Channel executives from four leading technology companies told the ChannelCon audience Wednesday they’re ready and willing to work with them to bring new technology solutions to more customers.
“There is more change and more opportunity happening in the next six years that there was in the past 20,” Brooks L. McCorcle, president, emerging business markets, AT&T Services Inc., said during the Channel Chiefs Power Panel.
The challenge for both vendors and their partners, McCorcle and other panelists said, will be to work together on new methods and strategies for serving their customers
“We need to challenge ourselves to create new and different ways to go to market,” she said.
“If we take a legacy approach to a changing buyer’s environment, we’re going to miss a huge opportunity,” concurred Doug Erickson, vice president, worldwide partner programs and development, Juniper Networks, Inc.
The panel touched on several opportunity areas – mobility, cloud computing, managed services and voice and data convergence.
In the mobility market, channel executives encouraged channel partners to look beyond simply providing customers with mobile devices.
“The opportunity for partners is not necessarily the device; it’s what surrounds the device, such as security,” advised Jeff McCullough, vice president, worldwide channels organization, indirect RTM and SMB segment for Hewlett-Packard Company. “There is a huge intersection between mobility and security.”
Erickson agreed, saying the SMB market is largely untapped from a mobility and security perspective. “The perception is what do I have to worry about? The reality is that they are as much at risk as a large enterprise.”
Channel partners were also reminded that “mobility is not just people walking down the street with phone,” according to McCullough.
One example is the healthcare marker, which relies on mobile technologies for physician notes, healthcare records and many other elements of patient care.
“Think about mobility as an extension of what you already do,” AT&T’s McCorcle said.
Panelists offered channel partners similar advice on the cloud market.
Dave Maffei, vice president, global channel sales, Carbonite, said vendors and their partners need to do a better job tying cloud solutions together. Rather than selling a piece here and a piece there, the goal should be to tie many cloud offering – email, CRM, backup and disaster recovery – into a single, unified solution.
“We really believe that end-to-end solution selling is the future for us as well as for the partners in this room,” McCorcle agreed. “This is a huge opportunity for all of us in this room to work together.”
Steven Ostrowski is CompTIA’s director of corporate communications.
