mid-market, and higher has seven partners, according to McKinsey, who are those seven people trying to get into the deal? [00:05:25] Jay McBain: While there’s millions of companies that have come into tech over the last 10 to 20 years. Digital agencies, accountants, legal firms, everybody’s come in. The 250,000 SaaS companies, a million emerging tech companies, there’s a big fight to be one of those seven trusted people at the table. So millions of companies and tens of millions of people our competing for these slots. [00:05:49] Jay McBain: So one of the pieces of research I’m most proud of, uh, in my analyst career is this. And this took over two years to build. It’s a lot of logos. Not this PowerPoint slide, but the actual data. Thousands of people hours. Because guess what? When you look at partners from the top down, the top 1000 partners, by capability and capacity, not by resale. [00:06:15] Jay McBain: It’s not a ranking of CDW and insight and resale numbers. It is the surrounding. Consulting, design, architecture, implementations, integrations, managed services, all the pieces that’s gonna make the next 20 years run. So when you start to look at this, 98% of these companies are private, so very difficult to get to those numbers and, uh, a ton of research and help from AI and other things to get this. [00:06:41] Jay McBain: But this is it. And if you look at this list, there’s a thousand logos out of the million companies. There’s a thousand logos that drive two thirds of all tech services in the world. $1.07 trillion gets delivered by a thousand companies, but here’s where it gets fun. Those companies in the middle, in blue, the 30 of them deliver more tech services than the next 970. [00:07:08] Jay McBain: Combined the 970 combined in white deliver more tech services. Then the next million combined. So if you think we live in an 80 20 rule or maybe a 99, a 95 5 rule, or a 99 1 rule, we actually live in a 99.9 0.1 parallel principle. These companies spread around the world evenly split across the uh, different regions. [00:07:35] Jay McBain: South Africa, Latin America, they’re all over. They split. They split among types. All of the Venn diagram I just showed from GSIs to VARs to MSPs, to agencies and other types of companies. But this is a really rich list and it’s public. So every company in the world now, if you’re looking at Transactable data, if you’re looking at quantifiable data that you can go put your revenue numbers against, it represents 70 to 80% of every company in this room’s Tam. [00:08:08] Jay McBain: In one piece of research. So what do you do below that? How do you cover a million companies that you can’t afford to put a channel account manager? You can’t afford to write programs directly for well after the top down analysis and all the wallet share and you know exactly where the lowest hanging fruit is for most of your tam. [00:08:28] Jay McBain: The available markets. The obtainable markets. You gotta start from the community level grassroots up. So you need to ask the question for the million companies and the maybe a hundred thousand companies out there, partner companies that are surrounding your customer. These are the seven partners that surround your customer. [00:08:48] Jay McBain: What do they read, where do they go, and who do they follow? Interestingly enough, our industry globally equates to only a thousand watering holes, a thousand companies at the top, a thousand places at the bottom. 35% of this audience we’re talking. Millions of people here love events and there’s 352 of them like this one that they love to go to. [00:09:13] Jay McBain: They love the hallway chats, they love the hotel lobby bar, you know, in a time reminded by the pandemic. They love to be in person. It’s the number one way they’re influenced. So if you don’t have a solid event strategy and you don’t have a community team out giving out socks every week, your competitors might beat you. [00:09:31] Jay McBain: 12% of this audience loves podcasts. It’s the Joe Rogan effect of our industry. And while you know, you may not think the 121 podcasts out there are important, well, you’re missing 12% of your audience. It’s over a million people. If you’re not on a weekly podcast in one of these podcasts in the world, there’s still people that read one of the 106 magazines in the world. [00:09:55] Jay McBain: There are people that love peer groups, associations, they wanna be part of this. There’s 15 different ways people are influenced. And a solid grassroots strategy is how you make this happen. In the last 10 years, we’ve created a number of billionaires. Bottom up. They never had to go talk to la large enterprise. [00:10:15] Jay McBain: They never had to go build out a mid-market strategy. They just went and give away socks and new community marketing. And this has created, I could rip through a bunch of names that became unicorns just in the last couple of years, bottoms up. You go back to your board walking into next year, top down, bottom up. [00:10:34] Jay McBain: You’ve covered a hundred percent of your tam, and now you’ve covered it with names, faces, and places. You haven’t covered it with a flywheel or a theory. And for 44 years, we have gone to our board every fourth quarter with flywheels and theory. Trust me, partners are important. The channel is key to us. [00:10:57] Jay McBain: Well, let’s talk at the point of this granularity, and now we’re getting supported by technology 261 entrepreneurs. Many of them in the room actually here that are driving this ability to succeed with seven partners in every deal to exchange data to be able to exchange telemetry of these prospects to be able to see twice or three times in terms of pipeline of your target addressable market. [00:11:26] Jay McBain: All these ai, um, technologies, agentic technologies are coming into this. It’s all about data. It’s all about quantifiable names, faces, and places. Now none of us should be walking around with flywheels, so let’s flip the flywheels. No. Uh, so we also look at, and I sold PCs for 17 years and that was in the high times of 40% margins for partners. [00:11:55] Jay McBain: But one interesting thing when you study the p and l for broad base of partners around the world, it’s changed pretty significantly in this last 20 year era. What the cloud era did is dropped hardware from what used to be 84% plus the break fix and things that wrap around