Colt published some interesting research last week which revealed that almost three-quarters of the European companies it surveyed suffered from a ‘tech deficit’(defined as “the gap between what businesses need to achieve and what their infrastructure can support”).
Only 26% of organisations thought their current infrastructure had the scalability to support the peaks, troughs and complexity of demand over the next two years. Half of them believed they only had a year before they would be unable to manage or mitigate risk for their business.
The good news is that many of those organisations (66%) believe the channel can play an important role in helping them to plug the tech deficit. Even more encouraging is the fact that 76% view resellers as partners rather than just IT suppliers. Another factor that could work in resellers’ favour is that 63% of companies see the benefit of moving to a single supplier model to provide a range of different IT service and infrastructure options.
Colt executive vice president Falk Weinreich suggested the preference for dealing with suppliers able to provide a range of different service and infrastructure options was “a great opportunity for IT consultants and VARs to sell a complete portfolio of solutions instead of individual services to maximise revenue per customer”.
He argued the channel should “empower organisations to tackle the tech deficit” with solutions offering built in flexibility without CAPEX outlays. “Strengthening their infrastructure foundations will be businesses’ top priority over the next two years,” Weinreich stated, “and we are confident that our channel partners across Europe will play a pivotal role in helping organisations to address the tech deficit.”
Direct route
It helps that one of the key roles played by channel partners over the years has been in delivering a blend of services and infrastructure from a number of vendors and suppliers to their customers. In fact it could be argued that this is their raison d’être. If customers were able to source all their service and infrastructure requirements from a single vendor, it would make more sense to do so directly.
The fact that so many of those companies surveyed viewed resellers as partners was also a strong endorsement for the role channel companies play in the overall supply chain. But perhaps as importantly, it also demonstrates just how valuable resellers are to vendors.
If all the resellers in the world disappeared overnight, how would vendors be able to plug the ‘trust deficit’ that would open up between what businesses needed to achieve and what the infrastructure vendors wanted them to buy? If businesses were forced to replace their ‘partners’ with vendors, how would they get access to the range of different IT service and infrastructure options they desire without being lumbered with much more complex and cumbersome supplier relationships? And that’s assuming they had the time and resources to replicate all the work a channel partner does internally.
There’s a tendency to take resellers for granted, perhaps even to focus on the difficulties they face in defining their future role as IT evolves. But before we get too gloomy, it’s also worth pointing out that the importance customers attach to channel partners in terms of plugging the tech deficit (and the trust deficit) is something that should stand them in good stead for the future whatever it brings.
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