Stephen DiFranco, principal at During his session, titled “Also on March 2, DiFranco’s session, titled “OtoSense, And during another session, titled “Tekie Geek’s president, will highlight his IoT best practices and lessons he's learned. He’ll also share how his organization helps clients add automated touch and voice controls.

Tech Data’s director of consulting services and marketing for IoT and data solutions, will take the stage to show partners how they can cash in on the expected $100 billion in new revenue from IoT over the next three years. During her session, titled “In a Q&A with Channel partners, DiFranco and Miner provide a sneak peek of what they’ll share with attendees.

Stephen DiFranco: We are seeing an acceleration of deployments of camera vision systems in transportation centers to monitor person awareness and traffic management. IoT devices and applications with presence awareness are used to track people movement. Reduced road traffic has been an opportunity for highway authorities to advance the deployment of traffic monitoring, intersection management and smart city systems.

digital transformation. In quick response to the channel’s need to enable their customers during this time, Tech Data created a catalog of COVID-19 response solutions that include thermal imaging, social distancing and worker safety solutions.

SD: Test Motors and VidRovr has AI-driven security tools to use video from any camera to understand the number of persons in the video frame. Their tools also track social media or any video stream to identify risks and threats.

AM: Our ... Practice Builder methodology coupled with the expertise of our consulting team enables us to assess channel partners’ businesses to determine the best opportunity for them to grow their business leveraging the proven, market-ready solutions in our solutions catalog. Our Practice Builder methodology enables us to assess a partner’s readiness to sell IoT and data solutions, choose the right solution and determine the enablement they need to execute successfully.

SD: Start with the application. Sense what matters. We often see deployments fail due to collecting non-relevant data. Keep the system simple. IoT networks can be complex. They require sensors, networking, connectivity, messaging and some type of application. It is easy to start too big. Start with as basic of a solution as possible. It is always easy to expand an IoT network. Just add more sensors and connectivity. Deploy small, expand fast.

AM: By leveraging our solutions factory methodology, CP: Can IoT give your business a competitive advantage? If so, how?

IoT automates the collecting, inferring and reporting at scale. IoT is the network between the physical world and the data world. IoT networks are designed to work at a scale. That is its advantage.

SD: An appreciation that IoT is no more complex than the networks we have built to connect PCs to servers to the clouds. There really is no difference between connecting a tablet to a network than a AM: Tech Data solutions enable any partner to leverage their existing expertise to sell IoT and data solutions. This enables new conversations with their customers and enables partners to deliver business value to their customers by leveraging the power of technology.