it of the p and l to now 16% of every partner in the world. [00:12:16] Jay McBain: 84% of their p and l is now software and services. And if you look at profitability, it’s worse. It’s actually 87% is profitability wise. They’ve completely shifted in terms of where they go. Now we look at other parts of our market. I could go through every part of the pie of the slide, but we’re watching each of the companies, and if you can see here, this is what we want to talk about in terms of ultimate partner. [00:12:43] Jay McBain: Microsoft has outgrown AWS for 26 straight quarters. They don’t have a better product. They don’t have a better price, they don’t have better promotion. It’s all place. And I’ll explain why you guess here in the light green line. Exactly. The day that Google went a hundred percent all in partner, every deal, even if a deal didn’t have a partner, one of the 4% of deals that didn’t have a partner, they injected a partner. [00:13:09] Jay McBain: You can see on the left side exactly where they did it. They got to the point of a hundred percent partner driven. Rebuilt their programs, rebuilt their marketplace. Their marketplace is actually larger than Microsoft’s, and they grew faster than Microsoft. A couple of those quarters. It is a partner driven future, and now I have Oracle, which I just walked by as I walked from the hotel. [00:13:31] Jay McBain: Oracle with their RPOs will start to join. Maybe the list of three hyperscalers becomes the list of four in future slides, but that’s a growth slide. Market share is different. AWS early and commanding lead. And it plays out, uh, plays out this way. But we’re at an interesting moment and I stood up six years ago talking about the decade of the ecosystem after we went through a decade of sales starting in 1999 when we all thought we were born to be salespeople. [00:14:02] Jay McBain: We managed territories with our gut. The sales tech stack would have it different, that sales was a science, and we ended the decade 2009, looking at sales very differently in 2009. I remember being at cocktail parties where CMOs would be joking around that 50% of their marketing dollars were wasted. They just didn’t know which 50%. [00:14:23] Jay McBain: And I’ll tell you, that was really funny. In 2009 till every 58-year-old CMO got replaced by a 38-year-old growth hacker who walked in with 15,348 SaaS companies in their MarTech and ad tech stack to solve the problem, every nickel of marketing by 2019 was tracked. Marketo, Eloqua, Pardot, HubSpot, driving this industry. [00:14:50] Jay McBain: Now, we stood up and said the 28 moments that come before a sale are pretty much all partner driven. In the best case scenario, a vendor might see four of the moments. They might come to your website, maybe they read an ebook, maybe they have a salesperson or a demo that comes in. That’s four outta 28 moments. [00:15:10] Jay McBain: The other 24 are done by partners. Yeah, in the worst case scenario and the majority scenario, you don’t see any of the moments. All 28 happen and you lose a deal without knowing there ever was a deal. So this is it. We need to partner in these moments and we need to inject partners into sales and marketing, like no time before, and this was the time to do it. [00:15:33] Jay McBain: And we got some feedback in the Salesforce state of sales report, which doesn’t involve any partnerships or, or. Channel Chiefs or anything else. This is 5,500 of the biggest CROs in the world that obviously use Salesforce. 89% of salespeople today use partners every day. For the 11% who don’t, 58% plan two within a year. [00:15:57] Jay McBain: If you add those two numbers together, that’s magically the 96% number. They recognize that every deal has partners in it. In 2024, last year, half of the salespeople in the world, every industry, every country. Miss their numbers. For the minority who made their numbers, 84 point percent pointed to partners as the reason why they made their numbers. [00:16:21] Jay McBain: It was the cheat code for sales, so that modern salesperson that knows how to orchestrate a deal, orchestrate the 28 moments with the seven partners and get to that final spot is the winning formula. HubSpot’s number in separate research was 84% in marketing. So we’re starting to see partners in here. We don’t have to shout from the mountaintops. [00:16:44] Jay McBain: These communities like ultimate Partner are working and we’re getting this to the highest levels in the board. And I’ll say that, you know, when 20 years from now half of the companies we know and love fail after we’re done writing the book and blaming the CEO for inventing the thing that ended up killing them, blaming the board for fiduciary responsibility and letting it happen. [00:17:06] Jay McBain: What are the other chapters of the book? And I think it’s all in one slide. We are in this platform economy and the. [00:17:31] Jay McBain: So your battery’s fine. Check, check, check, check. Alright, I’ll, I’ll just hold this in case, but the companies that execute on all five of these areas, well. Not only today become the trillion dollar valued companies, but they become the companies of tomorrow. These will be the fastest growing companies at every level. [00:17:50] Jay McBain: Not only running a platform business, but participating in other platforms. So this is how it breaks out, and there are people at very senior levels, at very big companies that have this now posted in the office of the CEO winning on integrations is everything. We just went through a demographic shift this year where 51% of our buyers are born after 1982. [00:18:15] Jay McBain: Millennials are the number one buyer of the $5 trillion. Their number one buying criteria is not service. Support your price, your brand reputation, it’s integrations. The buy a product, 80% is good as the next one if it works better in their environment. 