What’s up at the NASBA Services, Security and Storage event

Managed services, thin clients, and enterprise SATA as a PC differentiator

There’s a colorful group of small to medium-sized system builders here in Baltimore for the North American System Builder (NASBA) conference.  I love attending these events because they are informal and intimate – a chance to interact one-on-one and in a group setting with about 50 system builders. 

Tonight’s takeaways:

• Managed services is taking off, with about half of the attendees at least playing with it. 
• A minority of the ‘system builders’ here build systems.  They are leading with support or service, then following up with hardware from wherever to fulfill. 
• Stan Williamson from The Blencoe Group says they are succeeding tremendously with thin client solutions in business accounts with 25 seats or less.
• Gordon Schroyer of MTPC in Laramie, Wyoming is using Barracuda ES drives in all of his custom PCs for $10 extra, and marketing his PCs as using “100% server-quality drives”, as one way to get to his profitable margin threshold.  Below that hurdle, he resells HP systems. 
• Lots of pain from the drive shortage in the market. Our customers are frustrated – so am I!  Hard to see loyal customers have to turn to other sources.  No sign of supply catching up with demand any time soon.