ESET UK – 2018 Partner Conference

Paul Ellis joined the business early 2018 as one of our IT support engineers. Day-to-day, he is responsible for looking after our clients with their technology. Last week, Paul attended his first ever partner conference with our vendor, ESET.

Most of my time is spent looking after our clients and helping them to manage and support their computer systems. Across the other side of our office can sometimes be like a different world; Chris and Paul are always busy building relationships and talking to clients and prospective clients about how we might help their businesses.

When Chris threw out the suggestion I could go with him to the annual partner conference for ESET, I was excited at the opportunity to see a different side to how the business works and what goes into bringing in the solutions that are being recommended to our clients. It also felt good to represent Bespoke Computing Ltd with such an important vendor in our supply chain.

The partner conference this year – invitation only for select partners – was held at the Alton Towers resort in Staffordshire.

ESET and the Value of Conference

Before coming to Bespoke Computing Ltd, I hadn’t heard of ESET and listening to talks at the partner conference, this is quite often the biggest challenge they have in the UK. Despite that, ESET is celebrating its 30th birthday and protects more than 100 million users globally. They are ranked the 4th largest security vendor on the planet and ranked 1st in EMEA (Europe, Middle East & Africa).

ESET has a range of security products that includes the antivirus on your computers, multi-factor authentication and laptop encryption. They look after some big names like Toshiba and Greenpeace and some really big names that they aren’t allowed to talk about.

It’s a big deal for two of us to disappear from the office for a couple of days. It obviously has an impact on the day-to-day helping our clients with their technology.

Because 70%+ of our clients take an ESET product us, being able to learn about what the company is doing and how they are innovating with their products in response to an ever-changing landscape is invaluable. Everything that we learn at conference has some kind of impact to our clients.

One talk at the partner conference talked through malware as if it were a business. From writing and distributing software, to marketing and delivery – it as very easy to present malware as a unique industry in its own right. The scale of malware and the resource that goes behind it is mind binding.

Good news about ransomware – it is last years news. The largest threat right now is coin mining and did you know: the electricity consumed on Bitcoin mining exceeds the electricity consumption of Chile – about 0.31% of global consumption.

All Work and No Play…

… is not the ESET way.

After a day “in the classroom” it was time to celebrate partner successes (and watch the football) with a cold beer or two. ESET had dragged in former Scotland manager Gordon Strachan to commentate on the match.

Unexpectedly, Bespoke Computing Ltd was shortlisted for an award that recognised us as being one of their largest growing partners. It was nice for that recognition and a real shame that Chris and I couldn’t bring the trophy back for the team.

Having heard about the shenanigans of previous years, I was excited about the prospects of a day in Alton Towers and was not disappointed. From Oblivion to The Smiler, it was a fun day in the baking Staffordshire sunshine.