79% of us won’t buy a car unless it has CarPlay or Android Auto. [00:18:34] Jay McBain: This is an integration world. The company with the most integrations win. Second, there are seven partners that surround the customer. Highly trusted partners. We’re talking, coaching the customer’s, kids soccer team, having a cottage together up at the lake. You know, best men, bate of honors at weddings type of relationships. [00:18:57] Jay McBain: You can’t maybe have all seven, but how does Microsoft beat AWS? They might have had two, three, or four of them saying nice things about them instead of the competition. Winning in service partnerships and channel partnerships changes by category. If you’re selling MarTech, only 10% of it today is resold, so you build more on service partnerships. [00:19:18] Jay McBain: If you’re in cybersecurity today, 91.6% of it is resold. Transacted through partners. So you build a lot of channel partnerships, plus the service partnerships, whatever the mix is in your category, you have to have two or three of those seven people. Saying nice things about you at every stage of the customer journey. [00:19:38] Jay McBain: Now move over to alliances. We have already built the platforms at the hyperscale level. We’ve built the platforms within SaaS, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Workday, Marketo, NetSuite, HubSpot. Every buyer has a set of platforms that they buy. We’ve now built them in cybersecurity this year out of 6,500 as high as cyber companies, the top five are starting to separate. [00:20:02] Jay McBain: We built it in distribution, which I’ll show in a minute. We’re building it in Telco. This is a platform economy and alliances win and you have alliances with your competitors ’cause you compete in the morning, but you’re best friends by the afternoon. Winning in other platforms is just as important as driving your own. [00:20:20] Jay McBain: And probably the most important part of this is go to market. That sales, that marketing, the 28 moments, the every 30 days forever become all a partner strategy. So there’s still CEOs out there that believe platform is a UI or UX on a bunch of disparate products and things you’ve acquired. There’s still CFOs out there that Think platform is a pricing model, a bundle model of just getting everything under one, you know, subscription price or consumption price. [00:20:51] Jay McBain: And it’s not, platforms are synonymous with partnerships. This is the way forward and there’s no conversation around ai. That doesn’t involve Nvidia over there, an open AI over here and a hyperscaler over there and a SaaS company over here. The seven layer stack wins every single time, and the companies that get this will be the ones that survive this cycle. [00:21:16] Jay McBain: Now, flipping over to marketplaces. So we had written research that, um, about five years ago that marketplaces were going to grow at 82% compounded. Yeah, probably one of the most accurate predictions we ever made, because it happened, we, we predicted that, uh, we were gonna get up to about $85 billion. Well, now we’ve extended that to 2030, so we’re gonna get up to $163 billion, and the thing that we’re watching is in green. [00:21:46] Jay McBain: If 96% of these deals are partner assisted in some way, how is the economics of partnering going to work? We predicted that 50% of deals by 2027. Would be partner funded in some way. Private offers multi-partner offers distributor sellers of record, and now that extends to 59% by 2030, the most senior leader of the biggest marketplace AWS, just said to us they’re gonna probably make these numbers on their own. [00:22:14] Jay McBain: And he asked what their two competitors are doing. So he’s telling us that we under called this. Now when you look at each of the press releases, and this is the AWS Billion Dollar Club. Every one of the companies on the left have issued a press release that they’re in the billion dollar club. Some of them are in the multi-billions, but I want you to double click on this press release. [00:22:35] Jay McBain: I’m quoted in here somewhere, but as CrowdStrike is building the marketplace at 91% compounded, they’re almost doubling their revenue every single year. They’re growing the partner funding, in this case, distributor funding by 3548%. Almost triple digit growth in marketplace is translating into almost quadruple digit growth in funding. [00:23:01] Jay McBain: And you see that over and over again as, as Splunk hit three, uh, billion dollars. The same. Salesforce hit $2 billion on AWS in Ulti, 18 months. They joined in October 20, 23, and 18 months later, they’re already at $2 billion. But now you’re seeing at Salesforce, which by the way. Grew up to $40 billion in revenue direct, almost not a nickel in resell. [00:23:28] Jay McBain: Made it really difficult for VARs and managed service providers to work with Salesforce because they couldn’t understand how to add services to something they didn’t book the revenue for. While $40 billion companies now seeing 70% of their deals come through partners. So this is just the world that we’re in. [00:23:44] Jay McBain: It doesn’t matter who you are and what industry you’re in, this takes place. But now we’re starting to see for the first time. Partners join the billion dollar club. So you wonder about partnering and all this funding and everything that’s working through Now you’re seeing press releases and companies that are redoing their LinkedIn branding about joining this illustrious club without a product to sell and all the services that wrap around it. [00:24:10] Jay McBain: So the opening session on Microsoft was interesting because there’s been a number of changes that Microsoft has done just in the last 30 days. One is they cut distribution by two thirds going from 180 distributors to 62. They cut out any small partner lower than a thousand dollars, and that doesn’t sound like a lot, but that’s over a hundred thousand partners that get deed tightening the long tail. [00:24:38] Jay McBain: They we’re the first to really put a global point system in place three years ago. They went to the new commerce experience. If you remember, all kinds of changes being led by. The biggest company for the channel. And so when we’re studying marketplaces, we’re not just studying the three hyperscalers, we’re studying what TD Cynic is doing with Stream One Ingram’s doing with Advant Advantage Aerosphere. [00:25:01] Jay McBain: Also, we’re watching what PAX eight, who by the way, is the 365 bestseller for Microsoft in the world. They are the cybersecurity leader for Microsoft in the world and the copilot. Leader in the world for Microsoft and Partner of the Year for Microsoft. So we’re watching what the cloud platforms are doing, watching what the Telco are doing, which is 25 cents out of every dollar, if you remember that pie chart, watching what the biggest resellers are converting themselves into. [00:25:30] Jay