Analysis | 20 Feb 2009 :
VARs recognise that their customers' IT needs are getting more complicated every day. For this reason, they are offering an increasing number of services solutions. However, one solution area that is still relatively untapped by VARs is helping businesses to simplify IT strategy - that is, improving operational efficiency, manageability and flexibility to pinpoint ways to streamline how IT is acquired, maintained, and scaled.
Irrespective of today's economic conditions, the computing needs of organisations continue to increase at a dramatic rate. However, IT budgets remain flat or are being reduced. So, confronted with customers less willing to invest in their IT systems, VARs need to demonstrate how technology can bring major benefits to their customers, including an improved customer experience, significant cost and time-savings, and better asset utilisation. IT simplification helps reduce the cost and complexity of maintaining systems, enabling organisations to reclaim the time, money, and personnel needed to drive true innovation into daily business processes. For VARs, IT simplification can be a way to differentiate their offerings from those of their competitors, which leads to greater sales opportunities.
The idea of IT simplification has been around for many years. But vendors have only started to focus on integrating best-of-breed components into bundles that require fewer resources to get, implement, run and grow the IT infrastructure. VARs are in the position to advise businesses to adopt the following maxims in their approach to IT:
* Get IT faster
* Run IT better
* Grow IT smarter
Getting IT faster is not so much about actually procuring equipment faster. Rather, it encompasses the entire time from purchase to implementation, or time to solution. It all starts with purchasing the most suitable solution for the business - those built in standardised, consolidated platforms using flexible components made to scale with the needs of the business. VARs should advise businesses to never automatically opt for buying the cheapest - or most expensive - system for the company. These days more and more vendors are tailoring solutions, meaning best-fit solutions are available for all businesses, regardless of size. In the past, VARs and their customers would order off-the-shelf standard components and spend hours - even years - customising, testing, and fixing. Today, customised systems can be ordered from the factory, allowing the VAR to focus on high-value services rather than mundane, low-margin break/fix services. So, rather than trying to fit consumer-use or enterprise technology into the company IT environment, a solution that meets the needs of the customer's business can be implemented more rapidly with less risk.
In terms of running the IT operation, there are two aspects to making the investment pay. First, standardise and streamline the IT infrastructure and, second, be proactive in performing systems management and support - which ultimately leads to spending less time on day-to-day maintenance. Purchasing components that are engineered to work together will make them easier to run. VARs should also assess the underlying management tools in place, from desktop to data centre, and aim to have as few as possible. By working with vendors who build simplification into every component, VARs will be in a strong position to help customers reduce and better manage their IT complexity.
With changing times, companies need to foster an IT environment that supports rapidly shifting business requirements, whether in relation to data, to devices or to the network. It's critical that they adopt a flexible foundation on which new services can be quickly rolled out or enhanced to adapt to the evolving marketplace. Quite often, what holds companies back is a legacy IT infrastructure. VARs need to ensure their customers are ahead of the game instead of simply ‘keeping up'. This includes giving advice on designing, implementing, testing and running IT infrastructures that are dramatically more cost effective, energy efficient and scalable.
There is a huge opportunity for VARs to help customers simplify their IT, making IT systems more standardised, automated and scalable. Many businesses are yet to 'simplify IT' themselves, so VARs who not only do this, but do it well, can carve out a successful niche in a tough marketplace.
* Paul McCord is channel manager at Dell Ireland