It is likely Flash will supersede hard disk over time but, as Gerry Harvey, general manager at Commtech predicts, there will be “no big bang, no rip and replace – just an orderly transition from the old to the new”.
In 2015, he believes that “in the confusion of a market in transition, a well informed and fully skilled channel partner has a rich opportunity to act as trusted advisor and guide the user through the change”. There is that trusted advisor phrase again.
Solid state might significantly improve IT infrastructure performance for some customers but it may not be particularly relevant for others. The opportunity for resellers in 2015 is to help customers get to real use cases.
“Cloud is where the service model has gone, but cloud still needs a trusted advisor to provide local support and a managed service that customers will want. That is essentially the ongoing role channel partners will play in 2015” – Gareth Madden, MJ Flood
With customers interested in having a conversation around the type of storage they should deploy, partners have an important role to play in guiding them through the options of Flash cache, all Flash and hybrid arrays. Customers have a broad spectrum of requirements and partners should ensure their portfolios can match all of them. They also need the technical expertise to have the necessary conversations with customers.
Management is another area partners should focus on, according to John Casey, business development manager at Trilogy Technology, as they have the opportunity to wrap a managed service around storage arrays for customers and to actively manage and move their requirements around arrays.
Adding value to wireless
Wireless networking has become ubiquitous to the point where it is one of the first things people look for in a restaurant, cafe, hotel or bar. People also expect wireless networking in their workplace and the huge increase in mobile devices (and BYOD) is only serving to heighten their expectation. To add to the mix, there is a generational shift driving the adoption of wireless networking because newer recruits to the workforce are unlikely to have experienced using a wired connection. No wonder that IDC expects wireless data to account for 13% of telecommunications spending, which is equivalent to $536 billion, in 2015.
The demand for wireless networking is fuelling a significant and widespread opportunity for channel partners. In many instances, wireless is replacing wired Ethernet as the primary connection point and there is a growing expectation that every organisation should have a wireless network.
Wireless is likely to become the primary network for a significant number of SMEs in the next few years – the natural customer base for channel partners – because of the convenience, widespread usage of mobile devices and the ability to minimise the cost of office layout changes. SMEs are a significant opportunity for brand new Wi-Fi deployments. The arrival of the 802.11ac standard also provides a level of performance that can help to compete with wired networks. It can support video conferencing, VoIP and other bandwidth hungry applications used by small businesses looking to cut costs on travel and communications.
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