Noticed that our long-time customer Staples just announced their new "Thrive" set of IT services aimed at small-to-medium sized businesses (SMBs, in the industry vernacular).
And, of course, it was great to read that they'd chosen EMC as their partner in this venture.
So, what's going on here?
Actually, There's Quite A Bit In Play Here ...
First, there's the dramatic growth in selling IT products and services to SMBs. If you look at all the industry numbers from the analysts, the rate of IT growth in this segment jumps out at you.
Now, I wish there was a clear consensus as to what was an SMB, and what was not, but Staples' target audience (businesses with 25 to 250 employees) certainly qualifies as SMB in my mind.
But it's not enough to simply crank out a product for this segment, and hope that people will buy it. Simply put, success in SMB is all about distribution -- how do you reach your customer?
And all of us vendors need to think about this differently.
Would You Like A Product, Or A Service?
A while back, EMC bought Dantz, whose backup product (Retrospect) was pretty popular in this space. And then EMC went and bought an online cloud service (Mozy) that did essentially the same thing.
What's up with that?
Simple -- we think that most IT functionality is gradually migrating from being sold as a product, to being sold as a service. It's happening faster in some markets (e.g. consumer and SMB) and in certain areas (e.g. backup and related) than others.
Now, when you think in terms of a company with 25 to 250 employees, you need to think about "IT staff" in very different terms. A company of 25 may not have a dedicated IT employee. A company of 250 probably only a small number of hearty souls looking after IT issues.
Easy is everything, no? And what could be easier than a backup service that takes just a minute or two to set up?
And What's With Office Supplies?
I briefly worked for a very small company a while back, and every two weeks we'd go on down to the local Staples to stock up on paper, binders, pens, maybe a new desktop, a printer, some cables and the like.
That was our "IT run". If you couldn't buy it at Staples, you probably didn't need it.
At the time, if I had seen an offer for PC backup, $10/mo, well, I would have picked it up, no problem. The alternative would be to buy a bunch of stuff and do it myself. And probably screw things up in the process. We tried to put important stuff on floppies (this was a while ago), but we'd always forget to make a safety copy.
Who says you have to go to a computer store, or talk to a VAR, or go to a specialized web site? Buying an IT service like backup should be as easy as picking up a printer cartridge.
But There's Another Angle As Well
Staple's headquarters is not far from EMC's here in Massachussets. And, ever since I've worked here, we've had a pretty good relationship with them.
I kind of like the idea that we've evolved from being simply an IT vendor to being a true business partner -- and directly helping them get into an entirely new business segment.
And you know what?
I'd really like to be able to do that for all of EMC's customers ...
Comments