Backed by their strong relationships with the enterprise customers, channel partner community holds great influence on their set of end customers and can become agents for technology transformation.
And at a time when the channel community is looking at creating better value proposition for its set of customers, cloud computing can provide big momentum to channel partners and also can be great technology enabler for its customers, where channel partners can combine forces with vendors to deliver exactly what the customers want and most importantly how they want it to be delivered.
According to Vijay Sampath Kumar, Country Leader, Enterprise System Group, Global Commercial Channels, Dell India, Dell is not limiting Channel Partners to focus on one specific area in businesses.
“In fact we recently made improvements to channel partner programs, including software-specific enhancements to PartnerDirect program through four new software competencies, as well as new service provider and referral programs. The enhancements enable channel partners to sell end-to-end solutions through one simple program, and increase the scope and revenue potential from partnerships. Partners selling a mix of Dell hardware and software can now achieve Premier status through a mixed competency, while an advanced competency offers a path to Premier for partners specializing in a single line of business,” he adds on.
Today enterprise customers look surely look up to cloud, but can have their own specific needs to be carried forward and hence adopt a different path to the cloud. And this is where channel partners can become that binding force to join technologies such as cloud to their enterprise set of customers.
“The cloud solution should work for them, not the other way around. Our customers want a provider that is easy to do business with and that helps them get what they want when they want it. Dell offers a highly simplified path to the cloud though solutions built on a foundation of Open, Integrated and Secure Cloud. We help our customers take a pragmatic approach when adopting cloud, adopt cloud as a business strategy and not a technology, and give IT back time and money to drive business innovation,” Vijay Sampath Kumar from Dell adds on.
From a sales perspective, Cloud represents the future of data storage. With data multiplying at a rapid pace, cloud is a cost-effective answer to storage of large volumes of data. For Small and Medium Businesses cloud computing can give a technological boost at a fraction of what it could cost to run their own IT in-house.
Businesses are looking at cloud applications to store endless amounts of any data online, and run applications such as customer databases, finances, email and a lot more as Software-as-a-Service. This trend is especially gaining prominence amongst SMBs who prefer to use the cloud for the running of their business because of the convenience it brings at price point. Hence cloud solutions present a great business opportunity for channel partners.
According to Praveen Sahai, Vice President, Channels, EMC India and SAARC, the traditional hardware purchase model will continue to decline limiting opportunities for the channel community. “To survive and grow, partners will need to evolve and transform into cloud enablers and service integrators for their customers. We saw that and launched the VSPEX portfolio two years back to enable the channel to benefit from the cloud opportunity. Today, the VSPEX portfolio brings new opportunities to partners. With VSPEX, channel partners can now sell complete, highly-flexible solutions to their customers, resulting in a higher attach rate of components, and a bigger sale. VSPEX allows partners to brand their VSPEX solution and increase their mindshare in the customer’s environment. Partners can leverage EMC’s investment in the new VSPEX Labs to test additional infrastructures in collaboration with EMC and other VSPEX partners,” he explains.
Speaking on the importance of channel partners, Altaf Halde, Managing Director, Kaspersky Lab, South Asia says that, “We work with resellers who work in the security space, who have an appetite for growth and the necessary infrastructure to support our customers. For 2014, we welcome resellers who have a strong foothold in upcountry markets to align with us as we intend to aggressively increase our footprint in tier 2 and tier 3 cities this year. At the same time, we also welcome large SIs who have experience in VMware solutions to align with us as Kaspersky Security for Virtualization will be one of the key products that we focus on this year,” he adds on.