McBain: Vince just mentioned, you know, SHI in the changes there watching the managed services market and the leaders there, what they’re doing in terms of how this industry’s moving forward. By the way, managed services at $608 billion this year. Is one and a half times larger than the SaaS industry overall. [00:25:48] Jay McBain: It’s also one and a half times larger than all the hyperscalers combined. Oracle, Alibaba, IBM, all the way down. This is a massive market and it makes up 15 to 20 cents of every dollar the customer spend. We’re watching that industry hit a trillion dollars by the end of the decade, and we’re watching 150 different marketplace development platforms, the distribution of our industry, which today is 70.1% indirect. [00:26:13] Jay McBain: We’re starting to see that number, uh, solidify in terms of marketplaces as well. Watching distributors go from that linear warehouse in a bank to this orchestration model, watching some of the biggest players as the world comes around, platforms, it tightens around the place. So Caresoft, uh, from from here is the sixth biggest distributor in the world. [00:26:40] Jay McBain: Just shows you how big the. You know, biggest client in the world is that they serve. But understand that we’re publishing the distributor 500 list, but it’ll be the same thing. That little group in blue in the middle today, you know, drives almost two thirds of the market. So what happens in all this next stage in terms of where the dollars change hands. [00:27:07] Jay McBain: And the economics of partnering themselves are going through the most radical shift that we’ve seen ever. So back to the nineties, and, and for those of you that have been channel chiefs and running programs, we went to work every day. You know, everything’s on fire. We’re trying to check hundred boxes, trying to make our program 10% better than our competitors. [00:27:30] Jay McBain: Hey, we gotta fix our deal registration program today, and our incentives are outta whack or training programs or. You know, not where they need to be. Our certification, you know, this was the life of, uh, of a channel chief. Everybody thought we were just out drinking in the Caribbean with our best partners, but we were under the weight of this. [00:27:49] Jay McBain: But something interesting has happened is that we turned around and put the customer at the middle of our programs to say that those 28 moments in green before the sale are really, really important. And the seven partners who participate are really important. Understanding. The customer’s gonna buy a seven layer stack. [00:28:09] Jay McBain: They’re gonna buy it With these seven partners, the procurement stage is much different. The growth of marketplaces, the growth of direct in some of these areas, and then long term every 30 days forever in a managed service, implementations, integrations, how you upsell, cross-sell, enrich a deal changes. So how would you build a program that’s wrapped around the customer instead of the vendor? [00:28:35] Jay McBain: And we’re starting to hear our partners shout back to us. These are global surveys, big numbers, but over half of our partners, regardless of type, are selling consulting to their customer. Over half are designing architecting deals. A third of them are trying to be system integrators showing up at those implementation integration moments. [00:28:55] Jay McBain: Two thirds of them are doing managed services, but the shocking one here is 44% of our partners, regardless of type, are coding. They’re building agents and they’re out helping their customer at that level. So this is the modern partner that says, don’t typecast me. You may have thought of me in your program. [00:29:14] Jay McBain: You might have me slotted as a var. Well, I do 3.2 things, and if I don’t get access to those resources, if you don’t walk me to that room, I’m not gonna do them with you. You may have me as a managed service provider that’s only in the morning. By the afternoon I’m coding, and by the next morning I’m implementing and consulting. [00:29:33] Jay McBain: So again, a partner’s not a partner. That Venn diagram is a very loose one now, as every partner on there is doing 3.2 different business models. And again, they’re telling us for 43 years, they said, I want more leads this year it changed. For the first time, I want to be recognized and incentivized as more than just a cash register for you. [00:29:57] Jay McBain: I want you to recognize when I’m consulting, when I’m designing, when you’re winning deals, because of my wonderful services, by the way, we asked the follow up question, well, where should we spend our money with you? And they overwhelmingly say, in the consulting stage, you win and lose deals. Not at moment 28. [00:30:18] Jay McBain: We’re not buying a pack of gum at the gas station. This is a considered purchase. You win deals from moment 12 through 16 and I’m gonna show you a picture of that later, and they say, you better be spending your money there, or you’re not gonna win your fair share or more than your fair share of deals. [00:30:36] Jay McBain: The shocking thing about this is that Microsoft, when they went to the point system, lifted two thirds of all the money, tens of billions of dollars, and put it post-sale, and we were all scratching our heads going. Well, if the partners are asking for it there, and it seems like to beat your biggest competitors, you want to win there. [00:30:54] Jay McBain: Why would you spend the money on renewal? Well, they went to Wall Street and Goldman Sachs and the people who lift trillions of dollars of pension funds and said, if we renew deals at 108%, we become a cash machine for you. And we think that’s more valuable than a company coming out with a new cell phone in September and selling a lot of them by Christmas every year. [00:31:18] Jay McBain: The industry. And by the way, wall Street responded, Microsoft has been more valuable than Apple since. So we talk in this now multiplier language, and these are reports that we write, uh, at AMIA at canals. But talking about the partner opportunity in that customer cycle, the $6 and 40 cents you can make for every dollar of consumption, or the $7 and 5 cents you can make the $8 and 45 cents you can make. [00:31:46] Jay McBain: There’s over 24 companies speaking at this level now, and guess what? It’s not just cloud or software companies. Hardware