(3 votes, average: 6.33 out of 10)
Loading ...How partners can get more from stagnant IT budgets
By Paolo Del Nibletto
As an IT reseller, have you ever wondered how you could increase your business from an existing customer who has just told you their IT budget is stagnant for another year?
Well, it’s time to look beyond the IT department. Many other departments have budgets that include IT products and services, and non-IT departments and or individuals inside an organization acquiring IT products is becoming a growing trend. For example, a nurse often has authorization from administration to go ahead and purchase a push to talk IP phone.
The top decision maker will often go outside a set IT budget to buy a computing solution to either solve a specific business problem or gain a competitive advantage. The challenge then becomes how will this new equipment gets deployed and more important work with all other IT systems.
A customer doesn’t want expensive new equipment failing to talk with older equipment. This creates an opportunity for the solution provider to prevent an organization from having disparate IT solutions.
However, there is still greater opportunity for solution providers throughout an organization. This is why it’s important for a solution provider to build a relationship with CEO and the CFO of an organization along, with the CIO. Inevitably, if you can establish yourself as a trusted advisor to your customers all these separate business units will come to you.
This is something that Insight and CDW do extremely well. They understand and are able to cover organizations like an IT blanket. Also, look for vendors to push their channel partners to find hidden pockets of IT budget inside organizations.
Pat Calhoun, the CTO of Cisco Systems, has noticed this opportunity and believes channel partners are the best way to get at these non-IT people. “Partners for us are the best to sell Cisco to people within organizations we don’t have a relationship with,” he said.
One of his main targets is the manufacturing shop floor and a hospital emergency room.
Calhoun said sometimes it’s as simple as getting to know the guys who build the patient beds.
With this growing trend out there resellers now have another avenue to go down the next time they hear those dreaded words: “Sorry, the IT budgets are flat.”
One quick hit before I go. Ken Price, former executive with Compaq Canada and then HP Canada has resurfaced at Cisco Systems Canada in a marketing role. He also worked for Bell Business Solutions for a short while. CDN wishes Ken the very best at Cisco.
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(4 votes, average: 5.5 out of 10) Loading ...New Sage CEO swims with sharks
By Paolo Del Nibletto
My first take on Sue Swenson, the brand new CEO of Sage Software, is that it’s way too early to say anything about her.
However, I will say this. At her introductory keynote address at the Sage Insights 08 conference in Washington, DC, Swenson, a former T-Mobile USA chief executive, was smart enough not to make any proclamations and instead just made some general observations.
Telling the packed crowd that Sage has great products and should focus on the customer is nothing knew. Those are fine comments to make, but they’re also very safe comments to make. I think the Sage channel partners were expecting some kind of vision, and they did not get that at all.
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(6 votes, average: 8.17 out of 10) Loading ...Great night at CDN’s Top 100 Solution Provider event
*Go deeper into CDN’s Top 100 Solution Providers awards gala with full video and photo coverage, including interviews with some of the winners.
More than 200 solution providers turned out to see where they ranked on the annual CDN Top 100 Solution Provider list.
Softchoice was again the top solution provider of the year, but they were closely followed by Insight Canada, Compugen and Xwave. It was the closest race in years. Following up in the fifth spot was MetaFore IT Solutions. To view the entire list please click here: CDN Top 100 Solution Providers.
There were 12 newcomers to the list this year. The most CDN has ever witnessed. It is great to see smart and savvy new resellers challenging the established partners in the industry. It just makes everyone better, in my opinion. The award for newcomer of the year was handed out to The Herjavec Group, a security solution provider who acquired MetaComm last year. This company was established only a few short years ago and is led by Robert Herjavec, the former president of Brak Systems and current CBC TV personality on the show Dragon’s Den.
The fastest rising company was Epic Information Systems of Winnipeg, who moved up an amazing 27 spots from last year. This company is great in the community as they have their own Technology Day computer show. This show has been put on for five years and attracts more than 350 people from the area. David Reid, the president of Epic, said at the show last night that Winnipeg is the fly over show capital of Canada. All the computer trade shows fly over Winnipeg to get to Toronto or Montreal or from there to Calgary and Vancouver. He said for this market to have a show they would have to do it themselves. And, I have to congratulate Reid and the folks at Epic for the effort and initiative.
The event belonged to everyone in the channel. There were no runaway winners. All the people who attended I would consider winners, whether the made the list or they did not. Two people I would like to thank are Dave Neil of Neil Corporate Services who drove from North Bay, Ont., to make the event and Stuart Crawford of IT Matters of Calgary. Both narrowly missed making the list.
I also enjoyed meeting people such as Gary McNally of Digica Solutions, another newcomer to the CDN Top 100 Solution Provider list. I enjoyed listening to McNally telling me about his company and his future plans for success.
