Like many of my brethren, I have been somewhat neglectful in updating this blog.
There's been plenty to talk about, but just not enough time to write it all down.
Having just returned from EMC's North American Partner Council (see this related post), I was struck by just how many of our partners are now adding a distinct service provider component to their business mix.
And I think we'll see much more of that in the future.
What Do You Mean By "Partner"?
Sorry, that's an overused term in the industry.
These *specific* partners resell and add value around various EMC products. Perhaps better terms would be "solution provider" or "integrator" rather than simply "reseller".
Indeed, the value-added channel continues to morph and evolve at a healthy pace. Over time, their businesses are becoming less and less about product sales, and more and more about creating unique expertise and skills in the form of services.
It's All About Services
When an IT organization turns to one of these solution providers, they're really buying expertise. If all you want is cheap technology, there are plenty of places to go (like Ebay), so it's all about being good at what you do.
One way of thinking of the move from reseller to solution provider to service provider is simply more efficient delivery of these skills and expertise. Expertise comes packaged in the form of smart people, and having to schlep around to different customer locations can be incredibly inefficient for everyone involved.
Far more efficient and productive to deliver that expertise as a service, over a wire.
And that's just one of the reasons I see more and more value-added resellers and integrators starting to add a service provider element to their customer portfolio.
It's All About Choices
Many IT customers are torn between doing an IT function themselves, and using an external service provider for that function. Lots of examples -- from application-specific (think email, SAP, etc.) to function-specific (think infrastructure, backup, security, service delivery monitoring, etc.).
A local solution provider who can present both flavors of options -- traditional and as-a-service -- is uniquely positioned to capture more customer spend than one who only can do one or the other.
The expensive part of any IT business model is the investment in customer engagement. Better if you can monetize that investment by broadening your offering portfolio as much as possible.
It's All About Growing Your Business By Meeting Customer Needs
The "channel" (for lack of a better word) has always succeeded by giving their customers what they want in a way that the larger vendors simply couldn't.
Those "unmet needs" have evolved greatly over the last ten years or so, from convenient distribution and first-level support, to services-rich solutions -- and now to various aspects of IT delivered as a service.
As I mentioned in my original post, these folks are smart, nimble and entrepreneurial. They tend to define themselves in terms of the market opportunity, and less using traditional terms and labels.
Some Examples From EMC Partner Council
I met a least a half-dozen EMC partners who were delivering what you'd call IaaS to smaller customers using VMware -- and a few who want to use Vblocks.
I met another half-dozen who were doing some aspect of IT management -- backup, security, service delivery monitoring, etc. -- as a service.
And I met a few others who were focusing on certain horizontal applications -- email and collaboration being the most popular -- and delivering it as-a-service.
I bet if I had more time, I would have found more examples. Each of these solution providers has gotten into the SP business simply because it made sense for them.
All were pretty thumbs-up about the growth and the opportunity as a standalone offering, but also saw great synergies with their more traditional businesses.
Taking Your Expertise Back To Your Customers
And then it struck me.
Just about every decent-sized IT organization wants to become more like a service provider to their internal customers.
Who better to help them than a solution provider who actually has a service provider business, and can tell them how to do it? As in direct expertise in how to do the "built-differently, operated-differently and consumed-differently" aspects that make a cloud a cloud?
I guess the generic and imprecise term of "partner" is probably an accurate description after all.
The lines are blurring very fast indeed.
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