companies are starting to speak in this language, and on January 25th, Cisco, you know, probably second to Microsoft in terms of trust built with the channel globally is moving to a full point system. [00:32:09] Jay McBain: So these are the changes that happen fast. But your QBR with your partners now less about drinking beers at the hotel lobby bar and talking dollar by dollar where these opportunities are. So if you’re doing 3.2 of these things, let’s build out a, uh, a play where you can make $3 for every dollar that we make. [00:32:28] Jay McBain: And you make that profitably. You make it in sticky, highly retained business, and that’s the model. ’cause if you make $3 for every dollar. We make, you’re gonna win Partner of the year, and if you win partner of the year, that piece of glass that you win on stage, by the time you get back to your table, you’re gonna have three offers to buy your business. [00:32:51] Jay McBain: CDW just bought a w. S’s Partner of the Year. Insight bought Google’s eight time partner of the year. Presidio bought ServiceNow’s, partner of the year over and over and over again. So I’m at Octane, I’m at CrowdStrike, I’m at all these events in Vegas every week. I’m watching these partners of the year. [00:33:05] Jay McBain: And I’m watching as the big resellers. I’m watching as the GSIs and the m and a folks are surrounding their table after, and they’re selling their businesses for SaaS level valuations. Not the one-to-one service valuation. They’re getting multiples because this is the new future of our industry. This is platform economics. [00:33:25] Jay McBain: This is winning and platforms for partners. Now, like Vince, I spent 20 minutes without talking about ai, but we have to talk about ai. So the next 20 years as it plays out is gonna play out in phases. And the first thing you know to get it out of the way. The first two years since that March of 23, has been underwhelming, to say the least. [00:33:47] Jay McBain: It’s been disappointing. All the companies that should have won the biggest in AI have been the most disappointing. It’s underperformed the s and p by a considerable amount in terms of where we are. And it goes back to this. We always overestimate the first two years, but we underestimate the first 10. [00:34:07] Jay McBain: If you wanna be the point in time person and go look at that 1983 PC or the 1995 internet or that 2007 iPhone or that whatever point in time you wanna look at, or if you want to talk about hallucinations or where chat chip ET version five is version, as opposed to where it’s going to be as it improves every six months here on in. [00:34:30] Jay McBain: But the fact of the matter is, it’s been a consumer trend. Nvidia got to be the most valuable company in the world. OpenAI was the first company to 2 billion users, uh, in that amount of speed. It’s the fastest growing product ever in history, and it’s been a consumer win this trillions of dollars to get it thrown around in the press releases. [00:34:49] Jay McBain: They’re going out every day, you know, open ai, signing up somebody new or Nvidia, investing in somebody new almost every single day in hundreds of billions of dollars. It is all happening really on the consumer side. So we got a little bit worried and said, is that 96% of surround gonna work in ag agentic ai? [00:35:10] Jay McBain: So we went and asked, and the good news is 88% of end customers are using partners to work through their ag agentic strategy. Even though they’re moving slow, they’re actually using partners. But what’s interesting from a partner perspective, and this is new research that out till 2030. This is the number one services opportunity in the entire tech or telco industry. [00:35:34] Jay McBain: 35.3% compounded growth ending at $267 billion in services. Companies are rebuilding themselves, building out practices, and getting on this train and figuring out which vendors they should hook their caboose to as those trains leave the station. But it kind of plays out like this. So in the next three to five years, we’re in this generative, moving into agentic phase. [00:36:01] Jay McBain: Every partner thinks internally first, the sales and marketing. They’re thinking about their invoicing and billing. They’re thinking about their service tickets. They’re thinking about creating a business that’s 10% better than their competitors, taking that knowledge into their customers and drive in business. [00:36:17] Jay McBain: But we understand that ag agentic AI, as it’s going to play out is not a product. A couple of years ago, we thought maybe a copilot or an agent force or something was going to be the product that everybody needed to buy, and it’s not a product, it’s gonna show up as a feature. So you go back in the history of feature ads and it’s gonna show up in software. [00:36:38] Jay McBain: So if you’re calling in SMB, maybe you’re calling on a restaurant. The restaurant isn’t gonna call OpenAI or call Microsoft or call Nvidia directly. They’re running their restaurant. And they may have chosen a platform like Toast Square, Clover, whatever iPads people are running around with, runs on a platform that does everything in their business, does staffing, does food ordering, works with Uber Eats, does everything end to end? [00:37:08] Jay McBain: They’re gonna wait to one of those platforms, dries out agent AI for them, and can run the restaurant more effectively, less human capital and more consistently, but they wait for the SaaS platform as you get larger. A hundred, 150 people. You have vice presidents. Each of those vice presidents already have a SaaS stack. [00:37:28] Jay McBain: I talked about Salesforce, ServiceNow, Workday, et cetera. They’ve already built that seven layer model and in some cases it’s 70 layers. But the fact is, is they’re gonna wait for those SaaS layers to deliver ag agentic to them. So this is how it’s gonna play out for the next three and a half, three to five years. [00:37:45] Jay McBain: And partners are realizing that many of them were slow to pick up SaaS ’cause they didn’t resell it. Well now to win in this next three to half, three to five years, you’re gonna have to play in this environment. When you start looking out from here, the next generation, you know, kind of five through 15 years gets interesting in more of a physical sense. [00:38:06] Jay McBain: Where I was yesterday talking about every IOT device that