It was also great to catch up with Patrick Power, formerly of OAM and now with Nitro Microsystems after an acquisition. The Nitro/OAM deal is one of those classic cases of a win-win. Similar deals such as Compugen buying Orbex and Epic acquiring Prairie Computers are other examples of win-win deals in the channel. These win-win deals are rare, but they seem to happen more often in the Canadian IT channel. It says something about this community.
I also wanted to mention Bill MacDonald of Genuit and Herb Roblin of Hartco. I enjoyed listening to both of them talk about their days at Compaq and IBM respectively. We can all learn a few things from these veteran executives who are still making waves in the industry.
In closing I want to thank the sponsors for their time and attention to the CDN Top 100 event. They are HP Canada, Cisco Canada, Tech Data Canada, Symantec Canada, NEC Display Solutions and the newest sponsor AMD.
Two quick hits before I go. I has come to my attention that Paul Patterson has left Lexmark Canada. Patterson is a great friend of CDN and an excellent channel executive. I wish him the best.
Also Corel announced that Kris Hagerman, formerly Group President of Symantec’s Data Center Management Group, has been appointed as Corel’s interim Chief Executive Officer. Hagerman will replace the outgoing David Dobson, who accepted a senior executive position at a Fortune 500 company he has yet to name.
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(3 votes, average: 6.33 out of 10) Loading ...Cisco’s Partner Exchange program needs trust
Networking giant Cisco Systems wants partners to come together.
They’re hoping to encourage collaboration by reseller partners with Cisco, with customers and with other partners. Collaborating with Cisco and with customers seems straightforward enough. But partner-to-partner collaboration is tricky.
Cisco last week announced the creation a portal site and program called the Partner Exchange, designed to help partners learn the fine art of partner-to-partner collaboration.
The partners with whom I spoke – both Canadian and U.S.-based – say they believe it will be difficult to collaborate with competing partners, especially in local markets or smaller geographies.
Read the rest of this entry »
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(19 votes, average: 5.68 out of 10) Loading ...Dell cheapens its image at HP channel event
Dell Computer might want to rethink a recent channel recruitment promotion.
During a recent channel conference hosted by Hewlett-Packard Co. at the Las Vegas Caesars‘ Palace, I was lined up for a taxi and approached by two rather attractive women who claimed to work in casino promotions.
One of them asked if I had just attended the HP channel event inside the hotel. I said, “yes” and was then handed a paper flyer.
I initially thought I’d been given some sort of exclusive invitation to one of the many night clubs on the Las Vegas strip. To my amazement I’d been handed a Dell flyer that told me the company was driving some US$9 billion in channel business and claimed more than 30,000 solution providers in its North American partner network. Let me speak to the marketing tactic presently. The Dell flyer itself cited numbers that were at best somewhat inflated. I’d heard Dell worldwide channel chief Greg Davis say there were approximately 15,000 partners in the U.S. while in Canada, local channel manager Frank Fuser says there are about 2,000 partners here. If you also add in the 5,000 Equallogic partners then the total sits at around 23,000, significantly below this stated 30,000. Read the rest of this entry »
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(3 votes, average: 5.33 out of 10) Loading ...Dell may be playing the wrong channel game
Dell may be trying to change the rules of the channel game by not offering rebates similar to what’s being given by most other PC and server vendors.
Instead, Dell is looking to provide pre-configuration of systems and shipments directly to customers, for a less obvious but arguably greater value to the channel by eliminating the time, effort and expense of partners who currently do this sort of work – for little or no profit.
But it is asking a lot of channel partners to accept a new deal and I’m not convinced that the approach will work. Let’s not forget how Dell’s direct selling strategy changed the rules of the PC game by eliminating a selling tier and passing savings onto the buyer. Dell’s direct selling model worked well for more than 20 years, so I don’t entirely dismiss the chances of success for the company’s unique idea. But it’s difficult to see the real dollar benefits of this program. Read the rest of this entry »
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(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...A new logo and a new brand for Xerox
Xerox has come out with a bold new look and I don’t quite know if I like the new brand identity. I will say this: it is an improvement from what they have.
My personal favourite, for what it is worth, was the logo they had in 1994. It was simple, and it described what the company was: The Document Company.
This time around Xerox wants its logo to reflect the customer-centric focus it has. Company CEO Anne Mulcahy has spoken passionately about this and I wrote about it last year. I said that I was truly impressed by her and what she wanted to accomplish given her track record.
Now Xerox is saying that this logo and new brand is the most sweeping transformation of its corporate identity in its history. After taking a look at previous logos I can see why. Read the rest of this entry »
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