Connected insights to revolutionize channel business models
Channel partners are actively moving to new business models in response to significant changes in the way customers buy, deploy and use technology. ‘The value that resellers represent to their customers is changing,’ said Alastair Edwards, Principal Analyst at Canalys. ‘They have evolved from being pure suppliers of products and support to become trusted business partners. This means helping customers to generate business advantage from their investments in technology, particularly as they pursue digital transformation, or taking over responsibility for more technology functions through managed services.’
‘The unprecedented convergence of digitally enabled people, businesses and things is disrupting old business models and creating new ones – for our customers and our partners,’ said Fred Kohout, Vice President, Global Partner Marketing at EMC. ‘This transformation means we need to sell differently. Selling business outcomes is vital to our success. By providing a “build for one” enablement strategy, the assets, methodologies and IP resources that our direct field organizations use are now available to our partners via our Partner Academy. EMC and its partners are transforming together.’
‘As the technology industry changes, the stability of Dell and the increasing investments in Dell’s channel program make it a winning combination for our partners,’ said Cheryl Cook (foto), Vice President Global Channels and Alliances, Dell. ‘Dell understands the solutions expertise and value channel partners and VARs bring to customers. We listen to their needs and give them the choice to purchase products directly through us or our distributors. We provide our valued partners with incentives and the technology, tools and strength of the Dell brand to grow their businesses faster than the market and win new customers with Dell. As a private company we’re agile and adaptive to support evolving business models and help our partners win in the future.’
‘Organizations’ need for IT and OT groups to work together like never before is pushing the industry to focus on the value side of the IoT. The IoT, mobile/social and big data are highly disruptive forces that are driving a future of “connected equipment, connected infrastructure”. This will further drive the IT room and data center transformation for a more robust business continuity plan: a plan to keep all the connected equipment running 24x7x365. The solutions we jointly create with our partners are going to solve these problems. They’re going to be integrated, so no longer will a partner be going to disparate companies to get different solutions. We’ll be doing that integration work for them, so it’ll be seamless for the customer,’ said Noriaki Takamura, IT Business Vice President Channel & Alliance - Asia Pacific & Japan APC-Schneider Electric.
The larger channel-addressable opportunity will require more mature strategic planning, practical vendor evaluation, targeted skills enhancement and outcome-based service delivery. Channel partners attending this year’s Canalys Channels Forum events will benefit from discussions that can drive improvements across these business management topics as well as technology-based portfolio considerations.