now is internet access, starts to get access to large language models. Every little sensor, every camera, everything that’s out there starts to get smart. But there’s a point. The first trillionaire, I believe, will be created here. Elon’s already halfway there. [00:38:24] Jay McBain: Um, but when Bill Gates thought there was gonna be a PC in every home, and IBM thought they were gonna sell 10,000 to hobbyists, that created the richest person in the world for 20 years, there will be a humanoid in every home. There’s gonna be a point in time that you’re out having drinks with your friends, and somebody’s gonna say, the early adopter of your friends is gonna say. [00:38:46] Jay McBain: I haven’t done the dishes in six weeks. I haven’t done the laundry. I haven’t made my bed. I haven’t mowed the lawn. When they say that, you’re gonna say, well, how? And they’re gonna say, well, this year I didn’t buy a new car, but I went to the car dealership and I bought this. So we’re very close to the dexterity needed. [00:39:05] Jay McBain: We’ve got the large language models. Now. The chat, GPT version 10 by then is going to make an insane, and every house is gonna have one of the. [00:39:17] Jay McBain: This is the promise of ai. It’s not humanoid robots, it’s not agents. It’s this. 99% of the world’s business data has not been trained or tuned into models yet. Again, this is the slow moving business. If you want to think about the 99% of business data, every flight we’ve all taken in this room sits on a saber system that was put in place in 1964. [00:39:43] Jay McBain: Every banking transaction, we’ve all made, every withdrawal, every deposit sits on an IBM mainframe put in place in the sixties or seventies. 83% of this data sits in cold storage at the edge. It’s not ready to be moved. It’s not cleansed, it’s not, um, indexed. It’s not in any format or sitting on any infrastructure that a large language model will be able to gobble up the data. [00:40:10] Jay McBain: None of the workflows, none of the programming on top of that data is yet ready. So this is your 10 to 20 year arc of this era that chat bot today when they cancel your flight is cute. It’s empathetic, it feels bad for you, or at least it seems to, but it can’t do anything. It can’t book you the Marriott and get you an Uber and then a 5:00 AM flight the next morning. [00:40:34] Jay McBain: It can’t do any of that. But more importantly, it doesn’t know who you are. I’ve got 53 years of flights under my belt and they, I’m the person that get me within six hours of my kids and get me a one-way Hertz rental. You know, if there’s bad weather in Miami, get me to Tampa, get me a Hertz, I’m driving home, I’m gonna make it home. [00:40:56] Jay McBain: I’m not the 5:00 AM get me a hotel person. They would know that if they picked up the flights that I’ve taken in the past. Each of us are different. When you get access to the business data and you become ag agentic, everything changes. Every industry changes because of this around the customers. When you ask about this 35% growth, working on that data, working in traditional consulting and design and implementation, working in the $7 trillion of infrastructure, storage, compute, networking, that’s gonna be around, this is a massive opportunity. [00:41:30] Jay McBain: Services are gonna continue to outgrow products. Probably for the next five to 10 years because of this, and I’m gonna finish here. So we talked a lot about quantifying names, faces, places, and I think where we failed the most as ultimate partners is underneath the tam, which every one of our CEOs knows to the decimal point underneath the TAM that our board thinks they’re chasing. [00:41:59] Jay McBain: We’ve done a very poor job. Of talking about the available markets and obtainable markets underneath it, we, we’ve shown them theory. We’ve shown them a bunch of, you know, really smart stuff, and PowerPoint slides up the wazoo, but we’ve never quantified it for them. If they wanna win, if they want to get access, if they want to double their pipeline, triple their pipeline, if they wanna start winning more deals, if they wanna win deals that are three times larger, they close two times faster. [00:42:31] Jay McBain: And they renew 15% larger. They have to get into the available and obtainable markets. So just in the last couple weeks I spoke at Cribble, I spoke at Octane, I spoke at CrowdStrike Falcon. All three of those companies at the CEO level, main stage use those exact three numbers, three x, two x, 15%. That’s the language of platforms, and they’re investing millions and millions and millions of dollars on teams. [00:42:59] Jay McBain: To go build out the Sam Andal in name spaces and places. So you’ve heard me talk about these 28 moments a lot. They’re the ones that you spend when you buy a car. Some people spend one moment and they drive to the Cadillac dealership. ’cause Larry’s been, you know, taking care of the family for 50 years. [00:43:18] Jay McBain: Some people spend 50 moments like I do, watching every YouTube video and every, you know, thing on the internet. I clear the internet cover to cover. But the fact is, is every deal averages around these 28 moments. Your customer, there’s 13 members of the buying committee today. There’s seven partners and they’re buying seven things. [00:43:37] Jay McBain: There’s 27 things orchestrating inside these 28 moments. And where and how they all take place is a story of partnering. So a couple of years ago, canals. Latin for channel was acquired by amia, which is a part of Informa Tech Target, which is majority owned by Informa. All that being said, there’s hundreds of magazines that we have. [00:44:00] Jay McBain: There’s hundreds of events that we run. If somebody’s buying cybersecurity, they probably went to Black Hat or they probably went to GI Tech. One of these events we run, or one of the magazines. So we pick up these signals, these buyer intent signals as a company. Why did they wanna, um, buy a, uh, a Canals, which was a, you know, a small analyst firm around channels? [00:44:22] Jay McBain: They understood this as well. The 28 moments look a lot like this when marketers and salespeople are busy filling in the spots of every deal. And by the way, this is a real deal. AstraZeneca came in to spend millions of dollars on ASAP transformation, and you can start to see as the customer got smart. [00:44:45] Jay McBain: The eBooks, they read the podcasts, they listened to the events they went to. You start to see how this played out over the long term. But the thing we’ve never had in our industry is the light blue boxes. This deal was won and lost in December. In this particular case, NTT software won and Yash came in and sold the customer five projects. [00:45:07] Jay McBain: The millions of dollars that were going to be spent were solved here. The design and architecture work was all done here. A couple of ISVs You see in light blue came in right at the end, deal was closed in April. You see the six month cycle. But what if you could fill in every one of the 28 boxes in every single customer prospect that your sales and marketing team have? [00:45:30] Jay McBain: But here’s the brilliance of this. Those light blue boxes didn’t win the deals there. They won the deals months before that. So when NTT and Software one walked into this deal. They probably won the deal back in October and they had to go through the redlining. They had to go through the contracting, they had to go through all the stuff and the Gantt chart to get started. [00:45:54] Jay McBain: But while your CMO is getting all excited about somebody reading an ebook and triggering an MQL that the sales team doesn’t want, ’cause it’s not qualified, it’s not sales qualified, you walk in and say, no, no. This is a multimillion deal, dollar deal. It’s AstraZeneca. I know the five partners that are coming in in December to solidify the seven layers, and you’re walking in at the same time as the CMOs bragging about an ebook. [00:46:21] Jay McBain: This changes everything. If we could get to this level of data about every dollar of our tam, we not only outgrow our competitors, we become the platforms of the next generation. Partnering and ultimate partnering is all here. And this is what we’re doing in this room. This is what we’re doing over these couple of days, and this is what, uh, the mission that Vince is leading. [00:46:43] Jay McBain: Thank you so much. [00:46:47] Vince Menzione: Woo. Day in the house. Good to see you my friend. Good to see you. Oh, we’re gonna spend a couple minutes. Um, I’m put you in the second seat. We’re gonna put, we’re gonna make it sit fireside for a minute. Uh, that was intense. It was pretty incredible actually, Jay. And so I’m, I think I wanna open it up ’cause we only have a few minutes just to, any questions? [00:47:06] Vince Menzione: I’m sure people are just digesting. We already have one up here. See, [00:47:09] Question: Jay knows I’m [00:47:10] Vince Menzione: a question. I love it. We, I don’t think we have any I can grab a mic, a roving mic. I could be a roving mic person. Hold on. We can do this. This is not on. [00:47:25] Vince Menzione: Test, test. Yes it is. Yeah. [00:47:26] Question: Theresa Carriol dared me to ask a question and I say, you don’t have to dare me. You know, I’m going to Anyway. Um, so Jay, of the point of view that with all of the new AI players that strategic alliances is again having a moment, and I was curious your point of view on what you’re seeing around this emergence and trend of strategic alliances and strategic alliance management. [00:47:52] Question: As compared to channel management. And what are you seeing in terms of large vendors like AWS investing in that strategic alliance role versus that channel role training, enablement, measurement, all that good stuff? [00:48:06] Jay McBain: Yeah, it’s, it’s a great question. So when I told the story about toast at the restaurant or Square or Clover, they’re not call, they’re not gonna call open AI or Nvidia themselves either. [00:48:17] Jay McBain: When you look out at the 250,000 ISVs. That make up this AI stack, there is the layers that happen there. So the Alliance with AWS, the alliance they have with Microsoft or Google is going to be how they generate agent AI in their platforms. So when I talk about a seven layer stack, the average deal being seven layers, AI is gonna drive this to nine, and then 11, then probably 13. [00:48:44] Jay McBain: So in terms of how alliances work, I had it up there as one of the five core strategies, and I think it’s pretty even. You can have the best alliances in the world, but if the seven partners trusted by the customer don’t know what that alliance is and the benefits to the customer and never mention it, it’s all for Naugh. [00:49:00] Jay McBain: If you’re go-to market, you’re co-selling, your co-marketing strategies are not built around that alliance. It’s all for naught. If the integration and the co-innovation, the co-development, the all the co-creation work that’s done inside these alliances isn’t translated to customer outcomes, it’s all for naugh. [00:49:17] Jay McBain: These are all five parallel swim lanes. All five are absolutely critically needed. And I think they’re all five pretty equally weighted in terms of needing each other. Yes. To be successful in the era of platforms. Yeah. [00:49:32] Vince Menzione: And the problem is they’re all stove pipe today. If, if at all. Yeah. Maintained, right. [00:49:36] Vince Menzione: Alliances is an example. Channels and other example. They don’t talk to one another. Judge any, we’ve got a mic up here if anybody else has. Yep. We have some questions here, Jacqueline. [00:49:51] Question: So when we’re developing our channel programs, any advice on, you know, what’s the shift that we should make six months from now, a year from now? The historical has been bronze, silver, gold, right? And you’ve got your deal registration, but what’s the future look like? [00:50:05] Jay McBain: Yeah, so I mean, the programs are, are changing to, to the point where the customer should be in the middle and realizing the seven partners you need to win the deal. [00:50:15] Jay McBain: And depending on what category of product you’re in, security, how much you rely on resell, 91.6%. You know, the channel partners are gonna be critical where the customer spends the money. And if you’re adding friction to that process, you’re adding friction in terms of your growth. So you know, if you’re in cybersecurity, you have to have a pretty wide open reseller model. [00:50:39] Jay McBain: You have to have a wide open distribution model, and you have to make sure you’re there at that point of sale. While at the same time, considering the other six partners at moment 12 who are in either saying nice things about you or not, the customer might even be starting with you. ’cause there is actually one thing that I didn’t mention when I showed the 28 moments filled in. [00:51:00] Jay McBain: You’ll notice that the customer went to AWS twice direct. AWS lost the deal. Microsoft won the deal software. One is Microsoft’s biggest reseller in the world. They just acquired crayon. NTT who, who loves both had their Microsoft team go in. [00:51:18] Question: Mm. [00:51:19] Jay McBain: So I think that they went to AWS thinking it was A-W-S-S-A-P, you know, kind of starting this seven layer stack. [00:51:25] Jay McBain: I think they finished those, you know, critical moments in the middle looking at it. And then they went back to AWS kind of going probably WWTF. Yeah. What we thought was happening isn’t actually the outcome that was painted by our most trusted people. So, you know, to answer your question, listen to your partners. [00:51:43] Jay McBain: They want to be recognized for the other things they’re doing. You can’t be spending a hundred percent of the dollars at the point of sale. You gotta have a point of system that recognizes the point of sale, maybe even gold, silver, bronze, but recognizing that you’re paying for these other moments as well. [00:51:57] Jay McBain: Paying for alliances, paying for integrations and everything else, uh, in the cyber stack. And, um, you know, recognizing also the top 1000. So if I took your tam. And I overlaid those thousand logos. I would be walking into 2026 the best I could of showing my company logo by logo, where 80% of our TAM sits as wallet share, not by revenue. [00:52:25] Jay McBain: Remember, a million dollar partner is not a million dollar partner. One of them sells 1.2 million in our category. We should buy them a baseball cap and have ’em sit in the front row of our event. One of them sells $10 million and only sells our stuff if the customer asks. So my company should be looking at that $9 million opportunity and making sure my programs are writing the checks and my coverage. [00:52:48] Jay McBain: My capacity and capability planning is getting obsessed over that $9 million. My farmers can go over there, my hunters can go over here, and I should be submitting a list of a thousand sorted in descending order of opportunity. Of where my company can write program dollars into. [00:53:07] Vince Menzione: Great answer. All right. I, I do wanna be cognizant of time and the, all the other sessions we have. [00:53:14] Vince Menzione: So we’ll just take one other question if there are any here and if not, we’ll let I know. Jay, you’re gonna be mingling around for a little while before your flight. I’m [00:53:21] Jay McBain: here the whole day. [00:53:22] Vince Menzione: You, you’re the whole day. I see that Jay’s here the whole day. So if you have any other questions and, and, uh, sharing the deck is that. [00:53:29] Vince Menzione: Yep. Alright. We have permission to share the deck with the each of you as well. [00:53:34] Jay McBain: Alright, well thank you very much everyone. Jay. Great to have you.

In Episode 147 of “The Trusted Advisor,” RSPA CEO Jim Roddy talks leadership with Sandee Finley, Chief Payments officer at Paysafe Associates and the 2025 RSPA W2W Community Leader of the Year. Among the topics discussed are the value of leading with empathy, encouragement, and authenticity, why people connect with honesty and not perfection, and the importance of creating an environment where the leader is challenged. “The Trusted Advisor,” powered by the Retail Solutions Providers Association (RSPA), is an award-winning content series designed specifically for retail IT VARs and software providers. Our goal is to educate you on the topics of leadership, management, hiring, sales, and other small business best practices. For more insights, visit the RSPA blog at www.GoRSPA.org.  The RSPA is North America's largest community of VARs, software providers, vendors, and distributors in the retail, restaurant, and grocery verticals. The mission of the RSPA is to accelerate the success of its members in the retail technology ecosystem by providing knowledge and connections. The organization offers member-to-member warm introductions, education, legal advice, industry advocacy, and other services to assist members with becoming and remaining successful. RSPA is most well-known for its signature events, RetailNOW and Inspire, which provide face-to-face learning and networking opportunities. Learn more by visiting www.GoRSPA.org. 

Man kan ha många olika drivkrafter för att söka en romantisk partner, men vilka dominerande motiv man har för att ge sig in i en relation har visat sig spela stor roll för ens chanser att faktiskt få till det. Varsågoda för ett vindlande och bitvis rätt personligt avsnitt om vad som är en bra approach till livet i allmänhet och kärlek i synnerhet.Klipp:08:50 The Office UK Motivation14:15 marieforleo17:38 Old School28:10 Sex And The City34:41 Star TrekRedigering: Peter Malmqvist.Kontakta oss på dummamanniskor@gmail.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In Episode 146 of “The Trusted Advisor,” RSPA CEO Jim Roddy talks retail IT industry trends and leadership with Gilbert Bailey, the President of Genius Retail and Small Business for Global Payments. Among the topics discussed are AI, enterprise tools filtering to SMB, providing solutions beyond the POS, and that leaders “action always beats inaction.” “The Trusted Advisor,” powered by the Retail Solutions Providers Association (RSPA), is an award-winning content series designed specifically for retail IT VARs and software providers. Our goal is to educate you on the topics of leadership, management, hiring, sales, and other small business best practices. For more insights, visit the RSPA blog at www.GoRSPA.org.  The RSPA is North America's largest community of VARs, software providers, vendors, and distributors in the retail, restaurant, and grocery verticals. The mission of the RSPA is to accelerate the success of its members in the retail technology ecosystem by providing knowledge and connections. The organization offers member-to-member warm introductions, education, legal advice, industry advocacy, and other services to assist members with becoming and remaining successful. RSPA is most well-known for its signature events, RetailNOW and Inspire, which provide face-to-face learning and networking opportunities. Learn more by visiting www.GoRSPA.org.